Robert Ardrey (Unterscheidung)Helfer-Hub

"Robert Ardrey was that rarity in Hollywood, a writer who beat Hollywood and its producers, moguls, and stars at their own game of amassing power, wealth, and respect. Equally comfortable dealing with literary editors such as Bennett Cerf or moguls like Darryl F. Zanuck, he also retained his credibility in the intellectual realm by authoring texts on anthropology, history, and sociology that remain widely respected decades after their publication. Born in Chicago in 1908, he was the son of Robert Leslie Ardrey, an editor and publisher, and the former Marie Haswell. He showed an interest in writing while still a boy, and in his early teens he worked on his first novel. He studied anthropology and a range of natural and social sciences at the University of Chicago, but with the encouragement of Thornton Wilder, Ardrey pursued writing as a career. He supported himself during the Great Depression of the early '30s by playing piano in various jazz clubs, working as a statistician and staff analyst for the city's personnel bureau, and lecturing on pre-Columbian civilization at the Chicago World's Fair. He also authored what he later described as an embarrassingly bad novel set among Cro-Magnon peoples, and a failed play." - Bruce Eder, AllMovieGuide