Showing posts with label Robert Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Ryan. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The Lives of Robert Ryan by J.R. Jones

The Lives of Robert Ryan
by J.R. Jones
Wesleyan University Press
May 2015
Hardcover ISBN: 9780819573728
376 pages

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Robert Ryan was endlessly likable, despite the many villainous characters he portrayed on screen. There was just something about him. He brought a sense of authenticity to every role and you could tell he loved his work. Behind that wrinkled brow and severe scowl was a man who was an average Joe who just happened to be an extraordinary actor. Chances are, if you're a classic film fan, you count Robert Ryan as one of your personal favorites.

Born and raised in Chicago and educated at Dartmouth College, Robert Ryan tried out many jobs before finding his true calling: acting. As a child he appeared as an extra in Essanay Film Manufacturing Company films. After college he was invited by a friend to participate in a theater production and he was hooked. Ryan made his way to Hollywood where he studied at Max Reinhardt School of Theater. It was there he met fellow actor and soon to be wife Jessica Cadwalader. After playing some bit parts in Paramount films, Ryan was drafted into the Marines during WWII. When he came back he concentrated on his movie career at RKO. He took a huge gamble starring in Crossfire (1947) as violent Anti-Semite. The liberal minded and gentle Ryan was the complete opposite character. However, he excelled at playing bad guys and Crossfire would jumpstart his career and earn him his first (and only) Academy Award nomination.

“One thing Ryan had understood… a controversial role can help an actor’s career.” — J.R. Jones

Many films followed including Berlin Express (1948), The Boy with the Green Hair (1948), The Set-Up (1949), Clash By Night (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), Billy Budd (1962), The Longest Day (1962), The Professionals (1966), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Wild Bunch (1969), and his final film Executive Action (1973). Ryan would often play loners, outcasts and those figures on the perimeter of society. Off screen, Ryan was a fiercely private man. He opted out of the Hollywood scene and preferred to spend his off time with his wife and three children. Ryan became an outspoken critic of war, was a member of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and partook in Civil Rights efforts alongside his friend and Odds Against Tomorrow co-star Harry Belafonte. He had a penchant for booze and was troubled by bouts of depression. But he never let any of that get in the way of his work. Ryan built a reputation for coming to work on time and prepared and for befriending crew members as well as his fellow actors. Ryan passed away in 1973 at the age 63 which is a damn shame because he at least had a good decade or more left in him to continue his excellent body of work.

Robert Ryan and Jessica Cadwalader. Photo Source


The Lives of Robert Ryan by J.R. Jones offers a compelling look at the life and career of one of the finest actors to ever grace the silver screen. The author has clearly done his research as he pieces together the story of a man who was far from being an open book. The book benefits from extensive interviews with Ryan's children, especially his daughter Lisa Ryan, as well as access to the 20 page memoir Ryan wrote for his family shortly before his death. There are lots of great anecdotes, insightful observations and eye-opening revelations. The book leans towards the positive but the author isn't shy to share some of the darker elements of Ryan's life.

Classic film enthusiasts will love the behind-the-scenes information and following the trajectory of Ryan's acting career. The book does gloss over Ryan's later films and extrapolates more on his early work, especially some of the notable performances in films like Crossfire and The Set-Up. Some hardcore classic film enthusiasts won't mind this but I wanted the author to linger more on some of his later films.

The true star of the book for me was Robert Ryan's wife Jessica Cadwalader. I gobbled up any information offered to me about her extraordinary but ultimately sad life. There is extensive information about how she transitioned from being an actress to being a writer, how she and Ryan were fundamental in starting the Oakwood School, a private progressive elementary school in Los Angeles that is still going to this day, and how she suffered from the limitations posed on women, wives and mothers in the '50s and '60s. She had a mental breakdown in 1958 and reading about the circumstances that lead to it made me want to throw the book across the room in anger.

The Lives of Robert Ryan by J.R. Jones is an excellent biography that delves deep on the life and career of a beloved classic film star.


Thank you to Wesleyan University Press for sending me a copy for review!




This is my second review for my Summer Reading Challenge.

This happens to be my 100th book review! Check my book review page for the full list!

