Lester Cole

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Lester Cole
LCole in 1947
Born(1904-06-19)June 19, 1904
New York, New York
DiedAugust 15, 1985(1985-08-15) (aged 81)
San Francisco, California
Occupationscreenwriter

Lester Cole (June 19, 1904 – August 15, 1985) was an American screenwriter. Cole was one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and directors who were cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted for their refusal to testify regarding their alleged involvement with the Communist Party.

Biography[edit]

Born to a Jewish family[1][2] in New York City, Cole was the son of Polish immigrants to the United States. His father was a Marxist garment industry union organiser, and Cole developed his socialist ideology at a young age.[3][4]

Lester Cole began his career as an actor but soon turned to screenwriting. His first work was If I Had a Million. In 1933, he joined with John Howard Lawson and Samuel Ornitz to establish the Writers Guild of America, and in 1934 joined the American Communist Party.[5] Cole incorporated left-leaning political commentary in many of his scripts.[4][5]

Between 1932 and 1947, Cole wrote more than forty screenplays that were made into motion pictures.[6]

Blacklisting[edit]

In 1947, he became one of the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their Communist Party membership. Specifically, he was asked whether he was a member of the Screen Writer's Guild or the Communist Party.[7] Cole was convicted of Contempt of Congress, fined $1,000 and sentenced to twelve months' confinement at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut along with fellow Hollywood Ten member Ring Lardner Jr.,[8] of which he served ten months.

As a result of his refusal to testify, Cole was blacklisted by studio executives, after which just three of his screenplays were made into films - submitted under the names Gerald L.C. Copley, Lewis Copley, and J. Redmond Prior.

His best-known screenplay was that for the highly successful Born Free (1966), credited to Gerald L.C. Copley.

Personal life[edit]

Cole was married three times. His first two marriages ended in divorce and he separated from his third wife.

Cole married his first wife Jeanne “Jonnie” March in 1935.[9] Together they joined the Communist party.[10] The couple had two sons and divorced in 1953.[11] In the mid 1950s he briefly married Isabel (Dowden) Johnson,[12][13] who later married Alger Hiss.[14] Cole and Katharine Hogle married in 1956 and separated in 1977.[15][16]

Later life[edit]

In 1981, Cole published his autobiography, entitled Hollywood Red: The Autobiography of Lester Cole. In it, he recounted a 1978 incident when he called into a radio talk show on which ex-Communist Budd Schulberg was a guest. According to Cole, he berated Schulberg (who had testified before HUAC as a friendly witness) on the air as a "canary" and a "stool pigeon" before he was cut off:

Aren't you the canary who sang before the un-American Committee? Aren't you that canary? Or are you another bird, a pigeon – the stool kind.... Just sing, canary, sing, you bastard![17]

About this incident, Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley (Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry) comments, "Whether this actually happened is uncertain, but one can guess."[18]

Lester Cole died of a heart attack in San Francisco, California, in 1985. He was a professor for screenwriting for the University of Southern California at Berkeley up until the year before his death.[19] Ronald Radosh, Emeritus Professor of History at City University of New York, wrote that Cole "remained a hardcore Communist" until his death.[20]

Selected filmography[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Cones, John (April 2015). Motion Picture Biographies: The Hollywood Spin on Historical Figures. Algora. p. 35. ISBN 9781628941166.
  2. ^ Brook, Vincent (December 15, 2016). From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood: Chapter 1: Still an Empire of Their Own: How Jews Remain Atop a Reinvented Hollywood. Purdue University Press. p. 17. ISBN 9781557537638.
  3. ^ "Alvah Bessie (1904 – 1985) - The Hollywood Ten: The Men Who Refused to Name Names". The Hollywood Reporter. 16 November 2015.
  4. ^ a b Dick, Bernard F. (1989). Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 29–44.
  5. ^ a b Kenny, Emmet (2012). "A critical review of the 1947 HUAC hearings and the Hollywood Ten". Dublin Business School. hdl:10788/533.
  6. ^ Reynold Humphries (2008). Hollywood's Blacklists: A Political and Cultural History. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 54–. ISBN 978-0-7486-2455-3. Retrieved 2013-08-04. Lester Cole, also one of the Ten, wrote two scripts dealing with war subjects: Hostages (1943) and None Shall Escape (1944).
  7. ^ Twiford, Patrick William (1996). The American anticommunist tradition and the Hollywood Ten (Thesis). ProQuest 304327168.[page needed]
  8. ^ Eckstein, Arthur (2004). "The Hollywood Ten in History and Memory". Indiana University Press. 16 (4): 424–436. JSTOR 3815610.
  9. ^ Cole, Lester (1981). Hollywood Red : the autobiography of Lester Cole. Internet Archive. Palo Alto, Calif. : Ramparts Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-87867-085-7.
  10. ^ Cole, Lester (1981). Hollywood Red : the autobiography of Lester Cole. Internet Archive. Palo Alto, Calif. : Ramparts Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-87867-085-7.
  11. ^ Cole, Lester (1981). Hollywood Red : the autobiography of Lester Cole. Internet Archive. Palo Alto, Calif. : Ramparts Press. p. 345. ISBN 978-0-87867-085-7.
  12. ^ Sorin, Gerald (2012-11-05). Howard Fast: Life and Literature in the Left Lane. Indiana University Press. p. 462. ISBN 978-0-253-00732-2.
  13. ^ "Collection: Papers of Isabel Dowden Johnson Hiss, 1907-2000 | HOLLIS for". hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  14. ^ "Collection: Papers of Isabel Dowden Johnson Hiss, 1907-2000 | HOLLIS for". hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  15. ^ "Katherine Hogle Cole Obituary (2004) Deseret News". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  16. ^ Cole, Lester (1981). Hollywood Red : the autobiography of Lester Cole. Internet Archive. Palo Alto, Calif. : Ramparts Press. p. 426. ISBN 978-0-87867-085-7.
  17. ^ Cole, Lester (1981). Hollywood Red: The Autobiography of Lester Cole. Berkeley, Calif.: Ramparts Press. p. 428. ISBN 0-87867-085-8. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
  18. ^ Billingsley, Kenneth Lloyd (1998). Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s. Rocklin, Calif.: Prima Publishing. p. 267. ISBN 0-7615-1376-0. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
  19. ^ "LESTER COLE DIES: IN 'HOLLYWOOD 10'". New York Times. August 18, 1985.
  20. ^ Radosh, Ronald; Allis Radosh (2005). Red Star Over Hollywood. San Francisco: Encounter Books. p. 29. ISBN 1-893554-96-1. Retrieved March 9, 2011.

External links[edit]

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