Profile of Carl Foreman on Famous Like Me

Carl Foreman (July 23, 1914 – June 26, 1984) was an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.

Born in Chicago, Illinois to a working-class Jewish family, he studied at the University of Illinois. As a student in the 1930s he became an advocate of social reform and joined the American Communist Party. At the time, political ideology was being by the rise of fascism abroad and domestically by the ruthless business tactics of capitalists such as John D. Rockefeller while at the same time the unemployed and working poor of the Great Depression were suffering terribly.

After graduating from university, Carl Foreman moved to Hollywood where he used his writing talents and training to work as a screenwriter. From 1941 to 1942 he was involved with writing three films but his career was interrupted by service in the United States military during World War II. Returning to writing commercial scripts, by the end of the 1940s, Foreman had become one of the top writers in Hollywood whose successes included the 1949 Kirk Douglas film Champion for which Foreman received an Academy Award nomination.

In 1951, during production of the film High Noon, Carl Foreman was summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He testified that he had been a member of the American Communist Party more than ten years earlier while still a young man but had become disillusioned with the Party and quit. As a result of his refusal to give the names of fellow Party members, Foreman was labeled as an "uncooperative witness" and blacklisted by all of the Hollywood studio bosses.

Carl Foreman was the screenwriter of High Noon, a film that is seen as an allegory for McCarthyism. He was not credited for his associate producer role when the film was released in 1952 but he did receive an Academy Award nomination for his script from his fellow members of the MPAA. The Western film is considered an American classic and is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was #33 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. This would be the last film he would be allowed to work on by a Hollywood studio for the next six years. Unemployed, Foreman and some others who had also been blacklisted such as Ring Lardner, Jr. moved to England where they wrote scripts under pseudonyms that were channeled back to Hollywood. As such, the film that was Foreman' greatest screenwriting accomplishment made no mention of his name. In 1956 he co-wrote the screenplay with fellow blacklisted writer, Michael Wilson for the equally acclaimed The Bridge on the River Kwai. Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle, the two were not given screen credit and as such the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay went to Pierre Boulle. This was only rectified posthumously in 1984 and his name was added to the award.

In addition to his writing of screenplays, Carl Foreman produced ten films, including both producing, writing, and directing 1963s anti-war epic The Victors filmed entirely in the United Kingdom. In 1965 he was made a governor of the British Film Institute, serving until 1971. In 1970, Foreman was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Near the end of his life, Carl foreman returned to the United States where he died of a brain tumor in 1984 in Beverly Hills, California. Both of his children were born in London, UK. His daughter, Amanda Foreman graduated from Columbia University and Oxford University where she received a Ph.D. in history. Son, Jonathan Foreman has a degree in modern history from Cambridge University, a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is an editorial writer and senior film critic for the New York Post.

Documentaries on Foreman

In 2002, PBS television made a two-hour film about Foreman's ordeal during McCarthyism titled Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents. It was written and directed by outspoken conservative Lionel Chetwynd.

Foreman was also the subject of an episode of Screenwriters: Words Into Image, directed by Terry Sanders and Frieda Lee Mock.

Partial filmography (screenwriter)

• Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
• Young Winston (1972)
• Mackenna's Gold (1969)
• The Victors (1963)
• The Guns of Navarone (1961)
• The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
• A Hatful of Rain (1957)
• The Sleeping Tiger (1954)
• High Noon (1952)
• The Men (1950)
• Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
• Young Man with a Horn (1950)
• Champion (1949)
• Home of the Brave (1949)
• Spooks Run Wild (1941)
• Bowery Blitzkrieg (1941)

Major awards

Wins

• 1953 : WGA Award for Best Written American Drama - High Noon
• 1958 : Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay - The Bridge on the River Kwai (awarded posthumously)
• 1973 : Writers' Guild of Great Britain for Best British Screenplay - Young Winston

Nominations

• 1950 : Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay - Champion
• 1950 : WGA Award for Best Written American Drama Champion
• 1951 : Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay - The Men
• 1951 : WGA Award for Best Written American Drama - The Men
• 1953 : Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay - High Noon
• 1953 : Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture - High Noon
• 1962 : Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay - The Guns of Navarone
• 1962 : BAFTA Award for Best British Screenply - The Guns of Navarone
• 1973 : Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay - Young Winston

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