There are very few movie stars who looked and acted less like a movie star than Robert Ryan who, as with Fred MacMurray, our Star of the Month this past January, was one of the most underrated of all the super-talented fellows who have worked in the world of movies. Ryan always looked as if he should be shoveling coal into a giant furnace on a pirate ship or pummeling an adversary in a boxing ring. It's hard to imagine him sitting in chair on a film set as Max Factor makeup is applied to his rugged cheekbones.

But the fact is, he was bitten by the acting bug at an early age and great encouragement came early to him. He was chosen to be one of the students of the great Austrian director Max Reinhardt during the time Reinhardt had an acting school in Los Angeles in 1939, far away from the Nazis who were then in control of the director's home turf in Europe. Thanks to Reinhardt's focus and training (and Ryan's own ambitious nature), RR's entrance into films followed soon after.

The impression he made on a Paramount talent scout when playing a minor role in an L.A. stage production of Somerset Maugham's Too Many Husbands led to a screen test, a Paramount contract and, soon after, the lead in a Paramount B effort called Golden Gloves (1940) to be directed by future great Edward Dmytryk--someone who, as luck would have it, would later direct Ryan in four other pivotal films in Ryan's career (including the one which brought Ryan his one and only Academy Award® nomination, 1947's Crossfire). But Dmytryk wasn't yet totally smitten with the newcomer and soon he switched Ryan from the lead role to a minor part with only a single line of dialogue. Dmytryk later explained: "We decided Bob wasn't quite ready for us." He later added, "Perhaps we weren't quite ready for him." Thus began Ryan's film career, one which never did reach the peaks it initially seemed headed towards.

He did prove to be, without question, one of the most commanding, talented and versatile of any actor his age: that expressive non-actorish face of his, combined with his intensity, giving us a long list of examples of his brilliant work (just for starters: Crossfire, The Set-Up [1949], Act of Violence [1948], Bad Day at Black Rock [1955], Lonelyhearts [1958], Billy Budd [1962], and The Wild Bunch [1969]) not to mention an equally long list of titles which deserve to be seen and studied only because of what Ryan contributes to them.

We have 38 Robert Ryan movies for you this month and we hope you'll be with us every Friday throughout May to catch them: along with the rugged Mr. Ryan you'll be seeing the likes of Ginger Rogers, Spencer Tracy, Barbara Stanwyck, Ida Lupino, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Greer Garson, Jimmy Stewart, Anita Ekberg, Henry Fonda and many other headliners. One basically "unknown" Ryan movie we'll be showing for the first time: 1954's About Mrs. Leslie (airing May 13 at 10:15 EST), one of the most touching, romantic movies you'll ever encounter, a jewel which somehow has fallen through the cracks in Hollywood's history books, made by Ryan just before Bad Day at Black Rock, and costarring the magnificent Shirley Booth just after she'd won the Oscar® for 1952's Come Back Little Sheba. Once seen, you won't forget it. Guaranteed.

by Robert Osborne