A Rare Kind of Movie Star
Robert Ryan '32
A CTOR ROBERT RYAN '32 is unique. Take this scene for example: A crowd of teen-age girls fills the corridor outside his dressing room. Ryan opens the door to greet Katy Hepburn, his co-star, who wishes to introduce her father. The young ladies sigh their approval of the Mark Antony beard that dignifies Ryan's face and crush forward for autographs. One pony-tailed blonde murmurs, "He's a dream!"
Unique? Is there another member of the Class of 1932, or of the whole Dartmouth alumni body, who can claim such a moment in the last three months?
That was an unusual experience for Bob Ryan too. Large groups of young ladies don't normally make their way past the stage doorman - especially since their filling the corridor makes it awkward, to say the least, for the younger male members of the cast to make their way to the common shower clad in only towel and beard. In his twenty years as an actor Bob Ryan has made no bid for the teen-age sigh or exclamation so important to others - he's a realist - and therefore identifying him with Antony, Cleopatra's last and greatest love, and its effect on the teen-age set is somewhat surprising to him.
But the younger set is not alone in its admiration of Ryan. A casual walk through the crowded lobby of the Stratford, Connecticut, playhouse gave ample evidence of Ryan's effect upon the adult audience. One attractive gray-haired woman appeared to be tossing aside the proscenium arch and joining Cleopatra at the pyramids in her enthusiasm for Ryan's first-act performance. Ryan was a handsome Mark Antony, and the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre which invited him to co-star this summer with Katharine Hepburn in Antony andCleopatra made a fine choice.
It's easy to understand why the American Shakespeare Festival chose Ryan to portray Antony. Only to see him in his Roman garb is to visualize how Antony should have looked. The real Antony probably made this particular mark on history's pages battling a bald head and a bulging waistline, but history is secondary here. Shakespeare's tragic hero should look the part of the warrior-lover. And Ryan does. Standing six foot four, a trim and rugged Ryan has the physique of a great general or a Marine Corps private which he actually was in World War II. Add to this the Ryan face, dramatically lined by the years, and it's easy for anyone, male or female, to imagine him the type of man a Cleopatra would die for.
The interesting point is why Ryan chooses Shakespeare. The Festival Theatre can't come close to matching the salary that Ryan commands to portray a cinema role of considerably less dimension. And even more im- portant, why should a recognized star with Ryan's credentials of 58 films since 1941 expose himself to live audiences in a demanding Shakespearean role?
The almost-too-simple answer is that Bob Ryan has always enjoyed and appreciated Shakespearean drama. This interest was first aroused by a Jesuit teacher at Loyola Academy in his native Chicago and was nurtured in his undergraduate days at Dartmouth by such professors as Benfield Pressey and the late Brooks Henderson. However, this simple recitation of the facts merely places Ryan among many thousands of college graduates who appreciate Shakespeare and a step below hundreds of collegiate thespians who have flashed before the footlights in roles from Prospero to Polonius.
What was Ryan doing at Dartmouth? In dramatics, not much. He did write an original play that won him a prize of $100, but most of his extracurricular time was spent boxing. He was good with his fists too, good enough to be heavyweight champion for four years - an accomplishment that probably has served him much better in the movie making business than four years of memorizing Elizabethan English.
The complete answer as to why Ryan chooses Shakespeare is part of the case for pinning a "unique" label on the personable actor. Shakespeare is a challenge to him, and Ryan's record shows a clear pattern of seeking new challenges. The language of the Shake-spearean drama is difficult - and can be brutally handled by the tongue of the insensitive - a fact that doesn't lend much help to the equally arduous task of understanding the parts written by the Bard. Most critical opinion concedes that Ryan has shown fresh insight and mature, perceptive handling of the two major Shakespearean roles he has attempted - Antony this summer and the seldom-seen Coriolanus at New York's off-Broadway Phoenix Theatre in 1954.
