Biography:Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey | |
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![]() (c.1960) | |
Born | Chicago , Illinois, United States |
Died | January 14, 1980 Kalk Bay, South Africa | (aged 71)
Occupation | Writer, screenwriter, and playwright |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Chicago, Phi Beta Kappa, 1930 |
Notable works |
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Notable awards |
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Spouses | Helen Johnson (m. 1938–1960; divorced) Berdine Grunewald (m. 1960–1980; his death) |
Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for The Territorial Imperative (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s.[1][2]
As a playwright and screenwriter Ardrey received many accolades. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937,[3] won the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award in 1940, and in 1966 received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for his script for Khartoum.[4] His most famous play, Thunder Rock, is widely considered an international classic.[5]:63
Ardrey's scientific work played a major role in overturning long-standing assumptions in the social sciences. In particular, both African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966), two of his most widely read works, were instrumental in changing scientific doctrine and increasing public awareness of evolutionary science.[6][7] His work was so popular that many prominent scientists cite it as inspiring them to enter their fields.[8][9]
Life
Ardrey was born in Chicago , the son of Robert Leslie Ardrey, an editor and publisher, and Marie (née Haswell). His father died in 1919 from pneumonia during the influenza epidemic and he was raised by his mother.[5]:2 He grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended the nearby University of Chicago, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1930 as a Ph.B.[10][3] While in attendance, he studied creative writing with Thornton Wilder, who would become his lifelong mentor.[3][5]:4[11]:12–3, 15
His first play, Star Spangled, opened on Broadway in 1935 and lasted only a few days, but resulted in the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship.[3] The award granted Ardrey the financial independence to focus on writing plays. Several of his subsequent plays, including Casey Jones, How to Get Tough About It, and his most famous play, Thunder Rock, were produced on Broadway.[3]
In 1938 he moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,[3] where he would eventually become MGM's highest paid writer.[12] There he wrote many screenplays, including those for adaptations such as The Three Musketeers[13] (1948, with Gene Kelly), Madame Bovary [14] (1949), The Secret Garden [15] (1949), and The Wonderful Country[16] (1959, with Robert Mitchum; The Wonderful Country also had a cameo from famed Negro leagues pitcher Satchel Paige[17]). He also wrote original screenplays, including the screenplay for Khartoum (1966, directed by Basil Dearden, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay.[3][4]
During the 1950s Ardrey became increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood and what he saw as the growing role money had started to play in creative decisions.[18][19][20] At the same time and largely by accident, he renewed his interest in human origins and human behavior, which he had studied at the University of Chicago.[3] In the summer of 1956 he moved with his wife and two sons to Geneva. He spent the following years traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa, conducting research for what was to become his first book on the subject, African Genesis (1961), ultimately an international bestseller. Subsequently, he went on to write a total of four books in his widely read Nature of Man Series, including his best known book The Territorial Imperative (1966).[3]
In October 1960 he moved with his second wife to Trastevere, Rome, where they lived for 17 years. In 1977 they moved to a small town named Kalk Bay just outside Cape Town, South Africa.[3] He continued to publish influential works until his death on January 14, 1980. His ashes, along with those of his wife, are interred in the Holy Trinity Church overlooking False Bay.[3][5]:1
Theater and film career
After graduating from the University of Chicago, under the continuing mentorship of Thornton Wilder, Ardrey wrote a novel, several plays, and many short stories, all of which remained unpublished.[11]:15 It was Wilder's rule that "A young author should not write for market until his style [has] 'crystallized'".[11]:14–15 Wilder and Ardrey agreed that this moment came with the writing of the play Star Spangled.
Star Spangled opened on Broadway in 1935. It was a comedy that brought to life the classic struggles of an immigrant family living on the South Side of Chicago. It received largely negative reviews and lasted only a few days. However it did catch the attention of notable playwright Sidney Howard, whom Ardrey claims was instrumental in the resulting award of a Guggenheim fellowship for promise as a young playwright.[3][11]:18 The award allowed Ardrey the financial independence to remain in Chicago and focus on writing plays.
