The Racket (1928) is an American crime film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Thomas Meighan, Marie Prevost, Louis Wolheim, and George E. Stone. The film was produced by Howard Hughes, written by Bartlett Cormack and Tom Miranda, and was distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Background[link]

Due to the controversial portrayal of a corrupt police force and city government both the film and the play were banned at the time in Chicago.^[1]

Reception[link]

The Racket poster.

The Racket is one of the first films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (then called "Best Picture, Production") in the 1929 Academy Awards.

Preservation status[link]

Only one copy of the film is known to exist.^[2] It was long thought lost before being located in Howard Hughes' film collection after his death. A print was shepherded by Dr. Hart Wegner of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas film department for restoration by Jeffrey Masino, along with another lost Hughes-produced film, Two Arabian Knights (1927). In 2004 and 2006, Turner Classic Movies broadcast The Racket, Two Arabian Knights, and The Mating Call (1928), the first showing of any of the three films in decades.

References[link]

See also[link]

• List of rediscovered films

External links[link]

• The Racket at the Internet Movie Database

This 1920s drama film-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Wilhelmina Goodson, better known as Billie Pierce (June 8, 1907 – September 29, 1974) was an American jazz pianist and singer.^[1]

She was born in Marianna, Florida, United States^[1] one of seven piano-playing sisters (including Ida Goodson), born to a mother and father who both themselves played piano. Early in the 1920s, Pierce played with Bessie Smith in a theater in Pensacola, Florida, and later in the decade played in the bands of Alphonse Picou, Emile Barnes, and George Lewis.^[1] In the 1930s she played at the Blue Jay Club, where she met trumpeter De De Pierce; the two fell in love, married, and co-led their own ensemble, which served as the house band at Luthjen's Dance Hall in the 1950s. She played in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band,^[1] and was a regular on the New Orleans jazz scene in the 1950s through the early 1970s.

She died in September 1974, in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the age of 67. Her husband had died the previous November, aged 69.^[1]

References[link]

Robert Mitchum
Born	Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (1917-08-06)August 6, 1917 Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.
Died	July 1, 1997(1997-07-01) (aged 79) Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Lung cancer
Occupation	Actor, author, composer, singer
Years active	1942–1996
Spouse	Dorothy Spence (1940–97)

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s.

Early life and career[link]

Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a Methodist family.^[1] His mother, Ann Harriet (née Gunderson), was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter, and his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker.^[2] A sister, Annette, (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career) was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919, when his son was less than 2 years old. After his death, Ann Mitchum was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. She returned to her family in Connecticut, and married a former British Army major who helped her care for the children. In September 1919 a second son, John, was born. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post.^[3]

Throughout Mitchum's childhood, he was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When he was 12, his mother sent Mitchum to live with his grandparents in Felton, Delaware, where he was promptly expelled from his middle school for scuffling with a principal. A year later, in 1930, he moved in with his older sister, in New York's Hell's Kitchen. After being expelled from Haaran High School, he left his sister and traveled throughout the country on railroad cars, taking a number of jobs including as a ditch-digger for the Civilian Conservation Corps and as a professional boxer. He experienced numerous adventures during his years as one of the Depression era's "wild boys of the road." At age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he was arrested for vagrancy and put on a local chain gang. By Mitchum's own account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. It was during this time, while recovering from injuries that nearly lost him a leg, that he met the woman he would marry, a teenaged Dorothy Spence. He soon went back on the road, eventually riding the rails to California.

Mitchum arrived in Long Beach, California, in 1936, staying again with his sister Julie. Soon the rest of the Mitchum family joined them in Long Beach. During this time he worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. It was sister Julie who convinced him to join the local theater guild with her. In his years with the Players Guild of Long Beach, he made a living as a stagehand and occasional bit player in company productions. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. According to Lee Server's biography (Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care), Mitchum put a talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for his sister Julie's nightclub performances. In 1940 he returned East to marry Dorothy, taking her back to California. He remained a footloose character until the birth of their first child, James Mitchum, nicknamed Josh (two more children would follow, Christopher Mitchum and Petrine). Mitchum then got a steady job as a machine operator with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.

A nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary blindness), apparently from job-related stress, led Mitchum to look for work as an actor or extra in movies. An agent he had met got him an interview with the producer of the Hopalong Cassidy series of B-westerns; he was hired to play the villain in several films in the series during 1942 and 1943. He continued to find further work as an extra and supporting actor in numerous productions for various studios. After impressing director Mervyn LeRoy during the making of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Mitchum signed a seven-year contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He found himself groomed for B Western stardom in a series of Zane Grey adaptations.

Following the moderately successful western Nevada, Mitchum was lent from RKO to United Artists for the William Wellman-helmed The Story of G.I. Joe. In the film, he portrayed war-weary officer Bill Walker (based on Captain Henry T. Waskow), who remains resolute despite the troubles he faces. The film, which followed the life of an ordinary soldier through the eyes of journalist Ernie Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith), became an instant critical and commercial success. Shortly after making the film, Mitchum himself was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving at Fort MacArthur, California. At the 1946 Academy Awards, The Story of G.I. Joe was nominated for four Oscars, including Mitchum's only nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He finished the year off with a western (West of the Pecos) and a story of returning Marine veterans (Till the End of Time), before filming in a genre that came to define Mitchum's career and screen persona: film noir.

Film noir[link]

Mitchum was initially known for his work in film noir. His first foray into the genre was a supporting role in the B-film When Strangers Marry, about newlyweds and a New York City serial killer. Undercurrent, another of Mitchum's early noirs, featured him playing against type as a troubled, sensitive man entangled in the affairs of his brother (Robert Taylor) and his brother's suspicious wife (Katharine Hepburn). The film was director Vincente Minnelli's only film noir.

John Brahm's The Locket (1946) featured Mitchum as bitter ex-husband to Laraine Day's femme fatale, while Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947) combined western and noir styles, with Mitchum's character attempting to recall his past and find those responsible for killing his family. Crossfire (also 1947) featured Mitchum as a member of a group of soldiers, one of whom killed a Jew. It featured themes of anti-Semitism and the failings of military training. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, earned five Academy Award nominations.

Mitchum's famous role in Out of the Past (1947)

Following Crossfire, Mitchum starred in Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High), directed by Jacques Tourneur and featuring the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. Mitchum played Jeff Markham, a small-town gas station owner whose unfinished business with gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and femme fatale Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer), comes back to haunt him. Though ignored by most critics on its release, the film was a modest box office hit at the time and has received a positive reappraisal. Mitchum was photographed again by Musuraca in the Robert Wise psychological western Blood on the Moon the following year.

On September 1, 1948, after a string of successful films for RKO, Mitchum and actress Lila Leeds were arrested for possession of marijuana.^[4] The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers as well, but Mitchum and Leeds did not receive the tip-off. After serving a week at the county jail, (he described the experience to a reporter as being "like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff") Mitchum spent 43 days (February 16 to March 30) at a Castaic, California, prison farm, with Life magazine photographers right there taking photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform.^[5] The arrest became the inspiration for the exploitation film She Shoulda Said No! (1949), which starred Leeds. The arrest did little to affect Mitchum's career in the long term, but was seen as an embarrassment by his studio, who ordered Mitchum to clean up his act. The conviction was later overturned by the Los Angeles court and District Attorney's office on January 31, 1951, with the following statement, after it was exposed as a set-up:

Whether despite, or because of, his troubles with the law and his studio, the films released immediately after his arrest were box-office hits. Rachel and the Stranger (1948) featured Mitchum in a supporting role as a mountain man competing for the hand of Loretta Young, the indentured servant and wife of William Holden, while he appeared in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella The Red Pony (1949) as a trusted cowhand to a ranching family.

Mitchum returned to true film noir in The Big Steal (also 1949), where he again joined Jane Greer in an early Don Siegel film.

Career in the 1950s and 1960s[link]

In Where Danger Lives (1950) he played a doctor who comes between a mentally unbalanced Faith Domergue and cuckolded Claude Rains. The Racket was a noir remake of the early crime drama of the same name and featured Mitchum as a police captain fighting corruption in his precinct. The Josef von Sternberg film Macao (1952) saw Mitchum a victim of mistaken identity at an exotic resort casino, playing opposite Jane Russell. Otto Preminger's Angel Face was the first of three collaborations between Mitchum and British stage actress Jean Simmons. In the film, Simmons plays an insane heiress who plans to use young ambulance driver Mitchum to kill for her.

