Robert Rossen

Early life and career

Robert Rosen^[2] was born on March 16, 1908,^[3] and raised on the Lower East Side of New York City.^[4] His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants; his father, Philip Rosen, was a house painter.^[5] As a youth, he attended New York University,^[6] hustled pool and fought some prizefights^[7] – the latter two providing crucial background for his two greatest films, The Hustler and Body and Soul, respectively. He changed his name from Rosen to Rossen in 1931.^[8]

He started his theatrical career as a stage manager and director in stock and off-Broadway productions,^[2] mainly in the social and radical theaters that flourished in New York in the early and mid-1930s, as did John Huston, Elia Kazan and Joseph Losey.^[9] In 1932 Rossen directed John Wexley's Steel, about labor agitation, and Richard Maibaum's The Tree, about a lynching. A year later Rossen directed Birthright, in which Maibaum attacked Nazism,^[10] which had just triumphed in Germany with the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler in 1933.

In 1935, Rossen wrote and directed his first play, The Body Beautiful, a comedy about a naive burlesque dancer. Although the play closed after four performances,^[10] Warner Bros. director Mervyn LeRoy was so impressed that he signed Rossen to a personal screenwriting contract.^[7][10]

Marriage

In 1936, Rossen married Susan Siegal; the couple had three children: Carol, Stephen and Ellen.^[7][11]

Work in Hollywood

For his first credit in Hollywood, in 1937 Rossen co-wrote with Abem Finkel a script based on the prosecution of crime lord Lucky Luciano and eventually titled Marked Woman. Although some of Warner Bros. management saw Rossen as an unknown quantity, the result won praise from both Jack L. Warner and the Daily Worker.^[7] Rossen's first solo script was for They Won't Forget (1937), a fictionalized account of the lynching of Leo Frank, featuring Lana Turner in her debut performance.^[12]

Dust Be My Destiny, co-written in 1939 by Rossen, is the story of a fugitive from justice who is eventually acquitted with help from an attorney and a journalist, the latter arguing that "a million boys all over the country" were in a similar plight. Warner Bros. then ordered producer Lou Edelman to cut the script, adding that "This is the story of two people – not a group. It is an individual problem – not a national one."^[13] Rossen was one of three writers on the gangster melodrama The Roaring Twenties, released in 1939.^[14][15] A remake of the 1932 play and film Life Begins was written in 1939 by Rossen and released in 1940 as A Child Is Born. The plot recounted the experiences of six expectant mothers, and there was little scope to modify the original.^[16]

The Sea Wolf, released in 1941, was based on Jack London's novel. Although the film had a strong cast and production, Rossen's re-draft of the script may be the greatest influence on the film.^[17] While the character of Captain Larsen remained both victim and oppressed in a capitalist hierarchy, he became a symbol of fascism. He split the novel's idealist hero into an intellectual bosun and a rebellious seaman.^[18] Warner Bros. cut many political points during production.^[19]

Blues in the Night, written by Rossen and two colleagues and released in 1941, shows a group of jazz musicians traveling in the Depression. Their informal methods represent working-class culture rather than the commercialized music of the big bands.^[20] However, The New York Times' reviewer thought the soundtrack was "about all the film has to offer",^[21] and Warner was disappointed with the sales.^[20]

After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Screen Writers Guild set up on December 8, 1941, the Hollywood Writers Mobilization, a body to organize writers for the war effort. Rossen served as the body's chairman until 1944 and advocated the opening of a Second Front to support West European resistance against the Nazis. His earnings were much greater than in 1937. However, his work for Hollywood Writers Mobilization and for the Communist Party forced him to abandon some partly developed film projects, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which John Huston eventually directed in 1948.^[20]

In 1945 Rossen joined a picket line against Warner Bros, making an enemy of Jack Warner. Rossen signed a contract with an independent production company formed by Hal Wallis, who had previously been Warner Bros.' head of production. However Rossen wrote only two full scripts for this company, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946 and Desert Fury in 1947.^[22][23] In The Strange Love of Martha Ivers Rossen used a short story by John Patrick to introduce the main plot, which was set 15 years later and which Rossen wrote.^[22] The relationship between Rossen and Wallis broke down when Rossen received offers from other production companies.^[22]

Dick Powell had been a crooner but was making a new career as a dramatic actor. When Columbia Pictures agreed to make Johnny O'Clock for him in 1947, Powell successfully campaigned for Rossen to direct, and this became Rossen's debut in directing.^[23] As this crime melodrama proved a modest success, Roberts Productions signed Rossen to direct Abraham Polonsky's script of Body and Soul,^[24] described by Bob Thomas as "possibly the best prizefight film ever made."^[4] Rossen preferred an ending in which the hero wins a boxing match and then is killed by a gangster, but Polonsky insisted on his own ending, in which the hero escapes into obscurity before the fight.^[24] Following the success of Body and Soul, Rossen formed his own production company and signed with Columbia Pictures a contract that gave him wide autonomy over every second film that he made at the studio.^[24]

All the King's Men (1949) was based on the novel of the same name by Robert Penn Warren, which in turn was based on the career of politician Huey Long.^[25] Rossen introduced a new concept, that the defenders of the ordinary people can in turn become the new exploiters.^[26] As a requirement for his participation in the film, Rossen had to write to Columbia's Harry Cohn saying that he was no longer a Communist Party member.^[24][27] Cohn's critiques of the draft of Rossen's script included scrapping a framing structure that was difficult for audiences to follow and several improvements in the relationships and motivations of characters.^[28] A meeting of the Communist Party in Los Angeles severely criticized the film, and Rossen severed all relations with the Party.^[29] All the King's Men won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Broderick Crawford won the award for Best Actor and Mercedes McCambridge was honored as Best Supporting Actress. Rossen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director but lost to Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives.^[30] Rossen won the Golden Globe for Best Director and the film won the Golden Globe for Best Picture.^[31] His next film, The Brave Bulls, was directed in 1950 and released in 1951. This was Rossen's last work before the studios blacklisted him. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called this "the best film on bull-fighting yet."^[32]