While in Chicago Ardrey wrote two more plays. The first, Casey Jones, was a play about railroad men and their love for their machines. The second, How to Get Tough About It, Ardrey describes as "A proletarian love story of pleasant dimensions."[11]:18 In 1938 Guthrie McClintic presented How to Get Tough About It and Elia Kazan directed Casey Jones.[11]:19[21] The plays opened ten days apart and were massive failures. In his preface to Plays of Three Decades Ardrey writes:
No author in Broadway memory had attained two such failures on a scale quite so grand on evenings quite so close together. Had they opened six months apart, none would have noticed. Coming as they did, I became a kind of upside-down white-headed boy, a figure thundering toward literary glory in reverse gear. Hollywood, incapable of resisting the colossal, bid lavishly for my services. And Samuel Goldwyn, buyer of none but the best, bought me.[11]:19
Ardrey signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and moved for the first time to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. He worked on several projects, including Samuel Goldwyn's notorious boondoggle remake of Graustark, which was cancelled, and a western called The Cowboy and the Lady, from which he was dropped (though he later used most of the plot for his smash success Lady Takes A Chance).[5]:53–8 While in Los Angeles he would meet and work with Samuel Goldwyn, Clarence Brown, Pandro Berman, Garson Kanin, Gene Fowler, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Howard, and S.N. Behrman.[5]:53–60[11]:19
In 1938, however, he received word that his Broadway agent, Harold Freedman, had sold the film rights to his play How to Get Tough About It. Ardrey decided to use the opportunity to take time off to write a play. He travelled to Tucson where he married Helen Johnson with famed Hollywood director Garson Kanin as his best man. Following his wedding, he sent a note to Samuel Goldwyn which read: "Dear Mr. Goldwyn. I fear that I am wasting your money, and I'm sure you are wasting my time."[5]:60 He moved with his new wife back to the east coast and set to work, first on a minor project which he would abandon, and then on the play that would become Thunder Rock.[5]:60[21]
Thunder Rock
Robert Ardrey wrote Thunder Rock during the period of escalation in Europe which would lead to World War II. Despairing of the growing isolationism among Americans, Ardrey became convinced that American involvement in the war was a moral necessity.[5]:62 However he did not intend to write a play about the conflict until he was struck by a moment of inspiration during a performance of Swan Lake, in which he conceived of "the play from beginning to end, complete with first, second, and third act curtains."[5]:63 (quoted)[11]:23
In his autobiography, Ardrey gives the following summary of the play:
My story was that of a renowned journalist who having experienced the disillusionments of the 1930s had given up all hope of influencing man toward a better world. In his depths, he takes a job as keeper of a lonely lighthouse on a rock in Lake Michigan. On that rock, a century earlier, had been wrecked a ship carrying immigrants to the New World. It was a time of legitimate hope – he thought. And there – within this lighthouse, symbolically the shape of his mind – he recreated a little world populated by the hopeful immigrants to the New World. The play consists of the journalist-lightkeeper and the long-dead people of his own resurrection, his relations with characters existing only in his own mind. Yet in the probing of his own creations, his integrity catches up with him. They were as much escaping problems of their world as he was of his. In the end he returns to reality.[5]:63
Thunder Rock, an anti-isolationist play, opened on Broadway in November, 1939 to isolationist critics and a public wary of war. It received largely negative reviews and a poor reception.[5]:66 In the introduction to Plays of Three Decades, Ardrey writes that it opened "to the worst reviews I have ever received. Our most eminent critic deplored a play containing so much thunder and so little rock."[11]:24 Despite the negative initial reception, later commentators have described the play as prescient. Though unpopular at the time, it presaged the collapse of American isolationism. It was also one of the few pieces of art to warn not only about the European, but also about the Asian threat. Albert Wertheim remarked, "Ardrey's play is remarkable in another way as well. It is one of the only—perhaps the only—play of the period to see the conflicts and dangers across the Pacific. All other pre-Pearl Harbor plays of note look exclusively across the Atlantic to Hitler, Mussolini, and Europe."[22]
During the summer of 1940 Ardrey discovered, when he read a syndicated column from Britain, that unbeknownst to him Thunder Rock had been having a massively successful run in London.[5]:66 In the column Vincent Sheehan wrote that it had become so emblematic as to be "London's Chu Chin Chow of World War II."[23] The British rights had been sold to Herbert Marshall, who had launched a production starring Michael Redgrave. The play had been so successful that the British Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, arranged to have the Treasury department fund a production at the Globe Theatre in London's West End.
