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Sterling Hayden: Hollywood
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After the release of Terror in a Texas Town in 1958, Sterling Hayden sailed away from Hollywood and his film career. His marriage to second wife Betty de Noon had ended in 1955. In the early 1960s, Hayden shied away from acting but did publish his autobiography, Wanderer, in 1963. Other than an appearance on CBS-TV's The DuPont Show of the Month in 1960, he would make no other big or small screen appearances until the 1964 Stanley Kubrick black comedy Dr. Strangelove. Following this film was another long period of absence, but Hayden worked regularly from 1969 through 1976, when he published his novel Voyage: A Novel of 1896. Afterward, his film appearances again became sporadic.
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Sterling Hayden fought with the partisans in Yugoslavia because that was what the Marine Corp. assigned him to do! The communists in Yugoslavia were fighting against the NAZIS and the communists in China were fighting against IMPERIAL JAPAN; so the United States sent agents to both theaters to cooperate with the commies; both Chou En Lai and Tito were once allies of the United States. Sterling Hayden never stopped being a Marine (there is no such thing as an 'Ex' Marine!) and he never stopped cooperating with the Federal government: either in an active duty capacity or as a civilian actor. He was disillusioned with the economic determinism of Communism, it didn't set well with his free spirited approach to life. Sterling Hayden publically regretted cooperating with the H.U.A.C. but privately celebrated his contribution to ferreting out a lot of commie Hollywood ratfink actors.
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Hayden became a print model and later signed a contract with Paramount Studios, who dubbed the 6' 5" (1.96 m) actor The Most Beautiful Man in the Movies and The Beautiful Blond Viking God. His first film starred Madeleine Carroll, with whom he fell in love and married. But after just two film roles, he left Hollywood to serve as an undercover agent with William J. Donovan's COI office. He remained there after it became the OSS. Hayden ... joined the Marines under the name John Hamilton (which was never his legal name). His World War II service included running guns through German lines to the Yugoslav partisans and parachuting into fascist Croatia.
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Sterling Hayden served as mate and captain aboard a number of sailing ships, and was a Grand Banks fisherman when Hollywood offered him a screen test. His most famous role was that of Captain McCluskey in The Godfather. He died in 1986.
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Sterling Hayden arrived in Hollywood in 1938 amid a great deal of publicity, having delivered, at the age of 22, an 89-foot brigantine to Tahiti with a pick-up crew. This was only the first of numerous sailing adventures; and that, plus a stint in the Marines, gave him a healthy start in the land of movies.
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Deciding he loathed the service, Hayden pulled some strings and got himself hooked up with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the U.S.’s first intelligence unit. As an OSS member, he found himself all over the Mediterranean running supplies and guns, primarily to the Yugoslav partisans through German occupied areas. By 1946, he was back in Hollywood with a Silver Star, a citation from Tito, a fascination with communism, heavier drinking bouts, and, ironically, an ex-wife.
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