- Refused to write under a pseudonym after his blacklisting, working instead as a publicist, book reviewer and lighting technician at the hungry i nightclub in North Beach, San Francisco. In 1965, he wrote a book about his experiences during the McCarthy era, entitled "Inquisition in Eden".
- Was a member of the U.S. Communist Party when he fought with the famous Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and during his tenure as a Hollywood screenwriter. He resigned from the Party in 1954.
- As Alvah C. Bessie, won a 1936 O. Henry Award for his short story "A Personal Issue", which appeared in Scribner's Magazine.
- Won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935, publishing his first novel, "Dwell in the Wilderness", the same year. In 1936 and 1937, was drama editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
- One of the "Hollywood Ten", and father of Dan Bessie.
- Ernest Hemingway, the most prominent of the American supporters of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War against Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist Falangists, said that Bessie's Spanish Civil War novel "Men in Battle" was one of the best war novels of its time. Hemingway's own Spanish Civil War novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls", won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
- Was nominated for a 1945 Oscar for Best Original Story for Objective, Burma! (1945), a very patriotic motion picture. Communist Party members like Bessie and fellow Hollywood 10 member Dalton Trumbo originally opposed World War II as the Soviet Union was an ally of Germany from 1939 to 1941. With the June 1941 invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, Communist Party members became super-patriotic and threw themselves into the war effort.
- Attended DeWitt Clinton High School and Columbia University in New York.
- Was a good friend of actor Lee J. Cobb, who also held similar political views, until Cobb refused to lend him $500 after Bessie was ruined financially by legal fees incurred during the appeals of his contempt citation issued by the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC). Bessie and other members of the "Hollywood 10" braved the Committee's inquisition into supposed Communist "subversion" of Hollywood by refusing to cooperate with the Committee's investigation. When Cobb told him that $500 wouldn't solve his problems, their friendship was over. Cobb later turned out with hundreds of supporters of the Hollywood 10 who were flying to Washington, DC, for their trials on charges of contempt of Congress levied by HUAC.
- Father: Daniel Nathaniel Bessie; Mother: Adeline Schlesinger.
- Recognizing his talents as an actor were limited, Bessie moved to France in 1928, joining the colony of American expatriates who had relocated there. Bessie now focused his energies on becoming a writer.
- Bessie was initially known for his translations of avant-garde French literature, including Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs and The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau.
- Dan Bessie has published some of his father's previously unpublished or uncollected works, notably his Spanish Civil War Notebooks (2001).
- In 1957, Bessie wrote a novel fictionalising his experiences with the HUAC, The Un-Americans.[5] He followed this with a non-fiction account of his confrontation with the same organisation, Inquisition in Eden, in which he boasted of inserting pro-Soviet propaganda that was "subversive as all hell" into the film Action in the North Atlantic.
- Late in his life, however, he was involved in bringing his novel Bread and a Stone to the screen in the feature film Hard Traveling (1986) starring J.E. Freeman and Ellen Geer. The screenplay for the film was written by one of Alvah's two sons, Dan Bessie, who has also spent his career working in the film industry.
- Through 1938 Bessie fought as a volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return, he wrote a book about his experiences, Men in Battle. About the book, Ernest Hemingway commented: A true, honest, fine book. Bessie writes truly and finely of all that he could see ... and he saw enough.
- Bessie's greatest commercial and critical success came with the satirical novel The Symbol, about the exploitation by the film industry of an unhappy actress who resembles Marilyn Monroe. He wrote another non-fiction book in 1975, Spain Again, which chronicled his experiences as a co-writer and actor in a Spanish movie of the same name (Spain Again, 1969).
- In his family biography Rare Birds: An American Family (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), Dan Bessie notes that Alvah was related to some highly successful entrepreneurs: he was father-in-law of well-known 1960s poster artist Wes Wilson, husband of Alvah's daughter Eva, and a brother-in-law (through his first wife, Mary) of famous advertising executive Leo Burnett.
- In 1922, the Bessie family finances had taken a serious downturn after which the elder Bessie died. This reversal of family circumstances freed Bessie to pursue his own interests and ambition without the intervention of his authoritarian father.
- Bessie left the Communist Party in the 1950s.
- Bessie then joined the American Communist Party and worked as the film reviewer for the left-wing magazine The New Masses.
- His career came to a halt in 1947, when he was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He refused to deny or confirm involvement in the Communist Party, and in 1950, he became one of the Hollywood Ten being found guilty of Contempt of Congress, for which he was imprisoned for ten months, and blacklisted. After his release from prison, he worked at the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco, running the lights and sound board and frequently introducing performers.
- Alvah Bessie was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the movie studios for being one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
- Bessie wrote screenplays for Warner Bros., and other studios during the mid and late 1940s.
- During the 1930s, Bessie became alarmed at the rise of fascism, and began working for the anti-fascist cause.
- His screenwriting career was ruined by the blacklisting, and he never returned to Hollywood.
- Through a friend Bessie was introduced to the Provincetown Players whose guiding member was playwright Eugene O'Neill. Bessie became an actor in the group, which led to a four-year period of theatre work for him in Provincetown as well as in the New York theatre world as performer and actor/manager.
- He graduated from Dewitt Clinton High School where he had the reputation of being a rebellious student. He subsequently enrolled in Columbia University in 1920, graduating in 1924 with a B.A. in English.
- His son, Dan Bessie, directed a movie, Hard Travelling (1986), that was based on his father's novel, Bread and Stone.
- Alvah Bessie was born to a Jewish family,[1] the younger of two sons of Daniel Nathan Cohen Bessie and Adeline Schlesinger Bessie.
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