In Remembrance: Bernard Gordon

     Bernard Gordon, one the last of the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters who was forced to write such classics as Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) and Hellcats Of The Navy (1957) under the pseudonym Raymond T. Marcus, has passed away on May 11, 2007 in Los Angeles. He was 88.

     Born October 29, 1918 in New Britain, Connecticut, Gordon got his start in Hollywood as a script reader, reviewing submitted screenplays and writing recommendations for studio executives. Active in several political causes, Gordon was briefly a member of the Communist Party during the 1940s. Although not a member long, it was an association that would come back to haunt him a decade latter.

     Gordon’s first produced screenplay was the 1952 boxing film The Flesh And The Fury, starring a young Tony Curtis. He only had two other screenplays produced – The Lawless Breed (1953) and Crime Wave (1954) – before he was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although he was never actually called on to testify, he was named as a communist sympathizer by Lawless Breed producer William Alland.

     While such a stigma as being named before HUAC was enough to find himself publicly employed by the studios, Gordon earned a living much like many other blacklisted writers by hiding behind pseudonyms. Gordon was approached by producer Charles Schneer to adapt a play which became the film The Law Vs. Billy The Kid, though the name John T. Williams was credited to the screenplay. Gordon spent the rest of the 1950s writing such films as Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, The Man Who Turned To Stone (1957), Chicago Confidential (1957) and The Case Against Brooklyn (1958) under the pseudonym of Raymond T. Marcus.

     Although the blacklist began to crumble in 1960 after Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas gave blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo credit for his work on Exodus and Spartacus, Gordon still found himself going unrecognized for his work. Although he wrote the screenplay for the 1962 science-fiction film Day Of The Triffids, the credit was given to the film’s producer Philip Yordan. Although he would receive credit for his work on 55 Days At Peking, Cry Of Battle (1963) and The Thin Red Line (1964), he still lost credit to producer Yordan for Circus World (1964) and Battle Of The Bulge (1965). Following the final dissolution of the blacklist era, Gordon would get screen credit for his next two scripts, Custer Of The West (1967) and Krakatoa, East Of Java (1969).

     In the 1970s, Gordon left screenwriting behind to try his hand at producing. He would only produce a trio of B movies- the spaghetti westerns Bad Man’s River (1971) and Pancho Villa (1972) and the Christopher lee vehicle Horror Express (1973).

     Starting in 1980, the Writers Guild of America began restoring the credits for writers who were blacklisted. With his name now added on to approximately a dozen films, Gordon earned the distinction of being the blacklisted writer with the most restored credits.

     Gordon wrote two autobiographical books on his time in Hollywood and on the blacklist - Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist and The Gordon File: A Screenwriter Recalls Twenty Years of FBI Surveillance- and the novel Surfacing, which he adapted for the screen in 1981. In 1991, Gordon led the protest against the awarding of an honorary Academy Award to director Elia Kazan, who had named names to HUAC during the blacklist.