WHERE'S MOTHER?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1937, Page 9

WHERE'S MOTHER?

• I A FILM STAR'S QUEST. WALLACE FORD, BARNARDO BOY. TALKS ABOUT EAKLT UFE. ___ (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, December It. Wallace Ford, American film star, now busy on his first English picture, has spent the Christmas season in a search throughout the country for his mother, a poor w oman last heard of singing in the streets of Bolton more than 30 years ago. He never really knew her for, soon after he ""was born, 37 years ago, she became unable to support him and he was placed in Dr. Barnardo's first home, in Stepney. *"I can't recall much of my very early days,'' he said this week, "except that I was adopted by some family or other soon after being placed in Barnardo's, but my first real recollections begin when, at seven, I was taken, with about 300 other boys, to Toronto, Canada. ''There I was 'adopted' several times, but always my foster parents became too poor to keep me, or died. I was last taken by a farmer's family in Manitoba. But I couldn't stand the life, so during a blizzard ran away to Winnipeg, where | Barnardo's got me work. I did all sorts of jobs and was selling papers • when the war broke out. "I tried to enlist, but two years under ape was too much. So I went to the L nited States. There I met the man who was to change little Sammy Jones into Wallace Ford. For he was Wallace Ford. He was 38 and tramping to Minneapolis, where his mother was ill. We tramped together. '"We were going to 'jump' a train as i usual. I pleaded with him to get a ticket, but he wouldn't. So we jumped. I made it, Ford didn't. He was killed instantly. I could do nothing. So I took his name, as a tribute to my first friend. That's how I became Wallace Ford. i