text: Ryan co-starred with Merle Oberon in Berlin Express (1948) for director Jacques Tourneur; it was the first movie made in Germany after the end of the second world war. He was reunited with Scott in Return of the Bad Men (1948), and with O'Brien in The Boy with Green Hair (1948). The latter film was directed by Joseph Losey and produced by Dore Schary, who was head of production at RKO.
  MGM borrowed him to make Act of Violence (1948) for Fred Zinnemann. He stayed at that studio to make Caught (1949) for Max Ophuls with James Mason.
  Back at RKO, Ryan had one of his best roles in The Set-Up (1949), directed by Robert Wise, as an over-the-hill boxer who is brutally punished for refusing to take a dive. The Set-Up was a favorite of Ryan's. He was top billed in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), an anti-communist melodrama directed by Robert Stevenson, that was made at the prompting of RKO's new owner, Howard Hughes.
  Ryan next appeared in several film noirs: The Secret Fury (1950) with Claudette Colbert directed by Mel Ferrer, and Born to Be Bad (1950) directed by Nicholas Ray. In 1950, the studio bought The Miami Story as a vehicle for him.
  He then made the Western Best of the Badmen (1951), and costarred with John Wayne in Flying Leathernecks (1951), a World War II film directed by Ray. It was announced he was working on an original film story called The Alpine Slide about avalanches, but no film resulted.