Lester Cole

Lester Cole (born Lester Cohn; June 19, 1904 – August 15, 1985) was an American screenwriter. His film credits include The House of the Seven Gables, Objective, Burma! (1945), and The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). He is best known as one of the "Hollywood Ten"—the group of screenwriters and directors cited for contempt of Congress, and subsequently blacklisted and imprisoned, for refusing to testify regarding their alleged involvement with the Communist Party.

Early years Lester Cohn was born into a Jewish family of Polish immigrants in New York City. His father was a Marxist garment industry union organiser who influenced the development of his son's socialist ideology. Lester's parents divorced when he was ten, and his mother gained custody of him and his sister. The family moved multiple times, and he struggled as a student. At age 16, he left home and dropped out of high school. He also began writing plays.

Film career After Cole had two of his plays produced in New York, he signed a five-year, $250-a-week contract as a screenwriter with Paramount Pictures. He relocated to Hollywood in 1932 where his first assignment was to collaborate with over a dozen other writers on If I Had a Million.

Between 1932 and 1947, he wrote more than forty screenplays that were made into motion pictures. He incorporated left-leaning political commentary in many of his scripts. He replied that it wasn't a simple "Yes|No" matter but required a more complete response, which he had prepared in a written statement. But unlike most other HUAC witnesses, Cole was not permitted to read the statement into the Congressional Record because his statement was sharply critical of the House committee itself. After a few minutes of back-and-forth, HUAC Chairman J. Parnell Thomas realized they were at an impasse and excused the witness.

As a result of his refusal to cooperate with the HUAC, Cole was blacklisted by studio executives. In the next couple of decades, only three of his screenplays—for which he used three different pseudonyms: J. Redmond Prior, Lewis Copley, and Gerald L. C. Copley—were made into films. The most commercially successful of the films was Born Free (1966), credited to Gerald L. C. Copley. Cole said in 1967: "I did it for 15 percent of what my salary was before I was blacklisted." He was then briefly married to Isabel (Dowden) Johnson, who later married Alger Hiss. Cole and Katharine Hogle married in 1956 and separated in 1977.

Later years In contrast with other Hollywood Ten members such as Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr., who were allowed to work again in the 1960s and '70s under their own names, Cole was never "un-blacklisted". He remarked about this period: "The Blacklist was still in effect for some, certainly for John Howard Lawson and myself.... The Un-American Activities Committee was gone, but its ghost was alive and well in Hollywood."

In 1981, Cole published his autobiography, Hollywood Red. In it, he recounted a 1978 incident when he phoned into a radio talk show on which ex-Communist Budd Schulberg was a guest. Cole wrote that he berated Schulberg (who had testified before HUAC as a friendly witness and "named names"), calling him a "canary" and a "stool pigeon": Cole added that he was then abruptly cut off the air. About this incident, Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley comments, "Whether this actually happened is uncertain, but one can guess."

In his last years, Cole taught screenwriting at the University of California at Berkeley and at a New York University Summer Writers Conference in Vermont. As Ronald Radosh observes, Cole "remained a hardcore Communist" until the very end.

Lester Cole died at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center on August 15, 1985. It was ten days after he had suffered a heart attack. He was 81.

Selected filmography If I Had a Million (1932) Walls of Gold (1933) Nothing More Than a Woman (1934) Under Pressure (1935) Hitch Hike Lady (1935) The Jury's Secret (1938) Midnight Intruder (1938) The Crime of Doctor Hallet (1938) Secrets of a Nurse (1938) Pirates of the Skies (1939) The House of the Seven Gables (1940) Footsteps in the Dark (1941) Among the Living (1941) Pacific Blackout (1941) Hostages (1943) None Shall Escape (1944) Objective, Burma! (1945) Blood on the Sun (1945) Men in Her Diary (1945) The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947) High Wall (1947) Operation Eichmann (1961)credited to Lewis Copley Born Free (1966)credited to Gerald L. C. Copley