NEW YORK — Jerry Ford, who with his wife, Eileen, established one of the most recognizable modeling agencies in the world, turning a profession regarded as practically a hobby in the 1940s into one dominated by well-paid supermodels in the 1980s, died Sunday in Morristown, N.J. He was 83 and lived in Oldwick, N.J.

The cause was complications of endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, said his daughter Katie Ford, who was chief executive of Ford Models until last year and remains on the board.

While Eileen Ford, as the public persona behind Ford Models, was considered the doyenne of the New York modeling industry for more than four decades, it was her college sweetheart (later her husband) who first recognized the potential of a company that would approach modeling as a big, sophisticated business.

In the 1970s, Ford was credited with creating the first contracts for models to represent specific brands exclusively, commanding significantly higher fees for the models. He negotiated the first such contract for Lauren Hutton to represent Revlon in 1974.

“Before Jerry came along, there were only robber barons who were out there running modeling schools,” said Carmen Dell’Orefice, who has modeled with the Ford agency for 60 years.

In 1956, Ford said the agency was interviewing as many as 5,000 models a year but would accept only about 15. Ford represented the biggest names for decades — China Machado in the 1960s, Hutton in the 1970s, Christie Brinkley in the 1980s, Veronica Webb and Kristen McMenamy in the 1990s. Ford also managed the early modeling careers of Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Brooke Shields and Ali MacGraw.

Gerard William Ford was born on Oct. 2, 1924, in New Orleans, one of six children of John William and Ermine Ford. According to Michael Gross’ 1995 book, “Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,” Ford was a boxer and football player at Notre Dame (his roommate was John Lujack, a Heisman Trophy winner) before transferring to midshipman school at Columbia University. After serving on a supply ship based in Asia, Ford, upon his return to New York in 1946, resumed his studies, in accounting, at Columbia, while his wife, Eileen, worked as a secretary for several model friends and eventually became their informal agent; when she became pregnant, he stepped in to manage the business and found that he liked it.

“I’m not from New York,” Ford is quoted as saying in Gross’ book. “I thought models were the most incredible things in the world.”