Barzman, Ben
Entry updated 22 January 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1910-1989) Canadian-born US scriptwriter – his collaborative script for the film The Boy with Green Hair (1948) directed by Joseph Losey was much admired – who was soon blacklisted for his earlier membership in the Communist Party, though he managed to write about twenty-five produced scripts under his own and other names; he and his wife Norma Barzman (1920-2023), also creatively active in Hollywood and also blacklisted, had moved to Europe by 1949, not moving back until 1976. His sf novel, Out of this World (1960; vt Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 1960; vt Echo X 1962), ambitiously portrays a Counter-Earth – the contrasting world being a scientifically advanced, peaceful Utopia in which World War Two never happened – and tells a love story involving people transported between the two worlds. [JC]
Ben Frank Barzman
born Toronto, Ontario: 12 October 1910
died Santa Monica, California: 15 December 1989
works
- Out of this World (London: Collins, 1960) [hb/]
- Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1960) [vt of above: hb/Ben Feder]
- Echo X (New York: Paperback Library, 1962) [vt of above: pb/Bob Abbett]
about the author
- Norma Barzman. The Red and the Blacklist: A Memoir of a Hollywood Insider (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003) [nonfiction: by Barzman's wife: hb/]
links
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