cover image Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist

Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist

Bernard Gordon. University of Texas Press, $34.95 (335pp) ISBN 978-0-292-72827-1

Oddly, this colorful, personal recollection by screenwriter/producer Gordon is a success story, as he was eventually associated with some 20 films, working with stars like Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and David Niven, and directors like Nicholas Ray and Frank Capra. He worked for seven years as a Paramount reader and assistant story editor, but was fired after he was named during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. ""The fact that I never testified did not relieve me of my blacklist status. I had to work under a pseudonym... for about ten years until the blacklist was broken."" Recalling when his lifelong friend Julian Zimet (aka Julian Halevy) wrote The Young Lovers, Gordon notes, ""Even among New York publishers, the blacklist issue was raised, and Julian had to adopt a pen name for his book."" The two friends relocated to Europe, where they collaborated on a stack of uncredited screenplays. Gordon's long-time affiliation with the Philip Yordan-Samuel Bronston Madrid studio is the core of this book, which offers illuminating insights into the era of ""runaway productions,"" when historical epics were made economically in Spain. Woven throughout is an absorbing profile of the energetic, enigmatic Yordan, whose entrepreneurial lifestyle and ""whirlwind career"" would make a movie in itself. Gordon never pulls his punches in this anecdotal autobiography, filled with intimate details and vivid novelistic passages. A born storyteller, he writes with warmth and humor, and there's an emotional edge to his razor-sharp recall. 33 b&w photos. (Nov.)