Hollywood Exile or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. First Edition. Advance Uncorrected Copy Signed by the author Bernard Gordon and inscribed to the author and filmmaker Mollie Gregory, "For Mollie, who started me on the last buffalo hunt. Bernard Gordon 10/29/99". Mollie Gregory is best remembered for her film Buffalo Rider. In the book Gordon extensively thanks Gregory. ”Mollie Gregory is a dear friend who encouraged me to write about life in those interesting times, insisting that a personal account of the blacklist and filmmaking abroad would be a unique and valued documentation of a significant era. She got me started, kept my feet to the fire, criticized edited, supported. She also nurtured me through the travail of using a computer, spending endless hours cleaning up my computerized messes. Without Mollie, no book”. The publisher writes about the book: “The Hollywood blacklist, which began in the late 1940s and ran well into the 1960s, ended or curtailed the careers of hundreds of people accused of having ties to the Communist Party. Bernard Gordon was one of them. In this highly readable memoir, he tells a engrossing insider’s story of what it was like to be blacklisted and how he and others continued to work uncredited behind the scenes, writing and producing many box office hits of the era. Gordon describes how the blacklist cut short his screenwriting career in Hollywood and forced him to work in Europe. Ironically, though, his is a success story that includes the films El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Thin Red Line, Krakatoa East of Java, Day of the Triffids, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Horror Express, and many others. He recounts the making of many movies for which he was the writer and/or producer, with wonderful anecdotes about stars such as Charlton Heston, David Niven, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, and James Mason; directors Nicholas Ray, Frank Capra, and Anthony Mann; and the producer–studio head team of Philip Yordan and Samuel Bronston. Paperbound. Fine copy.