--- name: "Paul Ford" canonical: "https://film.one/person/paul-ford-127641" roles: ["Actor"] born: "2 November 1901" died: "12 April 1976" reviewed_on_fi1m: 3 average_fi1m_score: 74 average_as: "actor" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-20T04:36:09.695284+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Paul Ford Actor. Born 2 November 1901 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Died 12 April 1976. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 2 November 1901, Baltimore, Maryland, USA - **Died:** 12 April 1976 - **Active:** 1962–1966 - **Also known as:** Paul Ford Weaver - **Titles on Fi1m:** 3: 2 acting, 1 other - **Average Fi1m score:** 74, as actor, over 2 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1940s 74 (1), 1960s 74 (2) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ford, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q952205, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0285818/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/127641 ## Streaming the US now - **Tubi:** [*The Music Man*](https://film.one/film/the-music-man.md) (78) - **Apple TV:** [*The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!*](https://film.one/film/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming.md) (70) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Paul Ford > Paul Ford spent his screen career as the man in charge who has lost control of the situation, and he did it with more conviction than almost anyone. The joke is a good one. The trouble is that he was rarely given a second act to it. Mayor George Shinn stands up to make an announcement and the sentence leaves him partway through. The face knows before the mouth does. He pushes on anyway, because a mayor cannot stop talking simply because he has nothing left to say, and the town waits for him to finish with the patience of people who have heard this before. That is Paul Ford's whole act in *The Music Man* (1962), and for the first hour it is one of the best things in the film. He came to it late. Ford was a salesman, and then a writer and performer of puppet shows for the WPA in the Depression, and he did not act professionally until his late thirties; Broadway came in the mid-1940s, with *Another Part of the Forest* and *Command Decision*. The part that made him was Colonel John T. Hall on *The Phil Silvers Show* (1955–1959), the flustered commanding officer opposite Silvers, and he was fifty-four when it started. The 1960s films followed the same line: Shinn, Colonel Wilberforce in *It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World* (1963), Fendall Hawkins raising a militia out of the bar in *The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming* (1966). *Advise & Consent* (1962) gave him a senator to play straight. He retired in the early 1970s. What he did was pomposity from the inside. Most actors play a blowhard by shouting; Ford played him by believing every word, so the comedy came from watching a man's dignity fail him while he stood perfectly still. The trick was in the voice, a low, aggrieved rumble, and in the body, which stayed planted while everything above the collar went into a mild panic. On the Silvers show he was known to lose his lines and bluster through the gap, which for a man playing Colonel Hall hardly counts as a fault. The limit is that it is one trick. We laughed hard at Shinn in the first hour, and by the third act of *The Music Man* we were waiting for the sentences to stop collapsing, which is not something we expected to feel about a joke that good; Morton DaCosta and Marion Hargrove repeat him rather than develop him. In *The Russians Are Coming* he and Jonathan Winters make most of the noise in a film that already has too much, and once Norman Jewison has sent the islanders up and down the same street for the twentieth time, Ford's sword is one more thing in the frame. Start with the first hour of *The Music Man*, where he is given room and Hermione Gingold to work against, and see *The Russians Are Coming* for the scene in the bar. He spent his best years playing men who should never have been put in charge, and nobody did it with more certainty. ## Biography Paul Ford, born Paul Ford Weaver, was an American character actor. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 2 November 1901 and died in Mineola, New York, on 12 April 1976. He specialised in comic portrayals of authority figures. He played Colonel John T. Hall opposite Phil Silvers in the television series *The Phil Silvers Show* (1955–1959) and appeared on Broadway in *The Teahouse of the August Moon* (1953) before replacing David Burns as Mayor George Shinn in the musical *The Music Man* (1957). He reprised the role in the 1962 film adaptation. Ford's other screen credits include *It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World* (1963), *Advise & Consent* (1962), *The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming* (1966) and *The Comedians* (1967). He received a Tony Award nomination for *Never Too Late* (1962). