Ben Barzman (October 12, 1910 – December 15, 1989) was a Canadian journalist, screenwriter, and novelist, blacklisted during the McCarthy Era and known best for his screenplays for the movies Back to Bataan (1945), El Cid (1961), and The Blue Max (1966).[1]
| Ben Barzman | |
| Birth Date: | 12 October 1910 |
| Birth Place: | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Children: | 7, Paolo Barzman |
He was born in Toronto, Ontario to a Jewish family. He was the screenwriter or co-writer of more than 20 movies, from You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith (1943) to The Head of Normande St. Onge (1975).
Like many of his colleagues in the movie business, Barzman was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
His wife, Norma Barzman, was a Communist Party USA member from 1943 to 1949. In 2014, she told the Los Angeles Times, "one should be proud to have been a member of the American Communist Party during those years. Hitler was invading the Soviet Union, so there was no reason to be anti-Russian, they were our allies."[2]
The couple relocated to England so Barzman could work on the movies Give Us This Day (aka, Christ In Concrete, 1949).[3] After his return to the United States after directing Give Us This Day, Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten, testified about the Barzmans to HUAC in 1951. "To get out of prison he named us and a lot of other people," said Norma Barzman in 2014. During the 1950s, the family relocated to Paris, where friends included Pablo Picasso, Yves Montand, and Simone Signoret,[2] and later southern France. Barzman did not receive credit for some movies because of the Hollywood Blacklist.
His U.S. citizenship was revoked from 1954 to 1963. His wife Norma had her passport revoked from 1951 for seven years.[2] The family remained abroad in London, Paris, and Mougins (France) until 1976, during which time he wrote his novels and screenplays for French and Italian movies.[4]
Barzman died in Santa Monica, California, United States.
In 1960, Barzman became a science fiction author, with his novel Out Of This World. It dealt with the idea of a twin planet of Earth in the same orbit as Earth, hidden from our view by the sun. The two planets had developed almost identically from creation—but World War II never happened on the twin Earth.
He received a retrospective showing of his movies at the Cinematheque in 1982.