Alan Ladd

"Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd's calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel." --David Thomson ("A Biographical Dictionary of Film," 1975)

"That the old fashioned motion picture gangster with his ugly face, gaudy cars and flashy clothes was replaced by a smoother, better looking and better dressed bad man was largely the work of Mr. Ladd." --From The New York Times obituary (January 30, 1964)