Mitchum's cynical, mischievous attitude through his career had led him to shrug off fame as a fluke. His expulsion from Blood Alley (1955) is frequently attributed to his pranks, especially one in which he reportedly threw the film's transportation manager into San Francisco Bay. According to Sam O'Steen's memoir, Cut to the Chase, Mitchum showed up on set after a night of drinking and tore apart a studio office when they didn't have a car ready for him. Mitchum walked off the set of the third day of filming Blood Alley, claiming he could not work with the director. Because he was showing up late and behaving erratically, producer John Wayne, after failing to obtain Humphrey Bogart as a replacement, took over the role himself.^[6][7]

Following a series of conventional westerns and films noirs, including the Marilyn Monroe vehicle River of No Return (1954), he appeared in Charles Laughton's only film as director, The Night of the Hunter (1955). Based on a novel by Davis Grubb, the film noir thriller starred Mitchum as a monstrous criminal posing as a preacher to find money hidden by his cellmate in the cellmate's home. His performance as Reverend Harry Powell is considered by many to be one of the best of his career.^[8][9] Stanley Kramer's melodrama Not as a Stranger though, also released in 1955, was a box office hit for Mitchum. The film starred Mitchum against type, as an idealistic young doctor, who marries an older nurse (Olivia de Havilland), only to question his morality many years later. However, the film was not well received, with most critics pointing out that Mitchum, Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin were all too old for their characters. Olivia de Havilland received top billing over Mitchum and Sinatra.

Following a succession of average westerns and the poorly received Foreign Intrigue (1956), Mitchum starred in the first of three films with British actress Deborah Kerr. The John Huston war drama Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison starred Mitchum as a marine corporal shipwrecked on a Pacific Island with a nun, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), being his sole companion. In this character study they struggle to resist the elements and the invading Japanese army. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. For his role, Mitchum was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor.

Thunder Road (1958) was loosely based on an incident in which a driver transporting moonshine was said to have crashed to his death on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee somewhere between Bearden Hill and Morrell Road. According to Metro Pulse writer Jack Renfro, the incident occurred in 1952 and may have been witnessed by James Agee, who passed the story on to Mitchum–who not only starred in the movie, but also produced the film, co-wrote the screenplay, and is rumored to have directed much of the film himself. Mitchum also co-wrote (with Don Raye) the theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road."

In The Sundowners (1960)

Mitchum and Kerr reunited for the Fred Zinnemann film, The Sundowners (1960), where they played husband and wife struggling in Depression-era Australia. Opposite Mitchum, Kerr was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress, while the film was nominated for a total of five Oscars. Robert Mitchum was awarded that year's National Board of Review award for Best Actor for his performance. The award also recognized his superior performance in the Vincente Minnelli western drama Home from the Hill (also 1960). He was teamed with both Kerr and previous leading lady Jean Simmons as well as Cary Grant for the extremely offbeat Stanley Donen ensemble comedy The Grass Is Greener the same year.

Mitchum's performance as the menacing southern rapist Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) brought him even more attention and furthered his renown as playing cool, predatory characters. The 1960s were marked by a number of lesser films and missed opportunities. Among the films Mitchum passed on during the decade was John Huston's The Misfits, the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, the Academy Award–winning Patton, and Dirty Harry. The most notable of his films in the decade included the war epics The Longest Day (1962) and Anzio (1968), the Shirley MacLaine comedy-musical What a Way to Go! (1964), and the Howard Hawks western El Dorado (1966), a remake of Rio Bravo (1959), in which Mitchum took over Dean Martin's role of the drunk who comes to the aid of John Wayne.

Music career[link]

One of the lesser known aspects of Mitchum's career was his forays into music, both as singer and composer

Mitchum's voice was often used instead of that of a professional singer when his characters sang in his films. Notable productions featuring Mitchum's own singing voice included Rachel and the Stranger, River of No Return and The Night of the Hunter. After hearing traditional calypso music and meeting artists such as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison in the Caribbean island of Tobago, he recorded Calypso — is like so... in March 1957. On the album, released through Capitol Records, he emulated the calypso sound and style, even adopting the style's unique pronunciations and slang. A year later he recorded a song he had written for the film Thunder Road, titled "The Ballad of Thunder Road". The country-styled song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching #69 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart. The song was included as a bonus track on a successful reissue of Calypso... and helped market the film to a wider audience.

