Most people believe Alan Ladd
committed suicide, but the details surrounding his 1964 death are so convoluted
no one can be sure what really happened. History is often guilty of erring on
the side of sensationalism—but in Ladd’s case suicide is a reasonable
assumption. Just two years before, in 1962, he was discovered at home, lying
half-dead in a pool of blood, a bullet lodged in his chest. The newspapers and
fan mags bought into the story of an accident, but everyone who knew Ladd believed
that he’d botched a suicide attempt. It really doesn’t matter whether his
January 1964 death was intentional or not—Ladd’s life had been spiraling
downward for years, perhaps even from the moment he broke into the movie
business. It was apparent to anyone paying attention that he was hell-bent on
digging an early grave.
The average movie goer doesn’t understand how arduous life could be for the
stars of studio-era Hollywood, or how truthful that old industry adage: “you’re
only as good as your last picture” really was. It’s a dollars-and-cents, bottom
line, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately kind of racket, and despite a product
that was usually lighthearted, uplifting, and sentimental, the industry itself
could be painfully harsh. It goes without saying that Hollywood dreamers had to
be made of tough stuff, but as is often the case in life, many of those who
struggled mightily to achieve success were bewildered once they actually made
it—and surely didn’t know what to do after the spotlight left them for the next
big thing. Certainly this was the case with Alan Ladd, a hardscrabble kid who
worked a million crap jobs before he finally made it, then was so terrified of
losing it all that he let his insecurities devour him. The foundation upon
which Ladd’s self-esteem stood was simply not strong enough to sustain him. His
fame and wealth notwithstanding, he was the most insecure, frightened, and
guilt-ridden superstar in Hollywood.
Few performers ever made as
smashing a debut as Ladd did in the 1942 film This Gun for Hire, if it can be called a debut at all. Devotees
know This Gun wasn’t
his first appearance. The misconception exists owing to the “and
introducing Alan Ladd as Raven” treatment he gets in the opening credits.
Ladd had been getting bit parts in studio pictures since the mid-1930s, and he
had already scored small gigs in Citizen
Kane, as well as 1942’s Joan
of Paris before his unforgettable breakout in This Gun for Hire. When the first rushes
came in, This Gun director
Frank Tuttle and Paramount execs realized they had lightning in a bottle, and
reworked numerous shots to build him up, bolstering Ladd’s scenes with
Veronica Lake while shifting the focus away from top-billed Robert
Preston. The screen persona that Ladd establishes in This Gun for Hire’s very first scene is one that he would riff on
for more than a decade. It would carry him to the peak of Mount Hollywood, and
make him, for a short while, the most popular screen actor in the world.
Ladd emerged from This Gun for Hire as
a bona fide movie marvel, Paramount’s incandescent star—bigger even than Bing
Crosby. The studio hurried to craft an image that would ensure the public’s
continued adoration. The newly-minted Alan Ladd would be featured
primarily in romantic hero roles. He’d still be tough as nails, but his days
playing hired killers were over. Consequently, Adolph Zuckor felt it
was important to give Ladd a fantastical, picture postcard life story. He was
provided with a studio-written script to use for press interviews and public
appearances, while certain aspects of his past, such as the brief first
marriage and resulting child, were swept under the rug. Ladd would need to
present himself as the smiling family man beginning to dominate the covers of
fan magazines. The sanitized version of his life story presented in Screen Romances and Movie Story wasn’t an outright lie,
but it was a lot for an insecure young actor, uncomfortable with success, to
try to live up to.
Ladd was kind and good-natured,
but horribly apprehensive about his size, his personal history, and, most of
all, his acting. His costars often found him unapproachably distant, though
those he worked with more than once came to realize he was simply terrified
that people would think he was a fraud. Ladd ignored praise, but took to heart
every negative thing written about him. When Geraldine Fitzgerald encouraged
him to accept the lead in The Great
Gatsby he confided, “I won’t be able to do it because I can’t act, you
know.” Yet Robert Preston said, “…he was an awfully good actor. So many people
didn’t realize this. It’s said that the publicity department invented him, but
they didn’t really have to. He would have made it without that, and I think his
life would have been happier.” Virginia Mayo, who adored him, said it best:
“The whole problem with Alan’s psyche was his inability to remember that he was
a big star. And he was the biggest…. The lack of artistic recognition
affected him, affected him tragically…” Though Veronica Lake, who appeared
alongside Ladd more often than any other actress, and whose sad life in some
ways paralleled his, characterized their time together in surprisingly
professional terms: “both of us were very aloof…. We were a very good match for
one another. It enabled us to work together very easily and without friction or
temperament.” However, all who worked with him sensed a deep sadness in the
man. When an interviewer asked him what he would change about himself if he
could, he famously replied, “Everything.”
