Always Lead With Your Heart—Alan Ladd

If Alan Ladd were in your shoes, two things are highly probable. One: his feet would hurt, since you don’t wear the same size. The other: he’d make a few minor changes around the house, this otherwise delightful place you live in.

Knock down the west wall, for instance, and put in a picture window. Turn the two front rooms into an L-shaped living area. Put a jog in the driveway.

Furthermore, you might do well to listen to him. The chances are excellent that he’s right.

His preoccupation with interior and exterior design has led to a fairly widespread belief that in the event he foresakes films, he would turn to building—and very likely succeed in the business, particularly if he specialized in ranch dwellings.

Among those who share this opinion is the foremost authority on Ladd, his wife and ex officio biographer, Sue Carol. While it is not quite conceivable to Sue that Alan would leave pictures any way other than feet first, she occasionally joins with her worrier husband in the thought that there is no such thing as a pat hand.

Alan habitually sees disaster riding up over the nearest hill, a chap on a black horse with a dirty look, and a whip labeled “A. Ladd.” Sue doesn’t see it, but she’s willing to talk eventualities, gloomy and implausible as they may sound.

There are the chickens, for example. On the Hidden Valley ranch, Alsulana Acres, the Ladds are pretty successful chicken farmers. Self-sustaining, and that’s pretty successful. The chickens’ lay the eggs, the eggs go to Chasen’s restaurant or the Paramount commissary or elsewhere, the proceeds return to the Ladds, and the Ladds to the chickens.

In his younger days, Alan demonstrated a talent for flipping hamburgers, writing newspaper copy, and swimming fifty yards in a remarkably short time. But the bent for construction and design might reasonably prove to be the very thing to support a retired actor who unaccountably finds himself stoned out of the corral, should such an unlikely thing ever happen.

Alan’s ability manifests itself in two ways; affirmatively—Alsulana Acres is his baby, including much of the manual work—and in the form of muttered critiques, all on the constructive side.

To illustrate that, let us say that Sue and Alan are spending an evening at a friend’s place in Holmby Hills, a posh Los Angeles neighborhood where the Ladds likewise maintain a residence. Pretty soon there is a murmuring from Alan, low at first like a dynamo heard from a distance, intended only for Sue, then clear and distinct, as his critical faculties break their bonds. What tormented Alan this night was the presence of a too small window looking out on a sweeping view. He choked manfully for a while, then expounded his theory. Sue gave him The Look, as she usually does at that particular point, and said through a bright, stony smile that yes, dear, but has it occurred to you that perhaps they like it this way? With the overtone suggestion that Sue and Alan would have a little talk on the way home. Alan subsided, but he had made his point. They should be kicking the wall in by now.

First of Alan’s loves is Sue and kids. Unlike many movie dads, he hopes the kids will act.

It’s not always like that. On the more disciplined evenings, Alan manages to restrain himself until they’ve left. But then the redesigning gains momentum. In all Seriousness, this could serve as his backstop. He’s good at it.

No one, not even Sue Ladd, is able to account in whole for her husband’s recurrent spasms of anxiety, his suspicion that he is astride a skittish mount that might throw him at any time. Although he constantly gives thanks for his success and blessings, he is always mindful of the fears and anxieties of the depression years.

Alan Ladd is at the moment in the full flush of his career; in the opinion of many, he is the most truly famed and entrenched star of his time. This is not to say he will not go still farther onward and upward with his craft. But for the most of his profession, even those in his own giddy bracket, what he is right now represents the end of the rainbow.

But one night not long ago, shortly after the Ladds’ return from their European odyssey, Alan stared moodily at the floor of the main house at the ranch and declared himself out of a job.

His position was sound to the extent that he wasn’t working. It was unsound in view of twenty-seven scripts piled in a corner, awaiting only his okay.

“Alan,” Sue Ladd told a friend recently, “starts worrying any time a pile of prospective stories gets down to the point where he can see over it. I can hear him now. ‘Well—looks like they don’t want me any more.’ Then he moves the furniture around. Getting ready for his new career.”

Second comes his ranch (and the animals). “But to have it, I have to leave it,” he mourns.

But she speaks thus tenderly, not mockingly. It is well known to all Ladd’s intimates, and to his wife best of all, that having to leave pictures could break his heart. His profession, by most accounts, is the third of Ladd’s four fundamental loves. The first, naturally, is Sue and the children. The second is the ranch, an inseparable part of his being: And the fourth is Hollywood—not the generic term meaning any place in Southern California where films are being made, but the geographic segment of Los Angeles called Hollywood.

“When I die,” he told Sue, “bury me ere Not too far from Hollywood and Vine.

