Ring Lardner Jr.

Ringgold Wilmer Lardner Jr. (August 15<ref name = Severo>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> or 19,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 1915 – October 31, 2000) was an American screenwriter and novelist. After enjoying early success in Hollywood, he was subpoenaed in 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he refused to answer whether he was a member of the Communist Party. He was declared in contempt of Congress, blacklisted by the film studios as one of the "Hollywood Ten", and sentenced to a year in federal prison.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Lardner's next screenplay credit, using his own name, was not until The Cincinnati Kid in 1965. He went on to win an Academy Award for his M*A*S*H (1970) screenplay.

Early life

Born in Chicago, he was the son of Ellis (Abbott) and the nationally known journalist, humorist and short story writer Ring Lardner.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Ring Jr. and his three brothers—James, John, and David—grew up in material and cultural privilege.<ref name=Easton_page>Template:Cite web From the publisher's page for the 2017 reissue of Lardner's memoir by Easton Studio Press.</ref> He was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He attended Princeton University for two years but then dropped out ("I didn't see the point of finishing") in June 1934.<ref name=Corliss_book>Template:Cite book Lardner interviewed by Kenneth Geist.</ref>

By that time, Lardner had begun what he called his "leftward migration", which he attributed to "the growing severity of the Depression and what I assessed as the failure of both major parties to come to grips with it".Template:Sfn In autumn of 1934, he enrolled at the Anglo-American Institute of the University of Moscow,<ref name=ten /> an experience that moved his ideology further toward communism.Template:Sfn In 1936 he was recruited by his friend Budd Schulberg to join the US Communist Party (CPUSA),<ref>Template:Harvnb: "Dick Collins was already a Communist when I joined in 1936."</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb: Victor Navasky notes in the Introduction to I'd Hate Myself in the Morning that Schulberg later named Lardner before the House Un-American Activities Committee.</ref> and voted that year for Communist candidate Earl Browder in the presidential election.Template:Sfn

Writing career

After his return to New York from Moscow in 1935, Lardner was hired as a cub reporter for the Daily Mirror. In less than a year, he was lured away from his $25-a-week job to earn $40-a-week in the publicity department of David O. Selznick's Hollywood film studio, Selznick International Pictures.<ref name=Natale_article /> While Lardner was laboring in obscurity as a junior publicist, a writing opportunity arose. Selznick was soliciting ideas from anyone in the studio for a suitable ending to the film, A Star Is Born. Lardner and Schulberg huddled together and submitted a closing scene in which Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor)—still grieving from the suicide of her husband—proudly introduces herself to a throng of admirers as "Mrs. Norman Maine".<ref>Template:Harvnb: "The truth is, we had rejected that bit as too corny when we first thought of it, but after fiddling with several lame alternatives, we decided it was better to submit something than nothing."</ref> The line was enthusiastically accepted by Selznick, and would be reused in subsequent remakes of A Star Is Born.Template:Sfn Although the film's co-writer Dorothy Parker was unable to persuade Selznick to grant Lardner and Schulberg a screen credit for their work, Lardner began to get more writing assignments.Template:Sfn He soon made another uncredited contribution to an ending, this time with George Oppenheimer for the 1937 screwball comedy, Nothing Sacred.Template:Sfn

In 1938, Lardner joined the "B movie" unit at Warner Bros. and gained additional screenplay experience.Template:Sfn He collaborated with British writer Ian McLellan Hunter on two small features for RKO, Meet Dr. Christian (1939) and The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940).Template:Sfn Lardner's big break came when he and Michael Kanin wrote Woman of the Year (1942), a film which won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. That success vaulted Lardner's weekly salary from $250 to $1000.Template:Sfn Among his next assignments, he made uncredited improvements to Laura (1944) (he was asked by director Otto Preminger to sharpen the dialogue of Clifton Webb's character, Waldo LydeckerTemplate:Sfn), and co-wrote the films Cloak and Dagger (1946) and Forever Amber (1947).Template:Sfn He also worked on an animated short film, Brotherhood of Man (1946), that promoted racial tolerance.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref><ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

During these years in Hollywood, Lardner continued his left-wing activism. He helped raise funds for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. He was involved in organizing anti-fascist demonstrations. The death of his brother James—who volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and was killed in action in Spain in 1938<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>—was said to have deepened Lardner's leftist loyalties.Template:Sfn He meanwhile was part of the Hollywood section of the CPUSA and attended Marxist meetings as often as 4-5 nights a week.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He joined groups such as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Hollywood Writers Mobilization Against the War.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "Being a communist was time-consuming. I attended events of one sort or another four or five nights a week. There were separate organizational and educational gatherings of my branch, and 'fraction' meetings of Communists and close sympathizers within the Screen Writers Guild.... In addition, there were the various Guild committees and similar groups like the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the Motion Picture Artists Committee for Spanish Democracy and, during the war years, the Hollywood Writers Mobilization and Russian War Relief."</ref> He also served on the board of the Screen Writers Guild.<ref name=ten>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Despite his radical politics, Lardner remained a well-compensated employee in the film industry. In 1947 he became one of the highest paid screenwriters when he signed a contract with 20th Century Fox at $2,000 a week (equivalent to $Template:Inflation a week in 2025).<ref name=Natale_article>Template:Cite news</ref>

Blacklisting

File:Nine of the Hollywood 10 charged with contempt of Congress 1947.jpg

Nine of the Hollywood Ten, charged with contempt of Congress, after surrendering to the U.S. Marshal, December 10, 1947.
(L-R): Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Albert Maltz, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Samuel Ornitz, Edward Dmytryk, Robert Adrian Scott.

