The Lives of Robert Ryan

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The Lives of Robert Ryan Page 39

by J. R. Jones


  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Loyola Prep, June 1926, 67.

  16. Ryan, “The Full Text of Ryan’s Letter.”

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Lupton A. Wilkinson, “These Fathers!” Motion Picture, n.d., Robert Ryan clipping file, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

  20. Roger Biles, Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984), 9.

  21. Elmer Lynn Williams, The Fix-It Boys: The Inside Story of the New Deal and the Kelly-Nash Machine (Chicago: Elmer Lynn Williams, 1940), 22.

  22. Jessica Ryan, “Campaign–’52, or A Camera’s-Eye View from Two Odd Birds” (ca. 1970), private collection.

  23. “12 Dead, 16 Saved, in Tunnel,” Chicago Daily News, April 14, 1931, 1, 3.

  24. Ibid.

  25. “12 Rescued in Disaster,” Chicago Evening Post, April 14, 1931, 1, 3.

  26. Williams, The Fix-It Boys, 62.

  27. “Coroner’s Jury Goes Through Death Tunnel,” Chicago Daily News, April 15, 1931, 3.

  28. “Little Chance to Fix Tunnel Disaster Blame,” Chicago American, April 15, 1931, 1, 2.

  29. Tina Louise, telephone interview with author, July 15, 2012; Lisa Ryan, interview with author, San Francisco, April 17, 2011.

  30. Irv Kupcinet, “Kup’s Column,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 7, 1949.

  31. J. M. Waldreck, “Ryan the Rip-Roaring Adventurer” n.p., n.d., Robert Ryan clipping file, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

  32. Stein, “Robert Ryan,” 10.

  33. Wilkinson, “These Fathers!”

  34. Captain James McNamara (chairman, Maritime Industry Museum, Fort Schuyler, New York), telephone interview with author, July 1, 2012.

  35. Ryan, “The Full Text of Ryan’s Letter.”

  36. Jessica Ryan, “Campaign–’52.”

  37. June Skinner Sawyers, Chicago Portraits (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1991), 140.

  38. Williams, The Fix-It Boys, 31.

  39. Dartmouth College Class of 1932 newsletter (ca. March 1945), Dartmouth Alumni File, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

  40. “Robert Ryan Dies of Cancer,” Newark Star-Ledger, July 12, 1973, 43.

  41. Wilkinson, “These Fathers!”

  42. Autographed program for Dear Brutus, May 6, 1938, private collection.

  43. Loyola Prep, 78.

  44. Stein, “Robert Ryan,” 13.

  45. William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1.4.288–89. References are to act, scene, and line.

  two The Mysterious Spirit

  1. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1.5.106–109.

  2. Fredda Duddley, “Romancing with Ryan,” Photoplay, April 1944, 104.

  3. “Living the Life of Ryan,” Screen Guide, January 1950.

  4. “The Robert Ryan Story,” NBC Radio’s The Hollywood Story (November 28, 1953), Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin. Audio recording.

  5. George Wellworth and Alfred G. Brooks, ed., Max Reinhardt: A Centennial Festschrift, 1873–1973 (Binghamton, NY: Max Reinhardt Archives, 1973), 129.

  6. Wellworth and Brooks, Max Reinhardt, 129.

  7. Ibid., 1.

  8. Ibid., 5.

  9. Ibid., 75.

  10. “Robert Ryan’s Advice to Would-Be Actors,” Salt Lake City Deseret News, November 30, 1951.

  11. Wellworth and Brooks, Max Reinhardt, 110.

  12. Jeanne Stein, “Robert Ryan: Unlike Most Handsome Actors He Was Willing to Be a Heavy,” Films in Review 9, no. 1 (January 1968): 13.

  13. Jessica Ryan, “Recollections of a Pioneer Grandmother” (ca. 1970), private collection.

  14. Jessica Ryan, “If School Keeps” (ca. 1970), private collection.

  15. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 4.1.186–87. References are to act, scene, and line.

  16. Jessica Ryan, “Recollections of a Pioneer Grandmother.”

  17. Robert Ryan, “I’m Gambling with My Career,” Movieland, August 1947, 42.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Helen Louise Walker, “Portrait of a Happy Man,” Movieland, December 1949, 76.

