Albert Maltz (; October 28, 1908 – April 26, 1985) was an American playwright, fiction writer and screenwriter. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were jailed in 1950 for their 1947 refusal to testify before the US Congress about their involvement with the Communist Party USA. They and many other US entertainment industry figures were subsequently blacklisted, which denied Maltz employment in the industry for many years.
Background Albert Maltz was the third of three sons born to Bernard Morris Maltz, a Russian immigrant from modern-day Lithuania,Bernard Maltz and Lena Sherry Maltz passport application, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925 (microform database), 1924 Roll 2523 – Certificates: 418850-419349, 17 May 1924 – 19 May 1924. and Lena Schereaschetsky (later Sherry), also an immigrant from a Russia-controlled area.13th U.S. Federal Decennial Census, New York state, Kings county, Brooklyn borough, 21st Ward, New York City, April 29, 1910, ED 506, sheet 20B.Sbardellati, John. "'The Maltz Affair' revisited: how the American Communist Party relinquished its cultural influence at the dawn of the Cold War," Cold War History, vol. 9, no. 4, November 2009, pages 489–500. Born into an affluent Jewish family, in Brooklyn, New York, Maltz was educated at Columbia University, where he was a member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity and the class of 1930,"Zeta Beta Tau," Columbian, 1930, page 410, U.S. School Yearbooks, 1880–2012 database. and the Yale School of Drama. He became a communist in 1935, out of conviction, later telling an interviewer: "I also read the Marxist classics. I still think it to be the noblest set of ideals ever penned by man ... Where else in political literature do you find thinkers saying that we were going to end all forms of human exploitation? Wage exploitation, exploitation of women by men, the exploitation of people of colour by white peoples, the exploitation of colonial countries by imperialist countries. And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.""Albert Maltz." Spartacus Educational. Although Maltz later learned of and criticized Soviet repression, one 2009 analysis maintains, "he remained sympathetic to the anti-fascism of both the Soviet Union and the CPUSA during the 1930s," saying in a 1983 interview "the Communist party in the United States was leading the educational and organizational struggle."Maltz, Albert (interview by Joel Gardner). "The Citizen Writer in Retrospect," Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, 1983, 308–20. Cited in Sbardellati 2009.
Ostracism within the CPUSA and recantation In February 1946 Maltz published an article (written in October 1945) for The New Masses titled "What Shall We Ask of Writers?"Maltz, Albert. "What shall we ask of writers?", The New Masses, February 12, 1946, pages 19–22. in which he criticized fellow Communist writers for producing lower-quality work, owing to their placing political concerns above artistic ones. He also referred positively in his article to the work of James T. Farrell, a Trotskyist. This article brought upon Maltz venomous attacks from fellow CPUSA members,Burnett, Colin. "The 'Albert Maltz Affair' and the Debate over Para-Marxist Formalism in New Masses, 1945–1946" (abstract), Journal of American Studies, May 14, 2013. both in print and in person at party meetings. He was accused of "Browderism" and in order to retain his good standing with the party he had to humiliate himself by publishing in the Daily Worker a rebuttal of his own article. Furthermore, he "publicly denounced himself onstage at a writer's symposium chaired by party members."
Nearly 30 years after Maltz's death, the 'Albert Maltz Affair' still was a subject of discussion among scholars of Marxist movements and of the Hollywood Ten. John Sbardellati of the University of Waterloo argued in the journal Cold War History that "by reigning [sic] in Albert Maltz, the Party rejected its earlier, more accommodating approach to popular culture, and in doing so, unwittingly forfeited a large measure of its cultural influence" and that this shift contributed to the rapid decline of "social problem films" that had emerged early in the post-war era (p. 489). Writing in the Journal of American Studies, Colin Burnett argues, "The immediate attacks on Maltz by critics like Mike Gold were motivated primarily by the view that a properly Marxist aesthetics must follow the Leninist–Zhdanovite theory of 'art as a weapon'," though Burnett proposes "a reexamination of the 'para-Marxist' theory of art [Maltz] developed to clarify the role of leftist criticism and the 'citizen writer' ... in light of debates about art and literature in the journal New Masses (1926–48), as well as in international Marxist aesthetics."
