I'd Hate Myself in the Morning by Ring Lardner

I'd Hate Myself in the Morning by Ring Lardner

Ring Lardner, Jr.'s memoir is a pilgrimage through the American century. The son of an immensely popular and influential American writer, Lardner grew up swaddled in material and cultural privilege. After a memorable visit to Moscow in 1934, he worked as a reporter in New York before leaving for Hollywood where he served a bizarre apprenticeship with David O. Selznick, and won, at the age of 28, an Academy Award for the classic film, Woman of the Year, the first on-screen pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.

In irresistibly readable pages (New Yorker), peopled by a cast including Carole Lombard, Louis B. Mayer, Dalton Trumbo, Marlene Dietrich, Otto Preminger, Darryl F. Zanuck, Bertolt Brecht, Bert Lahr, Robert Altman, and Muhammad Ali, Lardner recalls the strange existence of a contract screenwriter in the vanished age of the studio system--an existence made stranger by membership in the Hollywood branch of the American Communist Party.

Lardner retraces the path that led him to a memorable confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee and thence to Federal prison and life on the Hollywood blacklist. One of the lucky few who were able to resume their careers, Lardner won his second Oscar for the screenplay to M.A.S.H. in 1970.

Ring Lardner Jr. (1915 - 2000), the third son of a famous American writer, attended Andover and Princeton and, in 1935 went to Hollywood to become a scriptwriter. In 1942 he co-wrote, with Michael Kanin, the comedy Woman of the Year, which won the Academy Award for best original screenplay. Because of his refusal to reveal beliefs and associations in 1947 before the House Committee on Un-American Activitites, Lardner was blacklisted in Hoillywood and three years later, sentenced to a year in prison. During that time he began research on his novel The Ecstasy of Owen Muir (1954), a searing indictment of American society during the McCarthy era.

In addition to his other books All for Love and The Lardners: My Family Remembered, Lardner wrote pieces for The Nation, Esquire, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Among his screenwriting credits following his blacklisting are The Cincinnati Kid and M*A*S*H, the latter of which won the 1970 Grand Prix in Cannes.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781560252962
ISBN 10	1560252960
Title	I'd Hate Myself in the Morning
Author	Ring Lardner
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Nation Books
Year published	2000-10-18
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.