  20. Marsha Hunt, telephone interview with author, February 9, 2011.

  21. Edward Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life But Not a Bad Living: A Hollywood Memoir (New York: Times Books, 1978), 48.

  22. Sidney Skolsky, “Tintypes,” Hollywood Citizen-News, June 24, 1954.

  23. Cheyney Ryan, The Chickenhawk Syndrome: War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), x–xi.

  24. “Acts of Birth: Robert Ryan,” Films and Filming, March 1971, 29.

  25. Robert Wallsten, interview with Franklin Jarlett, March 1986, private collection.

  26. Denis Brian, Tallulah, Darling: A Biography of Tallulah Bankhead (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 93.

  27. Ibid., 114.

  28. Ibid., 120.

  29. Tallulah Bankhead, Tallulah: My Autobiography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 245.

  30. Lee Israel, Miss Tallulah Bankhead (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 213.

  31. Joel Lobenthal, Tallulah! The Life and Times of a Leading Lady (New York: Regan Books, 2004), 336.

  32. Brian, Tallulah, Darling, 118.

  33. “Pare Lorentz Picks American Odysseus,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 14, 1942, 4.

  34. Patricia Bosworth, “Robert Ryan: In Search of Action,” New York Times, June 1, 1969, 1, 7.

  three Bombs Away

  1. John Houseman, Run-Through (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 484.

  2. Edward Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life, but Not a Bad Living: A Hollywood Memoir (New York Times Books, 1978), 54.

  3. “How Much? RKO Wants to Know from Lorentz,” Variety, July 22, 1942, 3.

  4. Robert Ryan to A. J. Dickerson (mid-1945), Dartmouth Alumni File, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

  5. “Movies Are Put in Essential Class by Draft Ruling,” New York Times, February 9, 1942, 1.

  6. “Special Draft Deferment Creates Furor in Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1942, A2.

  7. Joe McCarthy, “Antic Arts: Robert Ryan” (ca. 1963), private collection.

  8. Pat O’Brien, The Wind at My Back: The Life and Times of Pat O’Brien (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 271.

  9. Joe McCarthy, “Antic Arts.”

  10. Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life, 56.

  11. Fredda Dudley, “Romancing with Ryan,” Photoplay, April 1944, 103.

  12. Jessica Ryan, “Marine Ryan,” Movieland, October 1944, 31.

  four You Know the Kind

  1. Jessica Ryan, “Marine Ryan,” Movieland, October 1944, 32.

  2. Robert Witty and Neil Morgan, Marines of the Margharita (San Diego: Frye and Smith, 1970), 10.

  3. “Living the Life of Ryan,” Screen Guide, January 1950.

  4. Robert Ryan to commandant of the Marine Corps, August 25, 1944, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri.

  5. Robert Ryan to A. J. Dickerson (mid-1945), Dartmouth Alumni File, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

  6. Dartmouth College Class of 1932 newsletter (ca. March 1945), Dartmouth Alumni File, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

  7. Richard Brooks, The Brick Foxhole (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945), viii.

  8. Ibid., 29.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Douglass K. Daniels, Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 34.

  11. Robert Ryan to A. J. Dickerson (mid-1945), Dartmouth Alumni File, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

  12. Jessica Ryan, The Man Who Asked Why
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1945), 7.

  13. U.S. Marine Corps report of medical survey for Pvt. Robert Ryan (September 8, 1945), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

  14. Cheyney Ryan, interview with author, Eugene, Oregon, April 15, 2011.

  15. Jeanne Stein, “Robert Ryan: Unlike Most Handsome Actors He Was Willing to Be a Heavy,” Films in Review 9, no. 1 (January 1968): 19.

  16. Bert Cardullo, ed., Jean Renoir: Interviews (Jackson, MS: University of Jackson Press, 2005), 173. From Rui Nogueira and Francois Truchaud, Sight and Sound 37, no. 2 (Spring 1968): 25.

