Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor and activist. He became known for his roles in films noir and Westerns, gaining fame for his portrayals of both hardened anti-heroes and ruthless villains. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Crossfire (1947), and a BAFTA Award for his performance in Billy Budd (1962). He was also an accomplished stage actor, winning a Drama Desk Award for a 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Though he never achieved the A-list stardom of some of his Hollywood peers, Ryan nonetheless remained a popular performer, well-regarded by both critics and his peers. Critic Manohla Dargis wrote, "[Ryan] was the type of next-level star and B-movie stalwart that helped make old Hollywood great" and "born to play beautifully tortured, angry souls." He was of Irish (his paternal grandparents were from Thurles) and English descent. Ryan was raised Catholic and educated at Loyola Academy.
Ryan graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932, where he held the school's heavyweight boxing title for all four years of his attendance, along with lettering in football and track. After graduation, Ryan found employment as a stoker on a ship that traveled to Africa, a WPA worker, a ranch hand in Montana, and other odd jobs.
Ryan returned home in 1936 when his father died; after a brief stint modeling clothes for a department store, he decided to become an actor.
Career
Early appearances
In 1937 Ryan joined a little theater group in Chicago. The following year he enrolled in the Max Reinhardt Workshop in Hollywood.
Paramount
In November 1939, Paramount signed Ryan to a six-month contract and announced he would play the lead in Golden Gloves (1940), citing his boxing experience at Dartmouth. However, after a screen test with Gloves director Edward Dmytryk, the lead went to Richard Denning and Ryan was cast in a minor, but important role as a boxing "ringer". He had his first credited role, while making a lasting association with the director in which they would make several films together.
In the same year, Ryan had small parts in The Ghost Breakers (1940) and Queen of the Mob (1940) as well as small roles in North West Mounted Police (1941) and Texas Rangers Ride Again (1941). Then Paramount dropped him.
RKO
Ryan appeared in Bombardier (1943), starring Pat O'Brien, and was fourth-billed in the Fred Astaire musical The Sky's the Limit (1943), playing a friend of Astaire. Both films were popular.
He was fourth-billed in Behind the Rising Sun (1943), directed by Edward Dmytryk, which was a huge box-office success then third-billed in The Iron Major (1943), with O'Brien, and Gangway for Tomorrow (1943).
RKO promoted him to star status in Tender Comrade (1943), where he was Ginger Rogers' leading man, directed for the third time by Dmytryk. It was a big hit. Also popular was Marine Raiders (1944), in which Ryan co-starred again alongside O'Brien.
World War II
Ryan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served as a drill instructor from January 1944 to November 1945 at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California.
Ryan's breakthrough role was as an anti-Semitic killer in the Dmytryk-directed film noir Crossfire (1947), co-starring Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, and Gloria Grahame. The film was based on Richard Brooks's novel The Brick Foxhole, which reflected the tensions of barracks life during the war—something familiar to both Brooks and Ryan from their Pendleton experience. Crossfire was highly successful at the box office and received several Academy Award nominations including a Best Supporting Actor for Ryan's performance.
Ryan co-starred with Merle Oberon in Berlin Express (1948) for director Jacques Tourneur. He was reunited with Scott in Return of the Bad Men (1948), and with O'Brien in The Boy with Green Hair (1948). The latter film was directed by Joseph Losey and produced by Dore Schary, who was head of production at RKO.
MGM borrowed him to make Act of Violence (1948) for Fred Zinnemann. He stayed at that studio to make Caught (1949) for Max Ophuls with James Mason.
Back at RKO, Ryan had one of his best roles in The Set-Up (1949), directed by Robert Wise, as an over-the-hill boxer who is brutally punished for refusing to take a dive. The Set-Up was a favorite of Ryan's. He was top billed in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), an anti-communist melodrama directed by Robert Stevenson, that was made at the prompting of RKO's new owner, Howard Hughes.
Ryan next appeared in several film noirs: The Secret Fury (1950) with Claudette Colbert directed by Mel Ferrer, and Born to Be Bad (1950) directed by Nicholas Ray. In 1950, the studio bought The Miami Story as a vehicle for him.
He then made the Western Best of the Badmen (1951), and costarred with John Wayne in Flying Leathernecks (1951), a World War II film directed by Ray. It was announced he was working on an original film story called The Alpine Slide about avalanches, but no film resulted.
thumb|right|With [[Barbara Stanwyck in Clash by Night (1952)]]
In 1951, Ryan was reunited with Crossfire costar Robert Mitchum in The Racket, directed by John Cromwell; that same year, Ray again directed him in a film noir, On Dangerous Ground, with Ida Lupino. Ryan then made the film adaptation of Clash by Night (1952) with Barbara Stanwyck and Marilyn Monroe under Fritz Lang's direction. According to film critic David Thomson, "at RKO Ryan created the character of a modern neurotic such as the American screen had not dreamed of before."
His last film at RKO for a number of years was Beware, My Lovely (1952) with Lupino, made for her production company.
Post-RKO
thumb|right|[[The Naked Spur (1953)]]
Ryan went to MGM where he played a villain in Anthony Mann's western The Naked Spur (1953), starring James Stewart. The picture was very popular.
He appeared in City Beneath the Sea (1953) for Budd Boetticher at Universal, Inferno (1953) at Fox, and Alaska Seas (1954) at Paramount.
He was the leading man for Shirley Booth in About Mrs. Leslie (1954) and Greer Garson in Her Twelve Men (1954). The latter was made at MGM, now being run by Dore Schary, RKO's previous studio head, who cast Ryan as the head villain in Bad Day at Black Rock (1954).
He appeared in an off-Broadway production of Coriolanus (1954) directed by John Houseman.
Ryan returned to RKO for Escape to Burma (1955) with Stanwyck. More widely seen was Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo (1955) and Raoul Walsh's The Tall Men (1955), both at Fox. By now his fee was reported as $150,000 per film.
He starred in The Proud Ones (1956) at Fox, Back from Eternity (1956) at RKO, directed by John Farrow. He appeared in Men in War (1957) for Anthony Mann, made at Mann's company Security Pictures.
Television
Ryan made his television debut in 1955 as Abraham Lincoln in the Screen Director's Playhouse adaptation of Christopher Morley's story "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog." As he explained to reporters, despite financial considerations, Ryan preferred to steer clear of any commitment to a TV series:
<blockquote>The only money in TV is in the series, and I want to stay out of those. Sure, I might make a million or so in a series, but I'd wind up being 'Sidewinder Sam' for the rest of my life.</blockquote>
Ryan remained true to these convictions, appearing in many television series, but always as a guest star. He was in Screen Directors Playhouse, Mr. Adams and Eve, Goodyear Theatre, Alcoa Theatre, Playhouse 90 (playing The Great Gatsby), and Zane Grey Theater.
He continued to star in features, however, including God's Little Acre (1958) for Mann and Security Pictures, Lonelyhearts (1959) written and produced by Schary, Day of the Outlaw (1959) for Security Pictures, and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) for Wise.
1960s
In the summer of 1960 Ryan starred opposite Katharine Hepburn at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, playing Antony to Hepburn's Cleopatra.
Ryan remained in high demand throughout the 1960s: he appeared in Ice Palace (1960) with Richard Burton; a TV version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro directed by John Frankenheimer; The Canadians (1961) for Burt Kennedy; played John the Baptist in MGM's Technicolor epic King of Kings (1961) for Nicholas Ray; was the villainous Claggart in Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Billy Budd (1962) for which he was nominated for a BAFTA.
He also appeared in the all-star war film The Longest Day (1962), playing James M. Gavin.
Ryan returned to Broadway in the musical Mr. President (1962–63) by Lindsay and Crouse with music by Irving Berlin and directed by Joshua Logan; it ran for 263 performances.
Ryan continued to appear in TV shows such as Kraft Suspense Theatre, Breaking Point, The Eleventh Hour, Wagon Train, The Reporter and Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. Ryan's only partial concession to featuring in an entire television series was his role as Narrator in CBS's 26-episode acclaimed documentary homage to World War One, released in prime-time during the 1964–65 season.
Ryan was considered for a role in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Norman Spinrad had written the script of the 1967 episode "The Doomsday Machine" with Ryan in mind to play Commodore Matt Decker, but Ryan had prior commitments. That role went to William Windom.
Europe
Ryan could be seen in The Crooked Road (1965) and The Secret Agents (1965), then the all-star Battle of the Bulge (1965) for Phil Yordan and The Professionals (1966) for Brooks.
Ryan supported Sid Caesar in The Busy Body (1967) and had a key supporting part in The Dirty Dozen (1967) for Robert Aldrich and Hour of the Gun (1967), playing Ike Clanton for John Sturges.
Ryan played Othello (1967) in a regional production at Nottingham, England.
Ryan went to Europe for A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die (1968) and Anzio (1969) for Dmytryk. Ryan had the lead in Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969).
