Hollywood exile, or, How I learned to love the blacklist

"The Hollywood blacklist, which began in the late 1940s and ran well into the 1960s, ended or curtailed the careers of hundreds of people accused of having ties to the Communist Party. Bernard Gordon was one of them. In this memoir, he tells an insider's story of what it was like to be blacklisted and how he and others continued to work uncredited behind the scenes, often in Europe, writing and producing many box office hits and cult classics of the era."--BOOK JACKET. "Gordon movingly describes how the blacklist cut short his screenwriting career in Hollywood and forced him to work in France and Spain. Ironically, though, his is a success story that includes the films El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Thin Red Line, Krakatoa East of Java, Day of the Triffids, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Horror Express, and many others. He recounts the making of these and other movies for which he was the writer and/or producer, with wonderful anecdotes about stars such as Charlton Heston, David Niven, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, and James Mason; directors Nicholas Ray, Frank Capra, and Anthony Mann; and the producer - studio head team of Philip Yordan and Samuel Bronston, with whom Gordon worked extensively."--BOOK JACKET. "In 1997, the Writers Guild of America began publicly re-crediting screenplays to the authors who wrote them during the blacklist era. Bernard Gordon's name has so far appeared more often than any other. From this unique vantage point, he offers a clear-eyed perspective on the intended and unexpected consequences of the Hollywood blacklist that he successfully, if anonymously, defeated."--BOOK JACKET.