  17. Jean Renoir, My Life and My Films (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1974), 244.

  18. Rui Nogueira and Nicoletta Zalaffi, “A Bastard’s Long Career: Meeting with Robert Ryan,” Cinema 70 (April 1970): 50.

  19. Cardullo, Jean Renoir, 173.

  20. John Paxton to Clay Steinman, Keith Kelly, and Mario Falsetto (ca. July 1977), John Paxton Papers, Margaret Herrick Library Special Collections, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.

  21. Robert Ryan, “I’m Gambling with My Career,” Movieland, August 1947.

  22. Robert Ryan, “My Role in Crossfire,” Daily Worker, July 20, 1947, Southern edition.

  23. Ryan, “I’m Gambling with My Career.”

  24. N. Peter Rathvon memo to Dore Schary (February 12, 1947), Dore Schary Papers, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

  25. Dore Schary, Heyday (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979), 157.

  26. Edward Dmytryk, On Screen Directing (Boston: Focal Point Press, 1984), 86.

  27. Lee Server, Robert Mitchum: “Baby I Don’t Care” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 135.

  28. Clay Steinman, Keith Kelly, and Mario Falsetto to John Paxton, June 29, 1977, John Paxton Papers, Margaret Herrick Library Special Collections, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.

  29. Ryan, “I’m Gambling with My Career.”

  five We Will Succeed, You Will Not

  1. Cheyney Ryan, interview with author, Eugene, Oregon, April 15, 2011.

  2. “Jeep Hunt,” Photoplay, June 1947, 102.

  3. “A-Hunting We Will Go,” Screen Guide, November 1947, 65.

  4. Lynn Bowers, “Gentle Heel” n.p., n.d., Robert Ryan clipping file, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

  5. Bert Granet, “Berlin Express Diary,” Screen Writer, May 1948, 12.

  6. Herb Lightman, “The Story of Filming ‘Berlin Express,’” American Cinematographer, July 1948, 232.

  7. Bert Granet, letter draft n.p., n.d., Bert Granet Papers, Margaret Herrick Library Special Collections, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Charles Higham and Roy Moseley, Princess Merle: The Romantic Life of Merle Oberon (New York: Coward-McCann, 1983), 183–84.

  10. Robert Ryan, “We’re Not Quitting,” Screen Guide, May 1948, 84.

  11. Ibid., 55.

  12. Granet, “Berlin Express Diary,” 12.

  13. Ryan, “We’re Not Quitting,” 85.

  14. Ibid., 85.

  15. Ibid., 84.

  16. Harold J. Kennedy, No Pickle, No Performance: An Irreverent Theatrical Excursion from Tallulah to Travolta (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 127.

  17. Advertisement, Variety, July 30, 1947.

  18. Ryan, “We’re Not Quitting,” 87.

  19. Ibid.

  20. “RKO’s Sensitive Pick, ‘Crossfire,’ Looks Well Over the Sales Hump,” Variety, October 15, 1947, 7.

  21. Elliot E. Cohen, “Letter to the Movie-Makers: The Film Drama as a Social Force,” Commentary, August 1947, 112.

  22. Robert Ryan, “My Role in Crossfire,” Daily Worker, July 20, 1947, Southern edition.

  23. Robert Ryan, “Don’t Play It Safe” n.p., n.d., Robert Ryan clipping file, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

  24. Dore Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979), 157–58.

  25. Jennifer Langdon, “Americanism on Trial,” chap. 9 in Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood (Gutenberg-e.org), para. 33.

  26. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52” (ca. 1970), private collection.

  27. A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax, Bogart (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 36.

  28. Larry Ceplar and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), 273.

  29. Langdon, Caught in the Crossfire, chap. 9, para. 26.

  30. ABC Radio’s Hollywood Fights Back, original radio broadcast, October 26, 1948. Old Time Radio Catalogue, otrcat.com.

  31. Edward Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 73.

  32. House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry, 80th Cong., 1st sess., 1947, public law 601, sect. 121, subsect. Q(2). https://archive.org/stream/hearingsregardin1947aunit/hearingsregardin1947aunit_djvu.txt.

  33. Herman A. Lowe, “Big D.C. Whodunit: Who Killed That Red Probe? See Resumption in Dec.,” Variety, November 5, 1947, 3, 18.

  34. “Chatter—Hollywood,” Variety, October 29, 1947, 63.

