Bernard Gordon, the blacklisted screenwriter who gained fame when he organized the protest against the lifetime achievement Oscar® awarded to director Elia Kazan in 1999, died at his Hollywood Hills home on May 11 after long suffering from bone cancer. He was 88.

He was born on October 29, 1918, in New Britain, Connecticut to Russian Jewish immigrants. He was raised in New York City where he cultivated a youthful adoration of cinema. He majored in English and Film Studies at City College of New York, earning a bachelor's degree in 1937.

He relocated to Hollywood in the mid-'40s, and was employed by Paramount as a script reader and for the next few years, worked as a freelance scenarist. That all changed abruptly in 1952 during the height of Hollywood's "Red Scare" – a sad chapter in American history during the cold war that had the House of Un-American Committee (HUAC), subpoenaing many prominent members of the film colony to "rat out" anyone with left leaning sympathies. Gordon, who joined the Communist Party in 1941 in New York for reasons he felt were born out of frustrations with social injustices and inequities in the world, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee but was never called to testify. As was the case of someone in his position, guilt by association went a long way, and he soon had trouble finding work as a writer.

A few of his writing credits survived, such as the excellent boxing story Flesh and Fury (1952) and Andre De Toth's noir gem Crime Wave (1954). He eventually had to adopt the "front" name of Raymond T. Marcus and worked on a few minor pictures in the late '50s: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), the campy Ronald and Nancy Reagan flick Hellcats of the Navy (1957) and The Case Against Brooklyn (1958). By no means were these titles classics, but it allowed Gordon to put food on his table to support his family.

His prospects brightened when, through a friend, he met film producer Philip Yordan, who would become known for acting as a front for those victimized by the Hollywood blacklist. Gordon moved to Europe and over the next several years, wrote some interesting screenplays: The Day of the Triffids (1962), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The Thin Red Line (1964) and Battle of the Bulge (1965). He even tried his hand at producing a few films in the early '70s, the best of which was the Christopher Lee-Peter Cushing sci-fi horror romp Horror Express (1973).

Gordon relocated to America by the mid-'70s and kept a relatively low profile until 1999. That's when he led a protest against Elia Kazan (who had denounced colleagues as onetime communists before HUAC in 1952) who was to be the recipient of a lifetime achievement award. When Kazan walked onstage, some audience members withheld their applause and outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, hundreds of demonstrators protested. Some journalists and scholars questioned his vindictiveness, but in subsequent interviews, Gordon felt justified that the "red scare" was a sobering time in American history that should not be forgotten and those that aided in HUAC's efforts of unjustified incrimination, such as Kazan, should always answer for their actions.

Film buffs who want to know more about Gordon's career should check out his witty memoirs of the Blacklist Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist that was published by the University of Texas Press in 2000. He wife was Jean Lewin, who passed away in 1995 after 49 years of marriage. He is survived by his daughter Ellen.

by Michael T. Toole