Harry Bennett "Tell-All" Book About His Boss Henry Ford

Reprinted 1987 paperback edition.

Harry Bennett officially joined the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) in 1917 at the Highland Park plant where the automobile assembly line was born. In his almost thirty years with the company, Bennett exercised influence far beyond his station upon Henry Ford, founder and corporation president. In Mr. Ford's later years when his health declined, Bennett was considered the power behind the throne.

Tired of the barrage of bad publicity Bennett received after his unceremonious firing by twenty-eight-year-old Henry Ford II, he began writing his autobiography of his time working for Henry Ford I "to set the record straight." But publishers reportedly would not touch We Never Called Him Henry because it was "dynamite."

Fawcett Gold Medal Books spokesperson Ralph Daigh asked Bennett to rewrite the book to make it "more objective." With the help of former Detroit Times newspaper reporter Paul Marcus, an edited version was released in 1951 by Fawcett in a 25-cent paperback edition. Marcus spent six weeks interviewing Bennett. "I prodded and nagged at his memory and asked countless questions."

The book had a 400,000 copy run and was billed as the "sensational inside story of intrigue within the Ford empire, its gangster connections, and its bloody union wars." But the book is next to impossible to find.

Folklore surrounding this book proports that the Ford family was offended by its publication, so they bought up as many copies as they could in a "capture & kill" attempt to keep it off the market. I contacted the Benson Ford Research Center, but a spokesperson at their archives told me he could neither confirm nor deny the story. 

For my part, I remember coming home from the tenth grade in 1963 and seeing my mother intently reading a grimy, tattered and torn, well-read, Xerox copy of a book held together by a couple of brad tangs along the left edge. I asked my mother what she was reading, and she answered, "A banned book about Henry Ford and his family. A friend in my card club lent it to me." I was fifteen at the time, so I barely took notice. It wasn't until many years later when I was bitten by the history bug and Fordiana that I remembered my brush with this book.

In 1987, thirty-six years after its original publication, We Never Called Him Henry was republished by Paul Marcus with a new cover page by Tor Books for $3.95. Resale copies of this book are also rare and unavailable on Amazon, but I searched other used book retailers in July 2021 and found several copies ranging in price from $30 to $900. I bought an intact but yellowed copy to see what all the fuss was about.

Without going into the specifics of the book, I feel Bennett tries to portray himself as a sympathetic person who only did what Henry Ford asked him to do. He attempts to sanitize his public image by making himself the hero of his own story by blaming others and justifying all the right reasons for doing all the wrong things. Although he takes some roundhouse punches and jabs at the Ford family, the former Navy boxer never lands a punch.

In January 1974, Detroit Free Press feature reporter David L. Lewis convinced Harry Bennett to sit for a profile interview in Las Vegas, Nevada for "Detroit Magazine." The article was a personality piece about Bennett's private life after Ford. When Lewis asked Bennett his opinion of his own book, he answered: 

"I didn't like the book at all. The way it was written made me sound like a 15-year-old-kid. [The book] made it seem like I was ridiculing Mr. Ford. When I first saw the cover, I knew I would be loused up. The picture of Mr. Ford made him look dead.... I got so I didn't like Marcus [the ghost writer] either. The longer he was with me, the more snarly he was."

Original 1951 paperback book cover.

Bennett's response to the book which bears his name is just another example of his tendency towards disassociative behavior when it comes to taking responsibility for his actions.

Harry Bennett--Henry Ford's Fixer