Ring Lardner Jr.
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Ringgold W. Lardner Jr. (August 19, 1915 – October 31, 2000) was an American journalist and Oscar winning screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses during the era of McCarthyism.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, he was the son of the famous journalist and humorist, Ring Lardner. After being educated at Princeton University he became a reporter on the New York Daily Mirror.
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. Other notable scripts include Laura (1944), Brotherhood of Man (1946) and Forever Amber (1947).
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. 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.
After the Second World War the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began an investigation into the Hollywood motion picture industry. In September, 1947, the HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named several people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
Lardner appeared before the HUAC on October 30, 1947, but like Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz and John Howard Lawson, he refused to answer any questions. Known as the "Hollywood Ten", they claimed that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution clearly gave them the right to do this. The HUAC and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of Congress. Lardner was sentenced to 12 months in Danbury Prison and fined $1,000. He had been sacked 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). He moved to England for a time where he wrote under several pseudonyms for television series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood. The blacklist was lifted when producer Martin Ransohoff and director Norman Jewison gave him screen credit for writing 1965's The Cincinnati Kid. Lardner's later work included M*A*S*H (1970), for which he won the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, and The Greatest (1977).
According to Hungarian writer Miklos Vamos—who visited Lardner several times before his death—Lardner won an Academy Award for a movie he wrote under a pseudonym. Lardner refused to tell which movie it was, saying that it would be unfair to reveal it because the writer who allowed Lardner, Jr. to use his name (as Lardner's pseudonym) was doing him a big favor at the time.
Ring Lardner, Jr. died in Manhattan, New York in 2000. He was the last surviving member of the Hollywood Ten.
[edit] Television tributes
In the episode from the second series of The West Wing entitled "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail", Sam Seaborn, while attempting to gain a pardon for someone whom he believed 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" (also written by Aaron Sorkin), an elderly man is discovered in the studio. When asked his name, he replies first "Bessie Bibermann", then "Cole Lardner", then "Scott Trumbo". All six names are last names of members of the Hollywood Ten.
