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.