We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
STEVE: Spurred-on by the wealth of information that you kindly sent me I did some more digging about Little Al Junior and here are a few pointers that might interest you if you were not already aware of them.
[By the way I forgot to say I liked the quote from Richard Donner in the first article you sent me but I think the article left a bit out as the full quote from Richard apparently was: “There are snakes in this business; there is Joel Hirschhorn; and then there’s Alan Ladd Jr.”]
1/Alan Ladd Jr’s net worth at the time of his death is estimated at $75 million.
2/Alan Ladd SENIOR had to endure many jokes about his height during his movie career being slight for an action hero as he stood at just 5ft 6 and ¼ inches. Nevertheless at the start of the 1950s the status quo of Hollywood put it about that Ladd Senior’s only competitor for the informal title “The screen’s toughest tough guy” was Bogie.” That bothered neither man though and they were pals who liked watching movies together.
3/Alan Ladd Junior was 5ft 6 ins so actually ¼ inch shorter than his famous father. However it has been said that the equally- diminutive Al Pacino was known as Little Al at college but became Big Al after The Godfather; and so after the mega success of Star Wars which Ladd Jr made happen HE was certainly Big Alan around the studios.
4/The nickname of both Alan Ladd Senior and Alan Ladd Junior is officially registered as “Laddie”.
5/In the early 1970s Alan Ladd Junior formed a producing partnership in London with several others and produced his first movies, including “The Nightcomers” (1971), which starred Marlon Brando. Alan Ladd Senior had had plans in the late 1950s to make a movie (via his own production company at that time called Jaguar Productions) with Brando and Eva Marie Saint but they fell through. So it could be said Ladd Jr picked-up the baton.
6/Michael Winner directed The Nightcomers and whilst he apparently used Ladd Jr’s nickname of “Laddie” he insisted upon addressing Brando as ”Sir” on set and Winner claims that Marlon is the only actor to ever receive that accolade from him; and actors whom Winner also directed included screen giants such as Mitchum, Burt Lancaster [twice], Charles Bronson [half a dozen times], Peter Ustinov, Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud and Jimmy Stewart.
Bob, I was sad to read that Alan Ladd Jr died a few days ago, he was 84. As you well know without ‘Laddie’ there would not be a Star Wars, he had faith in George Lucas project after all the studios turned it down. And it went on to become the biggest grossing film of all time in unadjusted dollars. Blockbuster summer movies were here to stay and cinema survived the 1970s doldrums.
Hollywood Reporter cites Ladd Jr as ‘Star Wars Savior’ in their headline –
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alan-ladd-jr-dead-star-wars-braveheart-dies-1235102885/
HI STEVE:
I was unaware of Alan Junior’s passing and I thank you for sharing that news with me. The obituary link that you gave me was very comprehensive and did him justice.
Whilst familiar with a lot of his successes I was unaware that he ‘created/discovered’ Sigourney Weaver and Ripley – how male chauvinists must hate him and feminists love him, taking into account as well Myrna and Louise! One way and another Family Ladd has certainly left its mark on the cinema.
I was also unaware that he too had been nicknamed “Laddie”: I think that it was his father’s close pal -some even said “employee” – Bill Bendix who first gave Alan that nickname.
As you say the passing of Laddie Junior is sad but at least at 84 he had a decent innings – 34 years longer than his old man who died aged 50. Anyway thanks once again for keeping me abreast of the news.
Bob, in the George Lucas bios I have read they all refer to him as ‘Laddie’.
“Alan Ladd Jr. “Laddie,” as he was called by nearly everyone, was the son of actor Alan Ladd. Show business was in his blood and he had an intuitive feel for commercial hits, as well as an appreciation for talent, no matter how quirky. He had recently rescued writer-director Mel Brooks from a panicky Warner Bros. after the studio had lost faith in the unreleased Blazing Saddles, and Berg thought Ladd might appreciate both the talent and travails of his own client, who was fighting a similar creative battle with Universal over the still unreleased American Graffiti. Over drinks one afternoon, Berg offered to show Graffiti to Ladd and sent a smuggled print to his office. “I saw it on the Fox lot at nine one morning, and it absolutely bowled me over,” recalled Ladd. “That’s when I just said to Jeff [Berg] that I’d like to meet George and hear about what ideas he’s working on.”
