Albert Maltz -- author of novels, short stories, plays and screenplays, in Frank Sinatra’s opinion “the best goddam writer around” in the 1940s -- is not much remembered today. It is difficult to come across his works in bookstores, university or public libraries. When he is talked about, it is apt to be because of his politics rather than for his fairly distinguished career as a writer. Maltz was a long-time Communist and a member of the Hollywood Ten. He was blacklisted and spent time in prison and in exile in Mexico when he should have been in his professional prime.
Success on Screen and Stage
Maltz was born in Brooklyn in 1908 to Jewish immigrants. He earned a degree in philosophy from Columbia and studied drama at Yale. By 1935, Maltz had had four plays produced: Merry-Go-Round, Peace On Earth, Black Pit and Private Hicks. His first collection of short stories, Man On a Road, was also out. By this time he was a member of the Communist Party of America -- the source of all his later troubles.
In 1941 Maltz moved to Los Angeles to work on his first screenplay, This Gun for Hire, an adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel. It was up to Maltz to transpose Greene’s story to an American setting and do away with Greene’s Christian symbolism, which was not suited to a commercial thriller. That same year he wrote the commentary for Moscow Strikes Back, which was an American propaganda film on behalf of the Soviets. And in 1945 he would write the script for The House I Live In, a documentary on tolerance featuring Frank Sinatra’s performance of the title song and a lecture by him about the evil of prejudice. Both short films won Academy Awards.