Alan Ladd

Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer. Ladd found success in film in the 1940s and early 1950s, particularly in films noir and Westerns. He was often paired with Veronica Lake in films noir, such as This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia. Whispering Smith was his first Western and color film, and Shane was noted for its contributions to the genre. Ladd also appeared in 10 films with William Bendix.
His other notable credits include Two Years Before the Mast and The Great Gatsby. His popularity diminished in the mid-1950s, though he continued to appear in numerous films, including his first supporting role since This Gun for Hire in the smash hit The Carpetbaggers, which was released posthumously in April 1964.

Biography

Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on September 3, 1913. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh , and Alan Ladd, a freelance accountant. His mother was English, from County Durham, and had migrated to the U.S. in 1907 when she was 19. His father died of a heart attack when Ladd was four. On July 3, 1918, young Alan accidentally burned down the family home while playing with matches. His mother moved to Oklahoma City, where she married Jim Beavers, a house painter.
In the early 1920s, an economic downturn led to Ladd's family moving to California, which took four months. They lived in a migrant camp in Pasadena, California, at first and then moved to the San Fernando Valley, where Beavers went to work at FBO Studios as a painter.
Ladd enrolled in North Hollywood High School on February 18, 1930. He became a high-school swimming and diving champion and participated in high-school dramatics in his senior year, including the role of Ko-Ko in The Mikado. His diving skills led to his appearance in the aquatic show Marinella in July 1933.

Early career

Ladd's performance in The Mikado was seen by a talent scout. In August 1933, Ladd was one of a group of young "discoveries" signed to a long-term contract with Universal Pictures. The contract had options that could continue for seven years, but they were all in the studio's favor. Ladd appeared unbilled in Once in a Lifetime, but the studio eventually decided Ladd was too blond and too short, and it dropped him after six months.
At 20, Ladd graduated from high school on February 1, 1934. He worked in the advertising department of the San Fernando Sun Valley Record, becoming the newspaper's advertising manager. When the paper changed hands, Ladd lost his job. He sold cash registers and borrowed $150 to open his own hamburger and malt shop, across from his previous high school, which he called Tiny's Patio, but he was unable to make a success of the shop.
In another attempt to break into the film industry, Ladd went to work at Warner Bros. as a grip and stayed two years. He was injured falling off a scaffold and decided to quit.
Ladd managed to save and borrow enough money to attend an acting school run by Ben Bard, who had taught him when he was under contract at Universal. Ladd appeared in several stage productions for Bard. Bard later claimed Ladd "was such a shy guy he just wouldn't speak up loud and strong. I had to get him to lower his voice, too; it was too high. I also insisted that he get himself a decent set of dentures."
In 1936, Ladd played an unbilled role in Pigskin Parade. He had short-term stints at MGM and RKO, and got regular professional acting work only when he turned to radio. Ladd had worked to develop a rich, deep voice ideal for that medium, and in 1936, he was signed by station KFWB as its sole radio actor. He stayed for three years at KFWB, working as many as 20 shows per week.

Earning an agent

One night, Ladd was playing the roles of a father and son on radio when he was heard by the agent Sue Carol. She was impressed and called the station to talk to the actors, and was told they were only one person. She arranged to meet him, and impressed by his looks, she signed him to her books and enthusiastically promoted her new client in films and on radio. Ladd's first notable part under Carol's management was the 1939 film Rulers of the Sea, in which he played a character named Colin Farrell, at $250 per week. He also received attention for a small part in Hitler – Beast of Berlin.
Ladd tested unsuccessfully for the lead in Golden Boy, but obtained many other small roles in films, such as the serial The Green Hornet, Her First Romance, The Black Cat, and the Disney film The Reluctant Dragon. Most notably, he had a small, uncredited part in Citizen Kane, playing a newspaper reporter toward the end of the film.
Ladd's career gained extra momentum when he was cast in a featured role in Joan of Paris, a wartime drama made at RKO. It was only a small part, but it involved a touching death scene that brought him attention within the industry. RKO eventually offered Ladd a contract at $400 per week. However, he soon received a better offer from Paramount.

