Alvah Cecil Bessie (June 4, 1904 – July 21, 1985) was an American novelist, journalist and

screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...

who was

blacklisted Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...

by the

movie studio A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the production ...

s for being one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

Early life

Alvah Bessie was born to a Jewish family, the younger of two sons of Daniel Nathan Cohen Bessie and Adeline Schlesinger Bessie. Bessie's father was an inventor and successful businessman and the family lived a comfortable life in a prosperous section of Harlem in New York City. He graduated from Dewitt Clinton High School where he had the reputation of being a rebellious student. He subsequently enrolled in Columbia University in 1920, graduating in 1924 with a B.A. in English. In 1922, the Bessie family finances had taken a serious downturn after which the elder Bessie died. This reversal of family circumstances freed Bessie to pursue his own interests and ambition without the intervention of his authoritarian father. Through a friend Bessie was introduced to the Provincetown Players whose guiding member was playwright

Eugene O’Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

. Bessie became an actor in the group, which led to a four-year period of theatre work for him in Provincetown as well as in the New York theatre world as performer and actor/manager. Recognizing his talents as an actor were limited, Bessie moved to France in 1928, joining the colony of American expatriates who had relocated there. Bessie now focused his energies on becoming a writer.

Career

Bessie was initially known for his translations of avant-garde French literature, including '' Songs of Bilitis'' by Pierre Louÿs and ''The Torture Garden'' by Octave Mirbeau. During the 1930s, Bessie became alarmed at the rise of fascism, and began working for the

anti-fascist Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were ...

cause. Stanley Weintraub, ''The Last great cause. The intellectuals and the Spanish civil war.'' London : W. H. Allen, 1968. (pp. 256–8) Through 1938 Bessie fought as a volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of the

International Brigades The International Brigades ( es, Brigadas Internacionales) were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existed f ...

during the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return, he wrote a book about his experiences, ''

Men in Battle A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromo ...

''. About the book, Ernest Hemingway commented:

A true, honest, fine book. Bessie writes truly and finely of all that he could see ... and he saw enough.

Bessie then joined the American Communist Party and worked as the film reviewer for the left-wing magazine '' The New Masses''. Bessie wrote screenplays for Warner Bros., and other studios during the mid and late 1940s. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Story for the patriotic Warner's film ''

Objective Burma ''Objective, Burma!'' is a 1945 American war film that is loosely based on the six-month raid by Merrill's Marauders in the Burma Campaign during the Second World War. Directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn, the film was made by Warner ...

'' (1945).

Blacklisting

His career came to a halt in 1947, when he was summoned before the

(HUAC). He refused to deny or confirm involvement in the Communist Party, and in 1950, he became one of the Hollywood Ten being found guilty of

Contempt of Congress Contempt of Congress is the act of obstructing the work of the United States Congress or one of its committees. Historically, the bribery of a U.S. senator or U.S. representative was considered contempt of Congress. In modern times, contempt of Co ...

, for which he was imprisoned for ten months, and blacklisted. After his release from prison, he worked at the

hungry i The hungry i was a nightclub in San Francisco, California, originally located in the North Beach neighborhood. It played a major role in the history of stand-up comedy in the United States. It was launched by Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, who sold i ...

nightclub in San Francisco, running the lights and sound board and frequently introducing performers. Bessie left the Communist Party in the 1950s. In 1957, Bessie wrote a novel fictionalising his experiences with the HUAC, ''The Un-Americans''. He followed this with a non-fiction account of his confrontation with the same organisation, ''Inquisition in Eden'', in which he boasted of inserting pro-Soviet propaganda that was "subversive as all hell" into the film '' Action in the North Atlantic''. Bessie's greatest commercial and critical success came with the satirical novel ''The Symbol'', about the exploitation by the film industry of an unhappy actress who resembles Marilyn Monroe. He wrote another non-fiction book in 1975, ''Spain Again'', which chronicled his experiences as a co-writer and actor in a Spanish movie of the same name ('' Spain Again'', 1969). His screenwriting career was ruined by the blacklisting, and he never returned to Hollywood. Late in his life, however, he was involved in bringing his novel ''Bread and a Stone'' to the screen in the feature film ''

Hard Traveling ''Hard Traveling'' is a 1986 American drama film written and directed by Dan Bessie and starring J. E. Freeman, Ellen Geer and Barry Corbin. It is based on the 1941 novel ''Bread and a Stone'' by Alvah Bessie, the father of Dan Bessie. Premise ...

'' (1986) starring J.E. Freeman and Ellen Geer. The screenplay for the film was written by one of Alvah's two sons, Dan Bessie, who has also spent his career working in the film industry. Dan Bessie has published some of his father's previously unpublished or uncollected works, notably his ''Spanish Civil War Notebooks'' (2001). In his family biography ''Rare Birds: An American Family'' (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), Dan Bessie notes that Alvah was related to some highly successful entrepreneurs: he was father-in-law of well-known 1960s poster artist Wes Wilson, husband of Alvah's daughter Eva, and a brother-in-law (through his first wife, Mary) of famous advertising executive Leo Burnett. Bessie died in

Terra Linda, California Terra Linda ( Portuguese for "Beautiful Land") is a district of the city of San Rafael, California. It was formerly an unincorporated community within Marin County. It lies at an elevation of 171 feet (52 m). Terra Linda is a residential and ligh ...

, aged 81, of a heart attack.

Books

Fiction

* ''Dwell in the Wilderness'' (1935) * ''Bread and a Stone'' (1941) * (1957) * ''The Symbol: A Novel'' (1966) * ''One For My Baby: A Novel'' (1980) * ''Alvah Bessie's Short Fictions'' (1982); Introduction by Gabriel Miller.

Non-fiction

* ''Men In Battle; A Story Of Americans In Spain'' (1939) * ''Soviet People at War'' (1942) * ''This Is Your Enemy; A Documentary Record Of the Nazi Atrocities Against Citizens And Soldiers Of Our Soviet ally'' (1942) * ''The Heart Of Spain: anthology of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry'' (1952) * ''Inquisition in Eden'' (1965) * ''Spain Again'' (1975) * With Albert Prago ; introduction by

Ring Lardner, Jr. Ringgold Wilmer Lardner Jr. (August 19, 1915 – October 31, 2000) was an American screenwriter. A member of the "Hollywood Ten", he was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studios during the late 1940s and 1950s after his appearance as an ...

(1987) * ''Alvah Bessie's Spanish Civil War notebooks'', edited by Dan Bessie (2001)

References

External links

* *
Alvah Cecil Bessie Papers
at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
Subversives: Stories from the Red Scare
Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca at the Zinn Education Project (Alvah Bessie is featured in this lesson).
"Sneak Preview of a Hollywood Flashback"
– Full scans of article by Alvah Bessie's on his experience as one of The Hollywood Blacklist (The Realist No. 68, pgs August 1, 19–23, 1966)
Finding aid to Alvah Cecil Bessie letters at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bessie, Alvah 1904 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American writers Abraham Lincoln Brigade members American anti-fascists American male novelists American male screenwriters Columbia College (New York) alumni Hollywood blacklist Jewish American novelists Jewish American screenwriters Jewish anti-fascists Jewish socialists Members of the Communist Party USA People from Harlem 20th-century American screenwriters American communists Columbia University alumni