Robert Bushnell Ryan

Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973)

He was an actor, who most often portrayed hardened cops and ruthless villains. Ryan attempted to make a career in show business as a playwright, but was forced to start acting in order to support himself. He studied acting in Hollywood and appeared on stage and in small film parts during the early 1940s, beginning with The Ghost Breakers and Queen of the Mob, both for Paramount Pictures in 1940. 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, Jean Renoir (The Woman on the Beach), Robert Wise and Samuel Fuller. He played John the Baptist in MGM's Technicolor epic King of Kings (1961) and the villainous Claggart in Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Billy Budd (1962). He also appeared in several all-star war films, including The Longest Day (1962), Battle of the Bulge (1965), and The Dirty Dozen (1967).

In his later years, Ryan continued playing significant roles in major films. Among the most notable were The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals (1966) and Sam Peckinpah's highly influential brutal western The Wild Bunch. He portrayed Larry Slade in the American Film Theatre's 1973 film of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Ryan, who died before the film's premiere, won the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. He died from lung cancer in New York City that same year from lung cancer, age 63.