''This Gun for Hire'' and stardom

Paramount had owned the film rights to A Gun for Sale, a novel by Graham Greene, since 1936, but waited until 1941 before making a movie out of it, changing the title to This Gun for Hire. Director Frank Tuttle was struggling to find a new actor to play the role of Raven, a hit man with a conscience. Ladd auditioned successfully, and Paramount signed him to a long-term contract in September 1941 for $300 per week. The New York Times wrote that:

Tuttle and the studio are showing more than a passing enthusiasm for Ladd. He has been trying to get a foothold in pictures for eight years, but received no encouragement, although he tried every angle known to town—extra work, bit parts, stock contracts, dramatic schools, assault of the casting offices. Sue Carol, the former silent star who is now an agent, undertook to advance the youth's career two years ago, and only recently could she locate an attentive ear. Then, the breaks began.

According to author David Thomson in 1975, "Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd's calm, slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel." John Houseman later wrote that Ladd played "a professional killer with a poignant and desolate ferocity that made him unique, for a time, among the male heroes of his day."
Both the film and Ladd's performance played an important role in the development of the gangster genre: "That the old-fashioned motion picture gangster with his ugly face, gaudy cars, and flashy clothes was replaced by a smoother, better-looking, and better-dressed bad man was largely the work of Mr. Ladd." – The New York Times obituary.
Though the romantic lead went to established star Robert Preston, Ladd's teaming in support with female lead Veronica Lake captured the public's imagination. Their overnight-sensation pairing continued in three more films and included three more in guest spots in wartime all-star Hollywood musical revues.

''The Glass Key''

Even during the filming of This Gun for Hire, Paramount knew it had a potential star and announced Ladd's next film, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's story, The Glass Key. This had been a successful vehicle for George Raft several years earlier, and Paramount wanted "a sure-fire narrative to carry him on his way." Talk had also arisen that Ladd would appear in Red Harvest, another story by Hammett, but this was never produced.
The movie was Ladd's second pairing with Lake, with Ladd offering confident support of Brian Donlevy—so confident he even ended up with Donlevy's girl. Ladd's cool, unsmiling, understated persona proved popular with wartime audiences, and he was voted by the Motion Picture Herald as one of the 10 "stars of tomorrow" for 1942. His salary was raised to $750 per week. According to critic David Shipman:

Paramount of course was delighted. The majority of stars were earmarked as such when they appeared on the horizon—from Broadway or from wherever they came; if it seemed unlikely that public acceptance would come with one film, they were trained and built up: The incubation period was usually between two and five years. As far as Ladd was concerned, he was a small-part actor given a fat part faute de mieux, and after his second film for them, he had not merely hit the leading-men category, but had gone beyond it to films which were constructed around his personality.

Ladd then appeared in Lucky Jordan, a lighter vehicle with Helen Walker, playing a gangster who tries to get out of war service and tangles with Nazis. His new status was reflected by the fact he was the only actor billed above the title. He had a cameo spoofing his tough guy image in Star Spangled Rhythm, which featured most of Paramount's stars, and then starred in China with Loretta Young for director John Farrow, with whom Ladd made a number of movies. Young did not like working with Ladd:

I found him petulant... I don't remember hearing him laugh, or ever seeing him laugh. Everything that concerned him was very serious... He had a certain screen personality... but as an actor... I never made any contact with him. He wouldn't look at me. He'd say "I love you...", and he'd be looking out there some place. Finally, I said "Alan, I'm he-ere!!"... I think he was very conscious of his looks. Alan would not look beyond a certain point in the camera because he didn't think he looked good... Jimmy Cagney was not tall but somehow Jimmy was at terms with himself, always. I don't think Alan Ladd ever came to terms with himself.

Ladd's next film was meant to be Incendiary Blonde, opposite Betty Hutton, but he was inducted into the army on January 18, after reprising his performance in This Gun for Hire on radio for Lux Radio Theatre.