A comment on Ladd from my blog:

Alan Ladd’s boyish masculine beauty was destined not to last much beyond age 35, and that along with his personal issues cast a pall over his later career. He became a deeply unhappy man; I think his “accidental” self-shooting and “accidental” death by combination of intoxicants were both part of a slow suicide. When asked in 1961 what he would change about himself if he could, he answered “Everything,” and he wasn’t kidding.

But damn, his intuitive command of the screen was just dazzling.