Ring Lardner, Jr.
Birth : 1915-08-19, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Death : 2000-10-31
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ringgold Wilmer "Ring" Lardner Jr. (August 19, 1915 – October 31, 2000) was an American journalist and screenwriter blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s.
Ring Lardner Jr. moved to Hollywood where he worked as a publicist and "script doctor" before writing his own material. This included Woman of the Year, a film that won him an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay in 1942. He also worked on the scripts for the films Laura (1944), Brotherhood of Man (1946), Forever Amber (1947), and M*A*S*H (1970). The script of the latter earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Lardner held strong left-wing views and during the Spanish Civil War he helped raise funds for the Republican cause. He was also involved in organizing anti-fascist demonstrations. His brother, James Lardner, was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and was killed in action in Spain in 1938. Although his political involvement upset the owners of the film studios, he continued to be given work and in 1947 became one of the highest paid scriptwriters in Hollywood when he signed a contract with 20th Century Fox at $2,000 a week.
Self
A behind the scenes look at the making of the movie M*A*S*H. The documentary reveals all of the chaos, politics, and conflict that was going on behind the scenes during production of the movie through new interviews done with director Robert Altman as well as Richard Zanuck, who was head of production for 20th Century Fox at the time, and others.
Self
Documentary is about the life and work of American screenwriter Waldo Salt who won two Academy Awards and was put on the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s. The story is told through interviews with collaborators and friends such as Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jon Voight, John Schlesinger and with clips from Salt's films, chiefly Midnight Cowboy.
Writer
Muhammad Ali's life story up to the late 1970s, which includes his Olympic triumphs as Cassius Clay, his conversion to Islam, his refusal of the Army draft and the legal battle after being stripped of his World Title.
Dialogue
The story concerns the difficulties and reactions of Maddalena (Sophia Loren), an Italian visitor to New York City. She has come to the country carrying a huge mortadella sausage which she intends as a gift for her fiancé. But Customs do not allow processed meat to enter the U.S., so she is held at JFK airport...
Screenplay
The story concerns the difficulties and reactions of Maddalena (Sophia Loren), an Italian visitor to New York City. She has come to the country carrying a huge mortadella sausage which she intends as a gift for her fiancé. But Customs do not allow processed meat to enter the U.S., so she is held at JFK airport...
Additional Writing
An industrial espionage group calls on a retired spy living with his wife and children in Paris.
Screenplay
The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.
Screenplay
An up-and-coming poker player tries to prove himself in a high-stakes match against a long-time master of the game.
Screenplay
A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal. Photochemical preservation by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Writer
A European princess jeopardizes her crown when she falls for an American millionaire.
Writer
A British woman marries an American writer in spite of her family's disapproval and goes to live with him on a tropical island.
Screenplay
A young man zigzags through the sordid vortex of downtown Los Angeles while seeking vengeance on the man that beat his father.
Self
A brief look at The Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and directors charged with contempt of court after challenging the House Un-American Activities Committee and their controversial and self-incriminatory questions during the red scare. With that act of defiance, they were sentenced to one year in prison simply for speaking their minds and exercising their constitutional rights as concerned citizens. This is their story, their version of the facts, and their opinions.
Dialogue
A sailor on leave meets a beautiful girl on the ski slopes of Switzerland.
Screenplay
In Victorian London, young Adelaide is born into luxury, but marries starving artist Henry. His alcoholism and their lack of money lead to many quarrels. During one such fight, Henry slips down a flight of stairs and dies. A neighbor, Mrs. Mounsey, is the only witness, and she blackmails the young widow by threatening to tell the cops that Adelaide killed her husband. Luckily, lawyer Gilbert swoops in to help Adelaide.
Writer
Amber St Clair, orphaned during the English Civil War and raised by a family of farmers, aspires to be a lady of high society; when a group of cavaliers ride into town, she sneaks away with them to London to achieve her dreams.
Screenplay
Italian partisans help a professor sent by the OSS to find an atomic scientist held by Nazis.
Writer
Made from a pamphlet and financed by a union, the message that the similarities between people are greater than any racial differences, was part of a post WW2 optimism which was soon to be seen as leftist propaganda and now reads like simple multiculturalism.
Screenplay
German boy Emil comes to live with his American uncle who tries to teach the former Hitler Youth to reject Nazism.
Screenplay
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.
Screenplay
French soldiers (Jean-Pierre Aumont, Gene Kelly) surrender to lying Nazis and are herded into a barbaric prison camp.
Screenplay
Rival reporters Sam and Tess fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when Sam comes to resent Tess' hectic lifestyle.
Adaptation
Arkansas Judge is a 1941 American film starring Roy Rogers as a young lawyer defending a farmer accused of slander.
Writer
A doctor fights an epidemic that breaks out in the poor section of town and tries to get the rest of the town to help out.
Screenplay
The first of six films in the "Dr. Christian" series, starring Jean Hersholt as a small town doctor trying to convince local officials to approve funds for a new hospital.
Original Film Writer
The story of the tumultuous marriage of a gruff sportswriter and a sophisticated international reporter who work together on the same newspaper.
