Ring Lardner, Jr.

Film Clip: Woman of the Year 1942

Blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, Lardner worked for the next couple of years on the novel, The Ecstasy of Owen Muir (1954). He moved to England for a time where he wrote under several pseudonyms for television series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood. The blacklist was lifted when producer Martin Ransohoff and director Norman Jewison gave him screen credit for writing 1965's The Cincinnati Kid. Lardner's later work included M*A*S*H (1970), for which he won the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, and The Greatest (1977). His final film project was an adaptation of Roger Kahn's classic book, "The Boys of Summer." To Ring's great regret, funding did not materialize.

According to Hungarian writer Miklos Vamos—who visited Lardner several times before his death—Lardner won an Academy Award for a movie he wrote under a pseudonym. ^{Lardner refused to tell which movie it was, saying that it would be unfair to reveal it because the writer who allowed Lardner, Jr., to use his name as a front(as Lardner's pseudonym) was doing him a big favor at the time.}