“Lucas saw Ladd as an advocate, and defender, who would lead him through the next stage of his career. Unlike with Francis Coppola, however, there was little bombast in the low-key Ladd, which made him a good temperamental fit with the equally restrained Lucas. “He and I together don’t make one-half an extrovert,” remarked Ladd. Like Lucas, Ladd didn’t talk very much—and when he finally did speak, he did it so quietly and calmly that some thought he sounded eerily like the rogue computer HAL from 2001. Though Lucas derisively referred to most Hollywood executives as “used-car dealers,” there was something about Ladd that he liked right away.”
HI STEVE: Thanks for the further interesting ‘memorabilia’ about Laddie Junior.
Sounds as if when he spoke he sounded a lot like the Great Alan himself on screen in the likes of Shane and This Gun for Hire.
In Shane Laddie Sr raised his voice only once and that was to shout “You dirty, stinking old man” at Rufus Ryker when the latter implied that Shane had romantic designs on Jean Arthur who was Van Heflin’s wife in the movie.
Actually in shouting at Ryker as an “old man” Laddie Senior was exercising that Peter Pan licence that Hollywood extended to most of its top male stars in those days.
Shane although released in 1953 had been completed in 1951 when Alan Senior was 38 and Emile Myer who played Ryker was just 3 years older at 41!
On one site’s flag-up for its own Alan Ladd Senior page a photograph that purports to be Alan Senior is actually that of Alan Junior!
Maybe it’s a site monitored by some young whippersnapper like WH who hasn’t been around long enough to be familiar with the history of the Ladd dynasty and is confusing the father with the son. I suppose though not everyone can have been at the ‘coal face’ as I was!
Anyway thanks again for all the information you’ve sent me. Keep safe and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
NOTE: Posts 3 and 4 and an explanatory addition post are to be found further back
THE EAST!: One of Ladd’s old stomping grounds where often he taught lessons and manners to his favourite punchbags in movies: The Reds! And in Thunder in the East he once again of course got stuck into those perennial whipping-boys of his [and of his pal Big John!].
They weren’t actually called The Reds though in Thunder in the East but though a simple people at heart we were not stupid back in the 1950s: we completely got Uncle Joe McCarthy’s message shining through the movie’s plot.
In Uncle Joseph’s time many a Hollywood villain or group of villains weas analysed by critics and historians as akas for The Reds; and indeed I often wonder whether Hitch meant his notorious Mother Bates to be a destructive closet commie.
Despite the standard ‘Reds’-bashing there were two things different about Thunder in the East though. One was the fact that Ladd’s obligatory fawning and doating leading lady and love interest [Debs Kerr] was blind in the plot.
That didn’t matter though as what counted was what the audience saw; and in 1951/52 Ladd and Kerr as a screen team were arguably Hollywood’s two most “beautiful people” so the audiences’ eyes had a feast [contrastingly even in their 1940 peak years Bill Powell and Myrna Loy looked like everyone’s uncle and aunt.]
The other major difference was that the ending was sudden and explosive. The ‘Reds’ have Laddie, Debs and the other good guys trapped in a sanctuary compound and those pesky ‘Reds’ are battering away at the stout gates in the complacency that Ladd & Co have no guns with which to defend themselves. [Laddie could have gotten away earlier but heroically came back for Debs – the self-sacrifices that that wonderful guy made were boundless!]
However there ARE guns available in the compound and when the ‘Reds’ finally break the door down and pile in they don’t get very far: immediately blocking their way and mowing them down like ninepins before they can retreat is a rattling machine gun in the hands of a human fighting machine standing before them like a rock – guess who? There the film abruptly ends.
[Wade Garrett saloon bar bouncer -played by Sam Elliott- in 1989’s Road House as he pulls down from a bar table top an extrovert roughneck who has been making a nuisance of himself by dancing on the tables “Whoa Rambo! You can save the world from the Commies from down here on the floor.”]
Steve’s 1952 video has entertained me to the tune of 99% because of its overall excellence with the one disappointment being the absence of Ladd’s Thunder in the East.
But in fairness to Steve I must confess that none of my usual professional sources call that film a noir and all they are split about is whether it is a 1951 or 1952 film. But then we on this site all know how often Steve and The Work Horse tie themselves in knots over release dates.
Speaking of WH he seems to be getting way behind on many things [if he ever gets there at all]. For example I see it has now been a long 4 months since he has commented [at least on this site] on any of Steve’s videos. Think of what WH has been missing! – but then “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” [which the dictionary explains mean “those who will not look.”]
Actually to give myself plenty of time I often like to prepare in advance if I can for what I anticipate Steve will be bringing on next. Accordingly when his 1952 noirs video emerged I had already a piece written about Thunder in the East, admittedly more in hope than conviction that it would make the cut.