The play deeply resonated with a British public under siege. Eminent theater critic Harold Hobson wrote of Thunder Rock:
"The theatre ... did a great deal to keep the morale of the British people high. One intellectual play had an enormous effect in keeping alight a spirit of hope at a time when it was nearer to extinction than it had ever been, either before or after. This was Thunder Rock, by Robert Ardrey. What he accomplished for the British people at a moment of supreme despair ... merits their lasting gratitude. ... He, more quietly but equally effectively as Churchill, urged us never to surrender."[24]
Following its success in London, Thunder Rock has had a lasting legacy. Later in 1940 the BBC broadcast a live radio version,[25] and in 1946 they produced an adaption for television.[26] In 1942, Thunder Rock was turned into a film, directed by the Boulting Brothers, also starring Michael Redgrave. (See Thunder Rock (film))
Shortly following the war, productions of Thunder Rock were quickly launched in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and, most famously, in Allied-occupied Berlin where it was the first modern play to go up in the American zone.[5]:67[11]:24–6 It continues to be commonly produced in American university theaters and productions have gone up all around the globe, including in Harare (formerly Salisbury), Zimbabwe, and Nairobi, Kenya.[5]:66
Hollywood 1939–1946
After Thunder Rock quickly closed on Broadway, Ardrey returned to Hollywood. His first official credit was the screenplay for the adaptation of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted (1939). It was directed by Garson Kanin, starred Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton, and was shot on location in Napa Valley.[5]:68 In 1946, after a series of talks with RKO, Ardrey and his new agent Harold Norling Swanson negotiated the first-ever independent contract with a major Hollywood studio for him to write the screen adaptation of the A. J. Cronin novel The Green Years.[5]:76 The contract stipulated that Ardrey could work at his home in Brentwood – an unprecedented studio concession – and he was not to be bothered until he completed the screenplay in around six weeks.[5]:89–90 The Green Years debuted to record profits and went on to be one of the highest-grossing films of 1946.[5]:90, 96[27]
Following these successes in Hollywood, Ardrey returned to New York to reengage the theater. There he wrote Jeb.
Jeb
Jeb was a play about a disabled African American soldier returning to his home in the rural south after having fought in the war in the Pacific. He has lost one leg, but gained the ability to run an adding machine. Seeking out employment, he is faced with the bigotry of his countrymen. Jeb opened in New York in 1946.[28] It received largely positive reviews (famed American theatre critic George Jean Nathan called it the best play on the topic of civil rights) and found small but enthusiastic audiences.[5]:95 However, due to factors including high production costs and relatively low revenues, the play had to close after a run of only one week.[5]:95–6[29] The critical consensus, with which Ardrey came to agree, was that Jeb was far ahead of its time.[5]:96[30][31][32]
Hollywood 1946–1966
Following the short run of Jeb Ardrey moved back to Hollywood and signed a two-picture deal with MGM. In 1946 and '47 he wrote The Secret Garden.[15] In 1947 he wrote the screenplay for The Three Musketeers, (which would become the second-highest-grossing film of 1948.[27]) starring Lana Turner and Gene Kelly. This became Gene Kelly's favorite non-musical role.[13] In 1949, Ardrey wrote the screenplay for Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary. The film starred Jennifer Jones with James Mason playing the role of Flaubert.[14] The novel was originally tried for obscenity in France and Ardrey used this as a device to frame the story and allow for a commentator.[5]:103
In 1947, Ardrey, amid growing persecution of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee, was elected to the board of the Screen Writers Guild and made chairman of its Political Advisory Committee.[5]:106 Following the founding of the Committee for the First Amendment, Ardrey flew to Washington, along with Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, and John Huston, to defend The Hollywood Ten.[5]:107 Later, on behalf of the Guild, Ardrey worked with Thurman Arnold to lodge a suit against the Hollywood blacklist with the Supreme Court. The suit came up for review four years later, but the Guild dropped it.[5]:108–9, 112
In the early '50s, partly due to its enforcement of the blacklists and partly due to the increasing role banks were playing in creative decisions, Ardrey began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with Hollywood[18][19][20] and started to travel abroad. He travelled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, the Riviera, Venice, Yugoslavia, where he spent a month living in Belgrade, Greece, Istanbul, and Munich. He later described these travels as "necessary exercises" for his book African Genesis.[5]:114–5
In 1952 Ardrey joined the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson against the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a part of the group "Hollywood for Stevenson".[5]:110–1 The group sponsored an investigator to go to the hometown of Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, for research. While there the investigator discovered, in the high school newspaper archives, that Nixon had been known as "Tricky Dick".[5]:111
In 1954 Ardrey wrote a play about the persecution of accused communists in post-Cold War America. This play, Sing Me No Lullaby, was presented at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Brooks Atkinson, in his New York Times review, wrote:
"...the contribution [Ardrey] has made in the last act is a clear and perceptive statement of this nameless, formless situation and an estimation of what it is doing to America ... Mr. Ardrey ... is a man of principle and taste. In Sing Me No Lullaby he has performed the function of a writer. He has found the words to describe something that is vague and elusive but ominous. And he has got far enough away from political recriminations to state it in terms of character and the life of the spirit."[33]
Also in 1954 Ardrey wrote the adaptation of John Masters' novel Bhowani Junction.[34] Due in part to the intervention of the banks financing the film, Ardrey entered into contested negotiations over rewrites. Eventually he quit and took his name off the film.[35]
In 1958 Ardrey wrote the play Shadow of Heroes about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The play resulted in the release from Soviet custody of two political prisoners, Julia Rajk and her son.[36]
Ardrey next turned his attention toward Africa. He was soon to begin his pioneering work in paleoanthropology, but he also continued his career as a screenwriter. In 1964 he wrote the first screenplay adaptation of Isak Dinesen's novel Out of Africa.[37][38] In 1966 he wrote another screenplay set in Africa, the Academy Award-nominated Khartoum.