Ladd was always more at ease with the crew than he was other performers or
studio executives. He had begun in Hollywood as a laborer and enjoyed being around
those who worked behind the scenes. Yet he was able to form lasting friendships
with a few of his costars in spite of being “aloof,” including Edmond O’Brien,
Lloyd Nolan, and Van Heflin — but most notably William Bendix. The pair
met while costarring in The Glass
Key and would appear together in often. They began auspiciously, after
Bendix accidentally cold-cocked Ladd during a fight scene. Ladd was so taken by
the big man’s concern for his safety that they formed an immediate bond. Their
close friendship was widely publicized — they even purchased homes across
the street from one another. According to Bill’s wife Tess Bendix, things went
astray when Ladd’s wife Sue Carol made an offhand remark about Bendix’s lack of
military service. Stuck in the middle, Ladd was obliged to choose between his
friend and his wife, and it would be a decade before the two would have a
conversation that didn’t involve reading lines on a movie set. Once they
finally reconciled, Ladd would lean heavily on his old friend. Bendix was
constantly out of town during the early sixties, working almost exclusively on
the stage. Tess remembers many late-night phone calls that involved a
despondent Ladd pleading with Bendix to break his contracts and return to
California. Bendix’s heartbreak in the wake of Ladd’s 1964 death was
tremendous, and unfortunately short-lived — suffering from pneumonia, he
would follow his best friend in death before the year was out.
The roots of Ladd’s depression can almost certainly be traced back to his
childhood, which was anything but stable — his father died before his eyes when
he was only four years old. When his mother remarried, the family began a
Joad-like trek west and eventually settled in California. Their itinerant days
cost Ladd a few years in school — and consequently he was not only the
smallest, but also the oldest boy in his year. Nor did it help that he made
poor grades, was excruciatingly shy, and had no stable male role model. If
suicide is hereditary, then he never had a chance. In 1937, wrecked on alcohol
and poverty, his mother swallowed ant poison and died before his eyes, just as
he was struggling to get his first break. The incident naturally devastated
him, and many insiders have speculated that he spent the rest of his life seeking
to replace the doting woman who had been his only source of reassurance and
approval. Sue Carol, ten years his senior, filled some of the void left in his
mother’s wake, and Ladd came to consider the Paramount a surrogate home.
Nonetheless, he was plagued with guilt about his mother for the rest of his
days, and when he left the comfortable surroundings of Paramount his peace of
mind and sense of stability deteriorated even further.
Even in the years after he achieved stardom and financial security, Ladd’s
self-image and the rigors of a public life were a source of distress — he
referred to himself as “the most insecure guy in Hollywood.” He wanted to be
thought of as a serious actor but took to heart the whisperings that he was
more a product of Paramount’s publicity machine than his own ability. He wanted
to try different roles, but Adolph Zuckor considered him too valuable, and
wouldn’t risk damaging his carefully constructed screen persona by giving him
other kinds of parts. Ladd never complained much — he would have felt too
guilty. The studio had given him his start, and after having been poor for so
long he felt deeply indebted; so much so that he played ball with his bosses in
ways that seem perplexing today. For much of his career, he kept his first
marriage and the resulting child, Alan Ladd Jr., a secret from the public. The
fan magazines, as well as Sue Carol herself, were more than happy to go along
with the script. Ladd’s squeaky-clean image sold millions of magazines, and it
did no one any good to rock the boat.
Carol, a former
actress-turned-agent, represented Ladd tirelessly during the period leading up
to This Gun for Hire. Even in
the years after they were married, when her public role shifted to that of wife
and mother, she remained the guiding force behind his career. Everyone from
film historians to family friends has suggested that she did as much to
maintain Ladd’s screen image as the studios, and that while their marriage was
sound (Ladd absolutely refused to remove his wedding ring during production of
his films) she nevertheless contributed to the burden of stardom that so
weighed on her husband’s shoulders. She also contributed greatly to his
happiness by giving him two children. Alana was born in 1943, followed by David
in 1947.
Of his three kids David would
follow most closely in his father’s footsteps. He appeared briefly in Shane, and then won a much larger role
alongside Ladd in 1958’s The Proud
Rebel. David received solid notices for his work — as well as a Golden
Globe for Best Juvenile Actor — and quickly became a sought-after child star.
He worked for two decades as a film and television actor, then transitioned to
a long career as a film executive, and was married to Charlie’s Angels actress Cheryl Ladd for seven years.
