Abraham
Polonsky was
born in New York on 5th December, 1910.
He moved to Hollywood and wrote Golden Earrings
(1948), Body and Soul (1947) and
Force of Evil (1948).
In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion
Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working
in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as
"friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named
several people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an
emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany.
Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester
Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian
Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton
Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring
Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson
and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any
questions.
Known as the Hollywood Ten, they
claimed that the 1st
Amendment
of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this.
The House of Un-American Activities Committee
and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty
of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and
twelve months in prison.
Polonsky had been a member of the Communist
Party but his friends, including John
Howard Lawson and John Garfield,
refused to name him as a member. However, eventually he was called
to appear before the HUAC in April 1951. Although he was willing to
talk about his own political past, he refused to name his former comrades
and was blacklisted.
After the blacklist Polonsky wrote Madigan
(1968), Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here
(1969), Avalanche Express (1979)
and Monsignor (1982). Abraham
Polonsky
died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, on 26th October,
1999.
(1)
Abraham
Polonsky, explained in an interview
with Victor Navasky, what he felt towards the people who named him
as a member of the Communist Party.
In most cases the informers picked
a route that seemed to them an easy solution to a difficult problem;
in other words, they could handle their own friends, whom they testified
against, better than they could handle the U.S. government harassing
them. Schulberg just has to explain one thing: Why did he become an
informer when they forced him to? And why didn't he become an informer
before they forced him to? The reason was that before, he thought
it wasn't a good thing to do. The Nazis pointed a gun up against his
head and said, "Look, give us some names," and he says,
"Yeah, I hate those guys anyway."
I wish they had acted better, but they're not all Adolf Hitler's.
That's all. I myself don't want to have anything to do with them.
After all, I was on the ship and they got off and let us go down.
In fact, the only way they could get off was by putting us down. That's
the peculiar feeling: it wasn't only that they took the lifeboats
from the Titanic, you know; they pulled the plugs.
(2)
Abraham
Polonsky's complained that after he was blacklisted he was harassed
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The U.S. government can really
harass you. They went around to where people were on jobs and got
them fired. Even the jobs that had nothing to do with writing. Not
only that, but if people moved into an apartment house, the FBI would
show up and talk to the janitor or whoever. The landlord would say,
for instance, "Well, maybe if this guy is a criminal we ought
to get him out of here." And they would say, "Oh, no, he's
not a criminal, but we just to be sure he's still living here."
Well, now you know there's something wrong with this guy, and everyone
hears about it.
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