Khartoum
Khartoum was written and produced in 1966, directed by Basil Dearden. The film is based on historical accounts of British Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon's defense of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army during the Siege of Khartoum.[4]
Khartoum starred Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmed). Heston, in his autobiography, wrote about his decision to take the role: "It's a good part, presents the challenge of doing a mystic, as well as the English thing. Also, it's a helluva good script."[39]
The academy agreed with Heston's assessment of the script. In 1967 Khartoum earned Ardrey a nomination for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.[40][41]
Ardrey died, aged 71, in South Africa .
Africa
In 1955, when Ardrey was considering a trip to Africa, Max Ascoli, publisher of The Reporter, offered to buy anything that Ardrey would write there.[5]:119 At the same time, Ardrey renewed an acquaintance with prominent geologist Richard Foster Flint. Because of Ardrey's background in geology and paleontology, Flint arranged for Ardrey to investigate claims made by Raymond Dart about a specimen of Australopithecus africanus.[5]:119
Ardrey met Dart in South Africa and examined his evidence. Particularly, Dart had amassed a sample of 5,000 fossils from the Makapan cave. Among the fossils, some bones that could be used as tools—the lower jaw bones of small gazelles, which could be used as cutting tools, and the humerus of antelope, which could be used as clubs—were overrepresented (more frequent) by a factor of ten. This led Dart to theorize that in australopithecines, as man's direct ancestors, the use of weapons evolutionarily predated the development of large brains.[42]:41:20 Ardrey wrote an article about Dart's theory for The Reporter. After receiving significant attention, it was reprinted in Science Digest and led to The Smithsonian Institution contacting Dart.[5]:123–5
This trip would serve as the beginning of Ardrey's renewed interest in the human sciences and the initiation of his groundbreaking work in paleoanthropology.
Paleoanthropology
Ardrey spent the latter part of his life working as a science writer. (In 1969 he was also contracted by Universal to write a screenplay of Baroness Karen Blixen's memoir Out of Africa, but it was never produced.[43]) While this scientific work at first appears disparate with his early career, later commentators have emphasized the continuity. In his The New York Times obituary, Bayard Webster wrote, "A closer look at his dramas and his behavioral books disclose that he was writing about social conditions in both genres. One involved humans, the other concerned both humans and other animals. But the dramatic theme was the same: the difficulties humans and other animals have in dealing with each other, and the reasons for their actions."[44]
Both the scientific content and writing quality of Ardrey's work was widely praised. The biologist and naturalist E. O. Wilson admired The Hunting Hypothesis, commenting:
In his excellent new book Robert Ardrey continues as the lyric poet of human evolution, capturing the Homeric quality of the subject that so many scientists by and large feel but are unable to put into words. His opinions, like those in his earlier works, are controversial but more open, squarely stated, and closer to the truth than the protests of his most scandalized critics.[45]
In his 1964 book The Analysis of Prose, William D. Templeman used African Genesis as his third lesson. The volume included analysis and questions from his students at the University of Southern California.[46]
A.J. Jacobs, who wrote the 2004 book The Know-It-All, about reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica, asserts that a quote from African Genesis was the most profound thing he read while reading the Encyclopædia.[47]
Ardrey wrote mostly for popular audiences on topics in paleoanthropology, which encompasses anthropology, ethology, paleontology, zoology and[48] human evolution. He was widely praised for crossing the boundaries of scientific specialism. The Observer, for instance, in its review of The Social Contract, wrote that "Robert Ardrey ... leaps across the fences with which scientists nowadays surround their special subjects. He reports their findings in clear English. He attempts to relate them in a single science of Man, by which all of us may try to know ourselves."[49]
This single "science of Man" was postulated in Ardrey's influential Nature of Man Series, which is composed of four books: African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961), The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966), The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970), and The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976).
