Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and was killed in action in Spain in 1938.[citation needed
]
Although his political involvement upset the owners of the film studios, he continued to be employed 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 (equivalent to $27,291 a week today).[citation needed
]
Blacklisting
Ring Lardner Jr. (far left) with eight others of the Hollywood 10 charged with contempt of Congress in 1947
After the
Hollywood
motion picture industry. In September 1947, the HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These individuals attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their testimony, they named several people whom they accused of holding views sympathetic to communism.
Lardner appeared before the HUAC on October 30, 1947, but like
and fined $1,000. He had been dismissed by Fox on October 28, 1947.
Blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, Lardner worked for the next couple of years on the novel The Ecstasy of Owen Muir (1954). Beginning in 1955, Lardner and fellow blacklistee Ian McLellan Hunter, working under pseudonyms, wrote episodes of television series, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, and The Buccaneers, for producer Hannah Weinstein, an expatriate American living in England. For several years, meetings there with the producer were attended exclusively by Hunter, who had managed to gain a passport despite his political activities, whereas travel abroad for Lardner was deemed "not in the best interest of the United States" by the Passport Bureau, a restriction lasting from 1951 to 1958, when the Supreme Court ruled that passports could not be denied for political reasons.[8]
The blacklist was lifted for Lardner when producer
According to Hungarian writer Miklós Vámos—who visited Lardner several times before his death—Lardner won an Academy Award for a movie he wrote under a pseudonym.[9]
Personal life
Lardner married Silvia Schulman, then David O. Selznick's secretary, in 1937. They had two children, a son and a daughter, and divorced in 1945. In 1946, in Las Vegas, Nevada,[10] Lardner married Frances Chaney, an actress, and they remained wed until his death in 2000. They had one son. Chaney had been married to Lardner's brother, David, until his death in 1944 and had two children, a daughter and a son, from that marriage.[11]
Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail", Sam Seaborn
, while attempting to gain a pardon for someone whom he believes had been falsely convicted of communist espionage in the 1950s, comments to an FBI agent "Ring Lardner's just died. How many years does he get back?"
In an episode of NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, an elderly man is discovered in the studio. When asked his name, he replies first "Bessie Bibermann", then "Scott Trumbo", then "Cole Lardner". All six names are last names of members of the Hollywood Ten.
The episode of
Lardner's Ring
".
Works
Lardner, Ring Jr. (2017). I'd Hate Myself in the Morning : a memoir. Nation Books.
^Cannon, Robert (Director); Ring Lardner, Jr.; Maurice Rapf; John Hubley; Phil Eastman (Authors) (1946). The Brotherhood of Man (Short film). United Productions of America / Brandon Films, Inc.
Ceplair, Larry (July 4, 2018). "Ring Lardner, Jr. and the Hollywood Blacklist: A New Perspective on the Perennial Struggle against Thought Control in the United States". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 39 (1). Informa UK Limited: 75–95.
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