The need to protect Alan Ladd’s
image waned with his stardom, and the full story of his first marriage and son
finally became public. Movie fans embraced Laddie with no hint of scandal,
though the guilt the father felt at keeping his son a secret for so long was
debilitating. Alan Ladd Jr. would also enjoy a significant career in the movie
industry, becoming one the most successful executives in Hollywood. His tenure
as president of Twentieth Century Fox saw Young Frankenstein, Star
Wars, and Alien hit
theaters. In 1995 he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture as producer
of Braveheart. He continues to
produce quality films — most recently Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone.
Alan Ladd spent a decade at
Paramount following This Gun for
Hire, in a succession of weaker and weaker films that still scored millions
for the studio. By the end of the forties, he was arguably the most popular
actor in the world, regardless of the second-rate material the studio put him
in. Darryl Zanuck called him “the indestructible man,” and fully aware of
Ladd’s reputation as a one trick pony, he longed to get him under contract at
Fox. When Ladd finally left Paramount for big money from another studio, it
wasn’t Zanuck but Jack Warner who placed the winning bid. Warner would quickly
come to regret the deal however, as Ladd, no longer in the comforting embrace
of Paramount, began to flounder. His performances got worse and worse, and even
1953’s Shane — made at
Paramount but released after he and the studio separated — couldn’t
resurrect his career. He got great buzz and Shane was a colossal success, but the studios responded by rushing
every awful Ladd picture they had canned into release in order to cash in —
before long he was back where he started, longing to appear in a decent picture
and wondering where things went wrong. For the rest of the fifties Ladd made
one bad movie after the next. He was hopeful about 1957’s Boy on a Dolphin. Cast next to
rising star Sophia Loren, he was devastated when director Jean Negulesco
favored the statuesque Italian beauty and treated him like an afterthought.
Michael Curtiz helmed 1959’s The Man
in the Net, with Ladd in the title role. He was excited to work with an
A-list director, even if Curtiz had a reputation for being a tyrant. Both were
awful failures; it was clear to all that Ladd’s tenure as an above-the-title
film star was over.
Lacking the meaningful work to
distract him from his thoughts, Ladd became an alcoholic. He couldn’t sleep and
got hooked on Secobarbital. Neither his family, his legacy, nor his tremendous
wealth could undo the damage. He believed he had never been given the chance to
be a real actor and had never been taken seriously as anything other than a
pretty face. His problem was that he believed every bad word the
critics had ever written about him, and it was too late to rewrite history. He
appeared one last time, in 1964’s The
Carpetbaggers, as an aging western star. He got decent notices and there
was talk of a comeback as a character actor, à la Edward G. Robinson, but it
wasn’t to be. The once beautiful lead of such films as Lucky Jordan, Two Years Before the Mast, and The Great Gatsby was simply used up. On January 29, 1964,
eight weeks prior to the release of The
Carpetbaggers, Ladd’s butler discovered his body in his Palm Springs
bedroom. Having mixed liquor and sleeping pills one time too many, his body
finally failed. It’s easy to believe he killed himself, but whether he chose to
end his life that night or not, the more important truth is that some people
are simply not blessed with happiness, despite fame and fortune, and try as
they might their pain is such that it eventually overwhelms them. Nobody in
Hollywood was surprised to learn that Alan Ladd was dead.
Returning to This Gun for Hire after viewing the
full arc of Ladd’s career is jarring: his blonde hair is burned into our
memory, though for his debut Paramount ironically dyed his hair black — a
character named Raven couldn’t possibly be fair-haired. Ladd’s mop had held him
back for years —studios believed dark hair photographed better! Paramount, home
of Sterling Hayden and William Holden, was the only lot where sandy hair wasn’t
considered a setback. However it’s the industry’s never-ending campaign to
camouflage Ladd’s height that we recall now, particularly in This Gun for Hire. Few other actors have
been so stigmatized by their shortness, Ladd especially so because he was a
screen tough guy. Sure, Edward G. Robinson was Little Caesar, but with him size was part of his swagger, an integral
part of his screen image — and unlike Ladd, Robinson was never a romantic
leading man. In Ladd’s case, everyone wished he were taller. He stood
5’6”, as tall as Cagney and just two measly inches shorter than Bogart. Yet
there was something about his look — his boyishness, the pretty face, thin
frame — that made him appear smaller than his older and more famous peers. Like
most small men Ladd was sensitive; he would shy away from making personal
appearances in order to avoid the surprised expressions and hurtful slights of
his those surprised at his size. And while he could occasionally dodge the
public, his stature was an inescapable issue on-set. Robert Preston would write
of their time doing This Gun for
Hire, “…you couldn’t use a stand-in when you were working in a scene with
him because there would be so many cables and stands and reflectors you
couldn’t get in or out. And this is what sort of stultified Laddie. They were
photographing a doll … It’s so sad, because he was an awfully good actor.”
