Robert Ardrey

1908-1980

    Robert Ardrey was an Anthropologist interested in human behavior, and he was also a Hollywood screenwriter. Ardrey was born October 16, 1908 in Chicago, Illinois. He attended college at the University of Chicago, where he studied in the Natural and Social Science department.

    At age thirty, Ardrey wrote his first screenplay for Hollywood producers. He spent about twenty years in Hollywood, writing screenplays before returning to his Anthropology studies. Some of the movies that he wrote are Khartoum, The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, The Wonderful Country, Quentin Durward, The Green Years, A Lady Takes a Chance, Madame Bovary, The Secret Garden, Song of Love, They Knew What They Wanted, and The Three Musketeers.

    When he got back into Anthropology he did some writing. Ardrey’s most talked about book is African Genesis. This book talks about the "killer ape" theory that says that our ancestors were very agressive and that aggression is still in us today. "Man is a predator whose natural instinct is to kill with a weapon." Ardrey said but this theory came from Raymond Dart. Some of Ardrey's other books are The Territorial Imperative, The Social Contract, The Hunting Hypothesis, Social Contract, and Man and Aggression.

    Ardrey died of natural causes in Kalk Bay Africa in 1980.

References

Former link, http:\\www.hollywood.com/celebs/details/celeb/186229, (November, 2001)

Former link, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-8665911-5681650, (November, 2001)