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Cousin Albert Maltz
By Dick
Goldberg (8112) I spoke only once with Cousin Albert Maltz – 15 years ago when I was in California. It was shortly before his death. He had always been a hero of mine because I knew I was related to him and because he had played such an important role in the history of the American Left and in the film industry. When O spoke with him, he expressed intense – and understandable – cynicism about “the industry” and its treatment of writers. This was not only because he had been betrayed by studio executives and others when he had been hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as one of The Hollywood Ten but also because he felt that toward the end of his career, producers and even publishers had treated him shabbily. It saddened me to learn that he felt that way, but it did not diminish in any way my admiration for him. Cousin Albert was born on October 28, 1908, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His parents were Bernard (a builder) and Lena (sherry) Maltz. In 1937, he married Margaret Larkin; they divorced in 1963. The following year he married Rosemary Wylde. She died in 1968. The year after her death, he married Esther Engelberg. There were two children from his first marriage: Peter and Katherine. He was an excellent student, graduating Columbia University in New York with honors (and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa) in 1930; and pursuing graduate studies at Yale form 1930 to 1932. After Yale, he began his career as a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He actually collaborated on his first Broadway play while still at Yale. Other involvement in the theater included his being on the executive board of the Theater Union, Inc; a teacher of playwriting at New York University School of Adult Education, and at the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference. Most of this work took place in the thirties. He earned a name for himself during this period as a protest writer with his short stories “The Way Things Are,” “Seasons of Celebration,” and “Man on a Road,” which some critics believe exemplify his best work. In addition, his tale “The Happiest Man on Earth” won an O. Henry Memorial Award as the best short story in 1938. In the forties, he wrote U.S. propaganda films (during World War II) and started writing movies in Hollywood. His credits include “This Gun for Hire,” “Destination Tokyo,” and “The House I Live In,” which earned him a special Academy Award in 1945. From 1945-1948, he served as the president of Writers Guild of America West. In 1947 Maltz was one of the prominent film writers indicted for contempt of Congress after refusing to tell the HUAC whether he was a Communist; he served a prison term from June, 1950 to April, 1951. Was Cousin Albert a Communist? Most of the more credible resources about this period suggest yes, also characterizing him as a soft-spoken, articulate intellectual whose politics emanated from careful reflection on history and the social and economic disparity which he was all around him. The policy of the Communist Party at the time was that membership should not be divulged, a position consistent with Maltz’s understanding of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But HUAC, in pursuit of its own political ends, decided that privacy for political affiliations applied to everyone except those whose politics they didn’t like. After his release from prison, Maltz continued to write U.S> movies under pseudonyms from Mexico. Considered “rehabilitated” by the film industry by 1970, his own name was attached to films such as “Two Mules for Sister Sara” and “The Beguiled.” Most of Maltz’s novels were political in nature and included The Underground Stream, the best-seller The Cross and the Arrow, and his last work, Bel Canto, which is set in France during World War II. He died in 1985
Editor’s Note: Cousin Dick Goldberg has made a conscious effort to follow in Cousin Albert’s footsteps. A campus radical in the 60’s, Dick now owns and operates Diverse Productions, a Philadelphia-based production company he started to create diversity-in-the-work-place (e.g., sexism, racism, homophobia) theater and video productions. Like his hero, he is also a writer (and a proud member of the union, the Writers Guild of America, for which Albert Maltz served as president). Dick is the author of “Family Business,” which ran a year off-Broadway and was presented on PBS starring Milton Berle, is a Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, wrote the film “The Imagemaker” (staring Farley Grainger and Merry Ohrbach); has written TV movies for CBS, episodes of American Playhouse (PBS) including an adaptation of Harold Brodkey’s “Love and Other Sorrows,” and episodes of the TV series “Kate and Allie,” and “MacGyver.” His is married to Deborah Weinstein, a partner in a Philadelphia law firm. They have two children, Ted Goldberg, an admissions officer for Hebrew University, and Rosa W. Goldberg, a second year student at Oberlin College. Dick’s play “Comrades,” which has been produced in several theaters across the country, concerns the relationship of two fictional members of the Hollywood Ten. The hero of the play is Alvin Myers, whose initials should suggest on whom the character is based. Dick’s most recent play is entitled "God of Desire,” presented in Philadelphia last winter; it concerns the relationship between spiritual and erotic ecstasy.
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