Here is Brooks Atkinson's description of Ryan's Coriolanus in the NewYork Times review: "Mr. Ryan's pleasing, irrational Coriolanus, who has more heart than head, is an admirable piece of acting and the key to a mettlesome performance."
And six years later The Times was saying this about Ryan as Antony: "He has the physique for the role, and he has the attributes of a man who would succumb to the wiles of Cleopatra. There is a charm about him too and the grace of a well-proportioned football player. The flaw is a failure with the verse. Knowledge of the emotion in the role is evident, and also the ability to project the emotion. What is lacking is ability to wed these to the verse."
Ryan takes his reviews calmly. He naturally appreciates and prefers the good notices, but the veteran actor takes the unappreciative critics and harsh comments in his stride (even when an unwarranted blast such as the New York Herald-Tribune's review of Antony shows up). Shakespeare is a labor of love - and he does labor in this love. If his problem is handling the Shakespearean verse, the cause is not lack of talent or determination to do so but simply too few times when the Hollywood actor can work in dramas where discipline in language is essential.
How does the Hollywood-tied actor find opportunities to act in classic dramas of Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen or Shaw, or in the challenging pieces of our own day by men like Giraudoux, Inonesco and Beckett? A few movie people make half-hearted pilgrimages to the East to meet their publics across the footlights. But Ryan, an ardent enthusiast of the motion picture industry, wanted both, and he set about getting both in a California way. With a few others of like mind he rented a small theatre in Los Angeles and put on Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates and later starred in a U.C.L.A. production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.
He has even tried to interest other ranking members of the movie colony to join with him in Aristophanes or Molière, but he soon found his colleagues preferred less arduous and more rewarding (financially) tasks. To Hollywood's finest, Ryan notes, the idea of working for nothing but art's sake appears the end of the rope.
If you must act on the legitimate stage, some of his colleagues have been known to reply to his overtures, why wear the hair shirt and rattle around in some small dusty theatre? Why not hit Broadway? Ryan rejects this. Although his first break came in a 1941 Broadway fizzle, Clash byNight, starring Tallulah Bankhead, Ryan feels most of the commercial theatre productions these days are such that he can find equal material in film scripts and be paid much better for it - without running the risk of poor notices and premature closings. He also is emphatic in his belief that a good movie is more truthful, more contemporary than the stage, because the camera can see more, do more than the eyes of a second-balcony ticket holder or even Mr. Third-Row-Orchestra.
A happy compromise for Bob Ryan would appear to be acting in film versions of the dramas he so admires, but he's not apt to kid himself into believing this is likely to happen soon. Therefore he looks for the chances to do Eliot here or Giraudoux there, and especially William Shakespeare - anywhere. This longing appears a world and a half away from his bread-and-butter roles in such films as Bombardier, The Set TJp, Tender Comrade,Marine Raiders, The Tall Men, AboutMrs. Leslie - films that could hardly be called unforgettable by even the Hollywood press agents. But they fit into the Ryan picture.
Bob Ryan is deadly serious when he says that if an actor wants to do just what he likes he'd better get into another business. The self-discipline he sees a good actor imposing upon himself as he prepares for a role applies also to his overall point of view on the professional performer. Acting to Ryan is a laboriously learned business, and business is the word that best describes his orderly approach to his career - rather paradoxical for one who tried seven postgraduate years of everything from miner to mariner to escape the clutches of Business. It's a flexible approach, however, that allows Ryan to categorize himself as essentially a character actor then co-star with Hepburn in one of dramatic history's greatest romances. It allows him to tour the country beating the drums with Aldo Ray for a pot-boiler called Men in War and in the same year to do a reading of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge ofCourage.
