Don Ryan (author)
Don Ryan | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 14, 1889 Ohio |
| Died | 1978 (aged 88–89) Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Novelist, screenwriter |
| Alma mater | West Virginia University |
| Notable works |
|
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Don Ryan (Ohio, 1889 - Los Angeles, 1978) was an American novelist and screenwriter. He is most remembered today for his 1927 novel Angels Flight, "one of the first novels about Los Angeles and Hollywood" according to historian and California State Librarian Kevin Starr.[1]
Life
Ryan was born in Ohio in 1889, "just south of the river from Kentucky".[2] He attended West Virginia University and moved to Los Angeles in 1920.[3] During the first years of his life he held jobs as newspaper man, a professional dancer, a vaudeville actor, and an intertitle writer for silent films, and he also served as first lieutenant in the infantry in WWI.[4][5] In the early 1920s he was writing columns for the Los Angeles newspaper The Record.[1] He became friends with Austrian-American director and actor Erich Von Stroheim, best known for his 1924 film Greed, who might have been a model for a character in Ryan's two first novels.[1] Ryan played small acting roles in Von Stroheim's films The Merry Widow (1925) and The Wedding March (1928).[6][7]
In August 1927 Boni and Liveright released Ryan's first novel, Angel's Flight. After this he seemed to settle down as a writer; in 1929 he joined the writing staff at Vitaphone.[8] In the following years he would write several screenplays and three more novels, beside contributing to Hollywood magazines like Photoplay and Picture Play.[1]
Works
Ryan published four novels in total, although his third, The Warrior's Path, was published in London and never had an American edition. All of them are out of print as of 2026.[1]
Angel's Flight, presumably named after the funicular in the Bunker Hill District of LA, was the most highly regarded of his books, with historian and librarian Kevin Starr singling it out in his "Americans and the California Dream" series.[1] The plot concerns a returned World War I veteran slowly working his way into Hollywood, and it of course draws heavily from Ryan's own experience, through a strongly cynical prism.[1] Several characters were modeled after real media personalities at the time, among them an Elsie Lincoln Benedict, inspired by real-life evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.[9].
His second book, A Roman Holiday (unrelated to the film with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn), is somewhat similar to the first in its themes, although with a female protagonist. The story narrates her rise from a seedy nightclub to the movie industry, and her subsequent fall from grace. Supporting characters include Charlie Chaplin.[1] The New York Times called it "a lurid, arty scenario," warning that "scarcely a sequence would get past the censorship".[10] The New Yorker critic Agnes W. Smith called the novel "a story of the less chaste aspects of the film colony", and thought Ryan had "unusual talent, once he overcomes his temptation to be shocking".[11]
Ryan's last two novels suppose a considerable departure from those themes, rather fitting the historical genre.[1]
Novels
- Angel's Flight (Boni and Liveright, 1927)
- A Roman Holiday (Macaulay, 1930)
- The Warrior's Path (Duckworth & Co., 1937)
- The Devil's Brigadier (Coward-McCann, 1954)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Levesque, Richard (13 October 2012). "A Lost Angelino". Richard Levesque. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ Ryan, Don (1930). A Roman Holiday. New York: Macaulay. Search this book on
- ↑ Dawson, Jim. "Don Ryan". IMDb. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ "Newest Books and Book Reviews" (PDF). Winnetka Talk. 14 May 1927. p. 32. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ "Books and Authors". The New York Times. 22 May 1927. p. 16. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ "The Merry Widow". AFI Catalog. American Film Institute. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ "The Wedding March". Silent Era. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ "Ryan and Hobble Sign to Write Vitaphone Sketches". Motion Picture News. 13 July 1929. p. 194-A. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ Daley, Christine M. (2006). Urban Fervor: Los Angeles Literature and Alternative Religion (Philosophy thesis). New York: City University of New York. pp. 71–72. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ ""Spider Web" and Other Recent Works of Fiction". The New York Times. 26 January 1930. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
- ↑ Smith, Agnes W. (8 February 1930). "Reviews of "Backwater," by T. S. Stribling, "Pure Gold," by O. E. Rolvaag, "Free," by Blair Niles, "Tiger! Tiger!," by Honore Willsie Morrow, and other books". The New Yorker. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
External links
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