Trivia

Directed 13 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Melvyn Douglas, Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Richard Burton, James Earl Jones, Jane Alexander, Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson, Geraldine Page, Sally Field, Rip Torn, Alfre Woodard and James Garner. Neal, Douglas and Field won Oscars for their performances in one of Ritt's movies.

Served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II.

While blacklisted, he earned a living as an acting teacher at the Actors Studio.

Blacklisted in the 1950s for his alleged support of causes deemed to be "Communist" by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Many of his films dealt with human relationships and social issues reflecting his own strongly-held viewpoints (particularly in regard to racism and unions).

His films almost always explored social issues.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 734-736. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

He began his show-business career as an apprentice actor in the last years of the celebrated Group Theatre (1931-1940), the first acting company in America to put Konstantin Stanislavski's techniques into practice. He appeared as "Sam" and was the assistant stage manager in the 1939 debut of Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" with John Garfield (then billed as "Julie Garfield") and two other fledgling actors who would also go on to direct films: Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront (1954)) and Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk (1959)). He also acted in one of the last Group productions, Irwin Shaw's "The Gentle People" with another novice actor new to Broadway who appeared in a small role: Karl Malden.

He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Edge of the City (1957), Hud (1963), Sounder (1972) and Norma Rae (1979).

Graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx and Elon College in North Carolina. Studied law at St. John's University, where he befriended Elia Kazan whom he subsequently joined at the Group Theatre in New York.

Directed two movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Sounder (1972) and Norma Rae (1979).

A profile of him in a British film magazine in 1964 claimed that he had acted in a hundred and fifty television productions and directed a hundred more.

Often wears a flat cap in surviving photos: when in 1963 he met John le Carré in London's exclusive Connaught Hotel, to discuss The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), le Carré, then a serving British diplomat, was stunned to find him wearing "an artisan's flat cap with the peak turned up where it should have been turned down. But worn indoors, you understand".