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Actresses
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.jpg) Robert Ryan
Birthday: November 11, 1909
Birth
Place: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Height: 6' 4"
Below
is a complete filmography (list of movies he's appeared in) for
Robert Ryan. If you have any corrections or additions, please email
us at corrections@actorsofhollywood.com.
We'd also be interested in any trivia or other information you have.
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| Biography
It was his failure as a playwright that led Robert Ryan to a three-decade career as an actor. He was a unique presence on both the stage and screen, and in the Hollywood community, where he was that rarity: a two-fisted liberal. In many ways, at the end of the 1940s, Ryan was the liberals' answer to John Wayne, and he even managed to work alongside the right-wing icon in Flying Leathernecks (1951). The son of a successful building contractor, Ryan was born in Chicago in 1909 and attended Dartmouth College, where one of his fraternity brothers was Nelson Rockefeller. He was a top athlete at the school and held its heavyweight boxing title for four straight years. Ryan graduated in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, and intended to write plays. Finding no opportunities available in this field, he became a day laborer; he stoked coal on a ship bound for Africa, worked as a sandhog, and herded horses in Montana, among other jobs. Ryan finally had his chance to write as a member of a theater company in Chicago, but proved unsuccessful and turned to acting. He arrived in Hollywood at the end of the '30s and studied at the Max Reinhardt Workshop, making his professional stage debut in 1940. He appeared in small roles for Paramount Pictures, but Ryan's real film career didn't begin until several years later. He returned east to appear in stock, and landed a part in Clifford Odets' Clash by Night, in which he worked opposite Tallulah Bankhead and got excellent reviews. Ryan came to regard that production and his work with Bankhead as the pivotal point in his career. The reviews of the play brought him to the attention of studio casting offices, and he was signed by RKO. The actor made his debut at the studio in the wartime action thriller Bombardier. It was a good beginning, although his early films were fairly lackluster and his career was interrupted by World War II — he joined the Marines in 1944 and spent the next three years in uniform. Ryan's screen career took off when he returned to civilian life in 1947. He starred in two of the studio's best releases that year: Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach and Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire, the latter an extraordinary film for its time dealing with troubled veterans and virulent anti-Semitism, with Ryan giving an Oscar-nominated performance as an unrepentant murderer of an innocent Jewish man. He continued to do good work in difficult movies, including the Joseph Losey symbolic drama The Boy With Green Hair (1948) and with Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949). The latter film (which Ryan regarded as his favorite of all of his movies) was practically dumped onto the market by RKO, though the studio soon found itself with an unexpected success when the film received good reviews, it was entered in the Cannes Film Festival, and it won the Best Picture award in the British Academy Award competition. Ryan also distinguished himself that year in Dmytryk's Act of Violence and Max Oph
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Movie
Credits
Trivia
- Originally intended to portray Commodore Matt Decker in the "Star Trek" (1966) (original series) episode "Doomsday Machine", but was unable to do so. The character was intended as a Captain Ahab-type obsessed with revenge for the loss of his crew. The role instead went to William Windom, who portrayed Decker in a more tragic, sensitive light.
- Initially planned on studying at the Pasadena Playhouse but instead became a student of Max Reinhardt in the late 1930s, where he met fellow student and future wife Jessica Cadwalader. Following their marriage, she gave up her acting aspirations and later became a children's fiction book writer.
- While performing in a stock play version of "A Kiss for Cinderella" in 1941 with actress Luise Rainer, Rainer's ex-husband, Clifford Odets, saw him and offered him the featured juvenile part in his Broadway play "Clash by Night" as Joe Doyle, opposite Tallulah Bankhead. A decade later he starred in the film version, but had outgrown the juvenile role and instead played Earl Pfeiffer, one of the leads, originated on Broadway by Joseph Schildkraut. His Doyle character was played by Keith Andes in the film.
- In 1973 he played the terminally ill political activist Larry Slade in The Iceman Cometh (1973). Ironically, while filming, he knew he was approaching the final stages of lung cancer, and died in July of that year. Wife Jessica preceded him in death by a year, also succumbing to cancer.
- Due to his towering frame, cruelly-lined face, and a simmering intensity uncommon in his generation of "tough guys," he usually played hateful villains. Even on the rare occasions that he played a good guy, they often possessed a violent, obsessive personality that was a tad unsettling.
- Two sons, Bob and Tim, and a daughter. His daughter is the youngest.
- At the time he was diagnosed with cancer, he was scheduled to play Don Quixote in a film version of Miguel Cervantes' novel. It was Rex Harrison, however, who was finally seen as the Don in a 1973 made-for-television film of the book, a year after Peter O'Toole had starred in the film version of the Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha".
- Shortly before his death, Ryan moved out of his apartment (number 72) at the Dakota in New York City. Ryan leased (and then his estate later sold) the apartment to John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
- Co-founded the Theatre Group at the University of California at Los Angeles, with John Houseman and Sidney Harmon, in 1959. Nine years later, in 1968, he co-founded the Plumstead Playhouse Repertory Company, with Henry Fonda and Martha Scott.
- Was Turner Classic Movies' "Star of the Month" for February 2000, a rare honor for a character lead/supporting player.
- Served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1944 to 1947.
- When casting the role of the leading man in the 1943 Ginger Rogers vehicle "Tender Comrade", RKO producer David Hempstead became interested in Ryan due to favorable preview cards hailing Ryan's performances in "Bombardier," "The Sky's the Limit", and "Behind the Rising Sun". He suggested him to Rogers, who was at first unimpressed after screening parts of the three movies. She turned him down as her leading man as she thought he looked mean and (at 6' 4" tall) he was too big. A week later, when Rogers visited Hempstead at his office, he was busily going through preview cards of "The Sky's the Limit", and he showed her some of them. Rogers saw that all of the reviews of Ryan's performance were favorable, and since the time before principal production was drawing near, she decided to have another look at him. Ryan was conveniently waiting in a nearby office for just such a possibility. Less than a minute later, Ryan came to the office and talked with both the producer and Rogers. After a few moments, Rogers unobtrusively slipped Hempstead a note: "I think this is the guy." Today, the note hangs on the wall above Cheyney Ryan's (Ryan's son) desk, in his study.
Naked Photos of Robert Ryan are available at MaleStars.com. They
currently feature over 65,000 Nude Pics, Biographies, Video Clips,
Articles, and Movie Reviews of famous stars. |
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