Though Mitchum continued to use his singing voice in his film work, he waited until 1967 to record his follow-up record, That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings. The album, released by Nashville-based Monument Records, took him further into country music, and featured songs similar to The Ballad of Thunder Road. "Little Old Wine Drinker Me," the first single, was a top ten hit at country radio, reaching #9 there, and crossed over onto mainstream radio, where it peaked at #96. Its follow-up, "You Deserve Each Other," also charted on the Billboard Country Singles Chart.

Mitchum also co-wrote and composed the music for an oratorio which was produced by Orson Welles at the Hollywood Bowl.^[10]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

Later career[link]

Mitchum at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

Mitchum made a departure from his typical screen persona with the 1970 David Lean film Ryan's Daughter, in which he starred as Charles Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered schoolmaster in World War I era Ireland. Though the film was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning two) and Mitchum was much publicized as a contender for a Best Actor nomination, he was not nominated. George C. Scott won the award for his performance in Patton, a project which Mitchum had rejected for Ryan's Daughter.

The 1970s featured Mitchum in a number of well-received crime dramas. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) saw the actor playing an aging Boston hoodlum caught between the Feds and his criminal friends. Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1975) transplanted the typical film noir story arc to the Japanese underworld. He also appeared in 1976's Midway about an epic 1942 World War II battle. Mitchum's stint as an aging Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler adaptation Farewell, My Lovely (1975) was sufficiently well-received by audiences and critics for him to reprise the role in 1978's The Big Sleep.

In 1982, Mitchum went on location to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to play Coach Delaney in the film adaptation of playwright/actor Jason Miller's 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning play That Championship Season. He played a hard-boiled, bigoted coach whose former star players continue to swear allegiance to him, with one exception.

Mitchum expanded into the medium of television with the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War. The big-budget Herman Wouk story aired on ABC and starred Mitchum as naval officer "Pug" Henry, and examined the events leading up to America's involvement in World War II. He followed it in 1988 with War and Remembrance, which followed America through the war, and returned to the big screen for a memorable supporting role in Bill Murray's Scrooged.

In 1987, Mitchum was the guest host on Saturday Night Live where he played private eye Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, "Death Be Not Deadly". The show also ran a short comedy film he made (written and directed by his daughter, Trina) called Out of Gas. This was a mock sequel to his 1947 classic Out of the Past. Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.

In 1991, he won a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards in 1992.

Though Mitchum continued to appear in films throughout the 1990s, such as Tombstone, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and appeared in contrast to his role as the antagonist in the original, a protagonist police detective in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear, the actor gradually slowed his workload. His last film appearance was in the television biopic, James Dean: Race with Destiny. His last starring role was in the 1995 Norwegian movie Pakten.

Death[link]

Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea.^[11] He was survived by his wife of 57 years, Dorothy Mitchum, and actor sons, James Mitchum, Christopher Mitchum, and daughter Petrina (Trina) Mitchum. His grandchildren, Bentley Mitchum and Carrie Mitchum, are also actors, as was his younger brother John Mitchum, who died in 2001. His other grandson, Kian Mitchum, is a successful model.^[12]

Legacy[link]

Graffiti of Mitchum in Atlanta, Georgia

Mitchum is regarded by critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Roger Ebert called him 'the soul of film noir'. Mitchum himself, however, was self-effacing; in an interview with Barry Norman for the BBC about his contribution to cinema, Mitchum stopped Norman in mid flow and in his typical phlegmatic style said, "Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That's it." He had also succeeded in annoying some of his fellow actors by voicing his puzzlement at those who viewed the profession as challenging and hard work. He is quoted as having said in a BBC interview with Barry Norman that acting was actually very simple and that his job was to "show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks, and go home".^[13][14]

Interviewer Larry King has said on a number of occasions that Mitchum's interview was his most challenging. Mitchum, a man of few words, tended to answer simply "Yes" or "No" to many of King's questions.

He is #23 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars. Along with his performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady, is #28 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains, as a villain.

