Ring Lardner, Jr. Filmography

The Golden Honeymoon

Crew: Short Story Author

Synopsis: First telecast February 4, 1980, Golden Honeymoon is an easygoing adaptation of the Ring Lardner short story. James Whitmore and Teresa Wright play a New Jersey couple who celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary with a second honeymoon. Their Florida idyll is disrupted when the couple's old Read More

The Greatest

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Muhammad Ali, Ernest Borgnine, John Marley, Lloyd Haynes, Robert Duvall, James Earl Jones

Synopsis: With Muhammad Ali cast as himself, The Greatest covers Ali's life from his "Cassius Clay" days to the celebrated Ali/George Foreman bout. Along the way, the film focuses on Ali's conversion to Islam and his potentially career-breaking decision not to serve in the Army. Ernest Borgnine palys Ali's Read More

Hollywood on Trial

Actors: John Huston, Edward Dmytryk, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr., Lester Cole, Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Joseph McCarthy

Synopsis: Combining familiar newsreel footage with freshly shot material, David Helpern's Hollywood on Trial is a documentary concerning the "communist witch-hunt" era. In the years following World War II, several ambitious Washington politicos were anxious to dissipate the last traces of Roosevelt's New Read More

Mortadella

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sophia Loren

Synopsis: The well-known short-story writer Ring Lardner, Jr. wrote the screenplay for La Mortadella, an Italian/French production with mostly English dialogue. The story concerns the difficulties and reactions of Madelena (Sophia Loren), an Italian visitor to New York City. She has come to the country Read More

M*A*S*H

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Jo Ann Pflug, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen, Gary Burghoff

Synopsis: Although he was not the first choice to direct it, the hit black comedy MASH established Robert Altman as one of the leading figures of Hollywood's 1970s generation of innovative and irreverent young filmmakers. Scripted by Hollywood veteran Ring Lardner, Jr., this war comedy details the exploits Read More

The Cincinnati Kid

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld

Synopsis: Steve McQueen stars as the Cincinnati Kid, a crackerjack New Orleans stud poker player. Tired of chicken feed, the Kid decides to challenge The Man (Edward G. Robinson), the reigning poker champ, who is in town for a private game. The Shooter (Karl Malden), another gambling pro, arranges a game Read More

Four Days Leave

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Cornel Wilde, Josette Day, Simone Signoret, Richard Erdman, John Baragrey

Synopsis: Cornell Wilde serves as "box office insurance" in this Swiss-filmed romantic comedy. Wilde plays American sailor Stanley Robin, who while vacationing in Switzerland falls in love with Suzanne (Josette Day), the daughter of a local watchmaker. Their romance is threatened by the arrival of French Read More

The Forbidden Street

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Dana Andrews, Sybil Thorndike, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Anthony Tancred, Fay Compton

Synopsis: The Anglo-American co-production Britannia Mews was released in the U.S. as The Affairs of Adelaide, then reissued as Forbidden Street, the title it carries today. Set in the Victoria era, the film focuses upon Adelaide (Maureen O'Hara), a young lady of good family who renounces both name and fame Read More

So This Is New York

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Henry Morgan, Rudy Vallee, Bill Goodwin, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: Radio humorist Henry Morgan made his film debut in So This is New York. Based on The Big Town, a collection of stories by Ring Lardner, the film traces country bumpkin Morgan's progress as he uses an inheritance to take a trip with his wife (Virginia Grey) and sister-in-law (Dona Drake) to the New Read More

Forever Amber

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jane Ball, Linda Darnell, Cornel Wilde, Edmund Breon, Leo G. Carroll, Richard Greene, George Sanders, Robert Coote, Jessica Tandy

Synopsis: They said it couldn't be done, but they did it: Kathleen Winsor's "notorious", bestselling bodice-ripper Forever Amber actually made it to the screen in 1947 with full censorial approval. Of course, it was necessary to tone down the more erotic passages of Winsor's novel, but the end result Read More

Cloak and Dagger

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gary Cooper, Lilli Palmer, Robert Alda, Vladimir Sokoloff, J. Edward Bromberg, Marjorie Hoshelle

Synopsis: Inspired by actual events, Cloak and Dagger was first major "atomic power" melodrama of the postwar era. Gary Cooper stars as bookish physics professor Alvah Jesper, a character obviously based on A-bomb codeveloper J. Robert Oppenheimer. Pressed into service by the OSS in the last months of WW2 Read More

Laura

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson

Synopsis: This adaptation of Vera Caspary's suspense novel was begun by director Rouben Mamoulien and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but thanks to a complex series of backstage intrigues and hostilities, the film was ultimately credited to director Otto Preminger and cameraman Joseph LaShelle (who won an Read More

Tomorrow the World

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Fredric March, Betty Field, Agnes Moorehead, Skip Homeier, Joan Carroll

Synopsis: 14-year-old Skip Homeier repeats his stage role as an unreconstructed Hitler Jugend in the film version of the James Gow/Arnaud D'Usseau stage play Tomorrow the World. A German orphan, Homeier is taken into the home of his American uncle (Fredric March), a gently liberal university professor. Read More

