Kate Lardner is an American author, actress and writing teacher, known for her 2004 memoir Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid. Born in New York City, she grew up in a family of writers and performers whose lives were marked by the Hollywood blacklist of the McCarthy era.
Background
Kate Lardner was born Katharine Lardner on January 14, 1943, in New York City, into a family of writers. Her grandfather, Ring Lardner, was born in Niles, Michigan, in 1885 and became known for his short stories and sports writing. He contributed frequently to The Saturday Evening Post, a general-interest magazine founded in Philadelphia in 1821 that reached a wide middle-class readership with its fiction and reportage. Ring Lardner died in 1933.
Her father, David Lardner, was a journalist and the son of Ring Lardner. He wrote for The New Yorker, a weekly magazine founded in New York in 1925, and was killed while on assignment in Germany during World War II. Her mother, the actress Frances Chaney, was born Fanya Lipetz in Odessa, Russian Empire, in 1915. In 1946 she married David's brother, the screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr., in Las Vegas.
Ring Lardner Jr. was an Academy Award winner for the films Woman of the Year and M*A*S*H. In 1947 he was one of the Hollywood Ten, screenwriters and directors who declined to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee, a congressional panel investigating alleged subversion, whether they were Communist Party members. The ten were cited for contempt of Congress, and Lardner served nearly ten months in federal prison at Danbury, Connecticut.
The Hollywood blacklist that followed kept many film workers with alleged Communist ties out of studio employment. Lardner's memoir describes how neither her stepfather nor her mother could find work after his imprisonment, and how the family moved from Mexico City to rural Connecticut and then to Manhattan.
Education
Lardner's acting training came from two teachers: Sanford Meisner in New York City and Peggy Feury in Los Angeles. Meisner was a prominent American acting teacher known for his distinctive approach to method acting, a tradition that developed from the Group Theatre of the 1930s and the ideas of Constantin Stanislavski. He taught at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where his approach emphasized truthful behavior under imaginary circumstances.
Peggy Feury, born Margaret Feury in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1924, became a highly regarded acting teacher in New York before relocating to Los Angeles in December 1968. With her husband, the actor William Traylor, she founded the Loft Studio, an acting school later attended by major performers such as Sean Penn.
Career
Lardner's working life has combined film work, acting, writing and teaching. In 1987 she is credited as an apprentice sound editor on Making Mr. Right, a science-fiction romantic comedy directed by Susan Seidelman. In the film, a workaholic scientist builds a humanlike android, and a public relations expert is assigned to teach it emotions. The picture was produced by Orion Pictures, an American studio founded in 1978 by former United Artists executives.
She has also worked as an actress on film, stage and television. Her credits include the 1976 episode work on Quincy, M.E., an NBC crime drama that ran from 1976 to 1983, and she is credited on the 2005 production The Crutch.
Her memoir, Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid, was published in 2004 by Ballantine Books, a New York imprint of Random House. Its account of her childhood moves between reproduced letters and memories, covering her stepfather's year in prison, the blacklist years and her parents' efforts to cope with the crisis.
Lardner has taught writing at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, a Jungian training institute in Manhattan, at Manhattanville College, a private Catholic liberal arts college in Purchase, New York, and at The Writer's Voice, a New York literary center. She currently teaches privately. With the singer and actress Amy Coleman, she co-founded The True Voice Workshop. A creative nonfiction memoir, The Conference Call, is in progress.
Achievements
Lardner's essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Good Housekeeping and Town & Country. The New York Times, founded in 1851, is one of the largest American newspapers, while Good Housekeeping and Town & Country are long-established American magazines. She has also appeared on radio and television talk shows and panels, and as an actress she has worked on film, stage and television.
(Memoir published by Ballantine Books in 2004 about Lardne...)
2004
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, praised the memoir with the words: "Kate Lardner is funny, my favorite kind of funny."
Connections
Lardner belongs to a family with several generations of American writers. Her grandfather was Ring Lardner, her father was the journalist David Lardner, and her stepfather was the screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. Her mother, Frances Chaney, remained married to Ring Lardner Jr. until his death in 2000.
Lardner married the actor Tommy Lee Jones in 1971, and they divorced in 1978. She has two children.
Her half-brother, James Lardner, is the son of Frances Chaney and Ring Lardner Jr. In a 1997 retrospective article, he argued that his mother had a harder struggle under the blacklist than his more publicized father.
Father:
David Lardner
Writer for The New Yorker and son of Ring Lardner. He was killed while on assignment in Germany during World War II.
Mother:
Frances Chaney
Born Fanya Lipetz on July 23, 1915, in Odessa, Russian Empire. She was an actress known for When Harry Met Sally, Law & Order and Life with Mikey. She was married to David Ellis Lardner and then to Ring Lardner Jr. She died on November 23, 2004, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States.
stepfather:
Ring Lardner Jr.
The Oscar-winning screenwriter, known for Woman of the Year and M*A*S*H, was one of the Hollywood Ten. In 1947 he declined to answer the House Un-American Activities Committee's questions about Communist Party membership, was cited for contempt of Congress, and was blacklisted by the film studios. He served a sentence of nearly ten months in federal prison.
Grandfather:
Ring Lardner
Born Ringgold Wilmer Lardner on March 6, 1885, in Niles, Michigan. He was a writer and actor, known for The Cowboy Quarterback, Elmer, the Great and The New Klondike, and famous for his Saturday Evening Post series You Know Me Al. He was married to Ellis Abbott. He died on September 27, 1933, in Easthampton, Long Island, New York, United States.
grandmother:
Ellis Abbot
Married to Ring Lardner.
Great-grandfather:
Henry Lardner
Brother:
James Lardner
Son of Frances Chaney and Ring Lardner Jr., and therefore Lardner's half-brother.
Ex-husband:
Tommy Lee Jones
Born in San Saba, Texas, to Lucille Marie (Scott), a police officer and beauty shop owner, and Clyde C. Jones, who worked in the oil fields. Before acting he worked in underwater construction and on an oil rig. He attended St. Mark's School of Texas, a Dallas preparatory school for boys, on a scholarship, and then Harvard on another scholarship. At Harvard he roomed with future Vice President Al Gore and played offensive guard in the 1968 Harvard-Yale game known as The Tie, and he graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1969. He began his Broadway career in A Patriot for Me (1969) and made his film debut in Love Story (1970). He often plays hard-edged but sarcastic law enforcement and military officers.
Great-grandmother:
Lena Phillips Lardner
References
Lardner, Kate
Reference entry giving Lardner's parentage, her 1971 marriage to Tommy Lee Jones, which ended in divorce in 1978, her writing and her acting education with Sanford Meisner and Peggy Feury.
Kate Lardner, official author website: Biography
Author biography describing Lardner's memoir Shut Up He Explained, her essays in publications including the New York Times, Good Housekeeping and Town & Country, her teaching at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, Manhattanville College and The Writer's Voice, and her acting studies.
Kate Lardner - IMDb Biography
Filmography-based biography recording Lardner's birth on January 14, 1943, in New York City, her credits for Making Mr. Right (1987), Quincy, M.E. (1976) and The Crutch (2005), and her former marriage to Tommy Lee Jones.