He was the voice of the famous American Beef Council commercials that touted "Beef . . . it's what's for dinner", from the early 1980s until his death. There is a "Mitchum's Steakhouse" in Trappe, Maryland,^[15] where Mitchum and his family lived from 1959 to 1965.^[16]

Filmography[link]

Features[link]

Short subjects[link]

• The Magic of Make-up (1942)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Goes to Bat (1950)
• Waiting for the Wind (1990)

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Calypso — is like so... (1957, Capitol)
• That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings (1967, Monument) Country: #35

Singles[link]

• "The Ballad of Thunder Road" (1958, Capitol) Pop: #62
• "Little Old Wine Drinker Me" (1967, Monument) Country: #9 Pop: #96
• "You Deserve Each Other" (1967, Monument) Country: #55

Further reading[link]

• Lee Server (2001). Robert Mitchum: "Baby, I Don't Care". New York: St Martin's. ISBN 0-312-26206-X. 
• Mike Tomkies The Robert Mitchum Story, "It Sure Beats Working" Ballantine Books, 1972, ISBN 0-345-23484-7
• John Mitchum Them Ornery Mitchum Boys, The Adventures of Robert and John Mitchum, Creatures at Large, 1989, ISBN 0-940064-07-3
• TCM Film Guide, "Leading Men: The 50 Most Unforgettable Actors of the Studio Era", Chronicle Books, San Francisco, California, 2006, ISBN 0-8118-5467-1

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Mitchum

• Robert Mitchum at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Mitchum at the TCM Movie Database
• Profile @ Turner Classic Movies
• Photographs and literature
• The short film STAFF FILM REPORT 66-12A (1966) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2009)

Lizabeth Scott
Born	Emma Matzo (1922-09-29) September 29, 1922 (age 89) Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Lizabeth Scott (born September 29, 1922) is an American actress and singer widely known for her film noir roles.

Early life[link]

She was born Emma Matzo (some sources mistakenly give her family name as "Motzas") in the Pine Brook section of Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of six children, to Ruthenian^[1] parents who had emigrated from Uzhgorod, in what is now Ukraine. She attended Central High School and Marywood College (now Marywood University).

She later went to New York City and attended the Alvienne School of Drama. In late 1942, she was eking out a precarious living with a small Midtown Manhattan summer stock company when she got a job as understudy for Tallulah Bankhead in Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of Our Teeth. However, Scott never had an opportunity to substitute for Bankhead.

Rise to fame[link]

When Miriam Hopkins was signed to replace Bankhead, Scott quit and returned to her drama studies and some fashion modeling. She then received a call that Gladys George, who was signed to replace Hopkins, was ill, and Scott was needed back at the theatre. She went on in the leading role of "Sabina", receiving a nod of approval from critics at the age of 20. The following night, George was out again and Scott went on in her place.

Soon afterward, Scott was at the Stork Club when film producer Hal Wallis asked who she was, unaware that an aide had already arranged an interview with her for the following day. When Scott returned home, however, she found a telegram offering her the lead for the Boston run of The Skin of Our Teeth. She could not turn it down. She sent Wallis her apologies and went on the road.

Though the Broadway production, in which she was credited as "Girl", christened her "Elizabeth", she dropped the "e" the day after the opening night in Boston, "just to be different".

A photograph of Scott in Harper's Bazaar magazine was seen by film agent Charles Feldman. He admired the fashion pose and took her on as a client. Scott made her first screen test at Warner Brothers, where she and Wallis finally met. Though the test was bad, the producer recognized her potential. As soon as Wallis set up shop at Paramount, she was signed to a contract. Her film debut was in You Came Along (1945) opposite Robert Cummings.

Paramount publicity dubbed Scott "The Threat," in order to create an onscreen persona for her similar to Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake. Scott's smoky sensuality and husky voice lent itself to the film noir genre and, beginning with The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin, the studio cast her in a series of noir thrillers. Film historian Eddie Muller has noted that no other actress has appeared in so many noir films, with more than three quarters of her 20 films qualifying.^[2]

Don DeFore and Lizabeth Scott in a promotional still from Too Late for Tears.

