Robert Rossen was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer whose film career spanned almost three decades.
38 Facts About Robert Rossen
2.
Robert Rossen won the Golden Globe for Best Director and the film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture.
3.
Robert Rossen ended all relations with the Party in 1949.
4.
Robert Rossen was twice called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, in 1951 and in 1953.
5.
Robert Rossen exercised his Fifth Amendment rights at his first appearance, refusing to state whether he had ever been a Communist.
6.
Robert Rossen Rosen was born on March 16,1908, and raised on the Lower East Side of New York City.
7.
Robert Rossen's parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and his father, Philip Rosen, was a house painter.
8.
Robert Rossen changed his name from "Rosen" to "Rossen" in 1931.
9.
Robert Rossen started his theatrical career as a stage manager and director in stock and off-Broadway productions, mainly in the social and radical theaters that flourished in New York in the early and mid-1930s, as did John Huston, Elia Kazan and Joseph Losey.
10.
In 1932 Robert Rossen directed John Wexley's Steel, about labor agitation, and Richard Maibaum's The Tree, about a lynching.
11.
In 1935, Robert Rossen wrote and directed his first play, The Body Beautiful, a comedy about a naive burlesque dancer.
12.
In 1936, Robert Rossen married Susan Siegal; the couple had three children: Carol, Stephen and Ellen.
13.
Dust Be My Destiny, co-written in 1939 by Robert Rossen, is the story of a fugitive from justice who is eventually acquitted with help from an attorney and a journalist, the latter arguing that "a million boys all over the country" were in a similar plight.
14.
Robert Rossen served as the body's chairman until 1944 and advocated the opening of a Second Front to support West European resistance against the Nazis.
15.
In 1945 Robert Rossen joined a picket line against Warner Bros, making an enemy of Jack Warner.
16.
Robert Rossen signed a contract with an independent production company formed by Hal Wallis, who had previously been Warner Bros.
17.
However Robert Rossen wrote only two full scripts for this company, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946 and Desert Fury in 1947.
18.
Robert Rossen introduced a new concept, that the defenders of the ordinary people can in turn become the new exploiters.
19.
Cohn's critiques of the draft of Robert Rossen's script included scrapping a framing structure that was difficult for audiences to follow and several improvements in the relationships and motivations of characters.
20.
Robert Rossen won a Golden Globe for Best Director and the film won the Golden Globe for Best Picture.
21.
Robert Rossen was one of 19 "unfriendly witnesses" subpoenaed in October 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the second Red Scare but was one of eight not called to testify.
22.
In 1951, Robert Rossen was named as a Communist by several HUAC witnesses and he appeared before HUAC for the first time in June 1951.
23.
Robert Rossen exercised his rights under the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, taking what came to be known as the "augmented Fifth".
24.
Robert Rossen testified that he was not a member of the Communist Party and that he disagreed with the aims of the party, but when asked to state whether he had ever been a member of the party, Rossen refused to answer.
25.
Robert Rossen was placed on the unofficial blacklist by the Hollywood studios, and Columbia broke its production contract with him.
26.
Robert Rossen was torn between his desire to work and his desire not to talk, and he didn't know what to do.
27.
Robert Rossen was under pressure, he was sick, his diabetes was bad, and he was drinking.
28.
Robert Rossen produced, directed and co-wrote The Hustler, in 1961, and he was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium Academy Awards, sharing the nomination with his co-writer Sidney Carroll.
29.
From 1952 to 1953, Robert Rossen wrote Mambo, trying to repair his finances after almost two years without work following the 1951 HUAC hearing.
30.
Robert Rossen had to produce the film in Italy, and it was premiered in Italy in 1954 and the USA in 1955.
31.
Robert Rossen hoped Alexander the Great would be a blockbuster, but the majority of the reviews criticized the film for failing to keep the audience's interest.
32.
Robert Rossen was nominated as Best Director, and with Carroll for Best Adapted Screenplay, but did not win either award.
33.
Robert Rossen was named Best Director by the New York Film Critics Circle and shared with Carroll the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written Drama.
34.
Robert Rossen was already ill when he started on his final film, Lilith, and it was poorly received in the United States.
35.
Robert Rossen died in New York City at age 57 on February 18,1966, following a series of illnesses and is interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
36.
Robert Rossen was one of the directors who developed film gris.
37.
All of Robert Rossen's playscripts were adaptations except Marked Woman, Racket Buster and Alexander the Great, based on real events.
38.
The Academy Film Archive preserved several of Robert Rossen's films, including The Hustler, All the King's Men, and Lilith.