Author, Film Director. He is remembered as an American screenwriter of the 20th century, who received acclaim not only for screenwriting but for being a film director, essayist and novelist. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay for his 1947 drama "Body and Soul." He made his directing debut in 1948 with "Force of Evil," which was not a success in the United States but was acclaimed in England. During most of the 1950s and 1960s, he was blacklisted due to Senator McCarthy's communist witch hunt. He was a member of the American Communist Party since the late 1930s. In April of 1951, he refused to name other Communist Party colleagues at the United States Congressional hearings of the House Un-American Committee. At that point, he was fired from his well-paying position at 20th Century Fox. While blacklisted, he wrote under various pseudonym or co-authored pieces contributing his writing to the other author's name or being his front. He co-wrote the 1959 screenplay for "Odds Against Tomorrow," but was not given credit for his work until 1997. His comeback was in 1969 with "Tell Them Willie Boy is Here", but he never regained an important position in the film industry. He remained bitter about the blacklisting the rest of his life. He wrote screenplays for at least 13 films and directed five. Born Abraham Lincoln Polonsky, he was the oldest son of Jewish Russian immigrants. In 1928, he entered City College of New York and, following graduation, earned his law degree in 1935 at Columbia Law School. For several years, he had a law practice and was an English teacher at City College. Before his Hollywood career, he was an author, with his first book, "The Goose is Cooked," using the pseudonym of Emmett Hogarth. Besides "The Goose is Cooked," he wrote "A Season of Fear" in 1956, "The Enemy Sea" in 1943, "The World Above" in 1951 and "Zenia's Way" in 1980. He was the editor of the left-wing newspaper "The Home Front." He published four novels and a host of essays. During World War II, he served in Europe in the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner of the Central Intelligent Agency. Some sources state he was a spy. He worked with the French resistance to write scripts and direct programs for the clandestine OSS radio stations. He resigned from the Communist Party after seeing the horrors of Stalin's tenure in Russia. During the 1940s he also wrote for radio and worked with the Columbia Workshop and Orson Welles. His personal papers are archived at UCLA Library Special Collections. In 1937 he married Sylvia Marrow, had a son and the couple remained married until her death. He remarried. He was honored with the career achievement award of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.