Biography for
Alan Ladd
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His mother immigrated from England age nineteen. His accountant
father died when he was four. At age five he burned his apartment playing with matches and his mother moved them to Oklahoma City. He was malnourished, undersized, nicknamed Tiny, and his mother married a house painter
who moved them to California a la "Grapes of Wrath". He was eight. He picked fruit, delivered papers, swept stores. In high school he discovered track and swimming. By 1931 he was training for the 1932
Olympics, but an injury cancelled plans. He opened a hamburger stand, Tiny's Patio, then worked as a grip at Warner's. He married friend Midge in 1936 but couldn't afford her so they lived apart. In 1937 they shared a
friend's apartment. She delivered Alan, Jr., and his destitute alcoholic mother moved in with them, her agonizing suicide from ant poison witnessed a few months later by her son. His size and coloring were regarded as
not right for movies so he worked hard at radio where talent scout Sue Carol (I) discovered him early in 1939. After shopping him through bit parts he tested for "This Gun for Hire" late in 1941. His fourth
billing role as the psychotic killer Raven made him a star. He was drafted January 1943 and discharged in November with an ulcer and double hernia. Throughout the 1940s his tough-guy roles filled theatres and he was one
of very few males whose cover photos sold movie magazines. In the 1950s he obtained lucrative but unrewarding roles (exception, what many regard as his greatest movie, "Shane" released in 1953). By the end of
the fifties, liquor and a string of so-so movies had taken their toll. In November 1962 he was found unconscious lying in a pool of blood with a bullet wound near his heart. In January 1964 he was found dead, apparently
due to an accidental combination of alcohol and sedatives.
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Spouse
Sue Carol (I) (1942 - 29 January 1964) (his death); children: Alana, David
'Marjorie 'Midge' Jane Harrold' (1936 - 1941) (divorced); son Alan
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Trivia
Father of David Ladd
Grandfather of Jordan Ladd.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California,
USA, in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Heritage.
Due to a clerical error, Ladd was inaccurately included in the cast credits for Born to the West (1937) in studio publicity material. In fact, he was never
in the film, despite the fact that it often shows up in his credits and even on the video box!
In his movies, suffers two cat-o-nine-tails floggings aboard sailing ships: (1) in 1946's "Two Years Before the
Mast" he receives 10 lashes for striking an officer; (2) in 1953's "Botany Bay" he receives 50 lashes for attempting to escape from a prison-transport ship.
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Personal quotes
"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." - David Thomson ("A Biographical Dictionary of Film, " 1975)
"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." - "New York
Times" obituary (January 30, 1964)
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Salary
Boy on a Dolphin (1957) $290,000
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Actor. (b. Sept. 3, 1913, Hot Springs, Ark.; d. Nov. 7, 1964.) To casual observers, the young Alan Ladd might have seemed an unlikely bet for screen stardom: He was
short (five feet, five inches), his admittedly handsome face almost never changed expression, and he had a laconic manner that seemed to border on the catatonic. And yet, at the time of his starring debut in This Gun
for Hire (1942), Ladd was hailed as one of Hollywood's hottest new stars-a pronouncement borne out by the enthusiastic reception afforded him by moviegoers.
Ladd at an early age moved to California with his
family. As a young man he held a number of menial jobs, and spent two years toiling as a grip on the Warner Bros. lot. He began acting in the early 1930s, taking small roles in local theatrical productions, radio shows,
and movies. By 1940 he had graduated to featured roles and onscreen billing, albeit mostly in low-budget B movies for independent studios like Republic and PRC. He ap- peared briefly (as a reporter) in Orson Welles'
Citizen Kane (1941). He even sang with Rita Rio and Her All-Girl Or- chestra in a "soundie" short, I Look at You (1941).
Ladd's career was guided by his agent, former actress Sue Carol, who also became
his wife in 1942. That year she was instrumental in getting him cast as the cold-blooded killer in Paramount's screen adaptation of Graham Greene's "A Gun for Sale." Ladd's cool manner and deep voice made him
ideally suited for toughguy parts, although his diminutive stature presented casting and production problems: His costars were often forced to walk in shallow trenches alongside him, so as not to tower over him. And
Ladd sometimes stood on planks or fruit boxes to make love to tall leading ladies.
Throughout the 1940s Ladd maintained his position in the top rank of Hollywood stars, appearing in Westerns, war dramas, and
crime films. He frequently teamed with sultry Veronica Lake (most effectively in Gun 1942's The Glass Key and 1946's The Blue Dahlia), partly because their onscreen chemistry was good, and partly because she was shorter
than he was. Just as Ladd's star began to wane, he was cast for the leading role in George Stevens' production of Shane (1953), a critical and commercial success that revitalized his career. As middle age approached,
however, Ladd apparently realized that his days as a two-fisted leading man were numbered. Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, he was found dead of an overdose of sedatives and alcohol, an apparent suicide. Ironically,
in his last film, an adaptation of Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers Ladd had been cast as an aging, washed-up movie star. His son David Ladd had a brief career as a juvenile actor in films like The Big Land (1957, with
his father) and on his own in the lead roles of A Dog of Flanders (1959) and Misty (1961). He continued working, with diminishing success, into adulthood. His other son, Alan Ladd, Jr., became a successful movie
producer and studio executive.
OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1932: Once in a Lifetime, Tom Brown of Culver (in bits); 1936: Pigskin Parade 1937: Last Train From Madrid, Hold 'Em Navy 1938: The Goldwyn Follies 1939: Rulers
of the Sea 1940: The Light of Western Stars, The Green Hornet, Captain Caution 1941: Paper Bullets, The Reluctant Dragon 1942: Joan of Paris, Lucky Jordan, Star Spangled Rhythm (in a cameo); 1943: China 1944: And Now
Tomorrow 1945: Salty O'Rourke 1946: O.S.S., Two Years Before the Mast 1947: Calcutta, Wild Harvest, Variety Girl, My Favorite Brunette (cameos in the latter two); 1948: Saigon, Beyond Glory, Whispering Smith (his first
starring Western); 1949: The Great Gatsby, Chicago Deadline 1950: Captain Carey, U.S.A., Branded 1951: Red Mountain 1952: The Iron Mistress 1953: Thunder in the East 1954: The Black Knight, Hell Below Zero, Drum Beat
1955: The McConnell Story, Hell on Frisco Bay 1956: Santiago 1957: Boy on a Dolphin 1958: The Deep Six, The Proud Rebel 1959: The Man in the Net 1960: Guns of the Timberland, All the Young Men, One Foot in Hell 1961:
Duel of Champions 1962: 13 West Street
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