A compact tough guy actor, Alan Ladd arrived at stardom by way of a pair of film noir movies in the early 1940s. After nearly a decade of small parts, he was given the role of Raven in Paramount Pictures' 1942 This Gun For Hire, a somewhat toned down adaptation of the Graham Greene thriller. Although he didn't get star billing—that went to Robert Preston and Veronica Lake—Ladd stole the picture playing a sort of existentialist hired assassin. He managed to make the cold, doomed character unsettling and yet appealing. The scenes between him and Lake suggested to the studio that they would make a bankable romantic team, and before his first major film was released Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake were working together again in The Glass Key, a dark, violent version of Dashiell Hammett's novel. Brian Donlevy was the ostensible star...