Comedy of Success: The Five Years That Changed Harrison Ford's Life
One of the great cultural icons of our lives is celebrating 80: the man who played Han Solo and Indiana Jones was not at all interested in the game, and when he started doing so he quickly realized it was not for him.
An extraordinary chain of events between 1976 and 1981, and one fateful hand, made him the star we know today
Ilan Kaprov
13/07/2022
Wednesday, 13 July 2022, 00:58
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Harrison Ford was fed up, he decided to find a "job of the great".
The optimistic 60s of the last century were about to give way to the much gloomier 70s, and he, who was always mature and gloomy for his age, realized it was time to put his fantasies behind him.
Five years earlier he had left his hometown of Chicago in favor of Los Angeles, hoping to find a role as a radio actor.
He never aspired to more than that: some sketches, some decent jobs with a modest salary that would help support his family.
The very fact that the game became a profession for him was completely coincidental.
Although he was born to a mother who was herself a radio actress and a father who tried his luck in the field, the occupation never attracted him.
This motif will become a salient feature of one of the most amazing stories in the entertainment industry: a man who is dragged as if reluctantly by forces greater than himself into a career of cultural icon.
Five wonderful years.
Ford (Photo: GettyImages, Edoardo Fornaciari)
The first encounter between this mythical force and Ford may have taken place at Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he studied in his youth.
"Learned" is a somewhat generous definition, since as a student of English literature and philosophy he was best known for his failures.
With a grade point average so low as to be in danger of being fired from a college that is not known for its prestige - it needs a quick fix.
This was the moment he first encountered in a drama class.
He never performed on stage, nor did it occur to him that attending a class would require it.
He hoped he could get an easy grade thanks to memorizing plays, and take the time to meet girls.
Only later did he realize what he was actually choosing.
Instead of running away, he decided to face the challenge and his stage fright.
He was cynical and critical even then, most people his age seemed to him frivolous or boring.
The department first introduced Ford to a community of people whose skills challenged it to work together.
He found great satisfaction in the collaboration of storytelling, in the fact that each of them is essential to the other in order to succeed in the common goal of creating an emotional connection with the viewer.
It was a formative understanding that influenced him excessively.
While his classmates graduated and began real life in "big" jobs, Ford planned to make the game his livelihood.
Years later he would tell that his biggest fear was sitting in the office, and doing the same thing over and over until the end of his days.
Just before that happened, the forces arranged for him another random achievement that many people would mark as the pinnacle of their lives.
In the early 1960s he joined Jim Morrison and The Doors for a week and a half, as part of the band's photography team during a tour.
In a rare archive segment he is a narrator who enjoyed very much, but could not keep up with those guys.
To this claim and its degree of truth, we shall return.
Moving to Los Angeles after graduation was natural.
This was where actors came in in search of a job.
Fate once again intervened in Ford's favor, and while others spent years washing dishes and cleaning in anticipation of the coveted phone, he was hired within a few months.
But this livelihood involved a completely different lifestyle than he had imagined.
In 1964, the city was dominated by the "studio system", which would soon reach its end.
As part of the system, Hollywood's major studios dominated the entire production chain: they produced the films, produced them, distributed them on the cinema networks they owned, and employed the actors and the rest of the professionals on seven-year draconian contracts.
As a contractor for Columbia Studios, Ford received $ 150 a week for which his career was entrusted to the studios.
He was required to "cut Elvis-style haircuts," wear a suit and tie and at the beginning even change his name to "less pretentious than Harrison Ford."
Determined even then to beat any bullshit lying in his direction, the player showed up the next morning with an unparalleled Fordy alternative.
He suggested that his stage name be Kurt Affair - a name so amazing and absurd that executives were quick to agree that Harrison Ford did not sound terrible to them in spite of everything.
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To the full article
As a contract player he was sent to fill small roles according to the tapecast set for him, initially ones that did not include text or credit.
When he was already credited, he appeared as Harrison Jay Ford, so as not to confuse viewers with silent film star Harrison Ford.
Jay, by the way, had no meaning, since Ford had no middle name at all.
Ford (like most of us) was not at all aware of the existence of the silent film star, until he came across his star on the Avenue of the Stars in Hollywood.
Life as a tiny and unimportant screw in forgotten TV series and unknown movies, led him to the same feeling of disgust.