THERE IS NO PART of motion pictures that does not fascinate Ladd, no reward from the industry for which he is not profoundly grateful. He began as a grip at Warners’ and he still carries his card. He wants to act as long as he can, but if that wanes, there will be directing and production. He formed his own company now, and quite recently bought his first story, a business about a cop framed into jail who comes out of the jug feeling mighty vengeful about it. The children have some of this corporation; it’s part of the longrange trust system by which he has pledged himself to their security.

Ladd will play the cop. He is well adapted to roles conveying a sense of smoldering violence. But the cop is not a nasty sort. Ladd thinks it would be impolitic of him at this stage to play any more killer roles. His first spectacular hit was the role of Raven in This Gun For Hire. Raven was a fellow with no moral flaw except that the prices he charged for killing total strangers seemed to some of his employers outrageous. Ladd now tends to regard Raven as no worse than a mixed-up kid, but would not essay a repetition. Meanwhile, he’s up for a co-starring stint with June Allyson, another worry-ridden itinerant with whom Alan has a lot in common. Ladd was as reluctant to quit Paramount and the security it represented as June was to quit MGM. Both were reasonably sure they would starve to death and both dreaded breaking off established ties of friendship.

Ladd’s return home from his first day at Warners’ (or his first since the grip period) was marked by a surprising exchange with his wife.

“You know something?” he told Sue triumphantly. “They were wonderful to me! Everybody was swell!”

“Well, for pity’s sake,” said Sue. “Why shouldn’t they be? Are you a monster?”

“No, but the grips and everybody!” crowed Mr. L. “They remembered me. What do you think of that? They thought they’d stick me with some of the old grip language, but they couldn’t. And believe me, that’s a special language!”

“So what were you scared of?”

“What was I scared of? Everything, I guess. For all I knew, they’d treat me like an actor.”

Ladd’s friends think he is mortally sensitive to any change of “star behavior.” He is a warm and friendly man, the kind of man who, if he were not himself a star, would regard with contempt and hostility a star who employed overbearing behavior. So he thinks and feels from the opposite point of view. This lends him a curiously engaging facade, which in essense is the absence of any facade whatever. It is not at all the same as the professional Regular Guy. A star bending over backward to be one of the boys is apt to be an embarrassing spectacle. But Ladd is simply Ladd, neither more nor less. Success has changed Alan, yes—but all for the better in things like confidence, poise, and happiness. His innate decency has never been touched.

Evening comes to Hidden Valley like a benediction. Evening comes to almost every place like a benediction, but in Hidden Valley, it really puts its back into it. That is nice for Alan and Sue Ladd because they have a ringside seat—the ranch terrace that sits a brisk hundred feet above the valley floor and looks away at the pasture land and gathering shadows. Back to your right as you face the valley is the stable area and the chickens and the main house. Right behind you is the barbecue pit and the rumpus pavilion, and the pavilion rafter on which one night Macdonald Carey knocked himself cold as a well-kept salmon. Carey had just got word by phone that his dog had had a fine litter. He jumped for joy. The rafter stopped him in midflight, right square on the noggin. Carey settled to the ground like a tent when the center-pole is pulled. Ladd got him to a hospital very fast indeed, and they tatted a record number of stitches in Carey’s skull. The place on the rafter is now known as Carey’s corner.

YOU THINK of a ranch somehow as rolling land and vast acreage, but Alsulana is not. It is snug between the macadam road and the hill behind it. Mostly it’s a wonderful spot to watch the neighbors break their necks ranching.

Ladd sat on the terrace in denims and a bright red shirt, talking to an old friend, a photographer. The remarkable timbre of his voice was strong and resonant, perfectly audible from twenty feet. He rose to greet a guest, turning, and there was no change from five years ago, ten, twelve.

This was going to be a barbecue; a few friends, neighbors, relatives. A couple of studio workers, some people from Chicago. A name-dropper would have starved.

There are, as you know, four children: Alana, David Alan, Carol Lee and Alan, Jr.—Laddie. Presently two of them appeared on the road below, horseback, in a brisk gallop. Then a car came around the bend and passed them. They did not slow. Ladd walked to the edge of the embankment. “Okay!” he shouted. “That’s all! Get off the horses now!” He wasn’t being tough. He was rather frightened. Plainly, the kids had been taught to rein in when cars pass. He came back to the group. “They’ll remember now. It was time for them to knock off anyhow. You been up to the house? Want a sweater? It’ll be chilly pretty soon.” He called to the people in the pavilion. “Anyone for sweaters? I’m going up to the house anyway!”