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Tender Comrade (1943)



"Teacher, Tender Comrade, Wife. A fellow farer true through life. Heart-whole and soul-free. The August Father gave to me." – Robert Louis Stevenson


Tender Comrade (1943) is a sentimental WWII drama much in the style of Since You Went Away (1944). It follows the story of Jo Jones (Ginger Rogers) a fiesty and strong-willed woman married to mild-mannered soldier Chris (Robert Ryan). After Chris’ 24 hour leave, the two say their goodbyes at a train station as he travels overseas for battle. Doing her part for the war effort, Jo works at a local aircraft factory as a welder. She becomes friendly with a trio of women who've also been left behind. There’s Barbara (Ruth Hussey), an embittered woman who harbors bad feelings for her sailor husband. She openly dates other men and is the voice of discontent among the group. Then there is Doris (Kim Hunter), a sweet and starry-eyed newlywed. A proposal and quickie marriage left her in a suspended virginal state. Then there's Helen (Patricia Collinge), the matriarch and most level-headed of the bunch. Both her husband and son are away at war. All the women struggle to make ends meet and Jo comes up with an idea: they’ll all move in together and share the expenses equally. They add a fifth, Manya (Mady Christians), a German refugee whose husband is fighting the good fight against the Nazis. She takes on a job as a housekeeper. We follow their stories as they adjust to this new arrangement. The film is broken up with flashbacks of scenes from Jo and Chris’ courtship and marriage. It’s equal parts touching and tragic, just as you’d expect a WWII movie to be.




Written by Dalton Trumbo and directed by Edward Dmytryk, Tender Comrade was produced by RKO. Several endings were filmed in order to get just the right tone for the end product. According to Robert Ryan biographer Frank Jarlett, “the picture did well financially, earning $843,00 in profits for RKO, mainly because its tone of patriotic righteous indignation registered in the public’s mind at a peak emotional time.”

Ginger Rogers was on a high point in her career. She had won an Academy Award for her performance in Kitty Foyle (which was also written by Dalton Trumbo). That film did well for RKO and Tender Comrade was a psuedo follow-up to that success. For Tender Comrade, Rogers was billed as the “chin-up girl”, a role model for women embodying the ideal of strength and resilience during wartime. The film premiered in Los Angeles on December 29, 1943, just under the wire to have Rogers’ performance qualify for Academy Award submission. In the end, she didn’t receive a nomination and the film was released to the general public in June 1944. I’ve always been partial to Ginger Rogers and her performances but I felt her role as Jo was overbearing. Perhaps it was the long speeches and the constant bickering, but I found her character not as sympathetic as I wanted her to be.

On the other hand, Chris Jones was an exceptionally good part for Robert Ryan, who was still in the early days of his long acting career. Playing a leading romantic part with a major movie star helped put him on the map. Ryan is incredibly charming in this film. It’s a shame Hollywood relegated him to roles as heavies and villains because there was a “tender” side to him that really shone through.

A few years after its release, Tender Comrade developed a reputation for its perceived Communist agenda. During the HUAC investigations, the film singled out for subversive propaganda and for the term “Comrade” and its connection to Communist Russia. Although the phrase "tender comrade" is a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem The Wife and is quoted at the very start of the film, its reasonable to consider an intended dual meaning.

Trumbo is one of my favorite writers and a huge influence in my life. Reading his novel Johnny Got His Gun completely altered my perspective on the world and I tend to gravitate towards his works. I enjoyed the social commentary and the political subtext of the film even though I thought it to be overly sentimental.

Trumbo was singled out by Lela Rogers, Ginger Rogers mother, during a HUAC hearing. During the filming of Tender Comrade, Rogers started to take issue with some of the dialogue and this was a very dialogue-driven film. In one scene, the German housekeeper receives her husband medal of honor in the mail. Its decided that the medal belongs to all of them and not just Manya. Rogers was supposed to deliver the line “share and share alike, that’s democracy” but instead it was given to Kim Hunter. The film has a bit of a socialist agenda: the give women split their profits evenly, Manya becomes upset at perceived excess and Doris confesses hoarding lipsticks. However I felt the movie as had some strong patriotic messaging. There is Ginger Rogers’ grand speech about the sacrifice needed to live in a better world. And there are various references to being patriotic through rationing and also anti-German and Japanese sentiment. But in the end Dmytryk and Trumbo were both blacklisted by the HUAC and Hollywood. Dmytryk went into exile only to return to the US and give testimony which eventually cleared him from the blacklist. Trumbo was more defiant. After being jailed, he continued to work in Hollywood under pseudonyms. It wasn’t until both Otto Preminger (Exodus) and Kirk Douglas (Spartacus) publicly listed Trumbo as screenwriter in their respective films that the blacklist officially ended.