  35. Schary, Heyday, 369.

  36. “Bogart Terms Wash. Trip a ‘Foolish’ Move,” Variety, December 3, 1947, 5, 18.

  37. Higham and Moseley, Princess Merle, 184.

  38. Louella O. Parsons, “In Hollywood with Louella O. Parsons” n.p., February 29, 1948, Robert Ryan clipping file, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

  39. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52.”

  40. Jessica Ryan, “Campaign–’52, or A Camera’s-Eye View from Two Odd Birds” (ca. 1970), private collection.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52.”

  43. “Portrait of a Happy Man,” Movieland, December 1949, 76.

  44. Philip Dunne, interview with Franklin Jarlett, June 12, 1987, private collection.

  45. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52.”

  46. “Ryan for ‘Glory,’” Variety, November 5, 1947, 4.

  47. Norman Cousins, “Modern Man Is Obsolete,” Saturday Review, August 18, 1945, 8.

  48. Lisa Ryan, telephone interview with author, May 9, 2010.

  49. Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 99.

  six Caught

  1. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 411–12.

  2. “Despite Rathvon’s Balm to Aides, They’re Still Uneasy on Hughes Buy,” Variety, May 19, 1948, 5.

  3. “No RKO Changes Due, Schary Assures Help,” Variety, June 9, 1948, 3.

  4. Arthur Noletti Jr., “Conversation with Fred Zinnemann,” in Fred Zinnemann: Interviews, ed. Gabriel Miller (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 116.

  5. Fred Zinnemann, A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), 74.

  6. Robert Surtees, “The Story of Filming ‘Act of Violence,’” American Cinematographer (August 1948): 268.

  7. Dore Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979), 171.

  8. “Hollywood’s Economy Jitters,” Variety, July 14, 1948, 1.

  9. Betty Lasky, RKO, the Biggest Little Major of Them All (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984), 216–17.

  10. “RKO Closure Shrinks Backlog,” Variety, February 9, 1949, 5.

  11. Lisa Ryan, telephone interview with author, May 26, 2010.

  12. Franklin Jarlett, Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994), 35.

  13. Arthur Laurents, Original Story by: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood (New York: Knopf,
2000), 140.

  14. Ibid., 143.

  15. “Inside Stuff—Pictures,” Variety, August 4, 1948, 16.

  16. Robert Wallsten, interview with Franklin Jarlett, May 1986, private collection; also Jarlett, Robert Ryan, 89.

  17. Lutz Bacher, Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 237.

  18. Joseph Moncure March, The Wild Party / The Set-Up / A Certain Wildness (Freeport, ME: Bond Wheelwright, 1968), 53.

  19. Ibid., 153.

  20. Robert Ryan, interview with Tony Thomas (1960), Margaret Herrick Library Special Collections, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.

  21. George Stevens Jr., Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute (New York: Knopf, 2006), 465.

  22. Richard C. Keenan, The Films of Robert Wise (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 43–44.

  23. Robert Ryan, “The Role I Liked Best …,” Saturday Evening Post, July 15, 1950, 68.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Arthur (Weegee) Fellig column, Los Angeles Mirror, November 26, 1948.

  27. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52” (ca. 1970), private collection.

  28. Jarlett, Robert Ryan, 40.

  29. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52.”

  30. Philip Dunne, oral history, Margaret Herrick Library Special Collections, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California, 69.

  31. Jessica Ryan, notes for “Campaign–’52.”

  32. Ibid.

  33. Michael Ciment, Conversations with Losey (New York: Methuen, 1985), 81.

  34. Ben Barzman, “Pour Joe,” Positif, no. 293/4 (July–August 1985): 11, in David Caute, Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 87.

  35. “After 150G Preparation, ‘Boy’ Goes sans Haircut,” Variety, September 1, 1948, 2.

  36. Ciment, Conversations with Losey, 81.

  37. Bosley Crowther, review of The Boy with Green Hair, New York Times Book Review, January 13, 1949, 26.

  38. Cheyney Ryan, interview with author, Eugene, Oregon, April 15, 2011.

  39. Ciment, Conversations with Losey, 82.

  40. Patrick McGilligan, Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 197.

  41. Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray: An American Journey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 121.

 

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