RYAN O’NEAL – Let’s face it, Errol Flynn himself probably looked down from above with envy when it came to Ryan O’Neal’s escapades with women. And it’s a cinch that Flynn would have envied O’Neal’s acting talent, which was never spectacular but was above that of many of Hollywood’s biggest names.
In addition to the love of his life Farrah Fawcett, a partial list of the beautiful ladies who had romances with Ryan includes Joan Collins, Jacqueline Bisset, Diana Ross, Ursula Andress, Anouk Aimee and Leigh Taylor-Young. His first wife Joanna Moore praised O’Neal as “an incredible lover … totally devoted to giving a woman pleasure.”
Ryan tried his hand at boxing, then started his film career as a stuntman before gravitating to acting. At one time he was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, but his legendary partying and volatile behavior ultimately led to him being passed over for roles that might have cemented him as an upper tier thespian in Hollywood.
In this blog post I won’t be covering Ryan O’Neal’s well-known movies like Love Story, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc?, Barry Lyndon, The Driver, The Main Event and others. Nor will I cover his ensemble cast flicks like A Bridge Too Far.
GREEN ICE (1981) – Sadly, by 1981 the age of classic heist films like Rififi was long over and that may have contributed to the less than stellar box office results for this project. Ryan O’Neal starred as Joseph Wiley, a former engineer turned adventuring globe-trotter.
In Mexico, Wiley meets Anne Archer playing Lillian Holbrook, a diamond heiress running away from the life led by her stuffy family. Omar Sharif is Meno Argenti, Holbrook’s co-conspirator in a network of Colombian emerald smugglers. (Emeralds are the “green ice” of the title.)
An attempt on his life drives Wiley closer to Lillian and Argenti, but after intrigues and double-crosses involving Colombian rebels, Lillian’s missing sister and clashes with the corrupt Colombian government, Argenti emerges as the main villain.
Meno has hoarded emeralds that were originally intended to finance the rebels and stores them in his high-tech, supposedly impregnable vault in his penthouse atop a Colombian skyscraper. Joe Wiley and Lillian Holbrook recruit Miguel (Domingo Ambriz) and Claude (THE John Larroquette) in a heist involving one-man hot-air balloons and assorted technology to steal the emeralds from Argenti’s vault. Continue reading →