The dark blonde actress was initially compared to Bacall because of a slight resemblance and a similar voice, even more so after she starred with Bacall's husband, Humphrey Bogart, in the 1947 noir thriller Dead Reckoning. At the age of 25, Scott's billing and portrait were equal to Bogart's on the film's lobby posters and in advertisements. The film was the first of many femme fatale roles for Scott. In 1946 exhibitors voted her the seventh-most promising "star of tomorrow".^[3]

She also starred in Desert Fury (1947), a noir filmed in Technicolor, with John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster, Wendell Corey and Mary Astor. In it, she played Paula Haller, who, on her return from college, falls for gangster Eddie Bendix (Hodiak), and faces a great deal of opposition from the others. Scott was paired with Lancaster, Corey and Kirk Douglas in Wallis' I Walk Alone (1948), a noirish story of betrayal and vengeance. In 1949, she starred as a vicious femme fatale in Too Late for Tears. The film is unusual for featuring her as the main character, rather than the supporting role most women were relegated to in film noirs of the period.

Having been known professionally as Lizabeth Scott for 4½ years, she appeared at the courthouse in Los Angeles, on October 20, 1949 and had her name legally changed. Another courtroom appearance came several years later, in 1955, when she sued Confidential magazine for stating that she spent her off-work hours with "Hollywood's weird society of baritone babes" (a euphemism for a lesbian) in an article which claimed Scott's name was found on the clients' list belonging to a call-girl agency.^[4] The suit was dismissed on a technicality. After completing Loving You in 1957, Elvis Presley's second film, Scott retired from the screen. Later that year, she recorded her album, Lizabeth. The next few years saw Scott occasionally guest-star on television, including a 1963 episode of Burke's Law.^{[citation needed]}

Music[link]

After completing her final major film role, Scott signed a recording contract with Vik Records (a subsidiary of RCA Victor) and recorded an album with Henri Rene and his orchestra (in Hollywood on October 28, 29 and 30, 1957). Simply titled Lizabeth, the tracks are a mixture of torch songs and playful romantic ballads. The recordings were arranged by George Wyle and Henri Rene, while Herman Diaz, Jr. produced and directed.^{[citation needed]}

Later years[link]

Despite some rumored romances, no positive records of a relationship exist, and Scott is believed to have never married. She has no children. At least one book has claimed she was a mistress of married film producer Hal Wallis.^[5]

While she continued to make some guest appearances on various television shows throughout the 1960s, much of her private time was dedicated to classes at the University of Southern California.^[6] In 1972, she made her last film appearance, in Pulp, which starred Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney. After that, she mostly kept away from public view and has declined many interview requests.

She did, however, appear on stage at an American Film Institute tribute to Hal Wallis in 1987. In 2001, she was listed as one of the celebrity guests for the Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special, which screened in the USA on CBS. More recently, she was photographed next to an image of herself on the poster for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers at the AMPAS Centennial Celebration for Barbara Stanwyck on 16 May 2007. She recently attended another screening of the film on June 28, 2010 as part of AMPAS's "Oscar Noir" series at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.^{[citation needed]}

In 2003, Scott spoke substantially to Bernard F. Dick about her time in films for his biography of producer Hal Wallis. In the book, the author remarks that during his conversation with Scott in a restaurant, Scott (in her 80s) was still able to recite her opening monologue from The Skin of Our Teeth, which she performed on stage at age 20.

Lizabeth Scott has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to motion pictures at 1624 Vine Street in Hollywood.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lizabeth Scott

• Lizabeth Scott at the Internet Movie Database
• Lizabeth Scott at the Internet Broadway Database
• "Lizabeth Scott's Name Really Emma Motzas" - Printed in The Evening Independent, May 21, 1949.

Robert Ryan
Born	Robert Bushnell Ryan November 11, 1909 Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died	July 11, 1973(1973-07-11) (aged 63) New York City, New York, USA
Resting place	Cremated, Ashes scattered
Years active	1940–73
Spouse	Jessica Cadwalader (1939-72) (her death)

Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor who often played hardened cops and ruthless villains.

Early life and career[link]

Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois, the first child of Timothy Ryan and his wife Mabel Bushnell Ryan.^[1] He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932, having held the school's heavyweight boxing title all four years of his attendance. After graduation, the 6′ 4" Ryan found employment as a stoker on a ship, a WPA worker, and a ranch hand in Montana.

Ryan attempted to make a career in show business as a playwright, but had to turn to acting to support himself. He studied acting in Hollywood and appeared on stage and in small film parts during the early 1940s.

In January 1944, after securing a contract guarantee from RKO Radio Pictures, Ryan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served as a drill instructor at Camp Pendleton, in San Diego, California. At Camp Pendleton, he befriended writer and future director Richard Brooks, whose novel, The Brick Foxhole, he greatly admired. He also took up painting.