The house is the concentric heart of the Ladd family’s being. It’s comfortable, warm, handsome and unpretentious. Here Sue and Alan sit up nights talking, sometimes till four in the morning, Sometimes till dawn. “And I’ll never figure just what we talk about. I guess that’s the best part of it.’ About pictures, anyway. The future. The present. Not often the past. Here Alan tries to perpetuate his self-delusion that he likes to get off by himself, away from it all. It never ceases to amuse Sue. By eight at the latest, he is prone to jerk nervously in his chair and snap his fingers. “Wonder what George is doing?” He rises and takes a turn around the room. “Or how about calling Craig and Lila? They should be home.” There is a report in uninformed quarters that Ladd is shy and withdrawn. He is not. With friends, he is gregarious and outgoing. It is true that he is quieter than Sue, but then, most people are. That is not an observation, it is a quote from Sue, who takes life, career and family seriously but does not take herself too seriously. “Alan,” she reported recently, “has to make his conversation against overwhelming difficulties. I think he does very well, all things considered. He got twelve words in edgewise a week ago Tuesday.”

THE STEAKS began to get themselves barbecued, with a manful assist from Ladd. Sue was doing service duty with appetizers. Tacos. Best tacos ever. Everybody (maybe twenty guests) was very happy. Down in the valley now it was dark. Alan came over and sat on a bench.

The children came and went. They are courteous, charming, beautifully raised. “One thing,” Ladd said when they had gone, “I can’t dig, and that’s these picture people who say they wouldn’t let their kids go into pictures. Me, I want the kids in pictures—if that’s what they want. Carol Lee likes the idea, I think. She switched her major at UCLA to theatre.” That’s where she met fiancé Dick Anderson—perhaps her biggest interest in theatre.

Sue bit into her taco. It exploded. Tacos always do. “There’s talk of a picture part for David,” she said. He’s the youngest. Seven. “Alan’s all for it. Even badgering the producer. Alan thinks the younger he starts, the better. Alan thinks all the children should begin working early—maybe because he did. Make them realize that’s what life is, mostly. He can’t understand why they’re not eager to.”

There was a lively interruption at this point. A man ran up a tree. Nobody ever did understand exactly why. He was attached to the ranch.

“He’ll break his neck,” muttered Alan. He ran down to the tree and stood beneath it. “Come on down!” he called. “You’ll break your neck!” The man didn’t pay much attention. “Come on down from there!” yelled Alan. After a while, the man came down and Alan walked back to the party. Immediately the man ran up the tree again. Ladd sighed. Pretty soon after that, a truck came. The man jumped from lower limb of the tree into the back of the truck and was driven away. That’s absolutely what happened. Later we found out he was trying to fix the lights.

At dinner, Sue looked around her and said: “You know something? We couldn’t afford this place when we bought it. I’m not sure we can afford it now. But there’s one thing I’m even surer of. Sometimes you’ve got to lead with your heart. The house was burnt down, you know, when we bought it. All you see here is Alan’s labor of love.”

“Not quite all,” said Alan. “The masonry on that service bar over there, that’s a funny thing. The fellow who did it came for ten days and stayed for two years. The way it happened—”

“Alan!” somebody shouted. “Where’d you hide the Worcestershire?”

“Just a minute,” said Alan. “Pardon me.”

That’s probably a good story about the mason. It never got told. Alan had something else on his mind when he came back.

“I was just thinking,” he said. “There’s a catch to all this. The ranch, I mean. You’ll find the same catch in a lot of actor’s homes. I love the place. For me, it’s the beginning and the end and the middle. But I can live in it only on one condition, and that’s that I spend most of my time not living in it. You know what I mean? Picture making pays the upkeep. At least, it makes the ranch possible. But where do pictures send me? Europe. Banff. Locations fifty or a hundred miles away, it doesn’t matter. Even if ’m working on a home lot, it’s not practical to commute from out here, so we live in Holmby. This is strictly between pictures. So that’s the price. To have it, I have to leave it.”

But there is no doubt he will leave it whenever he must. Ladd knows about prices. He learned the hard way. He ran a hamburger stand, missed many meals when he was younger, and nourished himself on jelly doughnuts and pop—the thought of which still gags him. You read about stars who had it rough, and some of them aren’t kidding, but Alan Ladd? In spades!

IT WAS GETTING on toward eleven now, an appalling hour for Hidden Valley, and the guests were leaving. Sue went up to the hen house and began doling eggs in all directions. The lights along the valley were dwindling, and the air was sharp, like mountain air. Ladd stood on the porch of the main house and looked at it all.

“Got to get back to town tomorrow,” he said. “Dubbing at Warners’.” He sounded rather wistful.

“It won’t be long,” said Sue.

“Maybe we can come up for Sunday.”

“Why not?”

“Then what? Turn around and go back again. I don’t know, every time I leave it, its harder. It should get easier, shouldn’t it?”

“Remember what I said at dinner,” said Sue. “It’s what you get for leading with your heart.”

“Okay,” said Alan. “It’s what I get. So I’ll take it. It’s better than not leading at all.”

Well, there’s a catch to every rainbow, a hook on it somewhere. But the Ladds will settle happily for theirs. It seems you can go home again, at that. Simply a matter of understanding the penalty and accepting it.

THE END

—BY JOHN MAYNARD

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1954