Ben Barzman; Screenwriter Blacklisted in McCarthy Era

Ben Barzman, who was forced to abandon a successful screenwriting career when he was placed on a McCarthy-era blacklist, died Friday in Santa Monica. He was 79 and had suffered a stroke.

A journalist, novelist and author of musical revues, he turned to screenwriting with “True to Life” in 1943. He was to write or co-write several well-known pictures, among them “The Boy With the Green Hair,” “Back to Bataan,” “El Cid,” “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” “Z,” “The Blue Max,” “The Visit” and “Heroes of Telemark.” Some did not reflect his screen credit because of the blacklist, said his wife, Norma.

Barzman left Hollywood in the late 1940s, but unlike many of his fellow craftsmen, it was not to avoid a subpoena. He and his wife, a successful journalist and scenarist, went to London in 1949, where they had been invited by Edward Dmytryk, one of the two survivors of the famed Hollywood 10. Dmytryk was directing Barzman’s “Christ in Concrete,” based on the Pietro di Donato novel, for the J. Arthur Rank Studio.

The picture went on to win awards at several European film festivals, but by then the Barzmans had been told they would not be welcomed back to Hollywood because of their political sympathies.

(“Christ in Concrete” has just been purchased by HBO for screening in 1990.)

Barzman, born in Canada, had his naturalized citizenship revoked in 1954 and his American passport taken away. It was 1963 before his citizenship was restored, said Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund in their book “The Inquisition in Hollywood.” The government then presented Barzman with a bill for back taxes he supposedly owed for his nine years as a non-American.

In the interim the Barzmans lived in London, Paris and Nice, where he wrote several films for the French and Italian cinema.

Barzman’s novels included “Echo X,” published in 1960 and winner of the Science Fiction Book-of-the-Month Award. Philosopher Bertrand Russell said of it that Barzman “has a rare gift--he manages to treat serious themes amusingly.”

With his wife, he wrote two films, “The Locket” and “Never Say Goodbye,” and a second novel, “Rich Dreams.”

They raised their seven children in Europe, returning to Los Angeles in 1976.

In 1982 Ben Barzman was honored with a film retrospective at the Paris Cinematheque and in 1985 the French named him an officier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Besides his wife and children, he is survived by five grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 7 at Westwood Mortuary.