Along with Raymond Dart and Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey became one of the three most famous proponents of the hunting hypothesis and the killer ape theory.[50] Ardrey postulated that precursors of Australopithecus survived millions of years of drought in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, as the savannah spread and the forests shrank, by adapting the hunting ways of carnivorous species. Changes in survival techniques and social organization gradually differentiated pre-humans from other primates. Concomitant changes in diet potentiated unique developments in the human brain.[50]
The killer ape theory posits that aggression, a vital factor in hunting prey for food, was a fundamental characteristic which distinguished prehuman ancestors from other primates. Ardrey also argued that aggression was therefore an inherited evolutionary trait still present in man.[51] He challenged the reigning blank-slate hypothesis (similarly aligned with cultural determinism). The blank-slate hypothesis was defended (and Ardrey was famously attacked) by Ashley Montagu.[9][44] This debate sparked a major controversy in anthropology and led to popular interest in human origins. Ardrey's ideas influenced director Sam Peckinpah, to whom Strother Martin gave copies of two of Ardrey's books,[52][53][54][55][56] as well as Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in the development of 2001: A Space Odyssey.[57][58][59][60][61]:44:14 More recently, according to archeology expert K. Kris Hirst, reviewing the Dawn of Humanity (2015 PBS film) documentary which describes, directly in the context of 2001, the 2015 studies of fossils of Homo naledi, the violent behavior of apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence of 2001 has been "proven false", since contemporary evidence suggests that they were actually vegetarians.[62][63] Though some of Ardrey's theses on aggression have been contradicted, his popularization of the theory of African Genesis (as opposed to European or Asian Genesis) remains a major turning point in understanding the dawn of humanity.[61]:43:42
These themes have also been investigated in academia by, among others:
- Konrad Lorenz: On Aggression (1966)
- University of Chicago "Man the Hunter" symposium (1966): Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter: Symposium on Man the Hunter, University of Chicago. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.
- Sherwood Washburn and Chet Lancaster: Man the Hunter (1968). (Washburn's students Lee and DeVore organised the 1966 Chicago conference.)
- Craig Stanford: The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior, Princeton University Press (2001).
- Erich Fromm: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
- Matt Cartmill: A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History (1996)
Researchers
Some of the scientists whose research particularly informed Robert Ardrey's scientific investigations, and with several of whom Ardrey consulted at length while developing his four major works in Africa from the 1940s through the 1970s, include:
- Warder Clyde Allee
- Charles Kimberlin Brain
- Robert Broom
- Helmut Karl Buechner
- Clarence Ray Carpenter
- Raymond Dart
- Henry Eliot Howard
- James Kitching
- Louis Leakey
- Eugène Marais
- Kenneth Oakley
- George Schaller
Books
Fiction
- Worlds Beginning (1944) (Cited in Everett F. Bleiler's The Checklist of Fantastic Literature, 1948.)
- The Brotherhood of Fear (1952)
- Plays of Three Decades: Thunder Rock / Jeb / Shadow of Heroes (1968) (Includes an autobiographical preface)
Nonfiction
- African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961)
- The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966)
- The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970)
- The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976)
- Aggression and Violence in Man: A Dialogue Between Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and Robert Ardrey (1971) OCLC 631758464 Online version
Plays
- Star Spangled (1936)
- Casey Jones (1938)
- How to Get Tough About It (1938)
- Thunder Rock (1939) (filmed in 1942 in the UK, released 1944 in the US)
- God and Texas (1943)
- Jeb (1946)
- Sing Me No Lullaby (1954)
- Shadow of Heroes (1958) (produced in London as Stone and Star)
Screenplays
- They Knew What They Wanted (1940) [64]
- A Lady Takes a Chance (1943)
- The Green Years (1946)
- Song of Love (1947)
- The Three Musketeers (1948)
- Madame Bovary (1949)
- The Secret Garden (1949)
- The Schumann Story (1950) short film adaptation[65] of Song of Love
- The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955)
- The Power and the Prize (1956)
- The Wonderful Country (1959)
- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) [2]
- Khartoum (1966)[66] Nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay
- Out of Africa (1969, unproduced)[43]
- The Animal Within (1975) documentary
Awards and honors
- 1935: Sergel Drama Award.