Ryan's breakthrough film role was as an anti-Semitic killer in Crossfire (1947), a film noir based on Brooks's novel. The role won Ryan his sole career Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. From then on, Ryan's specialty was tough/tender roles, finding particular expression in the films of directors such as Nicholas Ray, Robert Wise and Sam Fuller. In Ray's On Dangerous Ground (1951) he portrayed a burnt-out city cop finding redemption while solving a rural murder. In Wise's The Set-Up (1949), he played an over-the-hill boxer who is brutally punished for refusing to take a dive. Other important films were Anthony Mann's western The Naked Spur, Sam Fuller's uproarious Japanese set gangland thriller House of Bamboo, Bad Day at Black Rock, and the socially conscious heist movie Odds Against Tomorrow. He also appeared in several all-star war films, including The Longest Day (1962) and Battle of the Bulge (1965), and The Dirty Dozen. He also played John the Baptist in MGM's Technicolor epic King of Kings (1961) and was the villainous Claggart in Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Billy Budd (1962).

In his later years, Ryan continued playing significant roles in major films. Most notable of these were The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals (1966) and Sam Peckinpah's highly influential brutal western The Wild Bunch (1969).

Ryan appeared several times on the Broadway stage. His credits there include Clash by Night, Mr. President and The Front Page, the comedy drama about newspapermen. Among his rare stage appearances, Ryan starred opposite Katharine Hepburn at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut where he played Antony to Hepburn's Cleopatra in the summer of 1960.

He appeared in many television series as a guest star, including the role of Franklin Hoppy-Hopp in the 1964 episode "Who Chopped Down the Cherry Tree?" on the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour. Similarly, he guest starred as Lloyd Osment in the 1964 episode "Better Than a Dead Lion" in the ABC psychiatric series, Breaking Point. In 1964, Ryan appeared with Warren Oates in the episode "No Comment" of CBS's short-lived drama about newspapers, The Reporter, starring Harry Guardino in the title role of journalist Danny Taylor. Ryan appeared five times (1956–1959) on CBS's Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater and twice (1959 and 1961) on the Zane Grey spin-off Frontier Justice. He appeared three times (1962–1964) on the western Wagon Train.

Politics[link]

Ryan was a liberal Democrat who tirelessly supported civil rights issues. Despite his military service, he also came to share the pacifist views of his wife Jessica, who was a Quaker.

In the late 1940s, as the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC) intensified its anti-communist attacks on Hollywood, he joined the short-lived Committee for the First Amendment. Throughout the 1950s, he donated money and services to civic and religious organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, American Friends Service Committee, and United World Federalists. In September 1959, he and Steve Allen became founding co-chairs of The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy's Hollywood chapter.^[2]

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 and, with Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, Sidney Poitier, and other actors, helped organize the short-lived Artists Help All Blacks.^{[citation needed]}

Ryan's film work often ran counter to the political causes he embraced. He was a pacifist who starred in war movies, westerns, and violent thrillers. He was an opponent of McCarthyism who nevertheless served the anticommunist cause by playing a nefarious Communist agent in I Married a Communist. And in socially progressive films such as Crossfire, Bad Day at Black Rock , Executive Action and Odds Against Tomorrow, he played bigoted bad guys. Ryan was often vocal about this dichotomy. At a screening of Odds Against Tomorrow, he appeared before black and foreign press representatives to discuss "the problems of an actor like me playing the kind of character that in real life he finds totally despicable."^[3]

Personal life[link]

On March 11, 1939, he married Jessica Cadwalader. They had two sons—Cheyney, a research fellow at Oxford University and a Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Oregon, and Timothy "Tim"—and one daughter, Lisa. They lived in Manhattan's famed co-op The Dakota at 72nd and Central Park West and eventually sublet the apartment to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Robert and Jessica remained married until her death from cancer in 1972. He died from lung cancer in New York City the following year at age 63.

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	World War II portal

• Film noir
• Western

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Ryan

• In Praise of Robert Ryan The L Magazine
• Robert Ryan at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Ryan at the Internet Broadway Database
• Robert Ryan at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Robert Ryan Tribute
• The Robert Ryan Homepage
• The Robert Ryan Centennial
• Robert Ryan at Find a Grave
• Photographs and literature on Robert Ryan