Henry Ford on PBS

Bob/Kansas City

Bob/Kansas City

Senior Member
Tuesday night PBS will be showing their American Experience program that will be profiling Henry Ford. Should be interesting and worth watching!
 
I think part of it was filmed in the twin cities-my 37 pickup was going to be in it but they decided it was too nice-they wanted something more beat up. May be a near perfect 38 in it that I turned them on to.
 
An excellent portrayal of this psychologically flawed genius.
For obvious reasons, I was most fascinated to view the part about the Model "A" and his actual role in the Model "A" story.
 
I just finished watching it.Great program! 1/2 way thru,the TV acted up & I had to go out & clean the wet snow off the sat-dish so I could see the rest of the show!He was a great industrialist,but he had a lousy personality & treated many people terribly,especialy his son Edsel.
 
I tuned-in around 9:15... right around the first Ford-Winton race, c. 1901.

It is a bittersweet story.... self-made American tinkerer-turned inventor who wants to make the world a better place, and in the process begins to (unintentionally) destroy the world he loves ( 19th Century rural America )...

As a child, I was a voracious reader, and loved to read biographies of historical figures; my favorites were people like Ben Franklin, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and so-on...

As an inventor/industrialist and social champion, Ford was in the ascendent between 1893 and 1916... and then he went into a sad, dark decline...

And no one suffered more than Edsel and Clara...

A long, sad end to such a great beginning...
 
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Watched the WHOLE thing, went to the garage, saw the coupe, and a sorta' sad, confusing, feeling went through my head. It'll take me a week or so to sort out this story in my head. Bill W.
 
For the best book ever written on Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company, read, "My Forty Years with Ford" by Charles Sorensen. I have literally read the book five or six times. Everything you saw on PBS and more is in this book. Sorensen was the heart and soul of Ford Motors and he tells it likes it is. It is still in print and available from Amazon, etc. Let me know what you think of the book after you have read it - two or three times. :)
 
Tom in SW VA said:
For the best book ever written on Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company, read, "My Forty Years with Ford" by Charles Sorensen. I have literally read the book five or six times. Everything you saw on PBS and more is in this book. Sorensen was the heart and soul of Ford Motors and he tells it likes it is. It is still in print and available from Amazon, etc. Let me know what you think of the book after you have read it - two or three times. :)
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Tom - Thanks for the suggestion - I will find this book and read it!

I am sure "Cast-Iron Charlie" had a very unique perspective on Ford and old Henry...

It is a shame how the old man "froze-out" those who were "no longer needed" - Childe Harold Wills, William Knudsen, Sorenson, etc...

Old Henry was surely a man of paradoxes...


SC Frank
 
Did I miss anything said on EVANGELINE DAHLINGER, his personal secretary, whom I believe Henry built an adjoining mansion for her and her "Husband" his chauffer, and supposedly had secret passages to her bed room and a son who claims old Henry was his father?
 
Bruce Adams said:
Did I miss anything said on EVANGELINE DAHLINGER, his personal secretary, whom I believe Henry built an adjoining mansion for her and her "Husband" his chauffer, and supposedly had secret passages to her bed room and a son who claims old Henry was his father?
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Didn't see / hear a peep about it. I tuned-in right around the famous race against Alexander Winton in 1901 (?), so I saw coverage of the time-period of the supposed Dahlinger dalliance...
 
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