Stranger than Fiction – Part 2
(Leon Ames and Ruth Roman)
“Truth is stranger than fiction,” Mark Twain once informed us, “but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”
This month’s Noir Nook serves up the next installment in my series that looks at “stranger than fiction” lives of actors and actresses from the noir era. This time around, I’m taking a look at two performers: Leon Ames and Ruth Roman.
Leon Ames
When you think of Leon Ames, do you envision the authoritative patriarch of the Smith clan in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)? Or maybe Doris Day’s father in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953)? Not me. In my book, Ames’s standout roles were the calculating attorneys he played in two first-rate noirs, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Angel Face (1953). He also contributed memorably to three additional films from the era: Lady in the Lake (1947), The Velvet Touch (1948), and Scene of the Crime (1949).
Away from the silver screen, Ames opened a Studio City Ford dealership in the mid-1940s that he later expanded into one of the largest automobile franchises in the west. It was this successful business that indirectly led to the actor’s real-life stranger than fiction encounter.
The incident began on the morning of February 12, 1964, when 21-year-old Lynn Wayne Benner – later described as handsome and “cool as a cucumber” – forced his way inside the Ames home, held the actor and his wife, Christine, at gunpoint, and demanded $50,000. Also held captive was a houseguest, Herbert Baumgarteker, who was visiting the Ames family. Ames later told reporters that he pretended to be sick, planning to try and grab Benner’s gun, but “then I realized that was silly.”
Instead, Ames played it safe and contacted Ralph Williams, the manager of his Encino dealership, instructing his employee to bring the money to his home. While they were waiting for Williams to arrive, Ames later recalled, Benner “drank six cups of coffee and he smoked all my cigarettes. [And my] bulldog just sat there licking the guy’s hands.”
When Williams arrived with the money, Ames was bound with surgical tape and Benner locked Benner and Baumbarteker in the trunk of Ames’s car. Benner then drove off in his own car, with Christine Ames as a hostage. But he didn’t get far. Before arriving with the cash, Williams had tipped off a bank manager, who’d notified police, and Benner was stopped by police just a few blocks from the Ames house. Also arrested was Benner’s wife, Patricia Louise, who was waiting in a car nearby. In the vehicle with her was the Benners’s three-year-old daughter.
“I was frightened,” Christine Ames said later. “When he saw the police closing in, he pushed the gun into my side. I said, ‘Please don’t do that.’ He dropped it and put his hands up. . . . He didn’t look like the type at all. I told him so.”
Benner later pleaded guilty to the robbery-kidnapping and was sentenced to life in prison. His probation report indicated that Ames and his wife had promised to communicate with Benner in prison “in order to encourage him to become a useful citizen.”
By the way, a few hours after the traumatic incident came to an end, Leon Ames was able to make light of his experience, telling the press: “I’ve played a lot of these parts before.”
Ruth Roman
In the shadowy realm of noir, Ruth Roman is probably best known for her role as Farley Granger’s fiancée in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), and the distaff half of a murderous married couple in The Window (1949). She also left her mark in several other noirs, including the Bette Davis starrer Beyond the Forest (1949) and Tomorrow is Another Day (1951).
But in the summer of 1956, Roman was on the pages of newspapers nationwide for more than just reviews for her movie performances. In July, she was traveling from Italy with her three-year-old son, Dickie, via the SS Andrea Doria luxury liner. On the evening of July 25th, Dickie was in bed in the family’s stateroom and Roman was reportedly dancing in the ship’s first-class lounge as the ship sailed through a thick fog. Suddenly, Roman later recalled, she “heard a big explosion, like a firecracker.” But it was no firecracker. The sound she heard was caused by a collision between the Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. The Stockholm struck the Andrea Doria on its starboard side, causing the ship to list heavily and rendering many of its lifeboats inaccessible.
Seeing smoke coming from the area near her cabin, Roman removed her high heels and found her way to her son, telling him that they were going on a picnic. Meanwhile, numerous boats and ships headed for the area to assist, including a United Fruit freighter, a Navy transport, and the SS Ile de France. With rescue efforts underway, Dickie was lowered into a lifeboat by a seaman, and Roman began climbing down a rope ladder – but when she was only halfway down, her son’s lifeboat pulled away. She was put on another lifeboat and wound up on the nearby Ile de France, while Dickie was taken to the Stockholm. The mother and son were reunited in New York; a total of 46 passengers and five crew died aboard the Andrea Doria – Roman and Dickie were among the 760 survivors.
And despite her frightening experience, Roman didn’t avoid shipboard travel – just four months later, she was aboard a Norwegian freighter called the Beranger, travelling with her soon-to-be husband, talent agent Bud Moss.
Stay tuned for the next entry in the Noir Nook’s look at noir performers with lives that were Stranger Than Fiction!
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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages.
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