Abraham Lincoln Polonsky (December 5, 1910 - October 26, 1999) was an American screenwriter and former Communist blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s. December 5 is the 339th day (340th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar). ... Screenwriters, scenarists or script writers, are authors who write the screenplays from which movies and television programs are made. ... Protestors opposing the jailing of the Hollywood Ten in 1950 (from the 1987 documentary Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist). ... ... A movie studio is a location, room, building, or group of buildings and/or sound stages, offices and storage facilities, which may include a backlot, where movies are made. ...

Abraham Polonsky was born in New York City, the eldest son of Russian-American Jewish immigrants. In 1928 he entered City College of New York and following graduation, earned his law degree in 1935 at Columbia Law School. After several years of practice, mixed with teaching, he decided to devote himself to writing. Polonsky wrote essays, radio scripts and several novels before beginning his career in Hollywood. His first novel,"'The Goose is Cooked" , written with Mitchell A. Wilson under the singular pseudonym of Emmett Grogan, was published in 1940. New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... A Russian-American is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States who has Russian heritage. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination... The City College of The City University of New York (known more commonly as City College of New York or simply City College, CCNY, or colloquially as City) is a senior college of the City University of New York, in New York City. ... Columbia Law School, located in the New York City borough of Manhattan, is one of the professional schools of Columbia University, a member of the Ivy League, and one of the leading law schools in the United States. ... Mitchell A Wilson (June 17, 1913 - February 25th 1973) was an American novelist. ...

A committed Marxist, in the late 1930s Polonsky also joined the American Communist Party. He participated in union politics and established and edited a leftwing newspaper, The Home Front. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. ...

Polonsky signed a screenwriter's contract with Paramount before leaving the US to serve in Europe in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II (from 1943 to 1945). After the war he returned to Hollywood writing for Paramount Pictures. After a brief stint at Paramount, he wrote the screenplay for Robert Rossen´s independent production Body and Soul, (1947) starring John Garfield and Lilli Palmer. Body and Soul has a famous Polonsky-scripted scene, in which Polonsky's boxer, after his life is threatened after refusing to throw the fight, retorts: "What can you do, kill me? Everybody dies." The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. After the success of Body and Soul, Polonsky became a Hollywood film director. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was a lineage precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as for the Special Forces and Navy Seals, who have traced their lineage back to... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Information in this article or section has not been verified against sources and may not be reliable. ... Robert Rossen (March 16, 1908 - February 18, 1966) was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s. ... Body and Soul is a film made in 1947 film noir film which tells the story of a boxer who becomes involved with a corrupt promoter. ... John Garfield John Garfield (born March 4, 1913 in New York City; died May 21, 1952 in New York City) was an American actor. ... Lilli Palmer (born Lillie Marie Peiser on May 24, 1914 in Posen, Prussia, Germany (then - after WW I - PoznaÅ„, Poland) - January 27, 1986 in Los Angeles) was an international actress. ... Academy Award The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are the most prominent and most watched film awards ceremony in the world. ...

Polonsky's first film as a director, Force of Evil (1948), is considered by some to be the most overtly political of all the crime films of the 1940s. Garfield plays a corrupt lawyer who faces a moral crisis over a Fourth of July weekend. Force of Evil was not successful when released in the United States but it was hailed as a masterpiece by film critics in England. The film was based on Tucker's People by Ira Wolfert. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Polonsky's career as a director and credited writer came to an abrupt halt after he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1951. Illinois congressman Harold Velde called the director a "very dangerous citizen" at the hearings. While blacklisted, Polonsky continued to write film scripts under various pseudonyms that have never been revealed. It is known that Polonsky, along with Harry Belafonte and Robert Wise co-wrote Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), in which Polonsky's name was initially dropped from the film credits. Polonsky was not given public credit for the screenplay until 1997, when the Writers Guild of America officially restored his name to the film as a credited screenwriter. HUAC hearings House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC or HCUA) (1938–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. ... Harry Belafonte starred in and produced Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), the first film noir with a black protagonist. ... The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the collective bargaining representative, or labor union, for writers in the motion picture and television industries in the United States. ...

In 1968, Polonsky was the screenwriter for Madigan, a police thriller, and Polonsky used his own name in the credits. The film was directed by Don Siegel, starring Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda. Madigan is a 1968 crime-drama film directed by Don Siegel and starring Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda. ... Don Siegel (October 26, 1912 - April 20, 1991) was an influential American film director. ... Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death Richard Widmark (born December 26, 1914 in Sunrise, Minnesota) is an Academy Award-nominated American film actor. ... Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was a highly acclaimed Academy Award-winning American film actor, best known for his roles as plain-speaking idealists. ...

