Albert Maltz -- author of novels, short stories, plays and screenplays, in Frank Sinatra’s opinion “the best goddam writer around” in the 1940s -- is not much remembered today. It is difficult to come across his works in bookstores, university or public libraries. When he is talked about, it is apt to be because of his politics rather than for his fairly distinguished career as a writer. Maltz was a long-time Communist and a member of the Hollywood Ten. He was blacklisted and spent time in prison and in exile in Mexico when he should have been in his professional prime.
Success on Screen and Stage
Maltz was born in Brooklyn in 1908 to Jewish immigrants. He earned a degree in philosophy from Columbia and studied drama at Yale. By 1935, Maltz had had four plays produced: Merry-Go-Round, Peace On Earth, Black Pit and Private Hicks. His first collection of short stories, Man On a Road, was also out. By this time he was a member of the Communist Party of America -- the source of all his later troubles.
In 1941 Maltz moved to Los Angeles to work on his first screenplay, This Gun for Hire, an adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel. It was up to Maltz to transpose Greene’s story to an American setting and do away with Greene’s Christian symbolism, which was not suited to a commercial thriller. That same year he wrote the commentary for Moscow Strikes Back, which was an American propaganda film on behalf of the Soviets. And in 1945 he would write the script for The House I Live In, a documentary on tolerance featuring Frank Sinatra’s performance of the title song and a lecture by him about the evil of prejudice. Both short films won Academy Awards.
Maltz’s second full-length screenplay, Pride of the Marines, was such a big success it made Maltz one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood. He was offered $5,000 a week to write Cloak and Dagger in collaboration with Ring Lardner Jr., another future member of the Hollywood Ten. Maltz’s next project was The Naked City for Universal which proved to be yet another huge success. It brought Maltz still more prestige, which he would not enjoy long. Naked City was to be his last credit for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, Maltz had clashed painfully with his Party comrades. In an article titled “What Shall We Ask of Writers?” in 1946, Maltz had questioned the accepted view of art “as a weapon of class struggle.” But he soon recanted following harsh reaction from his comrades and Party officials.
Member of the Hollywood Ten
What Maltz experienced in 1946 was nothing compared to what he faced when the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) opened its hearings on Communism in the film industry, worked through a list of friendly witnesses, and then began to call unfriendly ones. Maltz and nine colleagues -- Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Sam Ornitz, Robert Adrian and Dalton Trumbo -- resisted the questioning, were held in contempt, served prison sentences of up to one year, and were blacklisted.
For quite unexplained reasons, Maltz was the only one allowed by the committee to make a full statement. In it he asserted his constitutional right to join any party he liked, publish whatever he pleased, and make up or change his mind without dictation from anyone. He also challenged the right of the HUAC to inquire into his political or religious beliefs in any manner.
Blacklisted
Maltz served his term in a penitentiary in West Virginia. Like everyone else on the blacklist, he could no longer work for any film studio except possibly through a “front” arrangement in which he would be paid a small amount of money for writing the script while somebody else received the credit. Though he wrote the original screenplay for The Robe in 1945, Maltz’s name was removed from the script when the film came out in 1952. Philip Dunne, who replaced Maltz on the project, admitted that his revision of the script at best deserved a co-credit not a sole credit.
Maltz wrote two screenplays through a “front” until he was hired by Universal in1970 to work on the script for Two Mules for Sister Sara. Maltz, who died in 1985, wrote his last screenplay for Scalawag, directed by Kirk Douglas and released in 1973.
Sources:
Bessie, Alvah. Inquisition in Eden. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Charney, George. A Long Journey. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1968
Dick, Bernard F. Radical Ten: A Critical Study of The Hollywood Ten. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1989.
Navasky, Victor S. Naming Names. New York: Viking, 1980.
Salzman, Jack. Albert Maltz. Boston: Twayne, 1978.
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