Martin Ritt

File:Power-Living-Newspaper-Poster-1937.jpg play for the Federal Theatre Project (1937)]]

Ritt was born to a Jewish family{{cite book | last=Erens | first=Patricia | page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=-v2Di_5ShGMC&q=John%20Stahl&pg=PA392 392] | title= The Jew in American Cinema | isbn=978-0-253-20493-6 | publisher=Indiana University Press | date=August 1988}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uKW4I9cCucwC&q=ritt|first=John W.|last=Conesr|title=Patterns of Bias in Hollywood Movies|pages=88|publisher=Algora Publishing |date=October 8, 2012|isbn=9780875869582}} in Manhattan, the son of immigrant parents. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}

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 Theatre in New York City. There, he met Elia Kazan, who cast Ritt as an understudy to his play Golden Boy. Ritt continued his association with Kazan for well over a decade, later assisting—and sometimes filling in for—Kazan at The Actors Studio.{{cite book | quote=Whenever Kazan had to miss a class for professional reasons, his associate, Martin Ritt, would take over the session. Ritt was thoroughly familiar with Kazan's procedures and with the special talents and shortcomings of each member of the group. | first=David | last=Garfield | title=A Player's Place: The Story of The Actors Studio | url=https://archive.org/details/playersplacestor00garf | url-access=registration | year=1980 | publisher=MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. | location=New York | isbn=0-02-542650-8 | page=[https://archive.org/details/playersplacestor00garf/page/57 57] | chapter=Birth of The Actors Studio: 1947-1950}} He eventually became one of the Studio's few non-performing life members.{{cite book | first=David | last=Garfield | title=A Player's Place: The Story of The Actors Studio | url=https://archive.org/details/playersplacestor00garf | url-access=registration | year=1980 | publisher=MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. | location=New York | isbn=0-02-542650-8 | page=[https://archive.org/details/playersplacestor00garf/page/279 279] | chapter=Appendix: Life Members of The Actors Studio as of January 1980}}

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 am 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.

File:CounterattackMasthead.jpg newsletter]]

After working as a playwright with the WPA, acting on stage, and directing hundreds of plays, Ritt became a successful television director and producer. He produced and directed episodes of Danger, Somerset Maugham TV Theatre (1950–51), Starlight Theatre (1951), and The Plymouth Playhouse (1953).

In 1952, Ritt 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 anticommunist 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. He supported himself for five years by teaching at the Actors Studio.{{cite web | title=The Outrage |first=Rob | last=Nixon | work=TCM | url=https://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/97193 | publisher=Turner Classic Movies | access-date=June 12, 2015}}

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 (1957), 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 incorporates many themes that were to influence Ritt over the years: corruption, racism, intimidation of the individual by the group, defense of the individual against government oppression, and most notably, the redeeming quality of mercy and the value of shielding others from evil, even at the cost of sacrificing one's own reputation, career, or life.

Ritt went on to direct 25 more films. Producer Jerry Wald signed him to direct No Down Payment (1957) with Joanne Woodward. Wald later used Ritt on two adaptations of William Faulkner novels, both with Woodward: The Long, Hot Summer (1958) with Paul Newman, a big hit, and The Sound and the Fury (1959) with Yul Brynner, a flop. In between, he directed The Black Orchid (1958) at Paramount and 5 Branded Women (1960) in Europe.

Ritt directed Paris Blues (1961) with Woodward and Newman. He made one more film with Wald, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962), in which Newman played a supporting role. Ritt and Newman's next collaboration was 1963's Hud, starring Newman as the eponymous character. The film was a major financial success, and both men received Academy Award Nominations. It was also the first of three films that James Wong Howe would shoot for Ritt, and the second film for which he would win an Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography. The duo's fifth film together, The Outrage (1964), is an American retelling of the Kurosawa film Rashomon starring Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, Howard da Silva, and William Shatner, and reuniting the pair with Howe. Like Kurosawa's film, Ritt employed a flashback structure in his film, and Newman traveled to Mexico and spent time speaking to local residents to study the accents.{{cite book | author=Miller, Gabriel | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JmZ_cwPXn78C&q=+flashbacks&pg=PA203 | title=The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man | year=2000 | publisher=University Press of Mississippi | location=Jackson, MS | page=70 | isbn=9781617034961 | access-date=2013-02-22}}{{cite news | last=Weiler | first=A.H. | title=Movie Review: The Outrage (1964) | work=The New York Times | date=8 October 1964 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C03E4DD143DE13ABC4053DFB667838F679EDE | access-date=12 June 2015}} In spite of the pair's creative efforts, the film did not find the same success that Hud had had. However, their next collaboration, Hombre (1967), was a major financial success, but would prove to be the last film Ritt made with either Newman or Howe.

During this period, Ritt branched out by directing The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) with Richard Burton, a Cold War thriller based on the John le Carré novel. He ended the '60s with the Kirk Douglas-starring mafia film The Brotherhood (1968).

