Ben Barzman (October 12, 1910 – December 15, 1989) was a Canadian journalist, screenwriter, and novelist, blacklisted during the McCarthy Era and best known for his screenplays for the films Back to Bataan (1945), El Cid (1961), and The Blue Max (1966).
He was born in Toronto, Ontario to a Jewish family. He was the screenwriter or co-writer of more than 20 films, from You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith (1943) to The Head of Normande St. Onge (1975).
Like many of his colleagues in the movie business, Barzman was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
His wife, Norma Barzman, was a Communist Party USA member from 1943 to 1949. In 2014, she told the Los Angeles Times, “one should be proud to have been a member of the American Communist Party during those years. Hitler was invading the Soviet Union, so there was no reason to be anti-Russian, they were our allies.”
The couple moved to England so Barzman could work on the film Give Us This Day (aka, Christ in Concrete, 1949). Following his return to the United States after directing Give Us This Day, Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten, testified about the Barzmans to HUAC in 1951. “To get out of prison he named us and a lot of other people,” said Norma Barzman in 2014. In the 1950s, the family moved to Paris, where friends included Pablo Picasso, Yves Montand, and Simone Signoret, and later southern France. Barzman did not receive credit for some films because of the Hollywood Blacklist.
His U.S. citizenship was revoked from 1954 to 1963. His wife Norma had her passport revoked from 1951 for seven years. The family remained abroad in London, Paris and Mougins until 1976, during which time he wrote his novels and screenplays for French and Italian films.
Barzman died in Santa Monica, California, United States.
Surviving him was his wife, Norma Barzman, and seven children (including director Paolo Barzman, screenwriter Aaron Barzman, visual artist Luli Barzman, and French university professor John Barzman) and five grandchildren.
Source: Article “Ben Barzman” from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Ben Barzman Biography / Wiki
| Name | Ben Barzman |
| Also Know | |
| Gender | Male |
| Known For | Writing |
| Place of Birth | Toronto, Canada |
| Date of Birth | 1910-10-12 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 79 |
| Deathday | 1989-12-15 |
Writing
| Movie Name | Job | Release Date | Overview |
| The Boy with Green Hair | Writer | 1948-11-26 | Peter, an orphaned boy, is adopted by Gramp Frye after his parents are killed in Europe while doing war relief work. The boy feels safe with his new c… |
| El Cid | Screenplay | 1961-10-24 | Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz (“El Cid” to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeed… |
| Back to Bataan | Screenplay | 1945-05-30 | An Army colonel leads a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese in the Philippines…. |
| Stranger on the Prowl | Screenplay | 1952-03-12 | A down-and-out crook on the lam befriends a young street urchin, in an Italian port city. At first amused that the boy is a sneak thief, he tries to d… |
| Young Man with Ideas | Screenplay | 1952-05-02 | A Montana lawyer (Glenn Ford) gets distracted after moving to California with his wife (Ruth Roman) and children…. |
| Normande | Writer | 1975-10-30 | Normande St-Onge works as a clerk in a pharmacy and takes dance classes with the dream of being a cabaret dancer. Her mother, Berthe, has been confine… |
| Give Us This Day | Adaptation | 1949-10-14 | Exiled from Hollywood due to the blacklist, director Edward Dmytryk briefly operated in England in the late 1940s. Though filmed in its entirety in Lo… |
| True to Life | Story | 1943-12-24 | A writer for a radio program needs some fresh ideas to juice up his show. For inspiration, he rents a room with a typical American family and begins t… |
| The Visit | Screenplay | 1964-05-06 | Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning,… |
| The Ceremony | Screenplay | 1963-12-18 | A man has an affair with his condemned brother’s girlfriend while plotting his escape in Tangier…. |
| Give Us This Day | Screenplay | 1949-10-14 | Exiled from Hollywood due to the blacklist, director Edward Dmytryk briefly operated in England in the late 1940s. Though filmed in its entirety in Lo… |
| It Happened in Paris | Writer | 1952-12-26 | Wealthy American Patricia comes to spend some time at her uncle’s place in Paris. While out on her own for the evening she meets pseudo-Russian princ… |
| The Heroes of Telemark | Screenplay | 1965-11-22 | Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy w… |
| The Faithful City | Screenplay | 1952-01-15 | The Israeli-made Faithful City stars Jamie Smith as an American in Tel Aviv just after World War II. Smith makes the acquaintance of a group of orphan… |
| Never Say Goodbye | Story | 1946-11-09 | Phil and Ellen Gayley have been divorced for a year, and their 7-year old daughter, Flip, is very unhappy that her parents are not together. Flip star… |
| The Fall of the Roman Empire | Screenplay | 1964-03-24 | In the year 180 AD Germanic tribes are about to invade the Roman empire from the north. In the midst of this crisis ailing emperor Marcus Aurelius has… |
| The Assassination | Writer | 1972-10-11 | Sadiel, rebel leader in a North African state, takes refuge in Switzerland in the aftermath of a coup. Aware of the threat posed by Sadiel, the ruthle… |
| Blind Date | Screenplay | 1959-08-01 | Dutch painter Jan-Van Rooyer hurries to keep a rendezvous with Jacqueline Cousteau, an elegant, sophisticated Frenchwoman, slightly his elder, whose r… |
| You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith | Screenplay | 1943-10-22 | A young woman marries a soldier to fulfill the conditions of a will. However, when she gets ready to divorce him, she realizes that she actually loves… |
| He Who Must Die | Writer | 1957-05-03 | Greece, in the 1920s, is occupied by the Turks. The country is in turmoil with entire villages uprooted. The site of the movie is a Greek village that… |
| You Are Free, Dr. Korczak | Writer | 1975-04-09 | … |
| Incognito | Adaptation | 1958-04-09 | Bob Stanley was an American secret agent during World War II in France. After the war Stanley returns to France as a consul. In reality, he works for … |
| Oasis | Writer | 1955-03-18 | Two female agents from a rival gang are sent to disrupt the operations of a gold-smuggler’s caravan in Africa…. |
| Time Without Pity | Screenplay | 1957-03-21 | Alec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of … |
| Z | Writer | 1969-02-26 | Repression is the rule of the day in this film that skewers Greek governance of the 1960s. Z, a leftist rabble rouser, is killed in what appears to be… |
Credit: TMDB
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