After a prolonged absence, Polonsky returned to directing in 1969 with the Western film Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, a tale of a fugitive Native American pursued by a posse, which Polonsky converted into an allegory about racism, genocide, and persecution. The film was interpreted by many as a metaphorical reference to the political persecution suffered by Polonsky and others during the McCarthy era. Critical opinion is divided on the film. Some consider it an anachronism, a liberal 1950s-style Western in the style of Run of the Arrow or Apache, and increasingly irrelevant in the visceral era of Leone and Peckinpah. Others regard Willie Boy as a minor classic. Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here was released in 1969 and was directed by black-listed director Abraham Pononsky. ... Apache is a 1954 western film starring Burt Lancaster. ...

In the early 1980s, Polonsky was an uncredited scriptwriter for Mommie Dearest, based on Christina Crawford's memoirs of her mother Joan Crawford, and The Man Who Lived at the Ritz (1981), based a novel by A.E. Hotchner. An unrepentant Marxist until his death, Polonsky publicly objected when director Irwin Winkler sanitized his script for 1991's Guilty by Suspicion a film about the Hollywood blacklist era, by revising the lead character played by Robert De Niro into a liberal, rather than a Communist. Mommie Dearest is a 1981 Paramount biopic about Joan Crawford, starring Faye Dunaway. ... Joan Crawford (March 23, 1905 – May 10, 1977),[1] was an acclaimed, iconic, Academy Award-winning American actress, arguably one of the greatest from the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1920s through 1940s. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Promotional movie poster for the film Guilty by Suspicion is a 1991 film about the Hollywood blacklist and associated activities stemming from McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee. ...

He received the Career Achievement Award of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in 1999. Until 1999, Polonsky taught a philosophy class at USC School of Cinema-Television called "Consciousness and Content". While no longer a member of the Communist Party, he remained committed to Marxist political theory, stating "I thought Marxism offered the best analysis of history, and I still believe that." The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) was founded in 1975. ... Year 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar). ... The University of Southern Californias School of Cinema-Television is the oldest film school in the United States, established in 1929 as a joint venture with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ...

Until his death, Polonsky was a virulent critic of director Elia Kazan, who had testified before HUAC and provided names to the Committee. In 1999, he was enraged when Kazan was honored by the Hollywood Film Academy for lifetime achievement, stating that he hoped Kazan would be shot onstage.^[1] Elia Kazan, (Greek: Ηλίας Καζάν, IPA: ), (September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was a Greek-American film and theatre director, film and theatrical producer, screenwriter, novelist and cofounder of the influential Actors Studio in New York in 1947. ...

Polonsky died on October 26, 1999, in Beverly Hills, Ca. is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see: Beverly Hills (disambiguation). ...

Quote

"First of all, directing is an idea that you have of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space. It's an idea you have of yourself, like the idea you have of your own personality which finds its best representation in the world in terms of specific flows of imaginary images. That's what directing is." (Polonsky quoted in the book Directing the Film by Ed Sherman, 1976)

Films as screenwriter

Selected films as screenwriter:

• Golden Earring (1947) (co-screenwriter)
• Body and Soul (1947) - remade in 1981 and for TV in 1998.
• I Can Get It Wholesale (1951)
• Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) (uncredited, novel by William P. McGivern)
• Madigan (1968)
• Avalanche Express (1979)
• Monsignor (1982)
• Mommie Dearest (1981) (uncredited)
• Guilty By Suspicion (1991)

Body and Soul is a film made in 1947 film noir film which tells the story of a boxer who becomes involved with a corrupt promoter. ... Harry Belafonte starred in and produced Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), the first film noir with a black protagonist. ... Madigan is a 1968 crime-drama film directed by Don Siegel and starring Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda. ...

As director-screenwriter

• Force of Evil (1948) (based on Ira Wolfert's novel Tucker's People)
• Tell them Willie Boy is Here (1970) (based on Harry Lawton's novel)
• Romance of a Horsethief (1971)

This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Novels and essays

• The Goose is Cooked (1940) (with Mitchell A Wilson - pseudonym Emmett Hogarth)
• How the Blacklist Worked in Hollywood (1970)(essay)
• Making Movies (1971) (essay)
• Zenia's Way (1980) (novel)
• Children of Eden (1982) (unfinished novel)
• To Illuminate Our Time: The Blacklisted Teleplays of Abraham Polonsky (1993)

External links

• "Some Rude to Kazan"
• Abraham Polonsky at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Archive of American Television Video Interview with Abraham Polonsky [1]

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Abraham Polonsky