After the Second World War, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launched hearings to investigate "communist influences in the motion picture industry", and the injection of subversive propaganda into films. In September 1947, HUAC subpoenaed over 40 producers, directors, writers, and actors.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> More than half were deemed "friendly witnesses" who agreed to cooperate with the committee. Nineteen were labeled "unfriendly" because they opposed the committee's right to conduct the inquiry.Template:Sfn Eleven of the nineteen (ten Americans plus the German-born Bertolt Brecht) were compelled to testify in October 1947.

File:Hollywood Ten AP.jpg

"The Hollywood Ten" stand with their attorneys outside district court in Washington, D.C. before arraignment on contempt of Congress charges. The ten were charged for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
(Front row, L-R): Herbert Biberman, attorney Martin Popper, attorney Robert W. Kenny, Albert Maltz and Lester Cole.
(Second row, L-R): Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie and Samuel Ornitz.
(Top row, L-R): Ring Lardner Jr., Edward Dmytryk and Adrian Scott.

Unlike most of his colleagues, Lardner was not given a set date for his testimony, but was told to wait until further notice.Template:Sfn He was in a Washington, D.C. hotel room on October 29, listening to the HUAC proceedings on the radio, when Committee Chairman J. Parnell Thomas suddenly called Lardner to take the stand.Template:Sfn His attorney Robert Kenny promised to produce his client the next morning. As Lardner recalled in a 1997 interview:Template:Blockquote

A month after his testimony, Lardner was fired by 20th Century Fox.Template:Sfn He was branded—along with Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz and John Howard Lawson—one of the "Hollywood Ten" who refused to answer questions about their political affiliations. The ten men claimed that under the First Amendment's right of free speech, their political beliefs and affiliations were their own private affair.Template:Sfn HUAC and the courts disagreed.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> All ten were found guilty of contempt of Congress, fined $1,000, and sentenced to between 6–12 months in federal prison. After their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was dismissed in May 1950,Template:Sfn Lardner began serving what would be a nine-and-a-half-month stint at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. His fellow inmates included Lester Cole and, ironically, J. Parnell Thomas who had been convicted of fraud.<ref name=Life_blacklist>Template:Cite magazine This essay was Lardner's first effort at detailing his prison and blacklist experiences.</ref>

Upon release from prison, Lardner was blacklisted by the film studios. He and his family fled Hollywood, initially to Mexico and then to New York.Template:Sfn He worked on a novel, The Ecstasy of Owen Muir, published in England in 1954.Template:Sfn Starting in 1955, he and another blacklistee, his former RKO writing partner Ian McLellan Hunter, used pseudonyms (Lardner's was Oliver Skene) to write episodes for three British TV series: The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, and The Buccaneers.Template:Sfn The series were produced by Hannah Weinstein, an American expatriate living in England.Template:Sfn For several years, the script meetings with Weinstein in England could only be attended by Hunter, who had managed to obtain a passport despite his political activities.<ref name=Life_blacklist /> Travel abroad for Lardner was deemed "not in the best interests of the United States" and was denied by the Passport Bureau.Template:Sfn The restriction lasted from 1951 to 1958, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that passports could not be denied for political reasons.Template:Sfn During this period, Lardner's other writing jobs, such as his script contributions to Virgin Island (1958) and A Breath of Scandal (1960), were always done using "fronts" or pseudonyms, and for "greatly reduced money".<ref name=Life_blacklist />

Post-blacklist

The blacklist was lifted for Lardner when producer Martin Ransohoff and director Norman Jewison gave him a screenplay credit for The Cincinnati Kid (1965). In 1968 he was sent a copy of Richard Hooker's comic novel about the Korean War, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. Lardner's adaptation was made into the Robert Altman-directed film M*A*S*H (1970), for which Lardner won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, presented in April 1971. In his acceptance speech, he alluded to his prior win for Woman of the Year:Template:Blockquote In 1976 he published a memoir, The Lardners, about his family. In his last credited film project, he rewrote a script, originally created by Bill Gunn, for the 1977 Muhammad Ali biopic, The Greatest. Lardner published a second novel, All for Love, in 1985. In the 1990s, he adapted Roger Kahn's book The Boys of Summer, but the film was never produced.<ref name=Natale_article />

According to Hungarian writer Miklós Vámos—who visited Lardner several times before his death—Lardner said he had also won an Academy Award for a movie he wrote behind a “front”, but that he would not divulge details about the screenwriter who received the award because the person had previously done Lardner a great favor.<ref>Template:Cite web This assertion by Vámos has not been independently confirmed, nor did Lardner ever allude to an additional Academy Award in his memoir or when he was interviewed late in life.</ref>

Personal life

In 1937, Lardner married Silvia Schulman, David O. Selznick's secretary. They had a son and daughter before divorcing in 1945. The screenwriter then married actress Frances Chaney in 1946,<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> and they remained wed until his death in 2000. They had one son. Chaney was formerly married to Lardner's younger brother David, a World War II foreign correspondent who was killed in Germany in 1944.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Ring Lardner Jr. died from cancer at his home in Manhattan, on the evening of October 31, 2000, at the age of 85.<ref name = Severo/> He was the last surviving member of the Hollywood Ten.<ref name=ten />

Works

• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• I'd Hate Myself in the Morning: A Memoir. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. 2000. Template:ISBN.<ref name="nytimes/001126.26boswort">Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• The Hollywood Ten documentary.

Further reading

• McGilligan, Patrick. Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Template:ISBN.
• Template:Cite book 1997 interview with Lardner.

External links

• Template:IMDb name
• Ring Lardner Jr. papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences