The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (82 page)

Henry Ford came to love Greenfield Village as perhaps his favorite spot on earth. In 1935, a journalist who accompanied him on a tour of the facility noted, “As we drove slowly through the winding roads he pointed out the various buildings which he had obtained in various parts of the country and had erected in this town of his own making. There was a note of tenderness in his voice…. It was revealing to hear this man with a reputation for hardness become almost sentimental over these relics of the past.” But Ford's growing sensitivity to the past also sought another outlet. Though the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village may have reflected his ideas about how to rediscover a useful history, these projects did not fully meet his personal needs. For that, Ford turned to an activity that engaged him physically as well as emotionally.
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On August 15, 1924, New England dance instructor Benjamin Lovett received a phone call from the hostess of the Wayside Inn. She informed him that Henry Ford was visiting the area and wanted to meet him tomorrow to talk about dancing. Lovett, knowing Ford's disdain for modern ballroom techniques, immediately began brushing up on “the old-time maneuvers.” He consulted a number of dance manuals, refreshed his memory, and arrived the next morning confident he could handle any questions that might be asked of him. After greeting Ford and his wife in the ballroom of the Wayside Inn, however, Lovett was immediately stumped by the automaker.

“Do you know the Ripple?” Ford inquired. “No, I don't,” Lovett replied. “I've heard of it somewhere, but I can't recall where. But I'll know it the next time I see you.” Ford appeared delighted. “Why, I caught him the
first time,” he laughingly commented to Clara. Lovett was true to his word, however, and set out the next day to identify the elusive dance. Driving in his car, he contacted several professional acquaintances in Massachusetts, then motored into New Hampshire and Vermont, with no luck. Finally, Lovett found a crotchety old dance master near Burlington who solved the mystery. “Sure, I know,” he said. “The Ripple is what we call the Newport Down East.” Familiar with this latter dance, Lovett practiced the steps and went back to Ford in a few days to demonstrate his proficiency. The industrialist was very pleased. Subsequently, Lovett helped Ford organize several dance parties at the Wayside Inn, and then accepted an invitation to visit Dearborn for a week to do similar work. He would stay for the next twenty years, in a job that would bring him much fame and provide his patron with a great source of joy in his later life.
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Benjamin Basil Lovett was born in New Hampshire on February 2, 1876, and had been attracted to dancing as a teenager. His natural ability led him first to give lessons informally, and then to open up a small dancing school. Lovett studied with dancing masters in Boston and New York City, and his business prospered. In 1905, he married Charlotte L. Cooke, a graceful, pretty twenty-five-year-old secretary who shared his interest, and they opened several schools in Massachusetts that specialized in teaching the traditional dances of Anglo-America. A former student once described them as the “Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers” of old-fashioned dancing. Their efforts brought notice, first in New England and then nationally, as Lovett was elected president of the International Association of the Masters of Dancing in 1913.
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In the meantime, as part of his larger embrace of the American past, Henry Ford had returned joyfully to the dances of his youth. It had begun innocently one evening when the Fords were entertaining a few old friends and the discussion turned to the dances they had enjoyed as young people. The group began listing them, and eventually the braver souls tried to replicate the various steps amid much merriment. Finally, Clara said to her husband, “Do you realize, Henry Ford, that we have danced very little since we were married?” This evening of reminiscing inspired the Fords to organize an old-fashioned dance at the Wayside Inn on their next visit, which in turn prompted them to contact Lovett. With the dance master's arrival in Dearborn in 1924, Ford's new interest took flight. He hosted a Halloween dance in the barn of the old Ford homestead, and followed by putting Lovett in charge of a wide-ranging program of instruction and recreation. “Mr. Ford's interest has been personal and continuous,” Lovett wrote later. “As everyone knows, Mr. Ford is now the acknowledged patron of the Old American dances.”
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With Ford's backing, Lovett launched a dance revival. Ford cleared out the whole southwestern corner of the large Ford Engineering Laboratory in Dearborn, enclosed it, and installed special wooden flooring. Lovett set up a schedule of dance classes in the evening and publicized them in the community. He organized a series of formal dances, to which Ford played host and invited friends and professional associates. Lovett also initiated a popular program to teach dance in the Dearborn public schools. In time, he expanded these endeavors to the national scene, where, with Ford's backing, he convened clinics throughout the country to teach traditional dance steps. By the 1930s, Ford had expanded Lovett's duties by appointing him head of the Greenfield Village schools.

