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Thomas
"Tom" Lester Tryon (January 14, 1926 – September 4, 1991) was an American film and
television actor as well as a novelist. He is best known for playing the title
role in the film The Cardinal (1963), featured roles in the war films
The Longest Day (1962) and In Harm's Way (1965) with
John Wayne,
and especially the Walt Disney television character Texas John Slaughter
(1958–1961). He later turned to the writing of prose fiction and screenplays,
and wrote several science fiction, horror and
mystery novels.
Thomas Lester Tryon was born on January 14, 1926, in Hartford, Connecticut, the
son of Arthur Lane Tryon, a clothier[1][4]
and owner of Stackpole, Moore & Tryon. He served in the United States Navy in
the Pacific from 1943–1946[4]
during and after World War II. Upon return from the U.S. Navy he attended and
graduated from Yale.
Tryon studied acting at NYC's Neighborhood Playhouse under the tutelage of
Sanford Meisner.
He appeared in the 1952 original Broadway production of Wish You Were
Here, a long-running musical that starred Jack Cassidy, Patricia Marand
and Sheila Bond.
Tryon appeared in The Way of the World (1955). He also guest starred
in 1955 as Antoine De More in the two-part episode "King of the Dakotas" of
NBC's western anthology series Frontier.
Tryon was signed to a long term contract to Paramount. His film debut was
in The Scarlet Hour (1956) at Paramount, directed by Michael Curtiz. It
was a crime drama about a man whose married lover persuades him to commit a
robbery; Tryon was second billed. He was top billed in a low budget war film
at Allied Artists, Screaming Eagles (1956), then supported Charlton
Heston and Anne Baxter in Three Violent People (1956) at Paramount. He
was announced for, but did not end up appearing in,Short Cut to Hell.[5]
Tryon's work was mostly in TV though, appearing in Jane Wyman Presents
The Fireside Theatre, The 20th Century-Fox Hour, Playhouse 90
(an adaptation of Charley's Aunt), Zane Grey Theater, Studio
57, Matinee Theatre, and Lux Video Theatre. He had a support
role in RKO's The Unholy Wife (1957) billed after Rod Steiger and Diana
Dors. He had the lead in a low budget science fiction film at Paramount, I
Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958). Tryon appeared in the lead in
"The Mark Hanford Story" (February 26, 1958) on NBC's Wagon Train. He
portrayed an educated half-breed outraged at his father, Jack Hanford (played
by Onslow Stevens), for having mistreated Mark's Cheyenne mother. Kathleen
Crowley portrayed Ann Jamison, a young woman that the senior Hanford plans to
marry after the self-banishment and then suicide of Mark's mother.[6]
His other television roles included The Restless Gun, General
Electric Theater, The Millionaire, The Big Valley, and
The Joseph Cotten Show: On Trial.
Tryon played Texas John Slaughter for Disney in a series of TV movies for
Disney which ran from 1958 to 1961. The role was based on actual historical
figure John Slaughter.[7]
He was considered but eventually passed over for the role of Janet Leigh's
lover, Sam Loomis, in the classic thriller, Psycho (1960); the role
went to John Gavin.
Tryon starred in The Story of Ruth (1960) at 20th Century Fox. For
that studio he appeared in Marines, Let's Go (1961). Disney borrowed
him to star in a satire about the space age, Moon Pilot (1962). He was
one of many names in The Longest Day (1962) at Fox. In 1962, Tryon was
cast to play the role of Stephen Burkett ("Adam") in the unfinished Marilyn
Monroe-Dean Martin comedy film, Something's Got to Give, directed by
George Cukor,
but lost that role after Monroe was fired from the movie. He guest starred on
Dr. Kildare and The Virginian.
Tryon's greatest role was as an ambitious Catholic priest in The
Cardinal (1963). The film was a box office hit and Tryon received a
nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.
However, that honor barely compensated for the trauma and abuse he suffered at
the hands of director Otto Preminger. At one point during filming, Preminger
fired Tryon in front of his parents when they visited the set, then rehired
him after being satisfied that Tryon had been sufficiently humiliated.[8]
"Finally, I was in a position of being able to pick my roles," said Tryon
in 1986. "But I didn't like the movie. I didn't like me in the movie. To this
day, I cannot look at that film. It's because of Preminger. He was a tyrant
who ruled by terror. He tied me up in knots. He screamed at me. He called me
names. He said I was lazy. He said I was a fool. He never cursed me. His
insults were far more personal."[9]
Tryon guest starred on Kraft Suspense Theatre then was reunited with
Preminger in In Harm's Way (1965).
He had the lead in The Glory Guys (1965).
He was part of a live television performance of The Fall of the House of
Usher. He also co-wrote a song, "I Wish I Was," which appeared on
an obscure record by Dick Kallman, star of the short-lived and now largely
forgotten 1965 television sitcom, Hank. He guest starred on The Big
Valley and Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre and appeared in
the 1967 episode "Charade of Justice" of NBC's western series The Road West
starring Barry Sullivan. He starred in a TV movie remake of Winchester 73
(1967). Tryon went to Europe to star in Persecución hasta Valencia
(1968) and to Australia to make Color Me Dead (1969).
Disillusioned with acting, Tryon retired from the profession in 1969 and
began writing horror and mystery novels. He was successful, overcoming
skepticism about a classically handsome movie star suddenly turning novelist.
He also moved into film financing, being executive producer on Johnny Got
His Gun (1971).
His best-known work is The Other (1971), about a boy whose evil twin
brother may or may not be responsible for a series of deaths in a small rural
community in the 1930s. He adapted his novel into a film released the
following year, which starred Diana Muldaur, Uta Hagen, and John Ritter.
Harvest Home (1973), about the dark pagan rituals being practiced in a
small New England town, was adapted as The Dark Secret of Harvest Home
(1978), a television mini-series starring
Bette Davis.
An extensive critical analysis of Tryon's horror novels can be found in S.
T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001). His other books include
Crowned Heads, a collection of novellas inspired by the legends of
Hollywood. Tryon sold the film rights to Universal to make four films based on
the novellas.[10]
The first of these novellas, Fedora, about a reclusive former film
actress whose relationship with her plastic surgeon is similar to that between
a drug addict and her pusher, was later converted to a feature film directed
by Billy Wilder.
Other novellas in the collection were based on the murder of former silent
screen star
Ramón
Novarro, and the quasi-Oedipal relationship between actor
Clifton Webb
and his mother. Lady (1974) concerns the friendship between an
eight-year-old boy and a charming widow in 1930s New England and the secret he
discovers about her. His novel The Night of the Moonbow (1989) tells
the story of a boy driven to violent means by the constant harassment he
receives at a summer boys camp. Night Magic, written in 1991, was
posthumously published in 1995.
Tryon married, in 1955, Ann L. Noyes, the daughter of stockbroker Joseph
Leo Lilienthal and his wife, the former Edna Arnstein. She was the former wife
of Thomas Ewing Noyes, with whom she had been a theatrical producer.[11][12][13]
The Tryons divorced in 1958,[1]
and Ann Tryon resumed her previous married name, dying as Ann L. Noyes in
1966.[1][14]
During the 1970s, he was in a romantic relationship with
Clive Clerk, one of the original
cast members of A Chorus Line and an interior designer who decorated
Tryon's apartment on Central Park West in New York City, which was featured in
Architectural Digest.[2]
Tryon was also involved in a relationship with Calvin Culver, also known as
Casey
Donovan, a gay porn star.[3]
Tryon died of stomach cancer on September 4, 1991, at the age of 65, in Los
Angeles, California.
[15]
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