Knowing all this, you're about ready to pigeonhole Ryan as one who is unhappily frustrated by an inner yearning for the classic stage (as he undoubtedly is from time to time), when Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre flashes across the silver screen and there's Ryan, having a ball in the part of Ty Ty Walden. Ask him about it and he enthusiastically proclaims he enjoyed this part more than all others he's had. Antony, he accepts calmly, savoring the pleasures of a challenge well met — Ty Ty, he rejoices in - although it too was a difficult role in its own way. His performance in the story of the Georgia rustics was called memorable and superb.
Bob Ryan has even worked in westerns, and although he enjoys viewing them in any darkened theatre, it "bores hell out of me to work in them." Asking yourself whether you prefer one particular western to another, Ryan notes, is akin to asking if you prefer Monday's Times to Tuesday's Times. But he'll go back to the ranch if called - it's not Shakespeare or "one of those dramas I could never do otherwise" that he seeks to produce and act in off Wiltshire Boulevard - it's simply the business of being an actor. No one, certainly, will deny that Bob Ryan, at the top of his profession for these many years, is a unique member of the Hollywood colony on the lot or on location - but what about his personal life?
I suggest that Ryan is unique in this respect only because he doesn't fit the public's image of the movie star. If the doorman at the Brown Derby recognizes Ryan it's only because he's seen a Ryan film, for the veteran actor is not a nightclubber and never has been. Bob Ryan has been married for more than twenty years to the former Jessica Cadwalader whom he met when he was first trying to break into the acting profession as a drama student at the Max Reinhardt Workshop in Holly-wood. Mrs. Ryan is today the author of four published books and three junior-sized critics of dad's movie labors - Timothy, 14, Cheyney, 12, and Lisa, 8.
Ryan, like most parents, is concerned about the education of his children, but there are few other parents who can, like Ryan, say he founded and is today part owner of an elementary school. The Oakwood Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley came into existence ten years ago when the Ryans expressed their displeasure with overcrowding and inadequate instruction in the area schools by opening a private, non-sectarian school. The Oakwood School began with 23 children and now has more than 100. Its approach is a blend of progressive and traditional educational philosophy, which appears to satisfy Ryan who continues as a member of the Board of Trustees.
Another of Bob Ryan's deep personal convictions is the importance of the work of SANE (stands for Stop All Nuclear Explosions). A former chairman of the Hollywood branch of SANE, Ryan takes every opportunity he can find to talk with groups about SANE's efforts and the dangers of radioactive elements unleashed by nuclear explosions. To a Hollywoodite more accustomed to talk about who's dating whom and who's divorcing whom, Ryan's eagerness to speak out on fallout and politics (he's an active Democrat) draws a raised eyebrow here and there - but less so now than in the past.
Where does Ryan go from here? With his stint in Connecticut completed, he's off to "location" in Spain for a film job on the life of John the Baptist, and after that more films (he tries to average at least two a year) and perhaps in the future his dream of playing Macbeth or Lear will be realized.
Dartmouth too fits into Ryan's future, for he is a believer in the great possibilities in the Hopkins Center, This interest, in a very real way, is a marriage of his own convictions on both education and the theatre. As a member of the Theatre Advisory Group to the Hopkins Center, Ryan feels a keen responsibility that the Center's fine theatre facilities be used to the utmost in an amalgamation of the academic point of view and professional skills as an educational tool. He hopes that professional theatre people, from writers to actors, will be invited and will want to take part in dramatic experiences with the raw material on the campus. Both groups will benefit, he feels, thus providing an incubator for future talent and a return glimpse at the thrill of collegiate productions for the seasoned veteran.
Would Bob Ryan be a candidate for the latter group? The record appears to speak for itself. The play? Two have already been mentioned and there are many more the versatile Ryan would see as a challenge; and chances are that before his Final Curtain comes down, he'll do them.
Ryan (left) in the demanding role of Shakespeare's Antony.
Ryan and Katharine Hepburn, co-stars at Stratford, Conn., this summer.
With a Roman nose, Ryan plays Coriolanus in an off-Broadway production at the Phoenix.
Ryan as a freshman football player.