Tender Comrade holds an important place in the history of WWII films and the Hollywood Blacklist. This film makes its DVD debut thanks to the good folks at the Warner Archive Collection.



Tender Comrade (1943) is available on DVD-MOD from the Warner Archive Collection.When you use my buy links you help support this site. Thanks!

The Warner Archive trio George, D.W. and Matt discuss the film (about 25 minutes in) on the A Colossal Collection episode of their podcast.

 Warner Archive Wednesday - On (random) Wednesdays, I review one title from the Warner Archive Collection. Thank you to Warner Archive for sending me Tender Comrade (1943) to review!

Monday, July 30, 2018

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)




Dave Burke (Ed Begley) has a plan. The disgraced former New York City cop, disillusioned with the system, has been dreaming of the perfect bank heist. He's been keeping an eye on a small town bank and Burke knows exactly when to strike. He enlists two friends to help him pull off the heist. First there's Earle Slater (Robert Ryan), an ex-con who is trying to make things right with his live-in girlfriend Lorry (Shelley Winters). Unable to support her financially, he takes Burke up on his offer to make a quick $50k with the robbery. Then there's Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), a jazz singer who is deep in debt with his local bookies. He's separated from his wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton) and their daughter Eadie and knows he won't be able to come back to old life unless he gets himself out of this mess. But Burke has two problems. Slater is a terrible racist and unwilling to work with Johnny. And Burke has to seek out the head bookie and his team of thugs to put the pressure on Ingram. Burke's plan is solid but can Slater and Ingram stop butting heads long enough to execute the robbery?



Directed by Robert Wise, Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) is a film noir with a social agenda. The story of racial tension in 1950s America is effectively told through the lens of a bank heist drama.


***SPOILER STARTS***

The final scene of Odds Against Tomorrow delivers a poignant message: in the end we're all the same. After botching the bank heist because Slater (Robert Ryan) wouldn't trust Ingram (Harry Belafonte) with a key, they chase each other to fuel storage center. They meet their demise when a shoot out causes a massive explosion. The police discover their charred remains and any identifier of race or status is completely gone.

***SPOILER ENDS***


Shot on location in Manhattan and upstate New York, the film is gritty and real. Harry Belafonte, who was at the height of his music career, has the lead role and top billing. The movie was produced by his company HarBel Productions, Inc. and released through United Artists. It was remarkable for its time for having an African-American lead actor in a film noir. HarBel Productions was in negotiations with Richard Widmark for the role of Slater but eventually the part went to Robert Ryan. Widmark and Ryan were both perfect for the role so it was no loss either way. Ryan, who was a champion for civil rights, was at first hesitant to play Slater. According to Ryan biographer J.R. Jones, he said "a great many people realize that the characters they see on the screen are fictional or created but there is a substantial group that does not make that distinction." Recognizing the quality of the script and the significance of the movie, Ryan eventually agreed.

Ryan who played an anti-semitic character in Crossfire (1947) is reunited with his co-star in that film Gloria Grahame. Grahame has a small role in Odds Against Tomorrow as the next-door neighbor turned temptress Helen. Her part doesn't quite make sense for the movie except to inject the film with a bit of sex. Grahame and Ryan have a steamy scene when Helen's attempts to flirt with Slater get her more than she bargained for. In one racy shot, Ryan rips open Grahame's robe. According to the AFI,

"Gloria Grahame threatened a $100,000 lawsuit against United Artists, demanding they refrain from using certain photos of her in publicity for the film on the grounds that they were candid and taken without her knowledge. The photographs were taken by co-star Robert Ryan. The outcome of Grahame's demand has not been determined." 