The Cross of Lorraine

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jean-Pierre Aumont, Gene Kelly, Cedric Hardwicke, Richard Whorf, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: The time is World War II. A group of disillusioned French soldiers are approached by Nazi troops and promised safe passage to their homeland. The Frenchmen willingly surrender, only to discover that their next destination is a German concentration camp located near a Gallic village. The Read More

Woman of the Year

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, William Bendix

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn costarred for the first time in the delectable romantic comedy Woman of the Year. Tracy plays New York sportswriter Sam Craig, who becomes incensed at comments about the uselessness of sports made by foreign correspondent Tess Harding (Hepburn). Sam and Tess Read More

Arkansas Judge

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Leon Weaver, Frank Weaver, June Weaver, Roy Rogers, Spring Byington

Synopsis: The down-home Weaver family stars in this countrified drama set in Peaceful Valley where if things went any slower they'd be going backwards. Things pick up a bit when someone steals $50 from a widow. The townsfolk are outraged and Judge Weaver finds himself accusing the widow's cleaning lady of Read More

The Courageous Dr. Christian

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jean Hersholt, Dorothy Lovett, Robert Baldwin, Tom Neal, Maude Eburne

Synopsis: The second entry in RKO Radio's "Dr. Christian" series, Courageous Dr. Christian was like the first inspired by the popular radio weekly. In this one, kindly general practioner Dr. Christian (Jean Hersholt) tends to the needs of a group of indigents, living in squalor in the town's shanty Read More

Meet Dr. Christian

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jean Hersholt, Dorothy Lovett, Robert Baldwin, Enid Bennett, Paul Harvey

Synopsis: As a direct result with his excellent showing as warm-hearted Dr. Dafoe in the Dionne Quintuplets films, Jean Hersholt was awarded a not dissimilar radio series about a kindly general practioner named Dr. Christian. Two years after the debut of the Dr. Christian radio series, RKO Radio launched a Read More

The Cowboy Quarterback

Crew: Play Author, Short Story Author

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Marie Wilson, Gloria Dickson, Eddie Foy, Jr.

Synopsis: A tough football scout thinks he has finally found a potential star quarterback when he sees a burly country-store stock boy casually unloading huge sacks of potatoes. Then and there the talent scout signs the boy to play for the Green Bay Packers. This comedy examines what happens when the naive Read More

A Star Is Born

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine

Synopsis: A Star is Born came into being when producer David O. Selznick decided to tell a "true behind-the-scenes" story of Hollywood. The truth, of course, was filtered a bit for box-office purposes, although Selznick and an army of screenwriters based much of their script on actual people and events. Janet Gaynor Read More

Nothing Sacred

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: "This is New York, Skyscraper Champion of the World...Where the Slickers and Know-It-Alls peddle gold bricks to each other...And where Truth, crushed to earth, rises again more phony than a glass eye..." With this jaundiced opening title, scripter Ben Hecht introduces his classic comedy Nothing Sacred Read More

Blonde Trouble

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Eleanore Whitney, Johnny Downs, Lynne Overman, Terry Walker, Ben Baker

Synopsis: Johnny Downs takes a break from his usual campus musicals to play a small-town songsmith in Blonde Trouble. Attempting to make it big in New York, Downs falls victim to con artists, back-stabbing agents and vainglorious "artistes." But with the help of down-to-earth Eleanor Whitney, Downs pens a Read More

Alibi Ike

Crew: Short Story Author

Actors: William Frawley

Synopsis: In this rollicking adaptation of Ring Lardner's short story, Joe E. Brown plays an ace baseball player whose insistence upon making up excuses earns him the nickname "Alibi Ike." In the course of his first season with the Chicago Cubs, Brown also falls in love with Olivia De Havilland Read More

Elmer the Great

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Patricia Ellis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Preston S. Foster

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown plays Elmer Kane, a rookie ballplayer with the Chicago Cubs whose ego is matched only by his appetite. Because he is not only vain but naive, Elmer's teammates take great delight in pulling practical jokes on him. Still, he is so valuable a player that the Cubs management hides the Read More

June Moon

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Jack Oakie, Frances Dee, June MacCloy, Ernest Wood, Wynne Gibson

Synopsis: A well-meaning but dimwitted electrical worker-turned-lyricist Frederick Martin Stevens (Jack Oakie) arrives in New York determined to become a successful songwriter. He meets a nice girl , Edna Baker (Frances Dee), and a couple of bad ones, one of whom, Eileen Fletcher (June MacCloy), nearly Read More

Glorifying the American Girl

Actors: Mary Eaton, Edward Crandall, Helen Morgan

Synopsis: Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld brought his legendary "Follies" to the silver screen in Glorifying the American Girl. The barely visible plotline concerns a virginal young miss (Mary Eaton) who aspires to greatness as a Follies girl. With stars in her eyes, she heads to New York, leaving her Read More

The New Klondike

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee, Paul Kelly, Hallie Manning, Robert Craig

Synopsis: The New Klondike was a satire of two ripe-for-plucking targets: The national baseball craze and the Florida "land boom" of 1925. Thomas Meighan stars as Tom Kelly, a minor-league player who shows up in Florida for spring training, only to be promptly fired by his jealous manager Joe Cooley (J. W. Johnston Read More