|
Albert Maltz was born on October 28, 1908, in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated, Phi
Beta Kappa, with an A. B. in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1930. He then
pursued graduate study for two years at Yale University’s School of Drama and
began
writing plays with fellow student and collaborator George Sklar. Influenced by
the
social and economic conditions of the time, Maltz and Sklar coauthored Merry Go Round (1932) and Peace
on Earth (1933). In 1932, the two playwrights helped form a production
company, the Theatre Union, which dissolved in 1937. Political corruption, antiwar
sentiment, and labor issues were common themes of the company’s productions. In
1935, the same year Maltz joined the Communist Party, the company produced Maltz’s
play, Black Pit. Maltz married his first wife,
Margaret Larkin, in 1937. |
|
Maltz expanded his exploration of America’s social and economic conditions and
critique of American capitalist society in his short stories. These pieces enjoyed
critical success and were published and reprinted in numerous publications. "The Happiest Man" won first prize in the O. Henry
Memorial Awards for 1938. Many of Maltz’s stories were collected and published
as
The Way Things Are and Other Stories (1938) and
Afternoon in the Jungle: The Selected Short Stories of
Albert Maltz (1970). Maltz published his first novel, The Underground Stream: An Historical Novel of a Moment in the
American Winter, in 1940 but was unable to achieve financial success in
New York. Intending to write screenplays to finance his other writing, he and
his
family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1941. |
|
Maltz’s first produced screenplay, This Gun for Hire,
based on Graham Greene’s novel of the same name (also published as A Gun for Sale), was cowritten with W. R. Burnett in
1941. While in Hollywood, Maltz wrote and collaborated on several screenplays
and
continued writing novels. His screenplays include Destination
Tokyo (1943), Cloak and Dagger (1946),
and The Naked City (1948). He received an Academy
Award nomination for Pride of the Marines (1945) and
won Academy Awards for his work on the documentary Moscow
Strikes Back (1943) and for the film short The
House I Live In (1945). Maltz’s second novel The
Cross and the Arrow was published in 1944. |
|
In spite of his successful writing career, Maltz may be best remembered as one of
the
“Hollywood Ten.” In 1947, Maltz, along with other Hollywood artists, was called
to
testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee regarding his status as
a
Communist. He and ten other Hollywood writers refused to respond and were held
in
contempt of Congress. In 1949, while his case progressed through the court system,
Maltz published his third novel, The Journey of Simon
McKeever. The following year, Maltz was sentenced to one year in prison
and served from June 1950 to April 1951. |
|
Upon his release, Maltz moved to Mexico where, despite his blacklisting, he continued
to write stories, novels, and screenplays. He sometimes used the pseudonym Julian
Silva or a front man to get his works published or produced. He returned to
Hollywood in 1962 and one year later divorced his first wife, Margaret. In 1964,
Maltz married Rosemary Wylde. One year after Wylde’s death in 1968, Maltz married
Esther Engelberg. In 1970, Maltz’s 20 year status on Hollywood's blacklist ended
with his credited screenplay Two Mules for Sister
Sara. |
|
Maltz died on April 26, 1985, in Los Angeles, California. In 1991, the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posthumously restored Maltz’s name to the 1950
nomination for his previously uncredited screenplay, Broken
Arrow. |