- 1937: Guggenheim Fellowship.
- 1940: Sidney Howard Memorial Award.
- 1961: Theresa Helburn Memorial Award.
- 1963: Willkie Brothers Grant for Anthropology.
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
See also
- Dawn of Humanity (2015 PBS film)
Additional resources
There are a number of university libraries that house Robert Ardrey's papers. The primary archive for the Robert Ardrey Collection is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University.[67] There are also additional collections of Robert Ardrey's works held at UCLA,[68] Rutgers,[69] and the University of Chicago.[70]
References
- ↑ "Finding Aid for the Robert Ardrey Papers, 1935-1960". Online Archive of California. http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf5w1006sq/?query=%22Robert%20Ardrey%22&brand=oac.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bruce Eder. "Robert Ardrey". The New York Times. Allmovie. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=173054&mod=bio. "Equally comfortable dealing with literary editors such as Bennett Cerf or moguls like Darryl F. Zanuck, he also retained his credibility in the intellectual realm by authoring texts on anthropology, history, and sociology that remain widely respected decades after their publication. The widening dates between Ardrey's film projects came as a result of his increasing literary activity, as he began generating screenplays and novels on his own in the early 1950s and subsequently returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences. From the end of the 1950s, he kept his oar in both fields, film and academia, and occupied a virtually unique position in the Hollywood pecking order because of his dual career. In 1962, he took on the daunting task of turning the World War I-era novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into relevant entertainment for the early 1960s, authoring the screenplay for Vincente Minnelli's gargantuan 1962 all-star release."
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 The Robert Ardrey Estate Website. "About"
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Khartoum". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060588/.
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 5.24 5.25 5.26 5.27 5.28 5.29 5.30 5.31 Ardrey, Robert; Ardrey, Daniel (ed.). "The Education of Robert Ardrey: An Autobiography" (unpublished manuscript ca. 1980, available through Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center)
- ↑ Hunt, George P. "Provocateur in Anthropology." Time 26 August 1966: 2. Print.
- ↑ Wokler, Robert. "Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures: Rousseau's Anthropology Revisited." Daedalus Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time (Summer, 1978), pp. 107-134. Print.
- ↑ "African Genesis has, in all probability, been read by more people throughout the world than any other book on human evolution and the nature of man. Its influence has been very great indeed as it fermented an intense debate about these topics, and catalysed a new set of concepts in paleoanthropology." Brain, C.K. 1983. "Robert Ardrey and the 'Killer-Apes'" in Brain, C.K. 1983 The Hunters of the Hunted: An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Selig, Ruth Osterweis (Spring–Summer 1999). "Human Origins: One Man's Search for the Causes in Time". Smithsonian Institution. http://anthropology.si.edu/outreach/anthnote/Summer99/anthnote.html.
- ↑ Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, vol. 2, R. Reginald, 1979, pg 801
- ↑ 11.00 11.01 11.02 11.03 11.04 11.05 11.06 11.07 11.08 11.09 11.10 Ardrey, Robert. Plays of Three Decades, Introduction. New York: Atheneum. 1968. Print
- ↑ Swanson, H.N. Sprinkled with Ruby Dust: A Hollywood and Literary Memoir. 1989. New York: Warner books. Print.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 "The Three Musketeers". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040876/.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Madame Bovary". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041615/.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "The Secret Garden". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041855/.
- ↑ "The Wonderful Country". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053453/.
- ↑ From The Wonderful Country plot summary on iTunes
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Ardrey, Robert. "What Happened to Hollywood?" The Reporter 24 January 1957: 19-22. Print
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 Ardrey, Robert. "Hollywood's Fall into Virtue." The Reporter 21 February 1957: 13-7. Print
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Ardrey, Robert. "Hollywood: The Toll of the Frenzied Forties." The Reporter 21 March 1957: 29-33. Print
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 Aldgate, Anthony et al. Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War 2nd ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. p. 171. Print.
- ↑ Wertheim, Albert. Staging the War: American Drama and World War II. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2005. Pp. 352. Print.
- ↑ Quoted in Anderson, John. "London's Hit May Test Tempo for Our Season" Journal American August 25, 1940. Print.
