Читать книгу The Secret History of Entertainment - David Hepworth, David Hepworth - Страница 15

Alan Ladd, Hollywood superstar of the cowboy era of the 1950s, was remarkably small for an action hero. He had been malnourished as a child and once burned down the family apartment playing with matches. His mother called him ‘Tiny’, and when an interviewer once asked what he would change about himself he replied, ‘Everything’.

Estimates of Ladd’s precise stature begin at five foot four, but even the most generous go no higher than five foot six. Love scenes were always a problem. When he appeared with Sophia Loren in the 1957 movie Boy on a Dolphin he had to stand on a fruit box for the love scenes. James Mason made it clear that if he was to co-star with Ladd in the film Botany Bay he was not going to do what many of Ladd’s male costars had done, which was to stand in a trench to save the lead’s dignity. Ladd died in 1964, apparently after an accidental overdose of pills and alcohol.

Even at five foot six he was still an inch taller than Dustin Hoffman and the same height as Al Pacino, and would have fitted in with many of the biggest names in Hollywood today. Tom Cruise’s official height is five foot seven, while even Tobey Maguire and Joaquin Phoenix claim no more than five foot eight. Michael Caine, who’s six foot two, has been around long enough to note the change with what he calls ‘the emergence’ of ‘a generation of very talented small people. Maybe they are more ambitious because they are more angry because they are short.’