Ladd, Alan Walbridge

(1913-1964)

   Actor Alan Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but moved to California at an early age. Although he was short, he was good at sport and a potential Olympic athlete in 1931. After graduating from school in 1933, he worked as a journalist and in a variety of minor jobs in and around film studios. In 1936, he found work in a number of roles in local radio, and from 1932 through the early 1940s, he played a number of often unaccredited minor parts in films. Ladd had a small part in Citizen Kane in 1941, but his breakthrough came in 1942 when he was cast opposite Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire. Unable to serve in the military for medical reasons, Ladd made China in 1943 and appeared in several more successful movies with Lake, including Duffy’s Tavern (1945), The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Saigon (1948). He also starred in Two Years before the Mast (1946) and The Great Gatsby (1949). Ladd’s next major success was as the lone gunman in the western Shane (1953). He also starred in The Red Beret (1953) and The Black Knight (1954), but his career never reached the heights of his early successes. His last significant film appearance was in The Carpetbaggers (1964).

   See also Cinema.