Thinking about Sterling Hayden

Perhaps you’ve heard about the release, today, of tens of thousands of top-secret personnel files for the OSS—the WW II forerunner to the CIA. (Newly released files detail early US spy network.)

Naturally, we’ll hear lots about Julia Child’s file. But I wanted to focus on another former agent: character actor Sterling Hayden (1916-1986).

Most will remember him, I suppose, as the actor who played General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. He was a good actor, a terrific screen presence. He did a fair amount of film noire and lots of westerns.

Hayden started out a seaman, but, after nine years at sea, somehow, he switched to modeling and acting, which he hated. According to Wikipedia:

His first film starred Madeleine Carroll, with whom he fell in love and married. But after just two film roles, he left Hollywood to serve as an undercover agent with William J. Donovan's COI office. He remained there after it became the OSS. Hayden also joined the Marines under the name John Hamilton…. His World War II service included running guns through German lines to the Yugoslav partisans and parachuting into fascist Croatia. He won the Silver Star and a commendation from Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito.

His Yugoslavian experience led to his briefly joining the Communist party. According to his IMDb biography,

he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, confessing his brief Communist ties. Ever after regretted this action, holding himself in enormous contempt for what he considered "ratting".

I always assumed that Hayden wasn’t interesting except as an actor and squealer. But a perusal of his biography debunks such notions. He was obviously a complex, literate man. Loved sailing. Acted to pay for that.

IMDb lists some Hayden quotations:

• [On his films] Bastards, most of them, conceived in contempt of life and spewn out onto screens across the world with noxious ballyhoo; saying nothing, contemptuous of the truth, sullen, and lecherous.

• [On confessing his Communist ties] I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing . . . It's the one thing in my life that I'm categorically ashamed of.

• [After shooting Johnny Guitar (1954)] There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money

• [On acting] You don't need talent to star in a motion picture. All you need is some intelligence AND the ability to work freely in front of the lens. Why do I always freeze? I went through the war. I jumped out of bombers. I played kick-the-can with E-boats when all we had was a lousy 40-foot dragger with six machine guns and a top speed of six knots. Yet whenever I get a closeup in a nice warm studio, I curl up and die.

• [On the Yugoslavian Partisans] It seems to me the people in the [Communist] Party not only know what's going on in the world but they have the guts to determine a course of action . . . In Yugoslavia . . . when the going got rough and it was time to be counted, it was the Communists who stood up and fought.

• [On director Stanley Kubrick] By the time of [Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)] [Kubrick] had become very human -- maybe it was the power that came with successes like Lolita (1962) -- for he is now very strong. My first day was torture. I was nervous, scared, did 48 takes. I expected Kubrick to explode but instead he was gentle, calmed me, convinced me that the fear in my eyes would help the character.

• [On director Bernardo Bertolucci] Bertolucci is not like most directors I've worked with; there's something beautiful, crazy, special about him. He's funny, too. He operates like a writer. No one knows what he's going to do. Several million dollars are riding on him alone. He has the power, he goes ahead, upsets those who plan schedules, takes his own time, follows his own genius.

Hayden in Strangelove: "precious bodily fluids" (1964)


Trailer for "Crime Wave"/"The City is Dark" (1954)