Ladd: The Life, The Legend, The Legacy of Alan Ladd: A Biography;

Alan Ladd, he "blazed across the screen like a young Greek god" in the 1940s and 1950s in such films as This Gun for Hire, The Blue Dahlia and Shane to become one of Hollywood's Biggest stars. Yet on January 29, 1964, at the age of fifty, he died, alone, from a combination of pills and alchohol.