Cool News
Academy Award winning Screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. has died
Father Geek here with the sad duty once again to inform you of the passing of an entertainment industry giant, RING LARDNER, JR., not only a great writer for the screen, but a great patriot as well.
Ring Lardner Jr. was the son of the famous sports journalist and humorist, Ring Lardner, and was born on August 19, 1915. After being educated at Princeton University where he was active in the Socialist Club (he had spent his two years there playing cards and getting Cs) he became a reporter on the New York Daily Mirror.
Lardner later moved to Hollywood where he worked as a screen publicist and script doctor before beginning to write his own wonderful material. This included 1937's classic A STAR IS BORN, the great noir film LAURA in 1944, and WOMEN OF THE YEAR, a film that won an Academy Award for the best screenplay in 1942. Other notable scripts he wrote during this period include BROTHERHOOD OF MAN (1946) and the fine swashbuckler FOREVER AMBER (1947).
Always outspoken and frank, Lardner held strong liberal political views and during the Spanish Civil War he helped raise funds for the Republican (anti-Franco) cause. He was also deeply involved in organizing anti-fascist and anti-Nazi demonstrations in the late 1930's. Although his political (union) involvement upset the owners of some of the film studios, he continued to be given lots of work and in 1947 he became one of the highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood when he signed a contract with Fox at $2,000 a week.
After the Second World War the House of Un-American Activities Committee began an investigative witch-hunt into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. In September 1947, the HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named several people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
Fiercely outspoken, Lardner appeared before the HUAC on 30th October, 1947, but like Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz and John Howard Lawson, he refused to answer any of the congress' questions. Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this.
The scene was vividly described by a correspondent from Newsweek in the edition of November 10, 1947:
"The hearing room by now was in turmoil. Thomas, Stripling [investigator], and Lawson were all shouting at once. His face and neck flaming red, Thomas kept banging his gavel, but the screen writer ignored him. The 400 men and women in the audience...both booed and cheered. The six newsreel cameras hummed. The 30 newspaper photographers scurried around, exploding flashbulbs."
The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed with the validity of the 5th Amendment defense and all were found guilty of contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison. Lardner was sentenced to twelve months in Danbury Prison and fined $1,000. Lardner was sacked by Fox on 28th October, 1947. By the time he entered prison Republican Congressman Thomas, head of the HUAC committee, was also an inmate there, convicted of defrauding the American people of hundreds of thousands of dollars for his personal gain. Thomas was in charge of the prison chicken coup. Of this Laudner once committed that he was glad to see that the former committee chairman was still knee-deep in chicken shit activities.
Blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, Lardner worked for the next couple of years on the novel, "The Ecstasy of Owen Muir" (1954). He turned to television, writing under aliases until the late 1950s, when the Hollywood blacklist softened enough for him to return to screenwriting.
He also wrote under several pseudonyms before the blacklist was lifted. Lardner's later work included 1951's THE BIG NIGHT, THE CINCINNATI KID (1965), M*A*S*H (1970), for which he won another Academy Award, THE GREATEST (1977)and SEMI-TOUGH in 1978. In addition to his 2 Oscars Lardner was nominated for a Golden Globe and received The Laurel Award For Screenwriting and The WGA Screen Award.
Since retiring from screenwriting, Lardner has published another novel and a family memoir, and he was finishing a new book combining autobiography with meditations on everything from politics to old age. He did not feel cheated by the blacklist, he said: Without it, he might never have tried other kinds of writing. Still, getting the Oscar for M*A*S*H was a sweet moment. "It was very gratifying when I went up to receive it," Lardner says, "because there was more applause than there usually is for a writer's award."
Last surviving member of the Hollywood Ten RING LARDNER, JR. will be missed by all those who love the spirit of freedom and admire its defenders. His films will, of course live on.
Father Geek here, the following was sent to me a little while ago... I include it here as a item of interest that help explain the times around the HUAC hearings...
From a transcript of Ring Lardner's unsuccessful first parole hearing on 9-18-50, taken from The Smoking Gun's archives.
Q. Was there anything in your personal writings which prompted the government to ask you these questions?
A. I can only guess about it. At the hearings themselves, I kept asking myself and my lawyers kept asking if they would say what writings of mine occasioned this. They would not mention them, so anything I would say would be pure speculation. I had written a cartoon film for the United Automobile Workers' Union education department called "Brotherhood of Man." It was an educational short on the subject of races of mankind from a pamphlet of the that name and which tried to demonstrate a thesis that all races are inherently the same. This was the subject of some controversy, particularly among the southern congressman, and several attacks were made on this. This is perhaps the one piece of writing which I can cite that would have occasioned that. There were also various trade union activities, and I was particularly identified with a campaign in Hollywood for raising money for Spain. A brother of mine was killed in the battle. It was presumably some of that.