Career
During the 1930s, Maltz worked as a playwright for the Theater Union, which was "an organization of theater artists and [pro-Communist] political activists who mounted professional productions of plays oriented towards working people and their middle-class allies." In 1932, his play Merry Go Round was adapted for a film. At the Theater Union he met Margaret Larkin (1899–1967), whom he married in 1937. Subscription required. He won the O. Henry Award twice: in 1938 for The Happiest Man on Earth, a short story published in Harper's Magazine,"O. Henry Memorial Awards," The Dallas Morning News, November 1, 1938, page 13: "Awards were made by [Harry] Hansen and a co-operating jury of distinguished editors and reviewers. Major awards for 1938 were as follows: First prize, $300, to Albert Maltz of New York City, for The Happiest Man on Earth, published in Harper's Magazine; second prize, $200, to Richard Wright of New York City for Fire and Cloud, published in Story; third prize, $100, to John Steinbeck, Los Gatos, California, for The Promise, published in Harper's Magazine."The O.Henry Prize Stories Past Winners List and in 1941 for Afternoon in the Jungle, published in The New Yorker. His collection of short fiction The Way Things Are, and Other Stories was published in 1938, as was his novella Seasons of Celebration, included in The Flying Yorkshireman and Other Novellas, a multi-author compilation released as a May 1938 Book of the Month Club selection."M.E.E." (author not identified within column). "Book of short novels exhibits seriousness of purpose: collection of five novellas includes fantasy, nostalgia, indignation at social injustice" (book review of The Flying Yorkshireman and Other Novellas, Whit Burnett and Martha Foley, eds.), The Dallas Morning News, May 1, 1938, page 2. These writings and his 1940 novel The Underground Stream are considered works of proletarian literature.(No author.) "Strong Stories of the Dispossessed: The Way Things Are, and Other Stories, by Albert Maltz" (review), The Saturday Review, August 6, 1938, page 19.Sillen, Samuel. "The Underground Stream" (review of The Underground Stream), The New Masses, July 23, 1940, page 18. During this time, Maltz's play Private Hicks appeared in William Kozlenko's 1939 curated collection The Best Short Plays of the Social Theater, along with such plays as Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty, The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein, and The Dog Beneath the Skin by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.Greer, Hilton R. "Best of social plays selected by playwright", The Dallas Morning News, January 26, 1939, page 12.
In 1944 he published the novel The Cross and the Arrow, about which Jerry Belcher noted that it was "a best seller chronicling German resistance to the Nazi regime. It was distributed in a special Armed Services Edition to more than 150,000 American fighting men during World War II." In 1970 he published a new collection of short stories Afternoon in the Jungle.
While still pursuing his career as a writer of published fiction and stage drama, he branched out into writing for the screen. Within three years he was nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting and won one for documentary film and one special one. After working uncredited on Casablanca, Maltz's first screenwriting credit was for This Gun for Hire (1942), co-written with W. R. Burnett. For his script for the 1945 film Pride of the Marines, Maltz was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. During this period, he also received two Academy Awards for documentary or documentary-style films:UPI. "Albert Maltz, one of the 'Hollywood 10' figures" (obituary), April 29, 1985. the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1942 for The Defeat of German Armies Near Moscow and a special Oscar in 1945 for The House I Live In, an 11-minute film with singer-actor Frank Sinatra opposing anti-Semitism through an incident of young bullies chasing a Jewish boy, prompting Sinatra to speak and sing about why such behavior is wrong.J. Fred MacDonald and Associates. "The House I Live In" (film summary within LOC item description). Library of Congress.
In 1946, he co-wrote the screenplay for Cloak and Dagger (1946 film) with Ring Lardner, Jr. And he wrote the screenplay for the highly-praised The Naked City, released March 4, 1948, his last American screen credit for 22 years.
Blacklisting
In 1947 Maltz became one of the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their Communist Party membership. On the day that Maltz appeared before the committee, October 28, 1947, he and fellow writers Dalton Trumbo and Alvah Bessie not only refused to answer the committee's central question, but also "challenged the committee's constitutionality and berated its activities," according to a reporter for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau.Botter, David. "Probers defied: Film-writing trio cited in contempt," The Dallas Morning News, page 1: "The House un-American activities committee Tuesday cited three more movie script writers with contempt of Congress for their defiant refusal to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the question: 'Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?' For refusing to respond, each was cited for contempt by Congress, sentenced to jail and fined, although Maltz was the only one in the group whose citation was made the subject of a record vote (a decision in which each member's vote is recorded by name), approved 346 to 17; Trumbo's citation was part of a standing vote (votes counted but not individually named), 240 to 15, and the remaining eight were cited via voice vote.Botter, David. "House cites film figures: landslide vote backs Un-American inquiry," The Dallas Morning News, 25 November 1947, page 1. When the jail sentences and fines were finalized, June 29, 1950, "maximum sentences of a year in jail and $1,000 fine were imposed on Ring Lardner Jr., Lester Cole, Maltz, and Bessie", while Herbert Biberman and Edward Dmytryk received equal fines but six-month jail sentences; four additional members were set for later punishment.AP. "Movie figures get jail for contempt," The Dallas Morning News, June 30, 1950, page 9A.
Maltz was enraged at the questioning by the committee while Mississippi Democrat John E. Rankin was a member. After Rankin described the Ku Klux Klan as "an American institution" Maltz declared that he would "not be dictated to or intimidated by men to whom the Ku Klux Klan, as a matter of committee record, is an acceptable American institution".