Sterling Hayden

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Sterling Hayden

Hayden in The Killing (1956)
Born Sterling Relyea Walter
March 26, 1916
Upper Montclair, New Jersey, United States
Died May 23, 1986 (age 70)
Sausalito, California
Other name(s) Sterling Walter Hayden, John Hamilton
Occupation Actor, author, sailor, model, Marine, OSS agent
Years active 1930s-1982
Spouse(s) Madeleine Carroll (1942-1946)
Betty De Noon (divorced 1959)
Catherine Devine McConnell (1960-1986)

Sterling Hayden (March 26, 1916 – May 23, 1986) was an American actor and author. For most of his career as a leading man, he specialized in westerns and film noir, such as Johnny Guitar, The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing. Later on he became noted as a character actor for such roles as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). He also played the Irish policeman, Captain McCluskey, in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in 1972.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life, education

Born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, Hayden's parents were George and Frances Walter, who named him Sterling Relyea Walter[1][2]. After his father died, he was adopted at the age of nine by James Hayden and renamed Sterling Walter Hayden. As a child, he lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and Maine, where he attended Wassookeag School in Dexter, Maine.

Hayden was a genuine adventurer and man of action, not dissimilar from many of his movie parts. He ran away to sea at 17, as a ship's boy, then later was a fisherman on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. After serving as sailor and fireman on larger vessels, he was awarded his first command at 19, and sailed around the world several times.

[edit] Hollywood years, military service, communist sympathies

Hayden became a print model and later signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, who dubbed the 6' 5" (1.96 m) actor The Most Beautiful Man in the Movies and The Beautiful Blond Viking God. 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 (which was never his legal name). 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 admiration for the Communist partisans led to a brief membership in the Communist Party. According to his IMDB biography, as the Red Scare deepened in U.S., "he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, confessing his brief Communist ties" and 'naming names'. His wife at that time, Betty De Noon, insisted that the 'names' her ex-husband provided were already in the hands of the Committee, which had a copy of the Communist Party's membership list. In any event, Hayden subsequently repudiated his own cooperation with the Committee, stating in his autobiography "I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing."[1].

[edit] Marriages, sailing

Sterling Hayden often professed distaste for film acting, claiming he did it mainly to pay for his ships and voyages. In 1959, after a very bitter divorce he was awarded custody of his children. He defied a court order and sailed to Tahiti with all four children, Christian, Dana, Gretchen and Matthew.

Hayden married Catherine Devine McConnell in 1960. They had two sons, Andrew and David, and were married until his death in 1986. Catherine also had a son from her first marriage, the journalist Scott McConnell.

In the early 1960s, Hayden rented one of the pilot houses of the retired ferryboat Berkeley, docked in Sausalito, California where he resided while writing his autobiography Wanderer, which was published in 1963.

In the 1970s, after his appearance in The Godfather, he appeared several times on NBC's The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder where he talked about his career resurgence and how it had funded his travels and adventures around the world. Hayden bought a canal barge in the Netherlands in 1969, eventually moving it to the heart of Paris and living on it part of the time. He also shared a home in Connecticut with his family and had an apartment in Sausalito, California.

In 1986, Sterling Hayden died of prostate cancer in Sausalito, California, age 70. [3]

[edit] Quotations

From his autobiography, Wanderer:

  • To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea... cruising, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. I've always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Partial filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Hayden, Sterling (1964). Wanderer. Bantam. ISBN 978-1-57409-048-2, pp. 65-66, 76, 354
  2. ^ United States Census for 1920, Montclair Town, Essex County, New Jersey, Sheet 6B
  3. ^ "Sterling Hayden Dead", New York Times, May 24, 1986. 

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Persondata
NAME Hayden, Sterling
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walter, Sterling Relyea
SHORT DESCRIPTION Actor
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Upper Montclair, New Jersey, United States
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1986
PLACE OF DEATH Sausalito, California