- Born
- Died
- Ben Barzman was an Anglo-Canadian best known as a screenwriter who was blacklisted during the post-World War II "Red scare" in Hollywood. Born on October 12, 1910, in Toronto, he moved to the United States, where he established himself as a screenwriter during the war. He is probably best known for The Boy with Green Hair (1948), his adaptation of Betzi Beaton's novel that was an allegory against intolerance that bears witness to post-war American attitude that demanded conformity. The movie was directed by Joseph Losey, who also would be blacklisted and with whom Barzman would work in the future.
In Hollywood Ben and his wife Norma Barzman became members of the Communist Party and remained so in exile. After Barzman traveled to England in 1949 to work on a movie, he decided to stay in Europe, and he and Norma moved to Paris, where they had the freedom to associate with Communists, left-wingers and anyone else they wanted to. However, Ben grew to dislike the milieu, and moved the family to the south of France in the 1950s. They broke with the Party after the student riots of 1968 due to the French Communist Party's failure to support a general strike called by labor unions in solidarity with the students.
Norma Barzman claims that Ben rewrote the screenplay of the Oscar-winning Z (1969) for director Costa-Gavras, but did not receive credit. He also helped arrange for the filming of the movie in Algeria. In addition to his screen work, Barzman wrote the science-fiction novel "Out of This World" in 1960.
He died on December 15, 1989, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 79.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jon C. Hopwood (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)
- SpouseNorma Barzman(1943 - December 15, 1989) (his death, 7 children)
- Children
- ParentsAaron BarzmanBess G. Turoffsky
- A victim of the blacklist in Hollywood, about which he was often eloquently scathing in his later years.
- He was the screenwriter or co-writer of more than 20 movies.
- Barzman did not receive credit for some movies because of the Hollywood Blacklist.
- In 1960, Barzman became a science fiction author, with his novel Out Of This World. It dealt with the idea of a twin planet of Earth in the same orbit as Earth, hidden from our view by the sun. The two planets had developed almost identically from creation-but World War II never happened on the twin Earth. Philosopher Bertrand Russell said of it that Barzman "has a rare gift, he manages to treat serious themes amusingly.".
- During the 1950s, the he and his family relocated to Paris, where friends included Pablo Picasso, Yves Montand, and Simone Signoret, and later southern France.
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