Examinations by HUAC

After the end of World War II in 1945, the spread of Communism became the major concern in the United States.^[33] In 1946, the Republicans gained an overwhelming majority in the Congressional elections.^[22] and used this power to investigate Communist elements in the media. The Communist victory of China in 1949 and the start of the Korean War in 1950 reinforced the anti-communist concerns present at the time.

During hearings in 1947, Jack Warner included Rossen among the many openly leftist writers whom his studio Warner Bros. had hired as the earliest and most openly anti-Nazi studio in Hollywood. (Warner Bros. had made Confessions of a Nazi Spy [1939] and was criticized by the Republicans for their leftist writers at the time.) Warner reportedly accused Rossen of incorporating communist propaganda in scripts and fired him as a result, though some believe he was also unhappy with the writers’ union activities.^[34]

Rossen was one of 19 "unfriendly witnesses" subpoenaed in October 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the second Red Scare but was one of eight not called to testify.^[22] In 1951, Rossen was named as a Communist by several HUAC witnesses and he appeared before HUAC for the first time in June 1951.^[10] He exercised his rights under the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, taking what came to be known as the "augmented Fifth". He testified that he was not a member of the Communist Party and that he disagreed with the aims of the party, but when asked to state whether he had ever been a member of the party, Rossen refused to answer.^[35][10] He was placed on the unofficial blacklist by the Hollywood studios,^[12] and Columbia broke its production contract with him.^[36]

In a widespread practice during HUAC investigations, the U.S. State Department refused to renew Rossen's passport. This, and his inability to find work, brought Rossen, like his friend, ex-Communist Elia Kazan, back to the committee in May 1953, where he identified 57 people as Communists.^[37] He explained to the committee why he chose to testify: "I don't think, after two years of thinking, that any one individual can indulge himself in the luxury of personal morality or pit it against what I feel today very strongly is the security and safety of this nation."^[38] Stephen Rossen later shed light on his father's decision:

It killed him not to work. He was torn between his desire to work and his desire not to talk, and he didn't know what to do. What I think he wanted to know was, what would I think of him if he talked? He didn't say it in that way, though. Then he explained to me the politics of it—how the studios were in on it, and there was never any chance of his working. He was under pressure, he was sick, his diabetes was bad, and he was drinking. By this time I understood that he had refused to talk before and had done his time, from my point of view. What could any kid say at that point? You say, 'I love you and I'm behind you.' ^[1]

Like Elia Kazan's testimony, Rossen's HUAC admissions destroyed many lifelong friendships, along with impacting the careers of many of Rossen's colleagues. Kazan's career flourished and Rossen's career also quickly regained the productivity he had enjoyed prior to the blacklist. He produced, directed and co-wrote The Hustler, in 1961, and he was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium Academy Awards, sharing the nomination with his co-writer Sidney Carroll.

Return to filmmaking

From 1952 to 1953, Rossen wrote Mambo, trying to repair his finances after almost two years without work following the 1951 HUAC hearing. He had to produce the film in Italy, and it was premiered in Italy in 1954 and the US in 1955.^[39][40] Rossen later said "Mambo was to be for fun only," but he "took it seriously, and it didn't come off."^[41] Critics dismissed the film.^[42][43][44] However, in 2001, Dorothea Fischer-Hornung concluded that the film achieved more than Rossen and contemporary critics realized. The female lead resolves her own conflicts by devoting herself to dance. Katherine Dunham's choreography highlights this process;^[45] and innovative cinematography intensifies the dance scenes.^[46]

Rossen hoped Alexander the Great (1956) would be a blockbuster,^[36] but the majority of the reviews criticized the film for failing to keep the audience's interest.^[47] However, the review from The New York Times wrote that "its moments of boredom are rare...an overlong but thoughtful and spectacular entertainment."^[48]

In 1961, Rossen co-wrote, produced and directed The Hustler. Drawing upon his own experiences as a pool hustler, he teamed with Sidney Carroll to adapt the novel of the same name for the screen. The Hustler was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won two. Rossen was nominated as Best Director, and with Carroll for Best Adapted Screenplay, but did not win either award.^[49] He was named Best Director by the New York Film Critics Circle^[50] and shared with Carroll the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written Drama.^[51] The Hustler was an enormous popular success and is credited with sparking a resurgence in the popularity of pool in the United States, which had been on the decline for decades.^[52]

Rossen was already ill when he started on his final film, Lilith (1964), and it was poorly received in the United States.^[53] After it Rossen lost interest in directing, reportedly because of conflicts with the film's star, Warren Beatty. The filmmaker said, "It isn't worth that kind of grief. I won't take it any more. I have nothing to say on the screen right now. Even if I never make another picture, I've got The Hustler on my record. I'm content to let that one stand for me."^[4] However, at the time of his death Rossen was planning Cocoa Beach, a script he conceived in 1962, showing the hopes and struggles of transients in a local community and contrasting this with nearby Cape Canaveral, which Leftist writer Brian Neve described as a "symbol of America's imperial reach".^[37][54]

Plays

Other theater work