Sterling Hayden

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Sterling Hayden (born March 26, 1916 in Upper Montclair , New Jersey as Sterling Relyea Walter , † May 23, 1986 in Sausalito , California ) was an American actor who made more than 50 films, as well as a sailing adventurer and writer .

Life

Hayden was the son of Dutch immigrants. He grew up in Boothbay Harbor on the coast of the US state of Maine . When he was 15, he worked on a schooner during the summer voyage from Connecticut to California . At the age of 17, he left home and went to sea. As a young man he worked his way up quickly and at the age of 19 received his first command of the ship. At the age of 20 he was first officer on the Yankee by Irving Johnson , with whom he sailed under whose command the world. Two years later he acquired his master's license and became a crew member and navigator on the Gertrude L. Thebaud , on which he sailed the area of ​​the infamous Newfoundland Bank in winter . He then led the 89- foot (27.1-meter) long brigantine Florence C. Robinson to Tahiti .

After the ship, which he partly owned, was lost in a storm, Hayden tried his luck as an actor and signed a contract with the film studio Paramount Pictures . He received his first two roles in Virginia and Bahama Passage in 1941 , which made the tall, blond man a Hollywood star. In 1941, however, Hayden broke his contract, which required him to make more films to join the Marines . The following year he married actress Madeleine Carroll , with whom he had worked in his first two films.

On 25 June 1943 won Hayden and Carroll a lawsuit in Bridgeport ( Connecticut ) that allowed them its name to "Mr. and Mrs. John Hamilton ”in order to avoid constant attention of the public interest to Hayden by the Marines. During the Second World War he served with the US secret service OSS in Italy and temporarily brought weapons through the German lines to the Yugoslav partisans . In 1946 he divorced his wife. In the same year he joined the Communist Party for six months , which brought him difficulties with the Committee on Un-American Activities of Joseph McCarthy . There he publicly regretted his membership in the Communist Party in April 1951 and named other communists. He later despised himself for denouncing and apologized. On April 25, 1947, Hayden married his second wife, Betty Ann de Noon.

Hayden then turned back to Hollywood. He continued to shoot mainly B-films , mostly in the genres of westerns, war films or crime films. A productions included Asphalt Jungle (1950) directed by John Huston and alongside two of the greatest female movie stars of their time, The Star (1952) alongside Bette Davis and Johnny Guitar - When Women Hate (1954) alongside Joan Crawford .

In 1953, Hayden also divorced his second wife. However, just a year later, the two married again. In 1955 the couple separated again. Sterling Hayden received custody of their four children.

The actor, who had planned to go to Tahiti in his 92-foot (28-meter) pilot schooner (sailing ship) Gracie S. before his marriage, but then sold the ship because of his marriage, bought it back in 1956 and christened it Wanderer around.

That same year he made The Bill Didn't Work out, directed by Stanley Kubrick . In addition, Betty Anne and Sterling Hayden pledged their loyalty for the third time; This time too, the divorce soon followed, in August 1958.

In January of the following year, Hayden's ex-wife obtained a court order prohibiting Hayden from bringing the children out of California. Hayden then officially planned a sailing tour with the Wanderer from San Francisco to Southern California. In fact, however, he put together a 20-strong crew from friends and through newspaper advertisements and set out for Tahiti with this crew and his children in January 1959. Betty Anne then alerted the US Coast Guard that the ship was allegedly unseaworthy and, through her lawyers, brought charges ranging from kidnapping to conspiracy and contempt of court . The hiker , who had no radio on board anyway, reached Tahiti unmolested. In 1960 Hayden returned to the west coast of the United States and sold the schooner shortly after his arrival.

On March 9, 1960, Hayden married his third wife, Catherine Devine McConnell, with whom he had two sons. This marriage lasted until Hayden's death. Until 1962 he wrote his biography in Sausalito near San Francisco on the former Berkeley ferry, entitled Wanderer (published 1963); he closed it with the words Vale! Wanderer - According to Hayden, while writing, he was not sure whether he was saying goodbye to his boat or his lifestyle as a hiker. He spent the winter of 1962/1963 on Nantucket . Films he made in the 1960s and 1970s include Dr. Strange or: How I Learned to Love the Bomb (Direction: Stanley Kubrick, 1964), The Godfather (Direction: Francis Ford Coppola , 1972) and 1900 (Direction: Bernardo Bertolucci , 1976).

In 1969 Hayden bought a canal barge in the Netherlands , which he moved to Paris four years later to live there for a while. The Hayden family's primary residence was in Wilton , Connecticut, and they also had a second home in Sausalito. In 1983 Manfred Blank and Wolf-Eckart Bühler shot the documentary Lighthouse of Chaos about Hayden . A year later they adapted his autobiography Wanderer for the feature film Der Havarist .

In 1986, Hayden died of prostate cancer at the age of 70 after a two-year illness . His ashes were scattered in San Francisco Bay .

Filmography (selection)

literature

See also

  • Gregor Hauser: Muzzle flashes: The 50 best B-Westerns of the 50s and their stars . Verlag Reinhard Marheinecke 2015, ISBN 978-3-932053-85-6 . Pp. 241-244.

Web links

Commons : Sterling Hayden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b (February 9, 1959). To Break Out Time (accessed May 14, 2007)
  2. ↑ Wanderer. By Sterling Hayden , on the Sheridan House Publishers website (accessed May 12, 2007)
  3. ↑ Jason Ankeny. Biography. Sterling Hayden on the Barnes & Noble.com website (accessed May 14, 2007)
  4. ^ From description of a photo by the Associated Press , allegedly from the archives of the San Francisco Examiner newspaper , in an e-bay auction on May 12, 2007; together with a photo showing the couple leaving the courtroom; Note is / was here ( memento of the original from June 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . (accessed May 14, 2007) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / mbocc.net
  5. ↑ Snoopers, informers and a senator from Wisconsin by Hans Schmid on heise.de from December 21, 2008 (accessed January 10, 2012)
  6. ^ Cunliffe, Tom, & Osler, Adrian (2001). Pilots . WoodenBoat Publications. (P. 238) Electronic copy on google books (accessed May 14, 2007)
  7. ↑ (January 24, 1959). Hayden on his way to South Seas. United Press International . Reprinted in the Appendix by Sterling Hayden: Wanderer. Sheridan House, New York 1998 (p. 250). Electronic copy on google books
  8. ^ Foreword to the 1977 edition: Sterling Hayden (1963/1998). Hikers . New York: Sheridan House. (P. IX). Electronic copy on google books
  9. ^ Foreword to the 1977 edition: Sterling Hayden (1963/1998). Hikers . New York: Sheridan House. (S. XI). Electronic copy on google books
  10. ↑ a b Albin Krebs (May 24, 1986). Sterling Hayden Dead at 70; to Actor, Writer and Sailor (abstract) New York Times (accessed May 14, 2007)
  11. ↑ Findagrave.com. Retrieved March 8, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hayden, Sterling
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walter, Sterling Relyea (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Upper Montclair , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1986
Place of death Sausalito , California