Polonsky of Blacklist Dies

Abraham Polonsky, a director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter who worked under pseudonyms and used other writers as fronts after being blacklisted in McCarthy-era Hollywood, has died at 88.

He was found dead Tuesday by his housekeeper after suffering a heart attack.

Blacklisted for nearly two decades, Polonsky had only nine films to his credit. But he earned an Oscar nomination for writing the 1947 John Garfield boxing film Body and Soul, and critic Andrew Sarris said the 1948 movie Force of Evil, Polonsky's first as a director, is "one of the great films of the modern American cinema."

Polonsky's career was disrupted in the early 1950s, after he refused to testify about his Communist Party affiliations or name party members. His refusal prompted 20th Century Fox to fire him.

"If you said you were sorry you were a radical and had seen the errors of your ways, you were let off. That's like saying you have no right to make political experiments in your mind," Polonsky said in a 1968 interview. "That's the kind of thing they do in Communist countries, but we're supposed to be a free country. We need to be a genuinely free country and not merely pretend to be one."

Though blacklisted, Polonsky never completely abandoned Hollywood. His best-known work as an outcast scribe was the 1959 crime melodrama Odds Against Tomorrow, which he co-wrote under the name John O. Killens. In 1996, the Writers Guild of America restored his real name to the credits.

Polonsky also used other writers as fronts, which is how he worked steadily for the TV show You Are There. With such jobs, he said, his pay under the blacklist was actually higher than it had been before.

It wasn't until 1969 that he would direct his second film, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, starring Robert Redford. Polonsky also directed Romance of a Horse Thief in 1971 and wrote the screenplays for Avalanche Express in 1978 and Monsignor in 1982.

Polonsky was highly critical of On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan, who was honored this year with a lifetime achievement Oscar despite testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and naming names.

"He's a creep," Polonsky said. "I wouldn't say hello to him if he came across the street."

Polonsky trained as a lawyer and taught English at what is now the City University of New York. In World War II, he was a member of the OSS, a forerunner of the CIA. Before turning to films, he wrote novels as well as radio dramas for Orson Welles.

Most recently, he taught at the University of Southern California and California State University at Northridge.

He is survived by his wife, Iris; a son; and two granddaughters. His first wife, Sylvia, died in 1993 after 56 years of marriage.