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Alan Ladd September 3, 1913 - January 29, 1964.Alan Ladd made two film masterpieces -- Shane in 1953, and a small role as a reporter in Citizen Kane (1941). He made dozens of film that are either entertaining or better. Almost all of his other films are entertaining or better, if for his presence alone. The best of these are Carpetbaggers, The (1964), Badlanders, The (1958), Appointment with Danger (1951), O.S.S. (1946), Blue Dahlia, The (1946), Glass Key, The (1942), and This Gun for Hire (1942). Ladd's father died when he was four. At age five he burned down the apartment playing with matches. He was malnourished, undersized, and nicknamed Tiny. 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. Meanwhile Ladd's destitute, alcoholic mother moved in with them -- her agonizing suicide from ant poison witnessed a few months later by her son. His fourth billing role as the psychotic killer Raven in This Gun for Hire made him a star. He was drafted January 1943 and discharged in November with an ulcer and double hernia. By the end of the fifties, liquor and a string of so-so movies had taken their toll on the 5'5" actor. In November 1962 he was found unconscious lying in a pool of blood with a bullet wound near his heart. His first and only unsuccessful suicide attempt. (Next time he got it right.) Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, in January 1964 he was found dead, apparently due to an "accidental" combination of alcohol and sedatives. Ironically, in his last film, an adaptation of Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers Ladd had been cast as an aging, washed-up movie star. Ladd was the father of David Ladd, and Academy Award winning producer Alan Ladd Jr ("Laddie"). David Ladd married Cheryl Ladd. And they had Person of the Week, Jordan Ladd, Alan's granddaughter. Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Heritage. "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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