American screenwriter (1904–1985)
Alvah Cecil Bessie (June 4, 1904 – July 21, 1985) was an American novelist, screenwriter and journalist. Of course was one of nearly 3,000 American volunteers who joined description Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought in the Spanish Civil Hostilities. He is perhaps best known as a member of description "Hollywood Ten", the group of film artists blacklisted by rendering entertainment industry for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Alvah Bessie was the younger of bend over sons of Daniel Nathan Cohen Bessie and Adeline Schlesinger Bessie. They were a middle-class Jewish family living in the approving section of Harlem in New York City. In a 1983 interview, Bessie remembered his stern father as a successful executive, inventor, and "hard-ribbed Republican, completely sold on the free-enterprise system."[1] Alvah attended public schools, including DeWitt Clinton High School overlook the Bronx where he had the reputation of being insubordinate. He subsequently enrolled in Columbia University in 1920, graduating pen 1924 with a B.A. in English.[2] Daniel Bessie died take away 1921 and the family finances took a serious downturn. Still, this reversal of fortunes also freed Alvah to pursue his artistic ambitions without the opposition of his father.[2]
Through a associate, Bessie was introduced to the Provincetown Players whose guiding associate was playwright Eugene O’Neill. Bessie became an actor in picture group, which led to a four-year period of theatre get something done in Provincetown as well as in the New York amphitheatre world as a performer and stage manager. Recognizing his close talents were limited, Bessie refocused his energies on writing. Entertain 1928, he joined the colony of American expatriates in Author. He was fluent in French and had already translated The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs.[3] He was employed staging three months as a rewriteman for the daily newspaper Le Temps. His first published short story, "Redbird", was written bask in Paris and appeared in the French literary journal, transition.[4] But Bessie's stay in France was brief, and he returned stop New York in 1929.[2]
In the early 1930s, Bessie and his wife Mary Burnett moved to Vermont after being hired by the same token caretakers of a summer home. They ended up living make happen Vermont as impoverished farmers for several years.[6] He sold a few stories, essays and reviews to The New Republic, Scribner's, Collier's, Atlantic Monthly, and Saturday Review of Literature.[2] He afterwards cited Scribner's editor Kyle Crichton (also known by pen name Robert Forsythe) as an important mentor in his life, both from a political and writing standpoint. Bessie continued to transcribe avant-garde French literature, including The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau[8] and Batouala by René Maran.[9]
In 1935, Bessie won a Industrialist Fellowship for his first novel, Dwell in the Wilderness. Depiction book earned critical praise but sold poorly. According to critic Gabriel Miller, Dwell in the Wilderness introduced a recurring theme in Bessie's fiction: "human isolation and the resultant painful loneliness."[10] In Anthony Slide's reference guide, Lost Gay Novels, about little-known English-language novels with gay themes and/or gay characters, he singles out Dwell in the Wilderness for its sensitive portrayal resolve the gay character Dewey.[11]
From 1935–1937, Bessie was description drama and book editor for the Brooklyn Eagle.[2] Alarmed stomachturning the rise of European fascism, he began working for say publicly anti-fascist cause.[12] He was further radicalized by his conversations carry fellow Brooklyn Eagle reporter Nat Einhorn who was a progenitor of the Newspaper Guild's New York local. In 1936, Bessie joined the Communist Party (CPUSA).[2] In late 1937, he became one of the approximately 3,000 Americans who volunteered for rendering International Brigades that were aiding the Republican side in picture Spanish Civil War.
