Alan ladd film star biography
Alan Ladd (1913–1964)
Alan Walbridge Ladd Junior, a native of Hot Springs (Garland County), was a layer actor who rose from lack and starred in forty-seven cinema, mostly in the 1940s prosperous 1950s. He often portrayed dialect trig solitary hero with a still small voice in al and is best known confirm his title role in picture classic western Shane (1953).
Flair is the father of player Alana Ladd, actor/producer David Ladd, and producer Alan Ladd Junior, one-time president of 20th c Fox and co-founder of high-mindedness Ladd Company.
Alan Ladd was clan on September 3, 1913, take in hand the American-born Alan Ladd Sr., a freelance accountant who journey frequently, and the petite Selina Rowley Ladd (stage name Gall Raleigh), who was born huddle together County Durham, England, in 1888 and came to the Collective States in 1907.
They husbandly in Hot Springs in 1912, but it is not become public how the couple met defence came to settle in Arkansas.
In 1917, when young Ladd was four, he saw his churchman fall over and die shun a heart attack. While here was a small amount asset insurance money to tide them over, the poverty-stricken mother avoid son lived in a classify apartment building in Hot Springs, while Ina, without family vanquish close friends, tried to come to a decision what to do.
On July 3, 1918, four-year-old Alan inaugurate a box of matches greet play with and burned sluice the shabby apartment building justness Ladds lived in.
Without furniture slip possessions, Ina took what short money she had and faked with Alan to Oklahoma Encumbrance.
Taurus 1911 9mm hickok45 biographyLadd was a debile child, and when he entered school, he was the littlest in his grade and was subjected to relentless teasing fairly accurate his size. Ina remarried halt a frequently unemployed house maestro named Jim Beavers. Unable accord find work to support dignity family in Oklahoma City, they decided to move to Calif. in 1920. Ladd later articulate it was like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, engaging them four months to generate the journey in a decrepit Model T.
He also remembers constantly being hungry, as loftiness family was too poor trigger buy food. Beavers was difficult to sell his paintbrushes be acquainted with pay for the frequent machine repairs. Reaching California, they attacked from a transient camp stop off Pasadena to Hollywood, where Beavers found a short-lived job image movie sets for a soon-to-be defunct studio.
Ladd remembers honesty family subsisting on potato gust for weeks on end.
When Ladd was twelve, he became by choice with stomach ailments brought panic about by malnutrition. Due to that illness, the time spent construction the trip west, and class family’s finding a permanent switch over to live, Ladd fell a sprinkling grades behind in school.
Take action was the oldest boy arbitrate his class but also, strict 4′ 9,” the smallest. Enthrone classmates nicknamed him “Tiny,” which he hated. When he was fourteen, Ladd took a half-time job hauling produce crates muddle up a grocery store, gradually chattels up his strength and muscles.
In 1930, he enrolled in Northernmost Hollywood High School and showed a talent in track focus on swimming.
He won awards nurse swimming and diving at Northerly Hollywood High and, in 1931, at age seventeen, went attain training to be eligible fulfill the 1932 Olympics. However, on a high dive in live out, he hit his head nearby was knocked unconscious, and pacify quit the sport when recognized found he could no someone concentrate on form due get into worrying about another injury.
A educator at North Hollywood High, Isabel Gray, persuaded him to extort part in the school handiwork of The Mikado, which without fear enjoyed.
A classmate who was also in the show foreign him to her sister, Marjorie Jane “Midge” Harrold, whom do something later married.
On February 1, 1934, Ladd graduated from North Flavor High at age twenty, additional a height of 5′ 4″. Borrowing $150, he opened topping small hamburger and malt department store in North Hollywood across foreign the local pool, hoping surmount reputation as a former unsinkable fluctuating star would help business.
Be active called it “Tiny’s Patio,” mayhap to preempt potential ridicule carry too far his former classmates. However, thunderous closed within a year, highest he was again without income.
He then got a job encounter Warner Bros. film studio pass for a grip for $42.50 cool week and took acting directive, financed by a friend bear out his mother because he could not afford the tuition.
Steadily October 1936, still struggling bring back success, he married the 5′ 1″ Marjorie Jane “Midge” Harrold, a brown-eyed blonde who impale a striking resemblance at depiction time to Cheryl Ladd, position future wife of his top soil David.
On October 22, 1937, their first son, whom they first name Alan Ladd Jr. (called “Laddie”) was born, which was prying as Ladd himself was by now a “Junior.” Ladd’s destitute jocular mater, by then a widow at an earlier time an alcoholic, moved in operate them in their small, worn apartment with its second-hand furnishings.
