Robert Ryan

Acting · 1.8 popularity

Age

116

Movies

Born: November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973
From: Chicago, Illinois, USA

Biography

Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor who often played hardened cops and ruthless villains. Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois, the first child of Timothy Ryan and his wife Mabel Bushnell Ryan. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932, having held the school's heavyweight boxing title all four years of his attendance. After graduation, the 6'4" Ryan found employment as a stoker on a ship, a WPA worker, and a ranch hand in Montana. Ryan attempted to make a career in show business as a playwright, but had to turn to acting to support himself. He studied acting in Hollywood and appeared on stage and in small film parts during the early 1940s. In January 1944, after securing a contract guarantee from RKO Radio Pictures, Ryan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served as a drill instructor at Camp Pendleton, in San Diego, California. At Camp Pendleton, he befriended writer and future director Richard Brooks, whose novel, The Brick Foxhole, he greatly admired. He also took up painting. Ryan's breakthrough film role was as an anti-Semitic killer in Crossfire (1947), a film noir based on Brooks's novel. The role won Ryan his sole career Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. From then on, Ryan's specialty was tough/tender roles, finding particular expression in the films of directors such as Nicholas Ray, Robert Wise and Sam Fuller. In Ray's On Dangerous Ground (1951) he portrayed a burnt-out city cop finding redemption while solving a rural murder. In Wise's The Set-Up (1949), he played an over-the-hill boxer who is brutally punished for refusing to take a dive. Other important films were Anthony Mann's western The Naked Spur, Sam Fuller's uproarious Japanese set gangland thriller House of Bamboo, Bad Day at Black Rock, and the socially conscious heist movie Odds Against Tomorrow. He also appeared in several all-star war films, including The Longest Day (1962) and Battle of the Bulge (1965), and The Dirty Dozen. He also played John the Baptist in MGM's Technicolor epic King of Kings (1961) and was the villainous Claggart in Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Billy Budd (1962). In his later years, Ryan continued playing significant roles in major films. Most notable of these were The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals (1966) and Sam Peckinpah's highly influential brutal western The Wild Bunch (1969). Ryan appeared several times on the Broadway stage. His credits there include Clash by Night, Mr. President and The Front Page, the comedy drama about newspapermen. He appeared in many television series as a guest star, including the role of Franklin Hoppy-Hopp in the 1964 episode "Who Chopped Down the Cherry Tree?" on the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour. Similarly, he guest starred as Lloyd Osment in the 1964 episode "Better Than a Dead Lion" in the ABC psychiatric series, Breaking Point. In 1964, Ryan appeared with Warren Oates in the episode "No Comment" of CBS's short-lived drama about newspapers, The Reporter, starring Harry Guardino in the title role of journalist Danny Taylor. Ryan appeared five times (1956–1959) on CBS's Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater and twice (1959 and 1961) on the Zane Grey spin-off Frontier Justice. He appeared three times (1962–1964) on the western Wagon Train.

Works

88 films

The Longest Day

19627.6

The Dirty Dozen

19677.6

The Wild Bunch

19697.6

The Professionals

19667.1

The Outfit

19736.8

King of Kings

19617.2

The Ghost Breakers

19406.5

Battle of the Bulge

19656.9

The Tall Men

19556.5

Bad Day at Black Rock

19557.3

Lawman

19716.5

Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire

19916.5

Billy Budd

19627.3

Caught

19496.6

Clash by Night

19526.7

Hour of the Gun

19676.5

Flying Leathernecks

19515.8

The Set-Up

19497.4

House of Bamboo

19556.2

Born to Be Bad

19506.0

The Racket

19516.3

Odds Against Tomorrow

19596.8

Anzio

19685.7

Day of the Outlaw

19596.8

The Naked Spur

19537.0

Custer of the West

19676.0

Lolly-Madonna XXX

19735.8

Crossfire

19476.7

Captain Nemo and the Underwater City

19695.6

Men in War

19576.6

On Dangerous Ground

19516.6

The Iceman Cometh

19736.1

Act of Violence

19496.9

Best of the Badmen

19516.5

Executive Action

19736.5

The Secret Fury

19505.5

The Proud Ones

19566.5

The Woman on the Beach

19476.2

God's Little Acre

19586.2

Horizons West

19526.4

Her Twelve Men

19545.9

The Boy with Green Hair

19486.2

And Hope to Die

19726.4

North West Mounted Police

19406.4

Barbara Stanwyck: Straight Down the Line

19977.7

The Dirty Game

19656.0

Berlin Express

19486.2

City Beneath the Sea

19535.1

Bombardier

19435.7

Back from Eternity

19566.7

The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katharine Hepburn

19868.3

Return of the Bad Men

19486.3

Tender Comrade

19445.7

The Busy Body

19677.2

Trail Street

19476.5

A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die

19685.9

Inferno

19536.1

Ice Palace

19606.3

The Texas Rangers Ride Again

19405.6

Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade

20048.0

The House Without a Name

19567.0

The Love Machine

19715.0

Escape to Burma

19556.2

The Canadians

19617.0

Queen of the Mob

19406.2

Simon and Garfunkel: Songs of America

1969

The Iron Major

19435.7

The Inheritance

19648.0

Hard, Fast and Beautiful!

19516.3

The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller

20025.8

Lonelyhearts

19596.3

Marine Raiders

19446.8

The Woman on Pier 13

19505.3

The Man Without a Country

19736.5

Golden Gloves

19406.0

Alaska Seas

19546.7

The Crooked Road

19655.5

The Sky's the Limit

19436.3

About Mrs. Leslie

19547.4

The Great Gatsby

1958

Beware, My Lovely

19526.1

Behind the Rising Sun

19436.1

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

1960

Gangway for Tomorrow

19436.1

The Moviemakers

197310.0

A New Dimension in Noir: Filming Inferno in 3D

2017

A Regular Bouquet: Mississippi Summer

1964

The Reason Why

197010.0