why was waldo salt accused

Waldo Salt Recalls ‘The Day of the Locust’. Many of … He lives in Bridgewater, Conn., has an office in New York and comes to the Coast only when he has to. Of that time, Salt said, “I wish we had done something to deserve being blacklisted. “I ended up at fifty, over-the-hill, thinking I had no future,” Salt explained. In those days there was a certain amount of rivalry between writers who came from the East and the nativeborn Californians, of whom Mr. Salt was one. That was a big thing then.”. Read about the historical … “I'm not a political man now,” he said, sipping instant coffee out of a brandy bell, “but I laugh when I think of how we were accused of putting Communist propaganda into films. Mr. Salt is an Easterner now himself. Onlt a real doofus would ask me to post the obvious. Dustin Hoffman is a well-known actor known for roles in movies such as The Graduate, Rain Man, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Meet the Fockers. The festival’s juries also awarded Desiree Akhavan’s “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” the Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s highest honor; Sundance’s sole dedicated screenplay honor, the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, went to Christina Choe for “Nancy.” In short, it … ... Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Paul Robeson, Waldo Salt, Paul Sweezy, John Garfield, Elia Kazan, John Hubley, Humphrey Bogart, and others (list found on Wikipedia, McCarthyism article). His efforts have led Mr. Salt through several rewrites. … I'm 59 now, and I was 28 then.”. “Finally, I realized that I had allowed myself to write less than I could.” According to fellow writer Ian Hunter, “From then on, Waldo approached screenwriting as an artist.”. Mr. Salt's rehabilitation began when he was credited for the screenplay of the otherwise unmemorable “Tams Bulba” in 1964. In April of 1951 Salt was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee — Senator Joseph McCarthy’s brainchild for the investigation of Communist infiltration of America. “That is, as we got closer to the center of operations of the film industry, we learned more about that establishment that dominated it.”, For many film writers who hoped they would eventually be able to get off their goldplated treadmills and do significant work, Mr. West and F. Scott Fitzgerald were the reigning heroes, Mr. Salt said. Thornton made his first break with co-writing and starring in the 1992 thriller One False Move and came to international attention after writing, directing, and starring in the independent drama Sling Blade (1996), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay … The career of screenwriter Waldo Salt was brought to a halt by McCarthyism in the 1950s. Can you imagine trying to get Communist propaganda past Louis B. Mayer?”, See the article in its original context from. In December 2017, a second woman accused Hoffman of harassment during the … What he did was to go beyond socialist realism”—Mr. Among his early adaptations for the screen were Fannie Hurst’s HUMORESQUE and Edith Wharton’s ETHAN FROME. She also worked behind the scenes in Hollywood and was an assistant to screenwriter Waldo Salt, director Hal Ashby and producer Bruce Gilbert in the 1978 drama Coming Home. Name three people mentioned in the article who were singled out as Communists. Oda received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for the film following its premiere at the Sundance film Festival in the U.S. Waldo Salt, who adapted Herlihy’s novel for the screen, was a long-time member of the Communist Party, took the Fifth Amendment in his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and ended up blacklisted in Hollywood for a number of years. Let’s be sure we deserve it.”, MAJOR SUPPORT FOR AMERICAN MASTERS PROVIDED BY, "As writers true to ourselves, it will always be hard, and if we're good, we'll always be in trouble. The end this time, Mr. Salt said, might come not by fire, as in Mr. West's vision, but in the frozen immobility of the gasoline shortage in a city without public transportation. It saved me from going to jail, too.”. “I was the Hollywood 11th,” Mr. Salt said. “We used to say that it took about 10 weeks, or the first option period on their contract, for them to go Hollywood,” he said, “and buy the convertible, the cashmere sports coats, the ascots, and, oh, yes, an expensive record changer. The Waldo Salt screenwriting award went to Edson Oda for “Nine Days,” a conceptual drama in which new souls audition for a shot to live on earth. It was completed when he won the Academy Award for the best screenplay of 1969, “Midnight Cowboy.”. In 1950, as his THE FLAME AND THE ARROW was showing throughout the country’s theaters, Waldo Salt seemed on his way to being one of Hollywood’s major screenwriters. The play focused on the fact that once accused, a person had little chance of exoneration, given the irrational and circular reasoning of both the courts and the public. Salt, who acknowledges that he was a member of the Communist party from 1939 until 1955, was blacklisted along with the others by the film studios. He was friends with Nathaniel West and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and worked on films with some of the period’s best known stars, including Robert Mitchum, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, and Virginia Mayo. ", Subscribe to the American Masters Newsletter. About The Film Morris From America: A smash hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and star Craig Robinson received a Special Jury Award for Acting for his touching and nuanced performance in his first dramatic role), Morris from America centers on Morris Gentry (Markees Christmas, in an incredible breakout performance) a Meanwhile, Mr. Salt wrote the screenplay for “The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight” and was co‐author of the screenplay for the current “Serpico.”, “We weren't sure that we were going to be able to go ahead with ‘Locust,’” Mr. Salt said, “until a week or two before shooting actually started in October.”. Dramatic Competition. But we didn’t.”, Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Salt wrote primarily for television and commercials. I wish we’d had that much influence on film or on politics at that time. LOS ANGELES—Writing the screenplay for “The Day of the Locust,” Nathanael West's novel of Hollywood's lower depths in the nineteenthirties, has been for Waldo Salt a trip into his own past. His acclaimed works include Midnight Cowboy (1969), Serpico (1972) and … Salt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Winifred (née Porter) and William Haslem Salt, an artist and business executive. By Tom Buckley Special to The New York Times. Luckily, they soon hired a more than suitable candidate for the job, talented author Waldo Salt, who was reduced to working on television under a pseudonym due to being blacklisted for his “communist affiliations” back in the 1950s— Midnight Cowboy was the wind in his sails he had been waiting for. Dashiell Hammet was imprisoned for refusing to name the sources of bail funds for communists, and Waldo Salt was It was also the year he joined the American Communist Party, the start of an affiliation that would cause him to be plucked from the brink of fame, blacklisted, and prevented from working in the industry he … While visiting Los Angeles in 1927, young British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is accused of murder and must go on the run to prove his innocence in THE HITCH by Troy A. Miller. Once again, as in the Los Angeles of Mr. West's day, the vibrations of apocalypse stirred the palm leaves. His acceptance speech proves to be a fitting epitaph: “As writers true to ourselves, it will always be hard, and if we’re good, we’ll always be in trouble. Context from came to Hollywood after graduating from Stanford at age eighteen the unite... As in the U.S article from the Times ’ s HUMORESQUE and Edith ’... We didn ’ t. ”, See the article in its original context from begins, Workers... 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