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, ibdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (3) ### Performed in (2) — the average rests on these - *The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!* (1966), Fi1m 70, as Fendall Hawkins — [page](https://film.one/film/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming.md) - *The Music Man* (1962), Fi1m 78, as Mayor George Shinn — [page](https://film.one/film/the-music-man.md) ### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited - *All the King's Men* (1949), Fi1m 74, as Spokesman for Impeachment (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/all-the-kings-men.md) ## Complete filmography (44) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Preminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker* (1991), as actor 'Advise and 'Consent' (archive footage) (uncredited) - *Journey Back to Oz* (1972), as Uncle Henry (voice) - *Richard* (1972), as Washington Doctor - *Fair Play* (1972), as F.O. McGill - *Twinky* (1970), as Mr. Wardman-Scott's father - *In Name Only* (1969), as Elwy Pertwhistle - *Love, American Style* (1969), series, as John - *My World and Welcome to It* (1969), series, Actor - *That's Life* (1968), series, Actor - *The Comedians* (1967), as Smith - *The Spy with a Cold Nose* (1966), as American General - *A Big Hand for the Little Lady* (1966), as C.P. Ballinger - *The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!* (1966), as Fendall Hawkins — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming.md) - *Never Too Late* (1965), as Harry Lambert - *The Baileys of Balboa* (1964), series, as Sam Bailey - *It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World* (1963), as Col. Wilberforce - *Who's Got the Action?* (1962), as Judge Boatwright - *The Lloyd Bridges Show* (1962), series, as George Tuppman - *The Music Man* (1962), as Mayor George Shinn — Fi1m 78, [page](https://film.one/film/the-music-man.md) - *Advise & Consent* (1962), as Senator Stanley Danta - *Life with Archie* (1962), as Mr. Weatherbee - *Outlaws* (1960), series, Actor - *Keep in Step* (1959), as Col. John T. Hall - *The Matchmaker* (1958), as Horace Vandergelder - *The Missouri Traveler* (1958), as Finas Daugherty - *DuPont Show of the Month* (1957), series, as J.B. Curtis - *The Teahouse of the August Moon* (1957), as Wainwright Purdy III - *Bloomer Girl* (1956), as Horatio Applegate - *Alfred Hitchcock Presents* (1955), series, as Professor Jarvis - *The Phil Silvers Show* (1955), series, as John Hall - *General Electric Theater* (1953), series, as Captain Joe McQueen - *Hallmark Hall of Fame* (1951), series, as Colonel Purdy - *Tales of Tomorrow* (1951), series, Actor - *Danger* (1950), series, Actor - *Perfect Strangers* (1950), as Judge Byron - *The Kid from Texas* (1950), as Copeland - *All the King's Men* (1949), as Spokesman for Impeachment (uncredited) — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/film/all-the-kings-men.md) - *Lust for Gold* (1949), as Sheriff Lynn Early - *Suspense* (1949), series, as Allison - *Studio One* (1948), series, as Jones - *The Ford Theatre Hour* (1948), series, as Rudolph Kugler - *The Philco Television Playhouse* (1948), series, Actor - *The Naked City* (1948), as Henry Fowler (Uncredited) - *The Front Page* (1945), Actor ## Gallery - ![Paul Ford](https://film.one/media/person/1236270/gallery-4f2fcccb7192.jpg) Paul Ford — CBS Television-photo by Gabor Rona., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Paul_Ford_Baileys_of_Balboa_1964.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Publicity photo of Phil Silvers (Ernie Bilko) and Paul Ford (Col. Hall) from You'll Never Get Rich.](https://film.one/media/person/1236270/gallery-d84ebac525e8.jpg) Publicity photo of Phil Silvers (Ernie Bilko) and Paul Ford (Col. Hall) from You'll Never Get Rich. — CBS Uploaded by We hope at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Bilko_youll_never_get_rich.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Photo of Phil Silvers and Paul Ford from the television series "You'll Never Get Rich". (1957)](https://film.one/media/person/1236270/gallery-0502f2a03996.jpg) Photo of Phil Silvers and Paul Ford from the television series "You'll Never Get Rich". (1957) — Photo from Metro Group photos., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Phil_Silvers_Paul_Ford_1957.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Paul Ford](https://film.one/media/person/1236270/gallery-54269c50e99d.jpg) Paul Ford — Image via TMDB ## Awards ### Other awards — 0 won, 1 nominated - Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play 1963: Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play (nominated) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/paul-ford-127641