Sterling Hayden

He was the original Hollywood hippie... a rebel with a cause.  His motivations for being an actor were all mercenary.  The more money he could earn, the bigger boats he could buy and the more he could take to sea.  It was the only place that made any sense to him.  On the water you learn the ropes and obey the rules.  Failure to do so can mean your last voyage.  It was simple and easy to understand.  

He didn't seem to have that full of an understanding in the rest of his life.  His five marriages to three women were often problematic.  He detested acting from his first day on a movie set and it never subsided.  Never for one day in his early life did he think of becoming an actor.  After he became one-- and I think a good one-- he didn't give much thought to it then either.  He was never much interested in making friends.  He just wanted to know where the lunch wagon was parked and when it was time to go home.  

There were times after he'd made a name for himself that he didn't return from sailing adventures in time for filming.  Sometimes the weather made him tardy but he was also sometimes reluctant to snap out of the dream-like state that sailing put him in.  Some future contracts would forbid him to sail for the length of the filming.  Hayden hated that.

He would always consider himself to be a seaman first, a writer second and always just a citizen of the world.  He never considered calling himself an actor.  He resisted being a glamour boy and actually cared very little about his looks.  Looking at all the pictures here shows a wide spectrum.

Born in 1926 in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, he and his mother and stepfather lived in coastal towns all along the Atlantic.  He found the harbors in each city and became a frequent visitor, soaking up all the colorful tales he could.  His love of the sea was immediate and intense and would last his entire life.  

When he could no longer stand hanging out on docks and sitting in the sand and wondering when (not if) he would grab some of the glory, he quit school at 16 and hired on as a mate on a schooner.  He worked as a fisherman off Newfoundland and was a fireman on vessels that made 11 trips to Cuba.  He was unconcerned where voyages took him.  Never particularly interested in the world's glamour spots, he just wanted to be aboard ship... sailing, working, cleaning, maybe a little drinking.  It wasn't even about fun... more about feeling whole.

By age 22 he was a ship's captain (cross that off the bucket list) in the Caribbean and earned a master's license and worked on various vessels in trips around the world.  Good as it all was he craved owning his own boat.  Since he had little money, he listened to friends and took up modeling as a means to an end.  He was embarrassed to hear talk of his blond handsomeness and imposing height (6'5").  The ladies got woozy over his deep voice.  He was shy and compliments made it worse.   He had no admiration for his new profession but it was easy, good money and would provide more free time to go to sea, something he'd never have in an 9-5 office job. 

In the late 30's the tall, handsome, blond seaman was in a race off the coast of Massachusetts and his photo was taken which ended up on a magazine cover.  Paramount Pictures saw it and was certain they'd found a new leading man.  He was in an emotional state of disarray when he signed a seven-year contract.  I was completely lost, ignorant, nervous.  I was so lost then I didn't think to analyze it.  This is nuts, he said, but damn, it's pleasant.  The $250-a-week salary was astronomical.  I had only one goal... to get $5,000.  I knew where there was a schooner and then I'd haul ass.  To get him started, Paramount trumpeted Hayden as either The Most Beautiful Man in the Movies or The Beautiful Blond Viking God.

He was teamed with beautiful, British blonde Madeleine Carroll in his first two films, both in 1941, Virginia and Bahama Passage.  Both were certainly colorful but neither caused much critical excitement.  Privately, there was much excitement because in 1942 they married.  

The first Mrs. Hayden, Madeleine Carroll

Shortly after their four-year marriage began Hayden joined the Marines as a private and when he came out in 1945, he was a captain.  He was trained in guerrilla warfare, joining the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) and spent much of his time in and around Yugoslavia.  He ran a fishing boat that rescued downed pilots and aided communist partisans.  He would earn a Silver Star.  One might wonder if we know everything Hayden was up to because suspicion arises when one considers he joined the Marines under the name John Hamilton and maintained it throughout his service.  Who does that?

After returning to Hollywood, actress Karen Morley recruited him to join the Communist Party.  While he confused his sentiment for the Yugoslavs with joining the party, he stuck with them for several years, despite often being at odds with their doctrines and dictates.  Apparently his main activities concerned working with unions and throwing some influence toward writers. 

He returned to films as one of four flying brothers for the U.S. Mail Service in 1947's Blaze of Noon (William Holden, Sonny Tufts and Johnny Sands are the others).  It's no great shakes but still fun.

Also in 1947 he married non-pro Betty Ann de Noon and they did so three times (and divorced) before the end of the 1950's.  I know her name primarily because it was always in the papers, usually on child custody issues.  Boy, did they battle.  