File:Martin Ritt, 1979.jpg

In the 1970s, Ritt won acclaim for movies such as The Molly Maguires (1970), The Great White Hope (1970) (earning Oscar nominations for James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander), Sounder (1972), Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), and Conrack (1974) (from Pat Conroy's autobiographical novel). He also made a return to acting, playing Uncle Morty in a PBS production of Awake and Sing! and Hans Bärlach in End of the Game.

After Warner Bros. Pictures brought the film rights to First Blood in 1973 Ritt was hired to direct from a screenplay by Walter Newman, featuring Paul Newman as John Rambo and Robert Mitchum as Sheriff Will Teasle. However his version of the film was not made.Broeske, Pat H. (November 25, 1985). "The Curious Evolution of John Rambo: How He Hacked His Way Through the Jungles of Hollywood". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. p. AB32.

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 "fronts", 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.

Ritt ended the decade by directing Casey's Shadow (1978), starring his Awake and Sing! co-star Walter Matthau, and Norma Rae (1979), which won Sally Field her first Oscar for Best Actress.

Ritt directed Field in two more films: Back Roads (1981) and Murphy's Romance (1985). Between these two films he also directed Cross Creek (1983) about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling. It was nominated for (but did not win) four Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress Alfre Woodard and Best Supporting Actor Rip Torn.

In 1987, Ritt again used extensive flashback and nonlinear storytelling techniques in the film Nuts,{{cite book | author=Miller, Gabriel | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JmZ_cwPXn78C&q=+flashbacks&pg=PA203 | title=The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man | year=2000 | publisher=University Press of Mississippi | location=Jackson, MS | page=202 | isbn=9781617034961 | access-date=2013-02-22}} based on the stage play of the same name, written by Tom Topor.{{cite news | last=Maslin | first=Janet | title=Movie Review: Nuts (1987) | work=The New York Times | date=20 November 1987 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B0DE1D61639F933A15752C1A961948260 | access-date=12 June 2015}} The film was considered a box-office disappointment in relation to its budget, although it did not actually lose money.

Ritt's final film was Stanley & Iris (1990).

Ritt and his wife Adele had a daughter, film producer Martina Wernerand, and a son, Michael.

Ritt died of heart disease at age 76 in Santa Monica, California, on December 8, 1990.

• Nominated, Palme d'Or Cannes Film Festival - The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
• Nominated, Best Director Directors Guild of America - The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
• Nominated, Golden Lion Award Venice Film Festival - The Black Orchid (1958)
• Nominated, Best Director Golden Globe - Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962)
• Nominated, Best Director Academy Award - Hud (1963)
• Nominated, Best Director Directors Guild of America - Hud (1963)
• Nominated, Best Director Golden Globe - Hud (1963)
• Nominated, Best Director New York Film Critics Circle - Hud (1963)
• Winner, OCIC Award Venice Film Festival - Hud (1963)
• Nominated, Golden Lion Award Venice Film Festival - Hud (1963)
• Winner, Best British Film BAFTA - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
• Nominated, Best Director Directors Guild of America - Sounder (1972)
• Winner, Technical Grand Prize Cannes Film Festival - Norma Rae (1979)
• Nominated, Palme d'Or Cannes Film Festival - Norma Rae (1979)
• Nominated, Palme d'Or Cannes Film Festival - Cross Creek (1983)

Oscar-related Performances

Under Ritt's direction, these actors have received Oscar nominations and wins for their performances in their respective roles.

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• Edge of the City (1957)
• No Down Payment (1957)
• The Long Hot Summer (1958)
• The Black Orchid (1958)
• The Sound and the Fury (1959)
• 5 Branded Women (1960)
• Paris Blues (1961)
• Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962)
• Hud (1963)
• The Outrage (1964)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
• Hombre (1967)
• The Brotherhood (1968)
• The Great White Hope (1970)
• The Molly Maguires (1970)
• Sounder (1972)
• Pete 'n' Tillie (1972)
• Awake and Sing! (1972 - TV)
• Conrack (1974)
• The Front (1976)
• Casey's Shadow (1978)
• Norma Rae (1979)
• Back Roads (1981)
• Cross Creek (1983)
• Murphy's Romance (1985)
• Nuts (1987)
• Stanley & Iris (1990)

{{div col end}}

{{Portal|Biography}}

• Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, a screenwriting couple with whom Ritt collaborated extensively.{{cite journal | title=Hud: A Conversation with Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. | last=Baer | first=William | journal=Michigan Quarterly Review | date=Spring 2003 | volume=XLII | issue=2 | hdl=2027/spo.act2080.0042.201 }}

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{{Martin Ritt}}

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Category:1914 births

Category:1990 deaths

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:American male stage actors

Category:American theatre directors

Category:BAFTA winners (people)

Category:DeWitt Clinton High School alumni

Category:Federal Theatre Project people

Category:Film directors from New York City

Category:Hollywood blacklist

Category:Jewish American male actors

Category:Military personnel from New York City

Category:Military personnel from New York (state)

Category:United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II

Category:Works Progress Administration workers