Corey Ford (April 29, 1902 – July 27, 1969) was an American humorist, writer, outdoorsman, and screenwriter. He was friendly with several members of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City and occasionally lunched there.
Failing to graduate, he embarked on a career as a freelance writer and humorist. In the 1930s he was noted for satirical sketches of books and authors penned under the name "John Riddell".[1]Theodore Dreiser was shown adopting the guise of a common workman building his newest and biggest novel from bricks and mortar. He reviewed Dead Lovers are Faithful Lovers as "Dead Novelists are Good Novelists."
Ford published 30 books and more than 500 magazine articles, many of them marked with a gregarious sense of humor, a love of dogs, and "underdogs." He told many stories of the literary scene in the twenties, of headhunters in Dutch Borneo, and of U.S. airmen in combat during World War II. He loved conversation and comradeship and was a great listener as well.
Ford created the name Eustace Tilley for the dandyish, top-hatted symbol of The New Yorker magazine. According to Ford's memoir, The Time of Laughter, the last name came from a maiden aunt and he chose the first name "for euphony".
Ford wrote a monthly column, "The Lower Forty Hunting, Shooting and Inside Straight Club", for Field & Stream for almost 20 years in the 1950s and 1960s. The column told about a fictional group of New England sportsmen, detailing the club members' adventures in and around the town of Hardscrabble, Vermont. The primary characters in the column were Colonel Cobb, Judge Parker, Cousin Sid, Uncle Perk, Doc Hall, and Mister McNabb. The columns have been anthologized into several books such as Minutes of the Lower Forty, Uncle Perk's Jug, and The Corey Ford Sporting Treasury.
Personal life
Ford lived in Hanover, New Hampshire in the 1950s and 1960s and sponsored the Dartmouth Boxing Club (there was no sanctioned Dartmouth Boxing Team). Members of the club trained in Ford's basement where he built a gym with a boxing ring, light and heavy bags, and boxing gloves. He also built a basement locker room for club members. A Dartmouth art professor, a friend of Ford's, would recruit artist models from members of the Dartmouth Boxing Club.
Forey, Cord (1925). Three rousing cheers for the Rollo Boys.
— (1926). The gazelle's ears. New York: George H. Doran.
— (1928). Meaning no offense: being some of the life, adventures and opinions of Trader Riddell. Illustrated by Miguel Covarrubias. New York: John Day.
Triplett, June (1929). Salt water taffy: or, Twenty thousand leagues away from the sea: the almost incredible autobiography of Capt. Ezra Triplett's seafaring daughter. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
