Bernard Gordon
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Bernard Gordon (October 29, 1918 – May 11, 2007) was an American writer and producer. For much of his 27-year career, he toiled in obscurity, prevented from taking screen credit by the Hollywood Blacklist. Among his best-known works are screenplays for Flesh and Fury, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and 55 Days at Peking.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Gordon was born in New Britain, Connecticut to Kitty and William Gordon, Jewish immigrants from Russia.[1] His father managed a hardware store and Gordon grew up in New York City.
[edit] Professional work
Beginning as a writer for print, Gordon moved to California and got a production job as a script reader, providing written "coverage" of screenplays submitted to studios. A political activist and, briefly in the 1940s, a member of the Communist Party, Gordon helped found the Screen Readers Guild. He married fellow activist Jean Lewin, one of the organizers of the Hollywood Canteen during the war.
His first produced screenplay was Flesh and Fury, a gritty boxing picture starring an up-and-coming actor named Tony Curtis. A western with Rock Hudson (The Lawless Breed) followed, but Gordon was subpoenaed to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating so-called Communist influence in Hollywood. Although subpoenaed, Gordon was never called to testify, and thus remained in a legal limbo. His producer, William Alland, had named Gordon in his own testimony to HUAC. A former left-wing sympathizer himself, Alland regularly informed the government about the political leanings of writers with whom he dealt at Universal Pictures.
[edit] Pseudonymous work
In 1954, Gordon received an under-the-table assignment from producer Charles Schneer, who worked with Columbia Pictures' low-budget maven Sam Katzman. Gordon adapted a play written by two friends, which became the film The Law vs. Billy the Kid. Schneer employed Gordon many times during the 1950s, memorably as screenwriter of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, a low budget alien invasion film with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. Gordon worked under the pen name Raymond T. Marcus, a friend who was not in the film business. These low-paying assignments were generally B-level potboilers. Notably, one of the Schneer films was the only feature film to co-star Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Davis, Hellcats of the Navy. Reagan's political views were, of course, diametrically opposed to the still-blacklisted Gordon. The writer took ironic satisfaction in having written an introduction for the esteemed Admiral Chester Nimitz.
[edit] Success in exile
Through his friendship with writer/entrepreneur Philip Yordan, Gordon found regular work as a writer and producer in Madrid for the Samuel Bronston company; at first, however, he was still denied screen credit, with Yordan frequently listing himself as sole author of films like Circus World, Battle of the Bulge, Custer of the West and Day of the Triffids. Gordon did receive on-screen credit for 55 Days at Peking, and the first screen adaptation of The Thin Red Line. As a producer, he made a number of westerns in Spain and the well-received sci-fi thriller Horror Express, co-starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Another film he wrote, Cry of Battle, was playing at the theater in which Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by Dallas police on 1963-11-22.
[edit] Resurfacing
Returning to the US, Gordon wrote a novel, "Surfacing", adapted into a film in 1981, but his blacklist-era work remained relatively anonymous until journalist Ted Newsom happened upon the "secret identity" of front Raymond T. Marcus. When the Writers Guild of America took up the task of correcting pseudonymous screenwriters from the 1950s and 1960s, Gordon received more after-the-fact credits than any other blacklisted writer. Gordon subsequently wrote two autobiographical books detailing the 20-year surveillance of him by the FBI, and often spoke publicly about his experiences. He helped lead the fight against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award to Elia Kazan, who cooperated with HUAC during the blacklist era.
Gordon died on May 11, 2007 in Hollywood, California.
[edit] Books
- Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist
- The Gordon File: A Screenwriter Recalls Twenty Years of FBI Surveillance (University of Texas Press, 2004)
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Bernard Gordon at the Internet Movie Database
- guild retroactive credits
- on Gordon and his career
- Bernard Gordon mini-bio
- The Final Taxi podcast on Bernard Gordon's life
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