Years later I saw Manhandled (1949), a film noir, I determined to catch up on his work.  After I saw him in a number of westerns and realized he also did noir, I was hooked.  Real fame came to him after he made The Asphalt Jungle (1950). The John Huston-directed and cowritten noir is a heist movie with Hayden as an ill-fated small-time hood.  If anyone doubted his ability to act, it certainly was erased when this came out.

The same could be said for the little-seen Journey into Light (1951) where he plays an embittered minister who turns away from the church after his wife's suicide and he ends up on skid row.  Dark to be sure, the real-seaman who claimed to hate making movies sure could settle down and deliver.

Never happier than when he was on a boat.

By the early 50's the Red Scare had come to America and it certainly permeated Hollywood.  Hayden was nervous as many were but hoped he'd go unnoticed since his interest had more or less faded by this point.  He was already lamenting that joining the party was one of the dumbest things I ever did.

But he was called up and to his deep regret he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and confirmed names of people he knew to be communists.  He would later say it was the one thing in my life that I am categorically ashamed of.  He would say so until the day he died and wrote extensively on it in his autobiography.

Having read so many biographies and autobiographies of actors, writers, directors and others who were communists, former communists or who ratted out others who were, I found that most  were snubbed by Hollywood in some way.  But it seems to me that  Hayden escaped that route and that he seemed to work as much as he wanted.

In thinking about it again while researching this article, I gave his career another look and gained a new prospective.  On the one hand we needn't feel sorry for Sterling Hayden.  His most prolific decade was the 1950's.  In examining the work, however, his leading man status was tarnished and pretty much stayed that way.  

He still was the lead but in what?  And often he was the second male lead.  And the films were, by and large, B-westerns with titles such as Flaming Feather, Denver and the Rio Grande, Hellgate, Kansas Pacific, Arrow in the Dust, Timberjack, Shotgun and The Iron Sheriff.  

He himself said I started at the top and worked my way down.  Perhaps that is due to the communist business and/or maybe it's because he told everyone on all his movies how much he hated being an actor.  And hey, let's not forget all the unsavory newspaper coverage on his battles at home.

Another clue that the career was slipping is when those longtime, older actresses whose careers may not have quite the old sheen want a certain actor as their leading men.  They didn't care to be  overshadowed by male stars as big as they were.  (Frankly those big male stars didn't want them either... they wanted someone 25-30 years younger.)

So Hayden became one of those.  He more than complemented big female egos with his giant frame, still handsome face, deep voice and commanding ways.  He would work with Bette Davis in The Star (1952) where he played an actor who didn't want to be one (hmmm), with Jane Wyman in the sentimental Edna Ferber tale So Big, an unusual film for him, and opposite Ann Sheridan in the humor-filled western Take Me to Town (both 1953), with Crawford in Johnny Guitar (1954) and opposite Barbara Stanwyck in a sobering noir, Crime of Passion (1957).  As you may expect, I liked them all and him in them.

Despite seeing him, I'm sure, in every B western he made and remembering none of them particularly except Johnny Guitar, he seemed better used, exceptional really, in noirs.  His generally brooding nature, tough talk, booming voice, icy stares and an air of doom that seemed to be hovering over his head made him ideal for the genre.

Crime Wave (1953) was a fine noir that should have had a wider audience.  Hayden is a reformed parolee who is sought out by former cellmates who are on the run.  Dancer Gene Nelson was one of the latter and Hayden played the parolee.  

Hayden's work from 1954 seems especially memorable.  And I say having a sense of how many forgettable films he made.  He, of course, would say all his films were forgettable.  He was fifth-billed as Sir Galwain in the silly but occasionally fun Prince Valiant.  Johnny Guitar ultimately brought him his most lasting fame, the thought of which probably made him want to tie himself to an anchor and drop off the side of his schooner.

Suddenly is a gripping hostage drama giving Frank Sinatra full dramatic rein as a thug holding Hayden and family captive in their home.  The two actors played well off one another and probably enjoyed talking of their mutual contempt for Hollywood. 

Naked Alibi is a favorite Hayden noir due mainly to the sultry presence of Gloria Grahame.  He is a cop tracking down a killer and she is the killer's songstress-girlfriend.  She, of course, was the queen of noir and together they were hot on that big screen... and apparently off as well.

Hayden apparently didn't get on so well with director Stanley Kubrick during the making of The Killing (1956) but it didn't disrupt their turning it into one of the classic noirs.  Not all that unlike Asphalt Jungle, this time it concerned a racetrack robbery and all the personal stories leading up to it.  He gave his usual solid performance of the leader who plans to make this his last heist.  I gotta say, though, that the true acting plums are provided by character actors Elisha Cook and Marie Windsor as the bickering married couple  It is a plot that is often duplicated but rarely as excitingly told.

