text: Ryan often spoke about the dichotomy of his personal beliefs and his acting roles. At a screening of Odds Against Tomorrow, he appeared before the press to discuss "the problems of an actor like me playing the kind of character that in real life he finds totally despicable." Ryan's roles as cynical, prejudiced, violent characters, often ran counter to the causes he embraced. He was a pacifist who starred in war movies, westerns, and violent thrillers. He was an opponent of McCarthyism, but appeared in the anti-communist propaganda film I Married a Communist, playing a nefarious communist agent. In socially progressive films such as Crossfire, Bad Day at Black Rock, Odds Against Tomorrow and Executive Action, he played bigoted villains or conspirators.
  Personal life
  On March 11, 1939, he married Jessica Cadwalader. They had three children: Timothy (b. 1946); Cheyney (b. 1948), a research fellow at Oxford University and a professor of philosophy and law at the University of Oregon; and Lisa (b. 1951). They lived in the Dakota at 72nd and Central Park West in Manhattan and eventually sub-let and later sold the apartment to John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
  In the fall of 1951, the progressive Oakwood School was opened in Jessica and Robert Ryan's backyard in Los Angeles; founded by a small group of parents, created and based on their educational and child-rearing views. Three years later, the parents, including the Ryans, Sidney Harmon, Elizabeth Schappert, Wendy and Ross Cabeen, and Charles and Emilie Haas, bought and built the elementary school campus on Moorpark Street in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley.
  Robert and Jessica remained married until her death from cancer in 1972. He died from lung cancer in New York City the following year at the age of 63.
  "I've been lucky as hell with my career and my family," he said shortly before he died.
  Appraisal
  According to one profile of him written after his death: