Robert Ryan

The AFI gives Robert Ryan in its credits as 1909 to 1973. As a student at Dartmouth he was an undefeated boxing champion, and when he played Bill Stoker Thompson in Robert Wise's The Set-Up in 1949 the fight scenes were worked up with him by John Indrisano, a former professional named in the credits. That film had been prompted by a poem of the same name Joseph Moncure March brought out in New York in 1928, and Wise took the critics' prize at Cannes for the work. Two years before, in Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire, he was Sergeant Montgomery: in Richard Brooks's novel Montgomery kills Samuels not for being Jewish but for being homosexual, and the film changed that. Some Jewish leaders objected, saying that Montgomery's extreme antisemitism could be dismissed too easily by an audience. Crossfire was nominated for best picture and did not win, and Ryan was a nominee for supporting actor.