At one point he appeared as an FBI agent in three different series without anyone noticing.
The fact that he looked like a movie star made him look like all those characters that were seen on screen, which made him unremarkable.
He was married (to his first wife, Mary Mercordet) to two young children and a growing understanding that his acting skills would not allow him to support his family.
In 1969 he announced his resignation to the heads of Colombia, and opened a new business as a carpenter.
Here, by all logic, the story was also supposed to end.
We all once dreamed of being famous and rich, until we came to terms with reality and adapted ourselves to the stencil of life.
But above Ford, as mentioned, other forces are hovering, and they will make sure that this random career change meets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The truth is that Ford had no background in carpentry.
It was required of her after he bought a crumbling house in the Hollywood hills, and could not afford to pay anyone to renovate it.
He began to stockpile tools and read books on home remodeling, but the practical knowledge came from his father.
John William "Christopher" Ford himself dreamed of another life, but fate was less accessible in his case.
His father (Harrison Ford's grandfather) was a Woodville actor, a traveling band of actors and entertainers identified with blatant performances for the period, early 20th century.
He died at a young age, leaving behind a woman who failed to care for her children.
This is how John Ford found himself rolling among Catholic orphanages where his tough and quiet character was built.
In the early 1940s, just before World War II reached the borders of the United States, he met in Chicago the Jewish radio actress Dorothy Needleman, whose parents had immigrated to America from the city of Minsk in Belarus - and the two married.
In 1942 their eldest son, Harrison, was born.
Irish-Catholic advertising manager and Jewish actress - This amazing connection between his parents brought Ford one of his greatest quotes ever, when he appeared in the "Game Studio" in 2000: "As a man I always felt Irish, as an actor I always felt Jewish."
Ford Sr. instilled in his son the values of decent manual labor and meticulous attention to detail.
The two worked together in the craft corner in the basement of their home in Chicago, with the young Harrison learning from his father how to cut wooden beams in a straight line and how to connect them to structures that would last a long time.
In one of these jobs, when he was 16, Ford saw his father cut off his index finger in a moment of inattention.
Ford Sr. tried to saw a sheet of plywood on the small table, but a bulge in the table caused the saw to bounce from the line to the saw's finger.
Later, when asked if the experience had traumatized him, Ford jokingly replied, "Why? That was not my finger."
After successfully renovating his home, Ford met a friend who served as a sound engineer for the Brazilian jazz giant, Sergio Mendez.
The friend told him that Mendes was interested in setting up his own recording studio in the backyard of his home in the Encino neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley, California.
Ford hurried to take over the project, Mendez never bothered to check the young carpenter's work history - and entrusted him with a project costing one hundred thousand dollars.
The bet paid off.
Before the premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in 2015, Mendez recalled the young carpenter and the impressive work he had done for him 40 years earlier.
The success with Mendez made Ford almost instantly a "carpenter of celebrities."
He renovated the home of writer Joan Didion in Malibu, worked for director Richard Fleischer ("20,000 Miles Underwater") and music producer Richard Perry.
His name as a skilled professional went before him.
But there are those who disagree about the quality of work of the outstanding carpenter.
In his memoir, Didion's partner, screenwriter John Gregory Dunn, describes that the work on their house was supposed to last two months but actually lasted six months, and that the contractor (Ford) exceeded the budget given to him by $ 4,000.
"I fired him," Dunn wrote, "he was an unemployed player and his team branched out a lot of cocaine."
Remember Ford testifying that he could not keep up with the members of the "Doors"?
The writer, artist and bohemian wife Yves Babitz has a quite different version of this claim.
In Babitz's memoir, Michelle Phillips, singer of The Mamas & The Papas, is quoted as being shocked to discover Ford on screen when she came to watch "Star Wars."
She knew him as her grass dealer.
And if there are already quotes from Babitz's book (who for a short time was Ford's partner), there is also the one in which she claims that the actor has endurance.
"Harrison could have slept with nine women in one night. It's hard to love nine people," Babich wrote, "Warren Beatty could only love six."
Whether you get Ford's version that carpentry was for him a direct continuation of the game's work, with a methodical work of laying foundations from the bottom up, or that of a platform for revelry and drug trafficking - the connection between the forces of fate and the new profession is undeniable.
