Jerry Ford, 83, Man Behind the Models, Dies
By
ERIC WILSON
Published: August 26, 2008
Jerry Ford, who with his wife, Eileen, established one of the most recognizable modeling agencies in the world, turning a profession regarded as practically a hobby in the 1940s into one dominated by well-paid supermodels in the 1980s, died on Sunday in Morristown, N.J.. He was 83 and lived in Oldwick, N.J.
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Gary Settle/The New York Times
Jerry Ford and his wife, Eileen, in 1978. Mr. Ford, in the 1940s, recognized the potential that modeling had as big business.
The cause was complications of endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, said his daughter Katie Ford, who was chief executive of Ford Models until last year and remains with the agency as a board member.
While Eileen Ford, as the public persona behind Ford Models, was considered the doyenne of the New York modeling industry for more than four decades, it was her college sweetheart (later her husband) who first recognized the potential of a company that would approach modeling as a big, sophisticated business.
Shortly after the company was started in 1946, Mr. Ford successfully introduced a payment system for models in which they were paid for their work in advance. Ford later recouped their fees from their various clients.
In the 1970s, Mr. Ford was credited with creating the first contracts for models to represent specific brands exclusively, commanding significantly higher fees for the models. He negotiated the first such contract for Lauren Hutton to represent Revlon in 1974.
“Before Jerry came along, there were only robber barons who were out there running modeling schools,” said Carmen Dell’Orefice, who has modeled with the Ford agency for 60 years.
Ms. Dell’Orefice said she was introduced to the Fords by the photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in 1947, months after they had opened the agency in an apartment on the Upper East Side. It had been common then for models to manage their own invoices and billings, and it was therefore not uncommon for them to be paid one or two years after a job, she said.
“He knew about business and he saw what was going on with the models, the clients and the photographers,” she said.
Mr. Ford established a five-day workweek, and every Friday the models were paid their fees, less Ford’s 10 percent cut, whether the clients had paid the agency or not.
Within a decade, those fees began to skyrocket, to as high as $3,500 a week for top models like Dorian Leigh and Mary Jane Russell, the first stars of Ford Models.
In 1956, Mr. Ford said the agency was interviewing as many as 5,000 models a year but would accept only about 15. Ford represented the biggest names for decades — China Machado in the 1960s, Ms. Hutton in the 1970s,
Christie Brinkley in the 1980s, Veronica Webb and Kristen McMenamy in the 1990s. Mr. Ford also managed the early modeling careers of
Jane Fonda,
Candice Bergen,
Brooke Shields and Ali MacGraw.
Gerard William Ford was born Oct. 2, 1924, in New Orleans, one of six children of John William and Ermine Ford. According to Michael Gross’s 1995 book, “Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,” Mr. Ford was a boxer and football player at
Notre Dame (his roommate was John Lujack, a Heisman Trophy winner) before transferring to midshipman school at
Columbia University. Mrs. Ford, then Eileen Otte, was studying at
Barnard College and was herself briefly a model. The couple met and eloped in 1944 as Mr. Ford was waiting to ship out with the Navy.
In addition to Mrs. Ford and Katie Ford, Mr. Ford is survived by three other children, Jamie Ford Craft of Washington, Gerard William Ford Jr. of Palm Beach, Fla., and Lacey Williams of Los Angeles; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
In December, the modeling company was sold to an investment bank, Stone Tower Equity Partners.
After serving on a supply ship based in Asia, Mr. Ford, upon his return to New York in 1946, resumed his studies, in accounting, at Columbia, while Mrs. Ford worked as a secretary for several model friends and eventually became their informal agent; when she became pregnant, he stepped in to manage the business and found that he liked it.
“I’m not from New York,” Mr. Ford is quoted as saying in Mr. Gross’s book. “I thought models were the most incredible things in the world.”
NY Times.com
Jerry FordPhoto: Patrick McMullan
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