Along with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, Ryan was goaded by Sam Peckinpah during the making of The Wild Bunch (1969). After production in Mexico moved from Parras to Torreón, his request to take a few days off to campaign for Eugene McCarthy during the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries was denied by Peckinpah. In his biography Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden, Bob Thomas wrote, "For ten days, Ryan reported to the set in makeup and costume. He never played a scene. Finally he grabbed Peckinpah by the shirtfront and growled, 'I'll do anything you ask me to do in front of the camera, because I'm a professional. But you open your mouth to me off the set, and I'll knock your teeth in.
Ryan returned to the stage in a revival of The Front Page. It was one of the earlier productions developed by the Plumstead Playhouse (later the Plumstead Theatre Company), a Long Island-based repertory company founded by Ryan, Martha Scott and Henry Fonda; the following winter, a film of the production (produced jointly by MPC and Plumstead) was broadcast nationally over the upstart Hughes TV Network.
Final films
Ryan supported Burt Lancaster in Lawman (1971) and John Phillip Law in The Love Machine (1971). He appeared in And Hope to Die (1971) with Jean-Louis Trintignant for René Clément.
In April 1971, Ryan returned to the stage to play James Tyrone in Arvin Brown's critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
He originally refused the lead in Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973) with Rod Steiger because he wanted to take his wife to Europe, but she died of cancer in May 1972, and he ended up playing the part. "Something very big is missing and I don't know what to put in its place," he said. the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor (in a tie with Al Pacino, for Serpico), and a special award from the National Society of Film Critics. The Iceman Cometh and Executive Action both were released in November 1973, after Ryan's death.
Ryan had signed to appear in a stage musical version of Shenandoah when he died.
By the mid-1960s, Ryan's political activities included efforts to fight racial discrimination. He served in the cultural division of the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King Jr., and helped organize the short-lived Artists Help All Blacks, with Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, Sidney Poitier, and several other actors.
Ryan often spoke about the dichotomy of his personal beliefs and his acting roles. At a screening of Odds Against Tomorrow, he appeared before the press to discuss "the problems of an actor like me playing the kind of character that in real life he finds totally despicable." Ryan's roles as cynical, prejudiced, violent characters, often ran counter to the causes he embraced. He was a pacifist who starred in war movies, westerns, and violent thrillers. He was an opponent of McCarthyism, but appeared in the anti-communist propaganda film I Married a Communist, playing a nefarious communist agent. In socially progressive films such as Crossfire, Bad Day at Black Rock, Odds Against Tomorrow and Executive Action, he played bigoted villains or conspirators.
Personal life
On March 11, 1939, he married Jessica Cadwalader. They had three children: Timothy (b. 1946); Cheyney (b. 1948), a research fellow at Oxford University, co-chair of the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights, and an emeritus professor of philosophy and law at the University of Oregon, and Lisa (b. 1951). They lived in the Dakota at 72nd and Central Park West in Manhattan and eventually sub-let and later sold the apartment to John Lennon and Yoko Ono where Lennon was shot and killed in the courtyard entryway in 1980. Kris Kristofferson referred to him as one of his favorite actors.
