Martin Ritt (March 2, 1914 –
December 8, 1990) was an American
director, actor, and
playwright who worked in both film and theater.
He was
born in New York
City
.
Early Career and influences
Ritt originally attended and played football for
Elon College in North Carolina. The stark
contrasts of the depression-era South, against his New York City
upbringing, instilled in him a passion for expressing the struggles
of inequality, which is apparent in the films he directed.
After
leaving St. John's University
, Ritt found work with a theater group, and began
acting in plays. His first performance was as
Crown
in
Porgy and Bess. After his
performance drew favorable reviews, Ritt concluded that he could
"only be happy in the theater." Ritt then went to work with the
Roosevelt administration's New Deal
Works Progress Administration
as a playwright for the
Federal
Theater Project, a federal government-funded theater support
program.
With work hard to find and the Depression in full effect, many WPA
theater performers, directors, and writers became heavily
influenced by the radical left and Communism, and Ritt was no
exception. Years later, Ritt would state that he had never been a
member of the Communist Party, although he considered himself a
leftist and found common ground with some Marxist principles.
Ritt moved on from the WPA to the Theater of Arts, then to the
Group Theater of New York
City. It was at the Group Theater that he met
Elia Kazan. Kazan cast Ritt as an understudy to
his play
Golden Boy. Ritt’s social
consciousness and political views continued to mature during his
time with the Group Theater, and would influence the social and
political viewpoint that Ritt would later express in his
films.
During
World War II, Ritt served with
the
U.S. Army Air Forces and appeared as an
actor in the Air Forces' Broadway
play and
film Winged
Victory. During the Broadway run of the play, Ritt
directed a production of
Sidney
Kingsley's play
Yellow
Jack, using actors from
Winged Victory and
rehearsing between midnight and 3 a.m. after
Winged
Victory performances.
The play had a brief Broadway run and was
performed again in Los
Angeles
when the Winged Victory troupe moved there
to make the film version.
Television and the Blacklist
After working as a playwright with the
Works Progress Administration,
acting on stage, and directing hundreds of plays, Ritt became a
successful television director.
In 1952, Ritt was acting, directing, and producing teleplays and
television programs when he was caught up by the Red Scare and
investigations of communist influence in Hollywood and the movie
industry. Although not directly named by the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC), Ritt was mentioned in an
anti-communist newsletter called
Counterattack, published
by American Business Consultants, a group formed by three former
FBI agents.
Counterattack alleged that Ritt had helped Communist
Party-affiliated locals of the New York-based Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union stage their annual show. Also cited was a
show he had directed for
Russian War
Relief at Madison Square Garden. His associations with the
Group Theater, founded on a Russian model, and the Federal Theater
Project (which Congress had stopped funding in 1939 because of what
some anti-New Deal congressmen claimed to be a left-wing political
tone to some productions), were also known to HUAC. He was finally
blacklisted by the television industry
when a Syracuse grocer charged him with donating money to Communist
China in 1951.
Career in Hollywood
Unable to work in the television industry, Ritt returned to the
theater for several years. By 1956, the Red Scare had decreased in
intensity, and he turned to film directing. His first film as
director was
Edge of the
City, an important film for Ritt and an opportunity to
give voice to his experiences. Based on the story of a union dock
worker who faces intimidation by a corrupt boss, the film is a
virtual laundry list of themes influencing Ritt over the years:
corruption, racism, intimidation of the individual by the group,
defense of the individual against government oppression, and most
notable, the redeeming quality of mercy and the value of shielding
others from evil, including sacrificing one's own reputation,
career, and even life if necessary.
Ritt went on to direct 25 more films.
Ritt's 1964 film
The Outrage,
is an American retelling of the
Kurosawa
film
Rashomon, and stars
Laurence Harvey,
Paul Newman,
Claire
Bloom,
Edward G. Robinson,
Howard Da Silva, and
William Shatner. The film uses the
Western genre to tell the same story as the
Japanese movie. Like the original
Kurosawa
film, this film contrasts the stories of various witnesses to a
crime. Shatner and Robinson listen to four different versions of a
rape/murder, told alternatively by Harvey, Bloom, Newman and Da
Silva. Harvey is the one murdered, but tells his story through an
Indian medicine man. Each story is a biased opinion of what
happened, and the movie never resolves which story is true (if
any). Like the
Kurosawa original, Ritt's
film is an example of
nonlinear
storytelling.
In 1976, Ritt made one of the first dramatic feature films about
the blacklist,
The Front,
starring
Woody Allen.
The Front
satirizes the use of
front men, men and women who (either
as a personal favor or in exchange for payment) allowed their names
to be listed as writers for scripts actually authored by
blacklisted writers. The film was based on the experiences of, and
written by, one of Ritt's closest friends, screenwriter
Walter Bernstein, who was blacklisted for
eight years beginning in 1950.
In 1987, Ritt again utilized extensive
flashback and
nonlinear storytelling techniques in the film
Nuts, a film about a strong-willed,
high-class call girl (
Barbra
Streisand) who kills a customer in self-defense. To avoid
scandal, her parents try to have her declared mentally incompetent.
Not helping matters is that she is distrustful of everybody,
including her court-appointed attorney (
Richard Dreyfuss), and is disruptive during
her court hearings. The movie is based on the
stage play by the same name, written by
Tom Topor. The film was considered a box office
disappointment in relation to its budget, although it did not
actually lose money.
Ritt died
at age 76 in Santa Monica, California
on December 8, 1990.
Selected films
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