After his return to New York from Moscow in 1935, Lardner was hired as a cub reporter for the
Daily Mirror. In less than a year, he was lured away from his $25-a-week job to earn $40-a-week in the publicity department of
David O. Selznick's Hollywood film studio,
Selznick International Pictures. The line was enthusiastically accepted by Selznick, and would be reused in subsequent remakes of
A Star Is Born. Although the film's co-writer
Dorothy Parker was unable to persuade Selznick to grant Lardner and Schulberg a
screen credit for their work, Lardner began to get more writing assignments. He soon made another uncredited contribution to an ending, this time with
George Oppenheimer for the 1937
screwball comedy,
Nothing Sacred. In 1938, Lardner joined the "
B movie" unit at
Warner Bros. and gained additional screenplay experience. He collaborated with British writer
Ian McLellan Hunter on two small features for
RKO,
Meet Dr. Christian (1939) and
The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940). Lardner's big break came when he and
Michael Kanin wrote
Woman of the Year (1942), a film which won the
Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. That success vaulted Lardner's weekly salary from $250 to $1000. Among his next assignments, he made uncredited improvements to
Laura (1944) (he was asked by director
Otto Preminger to sharpen the dialogue of
Clifton Webb's character, Waldo Lydecker), and co-wrote the films
Cloak and Dagger (1946) and
Forever Amber (1947). He also worked on an animated
short film,
Brotherhood of Man (1946), that promoted racial tolerance. During these years in Hollywood, Lardner continued his left-wing activism. He helped raise funds for the
Republican cause in the
Spanish Civil War. He was involved in organizing anti-
fascist demonstrations. The death of his brother James—who volunteered for the
Abraham Lincoln Battalion and was killed in action in Spain in 1938—was said to have deepened Lardner's leftist loyalties. He meanwhile was part of the Hollywood section of the CPUSA and attended
Marxist meetings as often as 4-5 nights a week. He joined groups such as the
Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Hollywood Writers Mobilization Against the War. He also served on the board of the
Screen Writers Guild. Despite his radical politics, Lardner remained a well-compensated employee in the film industry. In 1947 he became one of the highest paid screenwriters when he signed a contract with
20th Century Fox at $2,000 a week (equivalent to $ a week in 2025).
Blacklisting , charged with
contempt of Congress, after surrendering to the
U.S. Marshal, December 10, 1947.
(L-R): Ring Lardner Jr.,
John Howard Lawson,
Alvah Bessie,
Albert Maltz,
Herbert Biberman,
Lester Cole,
Samuel Ornitz,
Edward Dmytryk,
Robert Adrian Scott. After the
Second World War, the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launched hearings to investigate "communist influences in the
motion picture industry", and the injection of subversive propaganda into films. In September 1947, HUAC subpoenaed over 40 producers, directors, writers, and actors. More than half were deemed "friendly witnesses" who agreed to cooperate with the committee.
Nineteen were labeled "unfriendly" because they opposed the committee's right to conduct the inquiry. Eleven of the nineteen (ten Americans plus the German-born
Bertolt Brecht) were compelled to testify in October 1947. " stand with their attorneys outside district court in
Washington, D.C. before arraignment on
contempt of Congress charges. The ten were charged for refusing to cooperate with the
House Un-American Activities Committee.
(Front row, L-R): Herbert Biberman, attorney Martin Popper, attorney
Robert W. Kenny,
Albert Maltz and
Lester Cole.
(Second row, L-R): Dalton Trumbo,
John Howard Lawson,
Alvah Bessie and
Samuel Ornitz.
(Top row, L-R): Ring Lardner Jr.,
Edward Dmytryk and
Adrian Scott. Unlike most of his colleagues, Lardner was not given a set date for his testimony, but was told to wait until further notice. He was in a Washington, D.C. hotel room on October 29, listening to the HUAC proceedings on the radio, when Committee Chairman
J. Parnell Thomas suddenly called Lardner to take the stand. His attorney
Robert Kenny promised to produce his client the next morning. As Lardner recalled in a 1997 interview: A month after his testimony, Lardner was fired by 20th Century Fox. He was branded—along with
Alvah Bessie,
Herbert Biberman,
Albert Maltz,
Adrian Scott,
Dalton Trumbo,
Lester Cole,
Edward Dmytryk,
Samuel Ornitz and
John Howard Lawson—one of the "
Hollywood Ten" who refused to answer questions about their political affiliations. The ten men claimed that under the
First Amendment's right of free speech, their political beliefs and affiliations were their own private affair. HUAC and the courts disagreed. All ten were found guilty of
contempt of Congress, fined $1,000, and sentenced to between 6–12 months in federal prison. After their appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court was dismissed in May 1950, Lardner began serving what would be a nine-and-a-half-month stint at the
Federal Correctional Institution in
Danbury, Connecticut. His fellow inmates included Lester Cole and, ironically, J. Parnell Thomas who had been convicted of
fraud. Upon release from prison, Lardner was
blacklisted by the film studios. He and his family fled Hollywood, initially to Mexico and then to New York. He worked on a novel,
The Ecstasy of Owen Muir, published in England in 1954. Starting in 1955, he and another blacklistee, his former RKO writing partner Ian McLellan Hunter, used
pseudonyms (Lardner's was Oliver Skene) to write episodes for three British TV series:
The Adventures of Robin Hood,
The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, and
The Buccaneers. The series were produced by
Hannah Weinstein, an American expatriate living in England. For several years, the script meetings with Weinstein in England could only be attended by Hunter, who had managed to obtain a passport despite his political activities. == Personal life ==