Filmography
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-
|rowspan=5|1940
|The Ghost Breakers
|Intern
|Uncredited
|-
|Queen of the Mob
|Jim
|
|-
|Golden Gloves
|Pete Wells
|
|-
|North West Mounted Police
|Constable Dumont
|
|-
|The Texas Rangers Ride Again
|Eddie
|Uncredited
|-
|rowspan=6|1943
|Bombardier
|Joe Connors
|
|-
|The Sky's the Limit
|Reginald Fenton
|
|-
|Behind the Rising Sun
|Lefty O'Doyle
|
|-
|The Iron Major
|Father Timothy 'Tim' Donovan
|
|-
|Gangway for Tomorrow
|Joe Dunham
|
|-
|Tender Comrade
|Chris Jones
|
|-
|1944
| Marine Raiders
| Capt. Dan Craig
|
|-
|rowspan=3|1947
|Trail Street
| Allen
|
|-
|The Woman on the Beach
|Scott
|
|-
|Crossfire
|Montgomery
|
|-
|rowspan=4|1948
| Berlin Express
| Robert Lindley
|
|-
|Return of the Bad Men
| Sundance Kid
|
|-
|The Boy with Green Hair
| Dr. Evans
|
|-
| Act of Violence
| Joe Parkson
|
|-
|rowspan=3|1949
|Caught
|Smith Ohlrig
|
|-
|The Set-Up
| Stoker
|
|-
|I Married a Communist
| Brad Collins
|
|-
|rowspan=2|1950
| The Secret Fury
|David Mclean
|
|-
|Born to Be Bad
|Nick
|
|-
|rowspan=5|1951
| Hard, Fast and Beautiful
|Seabright Tennis Match Spectator
|Uncredited
|-
|Best of the Badmen
| Jeff Clanton
|
|-
|Flying Leathernecks
|Capt. Carl 'Griff' Griffin
|
|-
|The Racket
|Nick Scanlon
|
|-
|On Dangerous Ground
|Jim Wilson
|
|-
|rowspan=3|1952
| Clash by Night
| Earl Pfeiffer
|
|-
|Beware, My Lovely
| Howard Wilton
|
|-
|Horizons West
| Dan Hammond
|
|-
|rowspan=3|1953
|The Naked Spur
|Ben Vandergroat
|
|-
|City Beneath the Sea
| Brad Carlton
|
|-
|Inferno
| Donald Whitley Carson III
|
|-
|rowspan=3|1954
|Alaska Seas
| Matt Kelly
|
|-
|About Mrs. Leslie
|George Leslie
|
|-
|Her Twelve Men
| Joe Hargrave
|
|-
|rowspan=4|1955
|Bad Day at Black Rock
|Reno Smith
|
|-
|House of Bamboo
| Sandy Dawson
|
|-
|Escape to Burma
| Jim Brecan/Martin
|
|-
|The Tall Men
|Nathan Stark
|
|-
|rowspan=2|1956
|The Proud Ones
| Marshal Cass Silver
|
|-
|Back from Eternity
|Bill Lonagan
|
|-
|1957
| Men in War
|Lt. Benson
|
|-
|rowspan=3|1958
| Lonelyhearts
|William Shrike
|
|-
|God's Little Acre
|Ty Ty Walden
|
|-
| The Great Gatsby
| Jay Gatsby
| Television adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel
|-
|rowspan=2|1959
| Day of the Outlaw
| Blaise Starrett
|
|-
|Odds Against Tomorrow
| Earle Slater
|
|-
|1960
|Ice Palace
|Thor Storm
|
|-
|rowspan=2|1961
|The Canadians
| Inspector William Gannon
|
|-
|King of Kings
| John the Baptist
|
|-
|rowspan=2|1962
|The Longest Day
|Brig. Gen. James M. Gavin
|
|-
|Billy Budd
|John Claggart, Master-at-Arms
|
|-
|1941–42
|Clash by Night
|Joe W. Doyle
|Belasco Theatre, New York
|Broadway debut
|
|-
|1949
|Petticoat Fever
|
| rowspan="2" |La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego
|
|
|Crossfire
|
|-
|British Academy Film Award
|1963
|Best Foreign Actor
|Billy Budd
|
|-
|Drama Desk Award
|1971
|Vernon Rice Award
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |National Society of Film Critics Award
| rowspan="2" |1974
|Special Award
|
|-
|Best Actor
|
|}
References
Further reading
- Othman, Frederick C. "Hollywood Reporter". The Middlesboro Daily News. August 23, 1943.
- UP. "Robert Ryan Isn't Sure He Can Afford Stardom". The Milwaukee Journal. November 19, 1947.
- AP. "Robert Ryan: A Friend of the Underdog". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. September 14, 1948.
- "Robert Ryan's Advice to Would-Be Actors". The Deseret News. November 30, 1951.
- Finnigan, Joseph. "Actor Robert Ryan Set to Find His Relatives". The Palm Beach Post. July 4, 1961.
- Pack, Harvey. "Bob Ryan Shines on TV and Stage". The Toledo Blade. June 23, 1969.
- Otterburn-Hall, William. "Robert Ryan Recalls First Trip to Durango". The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. June 6, 1970.
- Thomas, Bob. "Robert Ryan Fights Back After Tragic Two Years". The Milwaukee Journal. August 25, 1972.
- Jones, J.R. "The Actor's Letter: A Reminiscence by Film Noir Icon Robert Ryan" . The Chicago Reader. October 29, 2009.
- Dargis, Manohla. "Robert Ryan's Quiet Furies". The New York Times. August 5, 2011.
- Kennedy, Harold J. No Pickle, No Performance. An Irreverent Theatrical Excursion from Tallulah to Travolta. New York, Doubleday & Co., 1978. pp. 124–148