I'd be remiss not to point out some of the fine performances in this film. Beyond Belafonte and Ryan, Ed Begley is adept at playing a character that is equal parts dark and sympathetic. I wanted more from Shelley Winters who is always a delight to watch on screen. I felt like her part was lacking. I was particularly fascinated with Richard Bright's Coco, one of Bacco's bookie thugs who antagonizes Johnny Ingram. There is a sadistic homoerotic tension between the two characters. His character reminded me a bit of Neville Brand's part in D.O.A. (1950). Robert Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson have bit parts as employees of the underground jazz club.

Odds Against Tomorrow was based on William P. McGivern's novel by the same name. It was adapted to screen by screenwriter Abraham Polonsky and Nelson Gidding. Polonsky, an unabashed Marxist and former member of the Communist Party, was blacklisted in 1951. He was named by actor Sterling Hayden and when brought to the HUAC  Polonsky refused to testify. For Odds Against Tomorrow, he used the name of left-wing African-American author John O. Killens as a front. It wasn't until 1996 that the WGA finally gave Polonsky credit for his work on this film. Before being blacklisted, Polonsky had written and directed Force of Evil (1948).

Fans of French cinema need to watch Odds Against Tomorrow particularly for the impact it had on director Jean-Pierre Melville. He was heavily influenced by Wise's film, watched it over 80 times and kept his own 35mm copy. Throughout his career, Melville would make references to Odds Against Tomorrow in his own movies.





Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) is available on Blu-Ray from Olive Films. Many thanks to Olive Films for sending me a copy to review.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Cinema Shame: The Wild Bunch (1969)


http://cinemashame.wordpress.com

Four years ago I created a watch list for 2014. These were the films that I hadn't seen yet that I wanted to make a point to watch that year. The Wild Bunch (1969) was one of those films. Unfortunately I never got to it that year or since. So when Jay of Cinema Shame prompted bloggers to submit their Cinema Shame statements for 2018 I added this one to mine!

Directed by Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch (1969) follows a band of outlaws as they seek out one big heist. The year is 1913. Pike Bishop (William Holden) leads his "wild bunch", consisted Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), Lyle Gorch (Warren Oates), Angel (Jaime Sanchez), Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson) and others to a dessert town to rob the railroad office's bank. What Pike and his men don't know is that this was a lure created by the railroad, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) and his own band of bounty hunters to trap the wild bunch. The robbery goes south and ends in a deadly shoot-out with the wild bunch getting away. When they discover their loot was nothing but bags of steel washers, they seek out another opportunity for a big pay day to make up for this failure. They head for the border and pick up old Freddie Sykes (Edmond O'Brien) along the way. Pike's past begins to haunt him. He's tired of this life and wants one last big heist so he can settle down. But his former partner Deke has made it his mission to capture Pike no matter what it takes. As the two bands cross the border into Mexico, a long chase filled with more heists, lots of booze, women, guns and violence.


"Being sure is my business." - William Holden as Pike Bishop

The Wild Bunch is a movie that revels in violence. Right from the very beginning when we see children feeding scorpions to fire ants, we realize that this movie is going to be tough as nails. In a post Hays Code world, this movie tested the waters and set the standards for increased violence and blood shed on film. Ernest Borgnine once said, "I made The Wild Bunch, which was the beginning of the splattering of blood and everything else. But there was a moral behind it. The moral was that, by golly, bad guys got it. That was it." The film was highly controversial at it's time. It won praise and disdain from those who were in awe of the filmmaking techniques and the performances and others who were appalled by its graphic and relentless representation of violence.

Maybe that's why The Wild Bunch is a mixed bag for me. I can appreciate the artistry of this film but am also repulsed by its violence. The cast is superb and includes some of my favorites like Borgnine, Ryan and O'Brien. I marveled at the excellent filmmaking and on location shooting. The film felt real to me. Like I was in Mexico right alongside the wild bunch on this outrageous adventure. It's not a film I feel the need to watch again but one I'm glad I saw. The Wild Bunch does make me want to watch more of Peckinpah's work. He received his one and only Academy Award nomination, in the Original Screenplay category, for this film.

Have you seen The Wild Bunch (1969)? What did you think of it? Tell me your thoughts below.
Stay tuned for more reviews or quick takes on my Cinema Shame movies for 2018!


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