- ↑ Hobson, Harold. Theatre in Britain: A Personal View. Oxford: Phaidon, 1984. pp. 117-8. Print
- ↑ BBC Genome Project. http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2b7a2614481348ef92324ad4d6a18b70
- ↑ BBC Genome Project. http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e6f5920c71594a48ae4d497a117afece http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e6f5920c71594a48ae4d497a117afece
- ↑ 27.0 27.1 The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
- ↑ "Jeb". Internet Broadway Database. https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/4860.
- ↑ Wertheim, Albert Staging the War: American Drama and World War II 2004. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 267. Print
- ↑ Kissel, Howard. David Merrick, the Abominable Showman: The Unauthorized Biography 1993. New York: Applause Books. p. 71.
- ↑ Deane, Pamela S. James Edwards: African American Hollywood Icon Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 4. Print.
- ↑ See especially Wertheim 2004, p. 267: "Jeb shows how the participation of African Americans in World War II and the occupational training they received in the armed forces prepare them in the postwar period to dress for battle in a new war to end racial discrimination and oppression at home. This is heady and unsettling stuff in 1946 for Broadway audiences and for society trying to return to prewar 'normalcy' and to put returning white soldiers back into the work force. It is no small wonder that Jeb, with its incisive unveiling of racism's economic underpinnings and with its militant ending, closed after six performances."
- ↑ Atkinson, Brooks. "Theatre: Phoenix Opens New Season." The New York Times, 15 October 1954. Print.
- ↑ "Collection – Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center". bu.edu. http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/collections/collection?id=121500.
- ↑ "Bhowani Junction". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049007/.
- ↑ Ardrey, Robert. Quoted in Quinn, Edward. History in Literature: A Reader's Guide to 20th Century History and the Literature It Inspired. New York: Infobase. 2009. Pp. 173-4. Print: "On October 18, 1958, eleven days after the [London] opening, Radio Budapest announced that Rajk had been released from prison and returned with her son to Budapest."
- ↑ "Out of Africa – Isak Dinesen, novel, Robert Ardrey, screenwriter". Royal Books. http://www.royalbooks.com/pages/books/135391/isak-dinesen-novel-robert-ardrey-screenwriter/out-of-africa-original-screenplay-for-an-unproduced-british-film.
- ↑ Ardrey, Daniel. Preface to Ardrey, Robert; Ardrey, Daniel (ed.). "The Education of Robert Ardrey: An Autobiography" (unpublished manuscript ca. 1980, available through Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center)
- ↑ Quoted in Khartoum Film Article at Turner Classic Movies
- ↑ "1967". Oscars.org – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. http://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1967.
- ↑ "Khartoum (1966) - Overview - TCM.com". Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/15858/Khartoum/.
- ↑ Townsley, Graham (Director) (10 September 2015). Dawn of Humanity (Documentary). Nova, PBS.
- ↑ 43.0 43.1 Maslin, Janet (1984-02-17). "At the Movies". New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/17/arts/at-the-movies.html.
- ↑ 44.0 44.1 Webster, Bayard. "Robert Ardrey Dies; Writer on Behavior." New York: The New York Times. January 16, 1980. Print
- ↑ Wilson, Edward O. Quoted in "Professional Comments on Robert Ardrey's The Hunting Hypothesis." Available through Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
- ↑ Templeman, William D. (1964) The Analysis of Prose. Odyssey.
- ↑ Q&A: The Know-It-All
- ↑ African Genesis
- ↑ Lewis, Peter "The Author who Stands out from the Crowd." The Observer, 1970. pp. 55-7. Print.
- ↑ 50.0 50.1 Brain, C.K. 1981. "Robert Ardrey and the 'Killer-Apes'" in Brain, C.K. 1983 The Hunters of the Hunted: An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ↑ Wright, William. Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality. New York: Routledge. 2013. Print.
- ↑ "Peckinpah: Primitive Horror". Time (magazine). December 20, 1971. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,879005,00.html.
- ↑ David Weddle. If They Move ... Kill 'Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah (p. 396). 1994 first edition: Grove Press, ISBN:0-8021-3776-8, ASIN 0802137768.
- ↑ Paul Cremean (23 May 2006). "Peckinpah's West vs. Mann's Metropolis". Grover Watrous' Golden Egg. http://cremmers.blogspot.com/2006/05/peckinpahs-west-vs-manns-metropolis.html. "Drawing heavily from the work of Robert Ardrey, controversial sociologist and author of 'African Genesis' and 'The Territorial Imperative,' Peckinpah ascribed to the belief that man is by nature territorial, brutal and elementally animal."