The money he earned as a carpenter allowed him to continue playing the few roles he chose.
During this time he met Fred Ross, a failed past actor and cast who connected Ford to a young director named George Lucas.
This acquaintance gave Ford his breakthrough role in American Graffiti in 1973.
Although this is a fairly secondary role, Ford has fitted in well with the bunch of young people who go out to celebrate graduation on a stormy night of debauchery in Modesto, California.
It was also the first time he felt the director listened to his views and allowed him to influence the part of the story for which he was responsible.
Aside from the huge commercial success of American Graffiti - a $ 770,000 budget that brought in $ 140 million in profits - fate continued to work for Ford.
While his and Lucas' paths parted for a short time, "American Graffiti" producer Francis Ford Coppola was impressed.
In 1974 he was given a small role in the film "The Conversation" and a few years later he would take it with him to produce the madness of "Apocalypse Now".
This very familiarity led to the climax of the forces overseeing Ford.
Thanks to the door.
Francis Ford Coppola (Photo: GettyImages, Frederick M. Brown)
In 1976, Ford Coppola asked the actor for a favor: install a complex door in his offices at 20th Century Fox Studios.
Ford was not the first to be approached by the director, but none of the previous professionals were able to get the job done the way he wanted.
Ford agreed on one condition: that the works be carried out at night.
The practical reason for the condition was to avoid people coming in and out of the office and interfering with the course of work, but Ford also did not want to run into other players and industry figures.
They were the successful ones who belonged to the entertainment industry, and he was the one who built balconies for a living.
In the early hours of one of the working nights, Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Fred Ross entered the compound.
At the time, Ford Coppola allowed Lucas to use the audition office for his new film - a space adventure fantasy called Star Wars.
Lucas wanted new blood and informed the production team that he was not interested in interviewing for roles in the film any of the actors who appeared in "American Graffiti".
But in that early morning, the exception came.
Ross turned to Langer and asked if he would agree to help them audition and read the texts of the other actors, to allow the examinees to respond to him.
Ford agreed.
Had it not been for the door he would never have been considered for the job.
Ford and Mark Hamill audition for Star Wars
About 300 different actors tried to be accepted for the role of the charming smuggler Han Solo, and they all did so with the help of Ford.
None of them managed to impress.
At some point, without any special ceremonies, Ross and Lucas informed Ford that he would play the role.
The small budget approved with great difficulty by skeptical Fox studio executives about the project allowed him a rather modest salary - but Ford jumped on the bargain.
One of the iconic roles in film history was given to him by default, and he was one of the only people in the production who believed the film might succeed.
Throughout his career Harrison Ford has been known as an unattractive interviewee.
The rigid Midwestern character combined with the aversion to bullshit he inherited from his father, created a persona that interviewers supposedly prefer to stay away from.
The foundations of this approach were born in the incredible success of "Star Wars," which turned him in one of an anonymous actor into a star identified wherever he goes.
Unlike many other stars who complain about attention but are secretly built from it, Ford actually experiences it as a trauma.
Less to himself and more to his family.
The fact that his children's quality of life was harmed in the slightest because of his presence led him to try and protect them at all costs.
The tough and angry coat that Ford presents is part of this mechanism, and as with his character Han Solo, he hides a big heart and human love beneath him.
The truth is that Ford actually loves cat and mouse games with interviewees, and those who are not afraid to face him manage to get great stories out of him.
The cast of "Star Wars" of course included the great Sir Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi), but the British elephant initially disregarded the film, which he called "Scribbled Fairy Tales" and agreed to star in it only for doubling his salary and percentage of profits.
This is how Ford entered a kind of mentor niche for the two young and unknown stars on the set: Mark Hamill (Luke) and Carrie Fisher (Leah).
He was then in his 30s, and his two young teenagers adored him.
This approach will be repeated in later Ford films as well.
Colleagues over three decades glorify the positivity and warmth that Ford has showered on them behind the scenes, including Ryan Gosling who snatched an unintentional punch from him during filming a scene in "Blade Runner 2049."
Ford, who claimed that "Gosling's face was where he was not supposed to be," arrived with a bottle of whiskey the evening after the incident at Gosling's room, poured him a drink and left.
The closest you will get to Meiri Tough's apology.
Heart break.
Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds (Photo: GettyImages)
But one piece of evidence still obscures something about Ford's chivalrous image in Hollywood.