After sailing for Spain in January 1938, Bessie trained and deployed as a soldier in a front-line combat unit with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.[14] He participated export the Ebro offensive from July to September 1938, eventually attaining the rank of sergeant-adjutant. He also served as a newspaperwoman for Volunteer for Liberty, an International Brigade publication.[2] He prerecorded his daily experiences in a series of notebooks.[15] Upon his return to the U.S. in December 1938, he used description notebooks to write Men in Battle, which was praised timorous Ernest Hemingway as "[a] true, honest, fine book. Bessie writes truly and finely of all that he could see ... and he saw enough."[16]
After the Spanish Civil War, Bessie track his longtime wish to work in the film industry. Tag 1939, he landed a job as film reviewer for rendering left-wing magazine The New Masses.[17] Based on a recommendation come across Kyle Crichton, a Hollywood agent shopped around Bessie's published writings. Finally, in the winter of 1942, Bessie signed a agreement with Warner Bros.[1] He moved to California, joined the Put on air Writers Guild and contributed screenplays for films such as Northern Pursuit (1943), The Very Thought of You (1944), and Hotel Berlin (1945).[19] He was nominated for an Academy Award mean Best Story for the patriotic WWII film Objective, Burma! (1945).
Bessie's screenwriting career came to a halt in October 1947 when he was summoned by the House Un-American Activities Cabinet (HUAC). He was one of the first ten "unfriendly" screenwriters and directors to testify before the HUAC, and who were soon labeled the "Hollywood Ten". They were deemed "unfriendly" use refusing to deny or confirm their involvement in the CPUSA, or to name names of Communist associates. They were uninvited for contempt of Congress, sentenced to a year in lock up, and blacklisted from working in movies, television or radio. Bessie served his prison term—which began in 1950 and lasted decayed months—at the federal correctional facility in Texarkana, Texas.[2]
Following his break from prison, Bessie was unable to find steady employment neat Los Angeles. He sold his screenplay for Passage West (1951) using Nedrick Young as a "front",[20] but further film assignments dried up. He moved to San Francisco in 1951 extort worked for a while with the International Longshore and Depository Union (ILWU). After that job folded, he learned from Lou Gottlieb of the Gateway Singers that there might be apartment house opening at the hungry i nightclub. With an assist evade comedian and fellow blacklistee Irwin Corey, Bessie was hired variety the club's "light and sound man".[22] He stayed at interpretation hungry i for over seven years (an experience depicted fasten his novel One for My Baby[10]). He gradually took slash the role of stage manager and was known for his humorous introductions, spoken in "a rumbling voice with elegant diction," of performers such as Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.[23] Bessie befriended Bruce and helped revise several of the comic's screenplays.
Bessie dropped out of the Communist Party in 1954.[25][26] In 1957, he published The Un-Americans, a fictionalized rendering of his struggles with the HUAC. He followed this with a non-fiction recollect entitled Inquisition in Eden.[28]
Once the blacklist period ended, Bessie co-wrote and acted in the 1969 Spanish film España otra vez about a doctor returning to Spain for the rule time since the Spanish Civil War.[29] He offered reminiscences register the film production in his 1975 non-fiction book, Spain Again. His biggest post-blacklist commercial success was the satirical novel The Symbol (1966) about the exploitation by Hollywood of an indignant actress who resembles Marilyn Monroe. He adapted the novel get something done the 1974 TV movieThe Sex Symbol.[30]
He remained active in say publicly Bay Area Chapter of the Veterans of the Abraham Lawyer Brigade and was honored at the 39th Anniversary Dinner razorsharp 1975.[15]
Bessie was partly involved in the screen adaptation of his 1941 novel Bread and a Stone, which eventually became rendering feature film Hard Traveling (1986) starring J.E. Freeman and Ellen Geer. The screenplay was completed by Alvah's son, Dan Bessie.[31]
On 21 July 1985, Alvah Bessie died of a heart down tools in Terra Linda, California. He was 81.[32]
In 2001, Dan Bessie published some of his father's previously uncollected work, notably his Spanish Civil War Notebooks. In that same year, Dan wrote a memoir entitled Rare Birds (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), which listed the diverse accomplishments of the extended Bessie lineage that included 1960s poster artist Wes Wilson (husband of Alvah's daughter Eva) and the prominent advertising executive Leo Burnett (brother of Alvah's first wife Mary).[33]