Oscar-nominated screenwriter Albert Maltz was born on October 28, 1908, in Brooklyn, New York, and after graduating from Columbia University in 1930, he attended the Yale School of Drama for two years as a tyro playwright, before striking out on his own as a dramatist.
Maltz developed sociopolitical plays which were destined to be produced by the left-wing theatrical companies the Theatre Union and the Group Theatre, and he also wrote novels and short stories. In 1935, during the Great Depression, he joined the Communist Party.
As a screenwriter for Warner Bros., Maltz worked on the classic Casablanca (1942) and other feature films and documentaries during World War II. He wrote the Oscar-winning documentary The House I Live In (1945),a plea for racial tolerance, and was nominated for an Oscar for writing Pride of the Marines (1945).
In 1945, Maltz wrote an article in the "New Masses" that demanded more intellectual freedom from the Communist Party for its members, but pressure from the Party made him recant his position, which had a chilling effect on some other Party members and liberal supporters of the Party's right to exist.
In 1947, Maltz and other Party members (and suspected Party members and sympathizers) were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which had determined to investigate "communist infiltration" of the movie industry. Maltz and nine others were cited for contempt of Congress for their uncooperative behavior before the Committee, which included not "naming names" of other communists, and were dubbed the "Hollywood 10". All were fined and jailed, and they were also blacklisted by the American film industry.
Remaining a committed communist, Maltz continued to write, using "fronts" who sold his screenplays and received any writing credit allotted by the studios and WGA. He remained unrepentant about his progressive politics until the end, which came on August 26, 1985, when he died in Los Angeles at the age of 76.
