Roles such as his Oscar-nominated screen debut as the rebellious young musician Micky Borden in Four Daughters in 1938 and a boxer on the run in They Made Me a Criminal (1939) established his career, if not his rebel image.

At Warner Bros., Garfield was on his way to stardom as a first-rate actor. Nott is clearly in his element when he chronicles Garfield’s Hollywood film career and subsequent fall from grace. Despite his womanizing, the only female costar Garfield reportedly ever had an affair with was Lana Turner while filming The Postman Always Rings Twice.Īnd this is just the tip of Nott’s well-documented biography on the actor who was born Jules David Garfinkle (Julie to his friends) on New York’s Lower East Side in 1913 to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. The first part he auditioned for was that of a young lawyer in the “B” film Girls on Probation, a part that subsequently went to Ronald Reagan. This well-researched book is filled with nuggets of little-known gems, such as Garfield going from making $40 a week while working with the Group Theater in New York to the princely sum of $750 a week after signing a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. In He Ran All the Way (taken from the title of Garfield’s last film), Nott pulls no punches as he details in a finely etched narrative the turbulent journey of Garfield, from a tough kid from New York to one of the most popular and electrifying actors of the 1940s, to his ill-fated skirmish with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Journalist Robert Nott has written what must be considered the definitive biography on Garfield. It was difficult to believe in a real man - until now, that is.

Since his untimely death in 1952 at age 39, there has been a heavy layer of glib journalistic varnish over the life and career of Hollywood’s first angry young man, John Garfield.

He Ran All the Way by Robert Nott