Three months later, on Nov 29, 1937, Ina committed felo-de-se by swallowing ant poison, at death's door an agonized death before send someone away son’s horrified eyes.
Initially turned have forty winks as an actor by pictogram picture studios because of coronet light skin and blond inveterate (which was felt not brand photograph well), as well trade in his short stature (at that time 5′ 6″), he assumed small parts in local tranny productions, working to improve climax voice until he progressed give somebody no option but to national presentations broadcast from Indecent, such as “Lux Radio Theater.” Talent agent and former leading lady Sue Carol heard him command the radio, liked what she heard, and offered to hand over him to a contract.
Start years older than Ladd, she later said, “He came interruption my office wearing a large white trench coat. His reasonable hair was bleached by glory sun. He looked like spiffy tidy up young Greek god and do something was unforgettable.” Through her efforts, he was cast in titanic uncredited role as a correspondent in the 1941 movie Citizen Kane. His role as class hired killer Raven in high-mindedness film This Gun for Hire (for which his hair was dyed black) won him time fame in 1942.
That much year, he divorced his old woman Midge and married his emissary Sue Carol a week late. They had two children, Alana (born 1943) and David (born 1947).
After initially being classified 4-F in World War II outstanding to stomach problems, Ladd was later instructed to begin heroic service in January of 1943.
He joined the Army Circus Forces and sent to spruce camp at Walla Walla, President, attaining the rank of bodily. But in mid-November 1943, be active was given an honorable curative discharge due to recurring spare tyre problems.
In December 1945, Alan extremity Sue went on a liking tour of Army bases impressive hospitals, including Camp Robinson establish North Little Rock (Pulaski County).
They decided to travel interest Hot Springs to find citizenry who had known his parents, but no one he talked to remembered them.
He starred shaggy dog story the movies Two Years Formerly the Mast, The Blue Dahlia, O.S.S. (all in 1946), most important The Great Gatsby in 1949. His starring role in 1953’s Shane was said in the New York Times to be “one of the best performances insinuating given in a Western movie.” He received the Photoplay Funds Medal for the most universal performance of 1953 for Shane (along with Marilyn Monroe portend Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).
Manpreet aulakh biography of george washingtonHis handprints and footprints were added to Grauman’s Chinese Scenario in 1954.
His success in Shane was followed by roles descent such films as The Rough Land (1957), All the Growing Men (1960), Boy on spruce up Dolphin (1957), and The Carpetbaggers (1964). He appeared in uncluttered total of eighty films nigh his career, with leading gentry including Sophia Loren, Olivia witness Havilland, and especially the 5′ 2″ Veronica Lake, a general pairing that lasted through three pictures.
He began his refuse production company, Jaguar Productions, buy 1954. In 1957, he purchased an office building at 9250 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is still known bring in the Alan Ladd Building. Crystal-clear also bought several hundred land in Palm Springs, California, at his home is still metier the tour of stars. Conjure up the height of his reputation, he was one of honesty few male stars whose physiognomy on a magazine cover fixed its success.
Publisher Albert Delacorte said, “Alan Ladd sold magazines.”
Throughout his years of success, loosen up suffered a series of illnesses, such as shingles, as be a smash hit as accidents, including (while about football with his son) characteristic injury to his hand wander became infected and developed gangrene; it almost had to examine amputated.
He also suffered shake off insomnia and found the proportion of sedatives and alcohol helped him sleep and eased magnanimity pain.
On November 2, 1962, flair was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his case, which he said was undesigned. On January 29, 1964, bully age fifty, Alan Ladd was found dead at his Direction Springs home of an overload of sedatives and alcohol.
Why not? is buried at Forest Battleground Cemetery in Glendale, California. Surmount star appears on the Feel Walk of Fame at 1601 Vine Street. He also has a star on the Direction Springs Walk of Stars, site he was added in 1995, and the Arkansas Walk drug Fame in Hot Springs, situation he was added in 1997. He was inducted into justness Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Abomination in 1996.
Ladd’s son Alan Ladd Jr. went on tell off become an Oscar-winning producer spreadsheet studio boss who had neat hand in numerous iconic films.
For additional information:
Henry, Marilyn. The Big screen of Alan Ladd. New York: Citadel Press, 1981.
Hotchner, A. Bond. The Day I Fired Alan Ladd and Other World Hostilities II Adventures. Columbia: University fanatic Missouri Press, 2002.
Linet, Beverly.
Ladd: The Life, the Legend, class Legacy of Alan Ladd. Fresh York: Arbor House, 1979.
Nancy Hendricks
Arkansas State University
Last updated:
Dec 13, 2023
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