Appreciate this,  He rarely smiled.

By 1958 Hayden and de Noon had been divorced for the third time and he set up plans to take his four children with him on his schooner, The Wanderer, for a voyage to Scandinavia.  Unfortunately and to his utter fury, she filed a suit to prevent him from taking them.  He needed money to fight her and pay for those divorces and a protracted child custody battle.  So he signed on for a costarring role in 1959's A Summer Place and then backed out and Arthur Kennedy substituted for him.

He suddenly became financially able to make the trip because he received an advance for a proposed documentary he was going to make about the voyage.  So against court order, he left with his kids anyway.  In his mind his documentary would be a great success and he could safely give the final finger to acting and make it as a respected documentary film-maker.  Alas, the documentary was never made. He had an angry wife and court system railing at him and one day he would be sued for the return of advance.    

Some good news occurred when he married for the last time in 1960 to another non-professional who presented him with two more sons.  He settled down enough to sit down and write an autobiography in 1963, Wanderer, to great acclaim.   

As it turned out throughout the 1960's he would only work on four projects, two of which were for television.  One of the four, however, remains one of his most famous and respected roles, that of the crazed Air Force general who sets off a nuclear Armageddon in Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).   It is a brilliant satire directed and co-written by Kubrick.  Thankfully the rift was mended enough to come together on another top film.

By the 1970's Hayden was older and decidedly more grizzled-looking, clearly a man who spent a lot of time at sea.  His weathered appearance could not be dismissed on the screen either.  His roles became smaller while one film became one of the biggies of all time, The Godfather (1972).  His corrupt police captain's demise is one of the film's most memorable scenes.

Shocker!  Hayden actually liked his work in Robert Altman's detective mystery The Long Goodbye (1973).  He even had some nice things to say about the film itself and the director.  He plays an alcoholic novelist (channeling his best Hemingway) who is the subject of a missing person's investigation.  It was played with a deft comical touch, making it one of my favorite Hayden films.

Money issues were compounded by tax problems and the actor fled the country... by sea, of course.  He was not able to accept Steven Spielberg's offer to play the crusty shark-hunter Quint in 1975's Jaws.  Who could not understand why Spielberg offered him the role... typecasting as I see it?  Robert Shaw, of course, was a most worthy replacement.

The epic story of 1900 (1976) was so long it was often shown in two parts in many countries.  Bernardo Bertolucci examines Italy's social spectrum by centering on the lives of two friends, a landowner and a peasant.  Hayden plays the father of the peasant among an all-star international cast including Robert DeNiro, Gerald Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini, Donald Sutherland, Alida Valli and Burt Lancaster. 

Also in 1976 his novel Voyage was published, to more acclaim.  Few disputed this was a man of the sea, first and foremost.  Thankfully it was a big-seller because Hayden needed to see some cash.  He hadn't worked much, still spent a great deal of time at sea and had a young family to raise.  It might have been his best marriage but she still had to deal with a wanderlust that the other wives didn't.

He was back in the U.S. to collect a paycheck to play the title role in King of the Gypsies (1978), a gripping, romanticized and entertaining look into a lifestyle that remains relatively unknown to many.  Hayden rules a gypsy clan and plans to turn over the reins to his grandson (Eric Roberts), skipping his mean son (Judd Hirsch) and causing a furor.  It would be his last starring role in a 
good film.  Roberts allegedly said Hayden was often loaded on hash.  In 1981 he would be arrested for possession of it at Toronto Airport.

He had a brief turn as a big corporate mucky-muck (now that was acting) in the revenge comedy 9 to 5 (1980) and otherwise did television or movies no one has ever heard of.  Maybe he burned them.

In the 1960s Hayden discovered Sausalito, California.  He rented one of the pilot houses on the ferryboat Berkeley.  It was where he spent a great deal of time writing his autobiography.  In 1969 he bought a canal barge in the Netherlands and moved it to Paris where he resided for several years while also sharing a home with his family in Connecticut.  He also maintained the apartment in Sausalito where he died at age 70 of prostate cancer.

To be fair, he turned out to be a B movie actor and maybe because he was so good at it and I saw most of his movies, he was always a little A to me.  I think I always knew by reading those movie magazines that he loved sailing and hated acting.  I think a quote of his was very telling.  When he completed his part in a film, he said to his producers... when you took me, who did you really want for the part?


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A good 50's film