But as the saying goes “waste not, want not” and as my piece is, as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson said about his Brexit deal with the European Union “baked and oven-ready” I think it will do no harm to throw-in that piece anyway for good measure and I do that in Part 2 of this post. Statham fans, forget about Jace for a short while: instead enjoy reading about how a legendary action-hero Maestro plied his craft!
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating (ooh), info, trivia, lyrics and quotes, always appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Interesting info on ‘Thunder in the East’, I have to admit I’m not familiar with that one. None of the three books I use as reference list it as noir. I’d never heard of the Glenn Ford film ‘The Green Glove’ either, not sure if it was even included in my Glenn Ford video. I wonder if ‘Thunder in the East’ was in my Alan Ladd video? My memory’s so bad I can’t remember.
The next video in the series will include Technicolor Noir for the first time. [cue gasps] and I think there might be a waterfall in there somewhere?
None of the 1952 noirs scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, one movie score 9 out of 10 – The Narrow Margin.
My Video Top 5 –
The Narrow Margin 7.9
Sudden Fear 7.7
Scandal Sheet 7.5
Kansas City Confidential 7.3
Clash by Night 7.2
The UMR Critics Top 5 –
The Narrow Margin 8.3
Sudden Fear 8.2
Kansas City Confidential 7.6
Clash by Night 7.5
Don’t Bother to Knock 7.4
IMDB Sudden Fear trivia – “According to Jack Palance, Joan Crawford and Gloria Grahame did not get along and got into a physical altercation at one point during the filming. The fight started after Grahame sat on the edge of the set during one of Crawford’s close-ups and very loudly sucked a lollipop in an attempt to anger Crawford. It worked, and Palance noted that the all male crew watched the fight for a few moments rather curiously before stepping in to break it up. Gloria Grahame reputedly had an affair with Jack Palance during filming.
Sudden Fear was Jack Palance’s “big break,” garnering him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and helping him get cast in the following year’s Shane (1953), for which he was also an Oscar nominee. Marlon Brando was originally offered the role of Lester Blaine. Joan Crawford received her third and last Academy Award nomination for this film, and it was the only year she competed against Bette Davis for the Oscar. Both lost to Shirley Booth for Come Back, Little Sheba. Crawford was savvy enough to recognize the potential of the film, and played a major role in shepherding it to the screen. Her instincts proved right and Sudden Fear became her biggest box office hit in years, Crawford was rewarded for her efforts.”
HI STEVE: Thanks for once again providing comprehensive and interesting feedback. Whilst Green Glove is one of Glenn/Charlie Bill’s more obscure films and in fact had almost a B movie status I have long been aware of it and can vividly remember trotting across to our Ambassador cinema as a boy one night in the early 1950s to see it.
Interesting trivia about Brando/Palance /Gloria and Sudden Fear. Actually via her agent Joan also sought Marlon to play her leading man in 1956’s Autumn Leaves. His response to the agent was unnecessarily rude: “Tell her to look me up again when she has some mother and son roles in mind” and Cliff Robertson got the Autumn Leaves part. Actually Joan wasn’t THAT old at the time – just 51. I mean who did Brando think she was – Myrna Loy? Anyway here are some other quotes for you.
“When I worked with him on the 1952 film Botany Bay I had the opportunity to examine the Ladd phenomenon up-close. I have never before or since seen such an athletic specimen on a movie set. He moved about the set like lightning.
That was actually quite amazing when you consider he had surrounded himself with so many prop contractions to make himself look taller that the set was in effect an obstacle course and indeed quite dangerous.
It could also be cramped as rooms with dwarf-like low ceilings were often constructed to make Alan look bigger when he stood up ” – James Neville Mason, English movie and stage thespian.
STEVE:This ship without a captain at the bridge is straying once again into strange waters as it did a couple of weeks ago.
Much as I kept trying to get Parts 1 and 2 of my today’s post to you onto your own page they persisted on ending- up on Stew’s page.
Tomorrow I’ll try again to transfer those first two parts to your page. In meantime I regret any confusion caused for you.
For some reason as I kept trying and failing to rectify matters -ie unilaterally ‘steady the ship’ – a verse from the 1971 song by the folk rock band called America entitled “A Horse With No Name” kept humming itself through my head.
Strange how the mind works isn’t it? Do you think that subconsciously I was blaming The Work Horse for his site’s failure to respond as I wanted it to and for his never being around to assist us these days?
“I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”