Yet it is to Ladd’s credit that Paramount went to such extremes to give him a
public face, as well as conceal his height — for anyone else they wouldn’t
have bothered. He was the studio’s golden goose; audiences just loved him.
There was no need to purchase a major literary property or shoot on-location,
Ladd’s name on the marquee ensured major profits — even if the picture was a
stinker. Throughout the 1940s his movies were simply bulletproof: every single
one made money, to the tune of $55,000,000 in the studio coffers. No other star
made so much money in such cheap pictures. In the grand scheme of things,
making him look taller was just good business.
Nowhere are the studio’s efforts
to carefully cultivate Ladd’s screen image more apparent than in This Gun for Hire’s opening scene,
which finds his Philip Raven waking from a night of troubled sleep. He sits up
and reaches for an envelope, while palming his nickel-plated automatic. The
camera work is all strictly low angle, and when Ladd finally gets off the bed
his head practically brushes the ceiling. Whether it was the camera position, a
shallow depth of field, or a cut-down set, the shot is obviously contrived to
make Raven appear a great deal taller than Alan Ladd. When that famous
kitten-hating maid shows up, itching for one of the best slaps in movie
history, the camera angle shifts from low to high, and Ladd, now looming over
the girl, is suddenly ten feet tall. This sort of cinematic sleight of hand
would characterize his career. The studios used a number of tricks to make him
appear as tall as possible: he might stand on a raised platform or his leading
lady might step into a freshly dug hole. It’s worth noting that in addition to
their great sexual chemistry, Paramount loved pairing Ladd with Veronica Lake
because she was barely five feet tall — one of the few actresses who could
wear heels and still look right to him.
Although Ladd is more often
described as a movie star rather than an actor (which meant then, as it does
now, that critics credited his success more to his looks than his ability), his
performance in This Gun for Hire is
damn good. The producers knew the film depended casting an actor able to
portray a psychopathic killer who would come across as both cold-blooded and
sympathetic. Ladd was blessed with a face that was chiseled and attractive, and
his knife-edge voice was simply magnificent. His early-career experience as a
radio actor had given him precise control over his pitch and timbre: he could
portray different emotions while keeping his face cold, making Raven one of
noir’s iciest killers. In a few key moments throughout the movie Ladd softens
his character just enough to give the audience a glimpse of the hurt kid
lurking underneath the grim façade. The effect is powerful, and in terms of Hollywood
currency, a star-maker. His special ability to play characters both vulnerable
and tough-as-nails was unique, his special something, the “it” that made him a
magnificent screen star. His physical beauty and potent chemistry with Lake was
the icing on the cake. The Hayes code demanded that Raven pay for his crimes in
the final reel of This Gun for Hire,
but you ache for it not to be so. You wish that he could somehow survive to
escape with the girl, his misdeeds revealed as a frame-up or as a hoax.
Instead, the denouement is clumsy and artificial, with Lake and her putz
boyfriend Preston awkwardly embracing as Ladd bleeds to death at their feet.
The New York critics may have had
Alan Ladd’s number when they derided him as merely a movie star, and
it may also be true that the “serious” career he wanted so badly eluded him.
But in spite of all the criticism and Ladd’s immense self-loathing, his movies
have pleased millions. He made his first splash as a professional killer in an
iconic film noir, establishing a potent new character type that would stand the
test of time and be exploited to the point of cliché in the crime pictures of
the forties and fifties. From trendsetting early efforts such as This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key, through the more
mature The Blue Dahlia, and
even in less well known noirs such as Calcutta, Chicago Deadline, and the
fantastic Appointment with Danger,
Ladd was a key actor in the canon of film noir. His screen charisma, immense
popularity, and ability to humanize the hoodlum ensured the continued
development of the noir style in the Hollywood studio system; and his movies
have weathered the years in ways he couldn’t possibly have imagined. His last
great role came as the good-guy hero in what many consider to be the American
western.
And he thought he was
small.
***
An earlier version of this essay
was published in Noir City, the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation. If the noir
community has a hub, it’s the FNF. My pals over there are working hard to
preserve original 35 mm prints of classic noirs, putting on the fantastic Noir
City film festivals, and publishing a great magazine. Consider clicking the
link and sending ’em a couple bucks. They’ll put it to good use — you’ll become
a real part of film conservation, and get some cool swag too.