Q. Had the others [of the Hollywood Ten] likewise--had the others perhaps written some things that would tend to make the government believe that perhaps they had other leanings?
A. Well, there were varying degrees of dossiers as they call them on these individuals. One of the men had written a pamphlet in the case of Harry Bridges (10), and others had written for magazines which were left or left liberal; but it was very difficult for us even at the time (and we were very anxious to do it) to try to figure out what standards had been used, why this particular selection. It was a recurring theme all through the hearings and the trials that followed, that of our attempt to get them to talk about the writings and to demonstrate what kind of infiltration they were talking about--what words and deeds of ours they considered subversive. We could never get any such statement.
-
+ Expand All
-
I saw an interesting DeNiro movie about this. The end was pretty scary because you could see how crazy the HUAC was getting people at that time.
-
That's horrible news, but kinda makes you wonder who will be next. Steve Allen, Ring, and now...
-
At the risk of seeming stony-hearted in the wake of Ring Lardner, jr.'s demise, I feel compelled to render some balance to the river of syrup I just waded through.
It's amazing what being Blacklisted will do for one's reputation as an Artist, Those who venerate Ring Lardner, jr. (along with his confreres in that Merry Band we know as 'The Hollywood Ten') seem to base their appreciation ENTIRELY on the run-in he had with a Committee of Waterheads back in 1947. What's doubly amazing to me is that these, shall we say, Extra-Literary reasons for celebrating his life are the sort of thing that most of us, were we placed in the same circumstances, would look back on with something less than Nostalgia. I find it exceedingly difficult to pay tribute here. Someone who supported Josef Stalin's regime (and Adolph Hitler's when Stalin said it was okay to) does not warrant my admiration. But let's not be disingenuous, here. Whatever you or I may see as the Justice of their Cause, you would have to admit that the Hollywood 10 behaved like a pack of crazed weasels (and highly-paid, self-righteous ones at that) at those Hearings. They did not claim 5th Amendment privileges, 6th Amendment privileges, Taft-Hartley or the Dred Scott Decision. In fact, these 'Unfriendlies' didn't cite ANY recognizable privilege when refusing to answer questions before HUAC. What they did was make compleat jackasses out of themselves. Let's face it, they were looking to go to jail. They knew, to a man, that their actions in Public session could land them no where else.
The House Committe on Un-American Activities' various investigations into Communist infiltration in Hollywood were little more than a Theater-of-the-Absurd spectacle that saw Hack Politicians pitted against Hack Screenwriters. Nobody distinguished themselves during those stupid Hearings, not the Committee, not the Witnesses (Friendly and Otherwise), no one. To believe that a Screenwriter is a 'Giant' on the basis of anything other than his Writing is, at bottom, an insult to that Writer, however deep your enthusiasm runs.
Another thing, Ring Lardner, sr. was not just some Sportswriter. He was one of the Greatest American Wirters of the last Century, and as far as I'm concerned, the man who died today is better remembered as Ring Lardner's son, not as Dalton Trumbo's cellmate. -
And I bet you find Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't lie to save your reputation. Great spin on a tragic event, Sparky!
-
Tom -- I think you make some good points here, though I'm not as familiar with what went down as you seem to be. Another poster refers to GUILTY BY SUSPICION, which I remember as being all right, but I sure wouldn't look at any movie as an historical document! Tom is also right about Ring Lardner, Sr. To think of him as just a sportswriter is as narrow as thinking of him as just a humorist; everything he touched wasn't gold, but he's one of the greatest minor writers we've had (nearly on a league with Willa Cather and J.D. Salinger).
-
Hadn't noticed the sportswriter comment above. Kinda like referring to James Agee as a mere film critic.
-
If you ask me anyone who stood up to that bullshit comittee is a fucking hero. There's a place in heaven for anyone who's a victim of tyranny. By the way, people throw around the word 'hack' too much these days. You know who I'm talking to.
-
If you ask me anyone who stood up to that bullshit comittee is a fucking hero. There's a place in heaven for anyone who's a victim of tyranny. By the way, people throw around the word 'hack' too much these days. You know who I'm talking to.
-
The government or any industry does not have the right to blacklist people based on political orientation. The government also doesn't have the right to make people grovel and name their friends in order to demonstrate their loyalty. Ironically that is something you would expect a communist country to subject their citizens to. The fact that conservatives still don't understand this is tragic. If you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it.
-
First of all, Ring Lardner Sr. was exactly what Father Geek said he was -- a sports journalist and a humorist. The fact that he created a seminal character in early 20th century populist American fiction doesn't make him MORE of a humorist. Just a humorist, and a good one. Thank you very much. Next.
