1. Robert Ardrey was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for The Territorial Imperative.
39 Facts About Robert Ardrey
1. 2.
Robert Ardrey was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937, won the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award in 1940, and in 1966 received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for his script for Khartoum.
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Robert Ardrey's father died in 1919 from pneumonia during the influenza epidemic and he was raised by his mother.
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Robert Ardrey grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended the nearby University of Chicago, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1930 as a Ph.
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Robert Ardrey wrote original screenplays, including the screenplay for Khartoum for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay.
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Robert Ardrey spent the following years traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa, conducting research for what was to become his first book on the subject, African Genesis, ultimately an international bestseller.
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Robert Ardrey continued to publish influential works until his death on January 14,1980, from lung cancer.
8.
Wilder and Robert Ardrey agreed that this moment came with the writing of the play Star Spangled.
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However it did catch the attention of notable playwright Sidney Howard, whom Robert Ardrey claims was instrumental in the resulting award of a Guggenheim fellowship for promise as a young playwright.
10.
Robert Ardrey worked on several projects, including Samuel Goldwyn's notorious boondoggle remake of Graustark, which was cancelled, and a western called The Cowboy and the Lady, from which he was dropped.
11.
Robert Ardrey decided to use the opportunity to take time off to write a play.
12.
Robert Ardrey travelled to Tucson where he married Helen Johnson with famed Hollywood director Garson Kanin as his best man.
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Robert Ardrey wrote Thunder Rock during the period of escalation in Europe which would lead to World War II.
14.
Robert Ardrey has lost one leg, but gained the ability to run an adding machine.
15.
The critical consensus, with which Robert Ardrey came to agree, was that Jeb was far ahead of its time.
16.
In 1949, Robert Ardrey wrote the screenplay for Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary.
17.
The novel was originally tried for obscenity in France and Robert Ardrey used this as a device to frame the story and allow for a commentator.
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In 1947, Robert Ardrey, amid growing persecution of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee, was elected to the board of the Screen Writers Guild and made chairman of its Political Advisory Committee.
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Later, on behalf of the Guild, Robert Ardrey worked with Thurman Arnold to lodge a suit against the Hollywood blacklist with the Supreme Court.
20.
Robert Ardrey travelled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, the Riviera, Venice, Yugoslavia, where he spent a month living in Belgrade, Greece, Istanbul, and Munich.
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Robert Ardrey later described these travels as "necessary exercises" for his book African Genesis.
22.
In 1952 Ardrey joined the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson against the Republican nominee, Dwight D Eisenhower, as a part of the group "Hollywood for Stevenson".
23.
In 1954 Robert Ardrey wrote a play about the persecution of accused communists in post-Cold War America.
24.
Robert Ardrey has found the words to describe something that is vague and elusive but ominous.
25.
Also in 1954 Robert Ardrey wrote the adaptation of John Masters' novel Bhowani Junction.
26.
In 1958 Robert Ardrey wrote the play Shadow of Heroes about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
27.
Robert Ardrey was to begin his pioneering work in paleoanthropology, but he continued his career as a screenwriter.
28.
In 1955, when Robert Ardrey was considering a trip to Africa, Max Ascoli, publisher of The Reporter, offered to buy anything that Robert Ardrey would write there.
29.
Robert Ardrey met Dart in South Africa and examined his evidence.
30.
Robert Ardrey wrote an article about Dart's theory for The Reporter.
31.
Robert Ardrey spent the latter part of his life working as a science writer.
32.
Robert Ardrey's work was so popular that some scientists cited it as inspiring them to enter their fields.
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Robert Ardrey wrote for popular audiences on topics in paleoanthropology, which encompasses anthropology, ethology, paleontology, zoology and human evolution.
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Robert Ardrey was praised for crossing the boundaries of scientific specialism.
35.
Robert Ardrey postulated that precursors of Australopithecus survived millions of years of drought in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, as the savannah spread and the forests shrank, by adapting the hunting ways of carnivorous species.
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Robert Ardrey argued that aggression was therefore an inherited evolutionary trait still present in man.
37.
Robert Ardrey challenged the reigning blank-slate hypothesis.
38.
Robert Ardrey seems to be scarcely aware of the interactions involved in biological processes and to know nothing of the scientific method.
39.
The primary archive for the Robert Ardrey Collection is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University.