"I don't think there are many other businesses where you can be paid good money and not know what you're doing.""I started at the top and worked my way down.""Where did the weakness lie, the weakness that forced you to give up ten or twelve of what might have been the most vital years of your life? It lay, did it not, in the fact that you were flawed. You were big and strong on the surface, but something was wrong inside. You were strong enough to rebel -- not strong enough to revolt."Sterling Hayden (March 26, 1916 – May 23, 1986) was an American actor and author. For most of his career as a leading man, he specialized in westerns and film noir. He is most noted for his appearance as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964).
He also played the Irish policeman, Captain McCluskey, who was gunned down by Al Pacino, in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" in 1972.
Born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, Hayden's parents were George and Frances Walter, who named him Montague Relyea Walter. After his father died, he was adopted at the age of nine by James Hayden and renamed Sterling Walter Hayden. As a child, he lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and Maine, where he attended Wassookeag School in Dexter, Maine.
Hayden was a genuine adventurer and man of action, not dissimilar from many of his movie parts. He ran away to sea at 17, as a ship's boy, then later was a fisherman on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. After serving as sailor and fireman on larger vessels, he was awarded his first command at 19, and sailed around the world several times.
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 whom he 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 also joined the Marines under the name John Hamilton. His World War II service included running guns through German lines to the Yugoslav partisans and parachuting into fascist Croatia. He won the Silver Star and a commendation from Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito.
His admiration for the Communist partisans led to a brief membership in the Communist Party. According to his IMDB biography, as the Red Scare deepened in U.S., "he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, confessing his brief Communist ties" and 'naming names'. His wife at that time, Betty Denoon, insisted that the 'names' her ex-husband provided were already in the hands of the Committee, which had a copy of the Communist Party's membership list.
He toyed with the notion of facing down HUAC by running an ad in the trades declaring that he'd been a Communist, but so what? When his therapist asked why he didn't place the ad, Hayden erupted: "Because I haven't got the guts, that's why. Maybe because I'm a parlor pink. Because I want to remain employable in ths town long enough to finish this fucking analysis....How many reasons do you want, sitting there on your throne?"
Sterling Hayden often professed distaste for film acting, claiming he did it mainly to pay for his sailboats. In 1959, after a very bitter divorce he was awarded custody of his children. He defied a court order and sailed to Tahiti with all four children, Christian, Dana, Gretchen and Matthew.
Hayden married Catherine Devine McConnell in 1960. They had two sons, Andrew and David, and were married until his death in 1986.
In the 1970s, after his appearance in The Godfather, he appeared several times on NBC's The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder where he talked about his career resurgence and how it had funded his travels and adventures around the world. Hayden bought a canal barge in the Netherlands in 1969, eventually moving it to the heart of Paris and living on it part of the time. He also shared a home in Connecticut with his family and had an apartment in Sausalito, California.
Hayden wrote two well-received books: his autobiography Wanderer in 1963 and a historical novel,Voyage: A Novel of 1896 in 1976. In 1986, Sterling Hayden died of prostate cancer in Sausalito, California. He was 70.
