He stood 5’5″, and while every clichéd gag about a leading man who had to stand on a crate can be invariably traced back to him, the handsome, understated performer Alan Ladd bucked the odds and became a leading box-office draw of the ’40s and ’50s. Born in Arkansas to a British émigré mother and an accountant father who died when he was four, Alan Walbridge Ladd knew an impoverished childhood marked by a Steinbeckesque journey to California, where his family eventually settled. He excelled in athletics in high school, and injuries wound up scuttling his training bid for the ’32 Olympics. Drifting in and out of odd jobs, he spent two years as a grip on the Warner Brothers lot; as the decade progressed, he pursued acting ambitions via the stage, radio shows, and sporadic extra work onscreen. In 1939, he met agent/former actress Sue Carol, who made his career her project; their marriage three years later endured until Ladd’s death. The unbilled bits (including one in Citizen Kane) grew in significance, and 1942 brought him his career break as the callous hit man Raven in This Gun for Hire.
His chemistry in This Gun for Hire with the sultry and fortunately petite Veronica Lake ensured their reteaming in The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia, and he would have other successes through the decade like China, Salty O’Rourke, Calcutta, and O.S.S. His career had hit a lull by the early ’50s, when he received the revitalizing role of the itinerant gunslinger hero of George Stevens’ classic Western Shane. He remained busy through the ’50s with projects like The McConnell Story, The Deep Six, and The Proud Rebel. Plagued with self-doubt his whole life, Ladd’s troubles with the waning of his career became too much to bear. In late 1962, he survived what appeared to be a pistol suicide attempt; in January 1964, he took a fatal combination of alcohol and sedatives. His last film appearance, coincidentally, came portraying an aging, dissolute movie star in The Carpetbaggers.
The decades haven’t dimmed the devotion of Ladd’s fans, and an appreciative response remains strong whenever the most hard-to-find of his starring vehicles surfaces on home video. Some recent favorites include:
Red Mountain (1951): Post-Civil War sagebrusher featuring Ladd as an ex-Confederate officer stuck between a desperate fugitive couple (Arthur Kennedy, Lizabeth Scott) and the suspect mercies of Wiliam Quantrill (John Ireland) and his Raiders.
Botany Bay (1953): 18th century high seas action with Ladd as an Australia-bound British convict who has his fill with sadistic prison ship captain James Mason.
Saigon (1947): The plot of this Vietnam-set postwar tale of intrigue might be a touch on the convoluted side, but it’s a can’t-miss for Ladd fans as his fourth and final star pairing with Veronica Lake.
Thunder in the East (1953): Adventure set in newly independent India offers Ladd as a gunrunner who’s angling that a provincial maharajah won’t find peaceful resolution with insurgents. Deborah Kerr co-stars.