Lovett cut a striking figure as the leader of Ford's dance revival. Stocky and elegant, he stood about five feet eight, but seemed taller because of his erect carriage. He always appeared in public neatly dressed in a suit, white shirt and tie, and shined shoes. With his dark hair slicked back against his head, and wire-rimmed spectacles, he struck everyone who saw him as perfectly groomed. As one of his former students observed, “He looked as though he had stepped out of a fashion magazine, even in his overcoat.” Lovett's easy, confident walk—the product of his years of dance training— impressed many. He “gave the appearance of being very proper, prim, and precise,” another student described. “I think he felt himself to be a model for posture, deportment, and dress.”
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Lovett's reserved, occasionally stern personality matched his rather old-fashioned appearance. He seldom talked of his private life and insisted that his pupils adhere to traditional values of respect and punctuality. But his strong sense of propriety seldom degenerated into stuffiness. Good humor provided a tonic to his formal manner. When, in full view of a lunchtime crowd in the dining room of the engineering building, he spilled a chocolate sundae on his immaculate white suit, as the glass bowl crashed to the floor, he smiled ruefully at all the starers and said, “Well, I knew I should have worn my brown suit today.” He was fond of teasing, often addressing a female teacher as the “Dean of Women,” and greeting a small group of men at the Martha-Mary Chapel every morning with “Good morning, gentlemen. I think that includes most of you.”
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Lovett brought considerable energy and confidence to his endeavors as a dance teacher for Ford. He loved his work, often arriving at the engineering laboratory, and later at Greenfield Village, cheerfully singing “I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” As an instructor, he insisted that students meet high standards but also provided much help and encouragement. “Mr. Lovett could really teach the dances. He was very particular and demanding in his instructions,” recalled a former student. “For example, if you were to
kick your foot out, you couldn't just kick your foot out. Your toe had to be pointed toward the floor…. It wasn't just any old way, but a certain way.” Lovett would call out his dancing instructions in a pronounced Boston accent, directing students through various intricate steps as he walked around beating out the rhythm by striking together two short wooden batons. His considerable skills were crucial to his pedagogy. He and the equally skilled Mrs. Lovett awed and inspired students with their precise, graceful movements as they glided over the dance floor.
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Lovett's instructional talents met their greatest challenge in following one of his patron's directives to teach dancing to company executives. Managers dutifully attended the dance master's classes; as one observer noted ruefully, “For two solid weeks the top brass came to work wilted by nightly polkas and wondering if and when in all hell it would end.” Ford supplemented these evening sessions with daytime interludes. He would drop by executive offices to offer pointers on dance steps that had been fumbled the night before, and on occasion after lunch even gave private instruction to associates in a large room near his private office at Fair Lane. J. L. McCloud clearly remembered the comical quality of these sessions, noting he “actually learned the Varsovienne by dancing with Mr. Ford and Charlie Sorensen.” Harry Bennett once found himself caught in the middle of a good-natured disagreement between Ford and Lovett over the correct way to teach a certain dance. After Lovett complained that any dance expert watching Ford's version would say, “Why in the hell doesn't Mr. Ford hire a teacher who knows his business?,” Ford surrendered, and watched a sweating Bennett spend the next half hour going through the steps with Lovett.
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The formal dances hosted by Ford at the ballroom became special events. They began promptly at nine o'clock on a Friday evening, lasted until midnight, and were studiously formal. Clara and Henry stood at the head of a receiving line to greet their guests, which consisted of a mix of Dearborn residents, company executives, and doctors from the Henry Ford Hospital. Guests were expected to follow the rules of decorum—polite requests for a dance, no cutting in, no crossing the middle of the ballroom— and to participate in the full range of traditional dances. As Ford explained, “Our complete repertoire is fourteen dances—the two-step, the circle two-step, the waltz, the schottische, the polka, the ripple, the minuet, the lanciers, the quadrille, the varsovienne, and so on through the infinite variety of combinations.”
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Lovett served as caller for the dances, standing at the center of the stage in front of a microphone while behind him sat the dance orchestra, consisting of a violin, bass violin, cymbalum, accordion, and dulcimer. The Fords were a mainstay on the dance floor, and Lovett publicly praised his patron's
skill: “He is a fine dancer, graceful, tireless, rhythmic, light on his feet, with a decided flair for the music of the dance, and, with Mrs. Ford, can give a notable exhibition on the floor of any old American dances.” But in private, he offered another evaluation. According to Sorensen, Lovett complained that Ford “never quite caught the rhythm of dance music. The dance seemed a mechanical thing to him.” Nonetheless, he appreciated Ford's enthusiasm. Indeed, Ford's passion for traditional dancing was so genuine that his wife often had to pull him off the floor at evening's end. The Fords frequently danced to phonograph music at home, and sometimes Henry even danced by himself to a record he liked.
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Lovett not only called many of the dances, but occasionally came down to the floor to participate directly. He had standing instructions to rescue Henry from “clodhoppers,” their name for females who bungled the steps while dancing with their host. Upon noticing such a laborious scene, Lovett would approach Ford and his partner and ask if he could dance with their lovely guest. The relieved Ford would scurry off to find a more suitable partner. Lovett also found himself in the middle of a good-natured dispute between the Fords. The couple had a recurring disagreement about the best tempo for a waltz. Henry preferred a slower rhythm for full-swaying movement, whereas Clara liked it faster and more dramatic. They would stop in front of the bandstand, and she would request a quicker rhythm while he protested that it was fast enough. “Are you trying to get me into trouble?” Lovett would mutter to his patron, and then compromise by speeding up the tempo for thirty bars and slowing it down for the next thirty.
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Lovett admired Ford for the gracious, courteous manner he exhibited in hosting these events. Ford was helpful to everyone who attended, paying special attention to youthful participants and the elderly. He went out of his way to speak with strangers and gently urged everyone to dance. Ford, who always took up a position on the dance floor right in front of Lovett and the orchestra, established a special set of signals by which he helped the dance master manage the flow of the event. “If he is dancing with an elderly lady and she shows less agility than the other guests, he will signal me [to] slow the music a little…. He just winks at me,” Lovett explained. “If at the end of a dance I see him fingering his hair, I know what music he wants for the next dance, and if I see him pulling his ear, I know what tune that indicates.”
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For all of Ford's enthusiasm and Lovett's skill, however, not everyone enjoyed these dances. Some simply lacked a knack for dancing in the old manner. Mrs. Sorensen shared her husband's aversion to the activity, earning the secret name of “Dumb Dora” because of her inability to pick up the various steps. Some complained that, once there, you were forced to participate.
Employees viewed the invitations as thinly disguised commands and resented being pressured to attend. “You felt that a lot of people just came because Mr. Ford wanted them to come, but they didn't have a very good time.” Still others saw the events as rather stiff affairs and devoid of fun, which they attributed primarily to Mrs. Ford and her reserve. “She didn't mix as well as he did,” noted one guest.
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