She was described in Fisher's book in her book The Princess Diarist, based on the diaries that Fisher kept while on the set of Star Wars.
According to Fisher's testimony, she was a naive and insecure 19-year-old girl when she was swept into an affair with a married Ford.
Shortly before that she became addicted to alcohol, in what years later would turn out to be a way to deal with a bipolar disorder that had accompanied her throughout her life.
The relationship between the two was kept secret, with Ford on the set doing his best to avoid meeting her, a reaction that the young Fisher described as a real heartbreak for her.
The intimate relationship lasted about three months and in the last interviews of her life Fischer treated him, as usual, with humor and lightness.
The two became good friends in adulthood and Ford testified how much he appreciated and loved Fisher, but whether he admitted it or not - the revelation of the story hurt him.
Since the publication of the book he has refused to comment on it.
Carrie Fisher stings Ford at the Lifetime Achievement Ceremony at the American Film Institute
The one who "won" to accept Ford's irritability without filters was actually George Lucas.
The director was known as a stubborn and proud man, and his relationship with the cast at the beginning was unsettled to say the least.
The British production team that accompanied the filming in London also rolled their eyes at the bizarre that unfolded before their eyes: a man in a huge dog suit, a princess with bagel-shaped hair, a talking gold-colored robot and strange soldiers running one after the other in a spaceship.
Alec Guinness refused to recite some of his lines, and the direct Ford always made sure to make Lucas understand what he thought of his lyrics.
In a famous incident he called out to the director during a filming break: "George, you can type this shit, but you can not say it. Try to move your mouth as you write."
This stubbornness paid off in the end.
In one of the highlights of "Empire Strikes Again," Leah turns to Hahn after nearly two films of love-hate relationships and confesses: "I love you."
The pilot / smuggler was supposed to reply "I love you too", but even after many takeaways the scene failed to reach the emotional result that Lucas was aiming for.
Ford disliked the dialogue and thought it was completely the opposite of everything Han's character represents.
He asked himself what would be the last thing a woman would want to hear in such a case, and in the next take he simply coolly replied to Fisher: "I know."
It was the only take filmed in the alternative version, and Lucas as expected hated it.
He was persuaded nonetheless to test it on the audience at the screening of an experiment of the film.
The reaction taught him that Ford was right, and one of the iconic lines of cinema was born - as always with Ford - by chance.
Despite the huge success, Ford never hid his lack of sympathy for Han.
He saw him as a rather stupid and one-dimensional man, with no interesting background or depth with which to enrich the story, and ran a long persuasion campaign to kill him during "The Return of the Jedi."
Three decades later his request will be granted, and it will also be one of the main reasons for his decision to return to character for the last time in "The Force Awakens."
A character that Ford actually greatly appreciated was that of the archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones, but this time, too, the role was not meant to reach him at all.
Lucas, who this time served as producer and screenwriter, did not want Ford to become for him what turned Robert De Niro into Martin Scorsese - a director and star who go together for many films.
Lucas and his good friend Steven Spielberg, who directed the film, examined a number of actors for the lead role.
Among them: Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray, Nick Nolte, Cheby Chase and Steve Martin.
In the end they decided to choose Tom Beet, who did an excellent audition.
There was only one problem: Beet has already committed to CBS for the lead role in "Magnum, a Private Detective."
Although the series kicked off Beet's career, it prevented him from becoming a much bigger star.
With schedules tight, Spielberg persuaded Lucas to choose Ford for the lead role nonetheless.
And so, in less than five years, Ford has by default become the star of a second iconic film series.
Following past traumas, he insisted on anchoring in his contract this time the right to rewrite scenes that would not conform to his worldview.
Absorbed Ford's irritability, unfiltered.
George Lucas (Photo: GettyImages)
Thanks to this section, Ford was able to once again influence a moment that will become one of the most memorable in modern cinema.
During filming in Tunisia, many of the production staff - including Ford - suffered from dysentery.
The disease exhausted Ford, who could not stand long takeaways.
The script included a long duel of Jones with an Arab warrior, who is an artist of sword use.
Whoever played the character was a British martial artist, for whom this was the opportunity to shine alongside Ford.
Exhausted and weak, Ford offered Spielberg a way to shorten the scene to suit Jones' impatient character: he would just shoot him.
