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Corey Ford (April 29, 1902-July 27, 1969) was an American humorist, author, outdoorsman, and screenwriter. He was also friendly with several members of the Algonquin Round Table and occasionally ate lunch there.

In the 1930's he was noted for satirical sketches of books and authors penned under the name "John Riddell". Richard Wright's "Black Boy" was lampooned as "Hollywood Boy" contrasting the author's celebrity with the raw story portrayed in the book. Theodore Dreiser was shown adopting the guise of a common workman building his newest and biggest novel from bricks and mortar. A forgotten book, "Dead Lovers are Good Lovers," was reviewed as "Dead Novelists are Good Novelists." Ford's series of "Impossible Interviews" for Vanity Fair magazine featured ill-assorted celebrities: Stalin vs John D. Rockefeller, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes vs Al Capone, Sigmund Freud vs Jean Harlow, Sally Rand vs Martha Graham, Gertrude Stein vs Gracie Allen, Adolf Hitler vs Huey Long.

Born and raised in New York City, Ford had stories to tell of the literary scene in the twenties, of headhunters in Dutch Borneo, of U.S. airmen in combat during World War II and he was a great listener as well. He loved conversation and comradeship. A city boy, he fell in love with the outdoors generally and New Hampshire in particular, which led this world traveler to his rendezvous with Dartmouth College.

In 1952, Ford moved to Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth College, where he became an adopted member of the Class of 1921. His connection with Dartmouth lay mainly in his relationships with students. He was an advisor to Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and to several student publications. In addition, he helped to organize the Dartmouth College Rugby Football Club (or DRFC) and opened a gym in his home near the campus for students interested in boxing. When he died in 1969, he left most of his estate, including his house, to the rugby club with instructions to use the money to build a clubhouse for the team. After many years of political and legal wrangling, the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse was completed and dedicated in September, 2005.

Ford was an established writer...he published thirty books and more than five hundred magazine articles, with a gregarious sense of humor, a love of dogs and "underdogs." The then nascent Rugby Club fell into the latter category. In an article entitled "Football for Fun," written in 1959, he explained the association:

"Perhaps you wonder how I came to take up rugby. Well, the fact is that rugby took up me. My home here in Hanover adjoins the college playing-fields; and so in the course of time it has been adopted as headquarters of the Dartmouth Rugby Club, an independent organization which has no home of its own. I am hailed as ‘Coach’ for want of a better title."

In her introduction to The Corey Ford Collection in Dartmouth's Rauner Library, Mildred C. Tunis writes:

"To countless Dartmouth men, the name of Corey Ford will bring back nostalgia for some of their most meaningful experiences as undergraduates when he was coach of boxing and rugby, a fellow Delta Kappa Epsilon, advisor on student publications, counselor, and friend."

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Corey Ford", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0