- ↑ Garner Simmons. Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage (p. 128). 1982 first edition: University of Texas Press, ISBN:0-292-76493-6, ASIN 0292764936. 2004 paperback edition: Limelight, ISBN:978-0-87910-273-9, ASIN 087910273X.
- ↑ Marshall Fine. Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah. 1991 first edition: Dutton Books, ISBN:1-55611-236-X, ISBN:978-1-55611-236-2. 2006 paperback edition: Miramax Books, ISBN:1-4013-5972-8, ISBN:978-1-4013-5972-0.
- ↑ Clarke, Arthur C. (1972). "2001 Diary (excerpts)". The Lost Worlds of 2001. New American Library (New York). http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0073.html.
- ↑ Stanley Kubrick (February 27, 1972). "Letter to the editor". The New York Times. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0037.html.
- ↑ Richard D. Erlich (1997–2005). "Strange Odyssey: From Dart to Ardrey to Kubrick and Clarke". English studies/Film theory course, Science fiction and Film. Miami University. http://www.users.muohio.edu/erlichrd/350/odyssey.php.
- ↑ Daniel Richter (2002). "Foreword". Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001, a Space Odyssey. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-7867-1073-7. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0099.html. "... the longest flash forward in the history of movies: three million years, from bone club to artificial satellite, in a twenty-fourth of a second."
- ↑ 61.0 61.1 Dawn of Humanity – 2015 PBS documentary film :43:45
- ↑ Hirst, K. Kris (2015). "The Dawn of Humanity – Newly Discovered Homo Naledi Video Review – Accessible Science on the Rising Star Paleolithic Site". About.com. http://archaeology.about.com/od/stoneage/fl/The-Dawn-of-Humanity-Newly-Discovered-Homo-Naledi-Video-Review.htm.
- ↑ Berger, Lee R. et al. (2015). "Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa". eLife 4. 10 September 2015. doi:10.7554/eLife.09560. PMID 26354291.
- ↑ "Robert Ardrey (10/16/1908 - 1/14/1980) Other Credits". AMC (TV network) website. http://www.amctv.com/person/detail?CID=8167-1-GMT.
- ↑ "The Schumann Story (1950)". Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438971/.
- ↑ "Robert Ardrey Filmography". DVDEmpire.com. http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_list_cast.asp?userid=&cast_id=60379. "Most Worked With: 1. Peter Ustinov 2. Pandro S. Berman 3. Raoul Walsh 4. Van Heflin 5. Angela Lansbury 6. Christopher Kent 7. Frank Allenby 8. Gene Kelly 9. George Sidney 10. Gladys Cooper"
- ↑ "Ardrey, Robert". Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center (HGARC), Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/archives-cc/app/details.php?id=7338&return=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fphpbin%2Farchives-cc%2Fapp%2Fbrowse.php%3Fletter%3DA%26sort_column%3Dcomposite_name%26sort_direction%3DASC%26per_page%3D10%26offset%3D20%26set_page%3Dnext.
- ↑ "Finding Aid for the Robert Ardrey Papers, 1935-1960". cdlib.org. http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf5w1006sq/entire_text/.
- ↑ MANUSCRIPTS ACQUISITIONS B Y ALBERT C. KING ejbe.libraries.rutgers.edu
- ↑ "Guide to the Robert Ardrey Papers 1928-1974". uchicago.edu. https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.ARDREYR.
External links
General
- NYTimes / All Movie Guide biography of Robert Ardrey
- Official site of The Robert Ardrey Estate
- Answers.com on Robert Ardrey
Plays and screenplays
- Synopses of Thunder Rock and Sing Me No Lullaby.
- Robert Ardrey on IMDb.
Paleoanthropology
- "The First Runner's High: Jogging Separated Humans From Apes." Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience, November 2004 (aspects of Miocene/Pliocene transition – from forest to savannah – central to Ardrey's theses)
- Robert Ardrey, The Scourge of Territorialism (1967)
- Robert Ardrey, Territorialism and War (1967)
- "Exploring Our Basic Human Nature: Are Humans Inherently Violent?" Robert W. Sussman, Anthro Notes: National Museum of Natural History Bulletin for Teachers, Vol. 19 No. 3, Fall 1997.
- Excerpts from African Genesis.
Collections
- Guide to the Robert Ardrey Papers 1928-1974 from the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
![]() | Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert Ardrey.
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