A few months passed and Ford's karma kept knocking like clockwork.
Director and artistic producer Ridley Scott, Hinds for months compiled a screenplay and art, based on a novella by renowned MDA writer Philip K. Dick, on a detective investigation that takes place 40 years in the future. Which never works for the big screen.
This time, too, the goals for the lead role were different: first Robert Mitchum and then Dustin Hoffman.
While the two stars dragged their feet in the casting process, Scott's girlfriend at the time, actress Barbara Hershey, brought up Ford's name.
The director is not convinced that Ford is capable of carrying a great film on his back.
Shortly afterwards Scott was invited by Steven Spielberg to visit the set of "Pirates of the Lost Ark" in London.
A few minutes of watching Ford made Scott realize he was wrong.
The man who had just retired from acting five years earlier to make a living from carpentry has been given another role that will become a cinematic classic.
Another iconic film series.
Spielberg (Photo: GettyImages, Pascal La Segarten)
Nothing in the production of "Blade Runner" hinted at long-term success.
The filming took place under torrential rain at night for two months, in what Ford described as the toughest set he had ever known.
But the difficult conditions were just the beginning.
Soon the star and director began to clash over his interpretation of the film: Is Descartes (the detective, the son of Ford's character) a human or an Android-like Android.
The enigmatic nature of the film left the interpretation open, but Warner Studios chiefs feared that the mysterious nature would alienate potential viewers and frustrate the film.
Ford was forced to record narration that would accompany the film and make sure to make it clear to viewers.
He obviously hated the idea.
With immense disgust, Ford recorded a monotonous narration without any charisma, hoping that this would be the decision to give up the idea.
He was wrong.
The film was released with the monotonous soundtrack, failed and was on its way to the abyss of oblivion.
The decision to release an extended and unannounced directorial version, was the one that saved the film in the end.
Additional versions that will be released over the years will add more and more sections that were removed under studio pressure, but already with the remake "Blade Runner" became a quiet hit among MDA fans. - Including a sequel in 2017, starring Ford.
The star and director, by the way, do not agree to this day on the interpretation of the end of the film.
This story, which spans just five years in Ford's tremendous career, is incapable of containing the extent of its huge impact and success on the entertainment industry.
In the coming decades he will be able to become a movie star based on Jack Ryan books, win his only Oscar nomination (for "The Witness"), play the kidnapped US president, star in great thrillers and silly comedies. At 50, he will complete two more dreams: to do Earring and learning to fly.The forces of fate will keep him there too, with two terrifying crashes that only ended in fractures and superficial injuries.He became an influential environmental activist and contributed a significant portion of his estate to nature conservation.Each of these stories can contain separate stories laden with Ford stories.
Just today (July 13) Ford is celebrating his 80th birthday, and even today he continues his fierce opposition to the Hollywood lifestyle.
He lives with his family on a farm in Wyoming, in a style very reminiscent of that of John Dutton in "Yellowstone" - the aging morning who struggles on the ground in a world that is being traded around him.
For more than 50 years of operation, the films in which he has starred more than nine billion dollars worldwide, place him seventh in the ranking of the most profitable actors ever.
He played alongside the great actors of Hollywood and under some of the legendary directors the entertainment city knew.
And all this without a background of academies considered a game, and with access to a profession reminiscent of a farmer.
"We get together, do a decent work day, everyone contributes their share - then go home and come back the next day to try again," he described it in typical Fordy dryness.
He always saw in the game a livelihood, and if he did not get along?
There has always been carpentry.
A glass of whiskey after the punch.
Ford and Gosling are photographed for "Blade Runner 2049" (Photo: GettyImages, Dave J Hogan)
He knows best of all that fate has touched him in ways that cannot be explained, but also that without the character and talent he displayed he could not have influenced the iconic roles he played.
And most of all he knows that the thing with luck is tricky: he comes with an unknown validity.
Even the luckiest person in the world is once enough to be unlucky, and that can be the end.
It remains only to hope that the forces that have brought it into our lives again and again, will agree to preserve it in the future as well.
It was only recently learned that he is expected to return to television for the first time after five decades in the prequel to "Yellowstone," and next year he will step into Indie's shoes for the fifth time with the new film in the series.
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Harrison Ford
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Ridley Scott