Anne Froelick

Anne Froelick Taylor (December 8, 1913 – January 26, 2010) was an American screenwriter from 1941 to 1950, and later a playwright and novelist. Her screenwriting career ended when two screenwriters named Froelick as a communist before the HUAC and was then blacklisted. In 1997, Froelick reflected: "We transferred the setting to this country [United States]. I picked this place in New Jersey, some place near Princeton, for the imaginary spaceship to land ... I remembered how they made us change the names of some things that people would recognize, and I resented that."

In 1939, Warner Bros. hired Koch as a screenwriter and he recommended they hire Froelick as a writer. Her first assignment was revising the script for The Letter (1940), directed by William Wyler. During the writing process, Koch handed her dialogue scenes to rewrite, among them were the romantic scenes. Despite her contributions, Koch was given the sole screenwriting credit. The film was acclaimed by film critics, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. After eighteen months there, Warner Bros. signed Froelick to a writing contract. Her first screen credit was the 1941 drama Shining Victory, which she co-wrote with Koch, who again handed her dialogue pages to rewrite.

In 1942, Koch was hired to write the screenplay for Mission to Moscow (1943) for Michael Curtiz. He asked Froelick to accompany her, but she stayed behind as she had recently married. She decided instead to write the screenplay for Miss Susie Slagle's (1946) for Paramount Pictures. Nevertheless, she suggested her friend Anne Green for the job. After the film's release, Green married Koch, and they remained married until his death. In 1941, Miss Susie Slagle's was postponed when Sam Wood, who was attached to direct, decided to film For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) instead. A year later, Froelick moved to RKO Pictures to write the screenplay for The Master Race (1944). She did on-set rewrites, and when filming concluded, she returned to Paramount to finish the Miss Susie Slagle's script. She followed up with Easy Come, Easy Go (1947). After this, she went to Columbia Pictures to write the screenplay for Harriet Craig (1950), a remake of 1936's Craig's Wife.

During this time, Froelick became involved in political activism, including opposing fascism and promoting unions and desegregation. This led her to join the Communist Party. In a 1997 interview, she stated she was not very active, but nevertheless went to "meetings and to a lot of events and activities." In 1951, Froelick's party membership caused her husband, Philip Taylor, to lose his job as a manufacturing planner at Lockheed. During the last hearings for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), in 1953, she was accused publicly to be a communist by fellow screenwriters Leopold Atlas and Sol Shor. Froelick was subsequently blacklisted, but continued to write for a living using her married name.

Froelick wrote one unpublished novel titled Fee Fi Fo Friend, which was inspired by her political activism and subsequent blacklisting. She took to alcohol to help self-medicate, and later went to Alcoholics Anonymous to fight her addiction. She wrote four plays that were produced locally, including Storm in the Sun. Along with that, she co-wrote a comic novel, Press on Regardless, about a female sports-car addict, with Fern Mosk, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 1956.

Anne Froelick Taylor died of natural causes on January 26, 2010, aged 96, in a nursing home in Los Angeles.

Filmography Year Title Notes 1940 The Letter With Howard KochUncredited 1941 Shining Victory With Howard KochFirst onscreen writing credit 1944 The Master Race With Herbert J. Biberman and Rowland Leigh 1946 Miss Susie Slagle's With Hugo Butler, Adrian Scott, and Theodore Strauss 1947 Easy Come, Easy Go With Francis Edward Faragoh and John McNulty 1950 Harriet Craig With James Gunn