Nobody is saying being on the Hollywood 10 makes these men great writers. Most of them arguably were not. But I really only need to point out that the idiot who started this talkback -- and he IS an idiot -- called Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo "hacks." That should be enough to get anybody who is 98.6 and breathing to go, "Oh, right, an idiot." But unfortunately many, including this idiot, obviously don't know what these guys wrote (See: IMDB, Trumbo, Dalton; and Lardner, Ring Jr.)
Never mind Trumbo, arguably one of THE greats, does this dork know that Ring Lardner Jr. is, today, along with Michael Kanin, the youngest person EVER to win an Academy Award for screenwriting? He was 26 years old, and away serving his country in WWII at the time.
The assumption that Father Geek's -- or anyone's -- appraisal of a writer is based solely on his politics is reactionary and stupid. In this case the target I'm arguing with is a little over infatuated with himself, but I'm not ashamed to slam 'em down even if they're easy. Tom's suggestion that we shouldn't judge Ring by his politics is immediately undercut by his observance of same. Thought it's ludicrous to suggest that Lardner supported Stalin (he did not, he was a Marxist as a young man in the '30s when it was cool to be a Marxist, like it was cool in the '60s to talk peace and love) -- or who supported HITLER (har har) -- so what if he HAD? Ironically, This guy's trying to preclude Ring Lardner from being remembered as a great writer because he obviously doesn't agree with what he thinks was his politics. But he's wrong. He doesn't understand his politics. Ring Lardner Jr. was a great writer. Period.
Thank you for a fitting and accurate tribute. -
Ring, HUAC or no, you were a hell of a writer, and MASH has always been an inspiration to me, and a favorite, as a movie, and as a great read.
-
BatVomit, and anyone else who thinks an obituary is the place to post "witty" (or not) remarks, remember. Grow up! Someday you will die, and for your relatives sake, i hope no punk kid decides to piss on your grave. No one deserves disrespect in their obituary, not you, and certainly not a talented writer such as the late Ring Lardner, Jr.
-
That Tom guy was amazing. He really went all the way, didn't he? Maybe he's Congressman Thomas' kid. He uses the same logic. My one point at the moment is that even if Lardner did support Hitler (I don't know how he found time amid his anti-Nazi demonstrations) it would be irrelevent. It is the responsibility of each of us to support everyone else's right to think and say anything in this country, thus granting ourselves the same freedom. Lardner could've been a Satan worshipper for all I care. The fact that he refused to compromise his right to do so or turn in his fellow Satan worshippers makes him a hero. ...Oh, and he was also a brilliant writer.
-
Well, worry not, I'm not offended by the foregoing posts. I'm used to it, in fact. Everytime I suggest that there were worse atrocities visited upon the American Cinema than the Anti-Communist Hysteria of the 40s and 50s, people react as if I'd informed them that their Grandparents were dealing Ecstasy to Elementary School kids. It's a bizarre mixture of Piety and Outrage that normally results in the most incredible accusations hurled my way. We saw a good example of it a few Posts ago, when someone suggested that I may in fact bear some familial connection to former HUAC Chairman and Public Thief, J. Parnell Thomas. Well, I don't. But I know what's bothering you all. The conviction some people have that The Blacklist represented Armageddon-in-Tinseltown and that the 'Martyrdom' of those it touched was ultimately meaningful is one of the last remaining Sacred Cows in this Country. If I were to suggest that enforcement of the Production Code from 1934 to 1968 had a far more deliterious and destructive impact on American Movies, you would no doubt write me off as a Phillistine at best and a Fascist at worst. Well I ain't no Fascist (or Conservative). I just don't allow my Ideology to inform my writing about Film when I think it's irrelevant to the subject. I don't think Ring Lardner, jr. was a Great Screenwriter, the fact that he was th youngest recipient of an Academy Award for his craft might be one for the reference books, but it doesn't say very much about the quality of his work. "M*A*S*H" hardly counts, either, because very little of his Screenplay was left after Robert Altman got done with it (Lardner considered it a worse offense than the Blacklist, which should tell you something about Lardner). The best Screenwriters of his era were Preston Sturges (who, it could be said, ridiculed the Dalton Trumbos of this world in "Sullivan's Travels"), Herman Mankiewicz, Joseph Mankiewicz, Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, Jules Furthman, Leigh Brackett and one or two others. Now maybe they didn't specialize in Socially-Conscious films (which were only the same Big-Studio Hollywood Melodramas everyone else was turning out, but with a Leftist flavoring) or hie off to Madirid with the Lincoln Brigade, but they were genuinely Great Writers who knew that the most effective way for a Screenwriter to Save the World was the simplest (and the most difficult): Write Good Dialogue. Propaganda Movies, no matter how well-intentioned, get really old really fast (try sitting through "Watch on the Rhine" someday and you'll see what I mean). The same impulses that inform a Right-Wing atrocity like "The Green Berets" are the same impulses that go into a "Tender Comrade" or "Song of Russia". The people who make films like these are not out to make good movies. They're out to Change the World; and the World (particularly the Audience), as a result, is worse off than before. Art, as amorphous as it is. doesn't play for keeps the way Propagandists do, which is what HUAC and the Hollywood Stalinists it bedevilled could never understand. The Tragedy (or Comedy, however you may look at it) of the Blacklisters and Blacklistees is that neither one of them knew that it was all for naught from the get-go. They all went to their graves without realizing that no one needed to be saved; that Movies can survive anything.
-
This is that kind of person who assumes his view is imperative, since after all it is based on, well, His View. This person hears applause for a member of the Hollywood blacklist and twitches into a sort of hysterical irritation. See, he doesn't WANT to stand up and make The Speech, but if he doesn't who will? So, once more he must go and show the Truth to what he delusionally perceives is a gaggle of screeching liberals carrying their blacklisted dead on their shoulders, spitting invective at Him and anyone else who dares to question just where they think they're going with that old carcass. Thank god for people like that! Whew, where would be without 'em? As a film student I was asked to sit on a committee to dedicate a blacklist statue at a film school in Los Angeles. I declined. Nor did I contribute to its funding. I am neither "pious" nor "outraged" nor leftist, nor any "strange mix" of the two. The blacklist was morally weak. That's a fact and anybody who wishes to revise that statement is free to do so, but I wish you'd wear a sign so I'd know to keep the kids away from you. It doesn't do to spread the values of non-values. The reason I did not sit on the blacklist statue committee as a student rep was because people DO get righteous to the point it rather clouds the air, and for me art is about cleaning UP the fetid clouds. But I'll tell you this. I've heard "voices of reason" such as Mr. Sutpen's and I have heard the gaggles being self-righteous. They're both prejudiced. Sutpen's prejudice is of the latent-adolescent college sophomoric type that started out protesting the tyrrany of academic symbolism -- "Can't it JUST BE a MOVIE?" -- and has since moved onto the tyrrany of other people's beliefs in general, and if I have to pick, I'll go down the river with the gaggle every time. Because those other ones, those cool-headed Sutpen ones. They're more scary. They ALMOST sound right. But they're not. (For the record, Lardner won his first award for Woman of the Year, the first of the Tracy/Hepburn collaborations. It's great.) It's not about movies surviving, it's about free speech surviving. (GASP! There I said it!) And I'm not even a leftist. Still I'll go down the river with the screeching left gaggle who complains and makes its own heroes and agitates (as they're wont to do, the pious fucks) about the (here we go again) First Amendment, because they're more likely to fuck things up and create an atmosphere in general where movies don't suck. The hysterics police never stirred up anything, never made anything better -- only more tolerable for themselves. So much unexamined self-congratulatory complacency, who can tolerate it? It's a bore. The truth is a lot of people lost their lives. Some killed themselves, some just lost homes and careers. That is all true. Actually, the real misconception here is the ludicrous suggestion that this period wasn't damned INTERESTING. It was. I don't claim to know everything about it, nor do I build statues to it, but I won't let some self-annointed, imperious "voice of reason" presume to teach me better.
Readers Talkback
User Login
Top Talkbacks
- Whitney Houston 1963 - 2012 -- 273 total posts 271 posts
- New JUDGE DREDD post production footage pops up -- 92 total posts 92 posts
- AVENGERS enemy revealed as pink boardgame pieces... You might suffer some form of elation... SPOILERS!!! -- 160 total posts 69 posts
- There's a STAR TREK video game that is going to lead into JJ's STAR TREK 2 apparently... -- 151 total posts 63 posts
- Does ‘SNL’ Rhyme With ‘Deschanel’?? Learn Which SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Vet Hosts After Sexy Zooey!! -- 67 total posts 59 posts
- HANNA's Saoirse Ronan to boss around seven little people -- 60 total posts 57 posts
- To Commemorate The 3D Release Of STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, George Lucas Wants You To Know...Greedo Shoots First!! -- 484 total posts 49 posts
- Here's The Red Band Trailer For Drafthouse Films' THE FP! -- 69 total posts 42 posts
- Friday Brings SWEEPS DAY NINE!! Gab Here About Tonight’s FRINGE!! Plus Einstein on TIM, Wiig On PORTLANDIA, MAHER, CLONE, GIFTED, GRIMM, SPARTACUS, SUPERNATURAL, GOLD RUSH And More!! -- 120 total posts 32 posts
- SPACE 2099!! -- 183 total posts 24 posts