“Let’s face it—alcohol has a million good functions.”
Best-known roles: Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and the corrupt police chief in The Godfather (1972). Sterling Hayden dropped out of high school in Maine to work as a mate on a schooner and spent the next several years sailing. He cashed in on his good looks and towering stature (he stood six-five) with modeling jobs. This led to a contract with Paramount in 1941. Hayden made just two pictures—with the studio promoting him as “the most beautiful man in the movies”—before the onset of World War II. He enlisted as a Marine and served as an OSS agent in Yugoslavia and Croatia, then returned to Hollywood after the war. He received accolades for starring roles in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), but had more success as a character actor. Hayden had briefly been a member of the Communist party, and he did name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, an action that haunted him the rest of his life. In the 1970s, he enjoyed something of a resurgence playing smaller parts for auteur directors: Coppola cast him in The Godfather; Altman in The Long Goodbye (1973); Bertolucci in 1900 (1976). Hayden divided his time between an apartment in Sausalito, a home in Connecticut, and a barge in Paris. In later years, he grew a long gray Ahab beard and frequently wore a biblical robe.
STERLING HAYDEN HAD A SAYING: “If you’re doing anything for money, you’re going down. If you’re doing anything only for money, you’re going down perpendicularly.” But now Hayden was in London on a five-week deal making a B-movie called Venom for a producer he thought was a “senior-grade asshole” and an angle hadn’t yet been invented for how he was going down.
Venom was about an insidious criminal plot to kidnap a wealthy couple’s child. The plan goes tragically awry when everyone involved is trapped in the couple’s home with a supremely pissed-off black mamba snake. Clearly, this was to be real Oscar bait. Co-starring was Oliver Reed, a burly English actor with two primary ambitions in life, “to drink every pub dry and to sleep with every woman on earth.” Basically, Hayden was getting paid fifty grand a week to hang out with a drunken Reed, whose main amusement on set (apart from the booze) was calling their other costar Klaus Kinski “fucking Nazi bastard” at every opportunity. Which might have been fun, had Hayden not just gone on the wagon—yet again.
Hayden had been off the studio radar for some time, though really he’d only ever had one foot in it to begin with. An incurable drifter, he’d only gotten into pictures in the first place as a way of financing a boat he wanted to purchase. He never really bought into the system, and the system, in turn, never really bought into him. But by the 1970s, a new generation of directors—including Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci—who knew Hayden from such films as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, and who revered him for his eccentric, bohemian lifestyle (he once lived on a barge on the Seine called the Who Knows?), were eager to hire him.
He also had two books to his name: an autobiography, Wanderer, and a novel, Voyage. But both of those were written in what he called the “alcoholic style of life,” which he’d had to give up for health reasons, and which he now thoroughly missed.
So it’s not as if Hayden needed this Venom thing. He also had two books to his name: an autobiography, Wanderer, and a novel, Voyage. But both of those were written in what he called the “alcoholic style of life,” which he’d had to give up for health reasons, and which he now thoroughly missed. To Hayden, who in WWII had received a Silver Star, a commendation from Marshal Tito, as well as a Bronze Arrowhead for parachuting behind enemy lines, quitting booze “made combat look like going down an elevator.”
But what the hell—just because he’d written two books under the influence of alcohol didn’t mean he needed it. Besides, what else was he going to do in his London hotel room? So one night, around 3 a.m., he sat down and started writing a new autobiography. He hadn’t had a drink in three or four months, but to his surprise, the writing felt great. So great, in fact, he figured he might as well—nah, he shouldn’t. Well, on second thought, why not—two double shots would be a great way to celebrate his sober literary prowess.
Three days later, Hayden informed Venom’s director that he was too drunk to continue on the picture. And just like that, he was gone. Venom would be his last film.