Carl Foreman (July 23, 1914 – June 26, 1984) was an American screenwriter, film producer, and director. He was one of the screenwriters who were blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s because of their suspected communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party, and subsequently relocated to the United Kingdom. He was nominated for six Academy Awards (five for writing and one for producing), and posthumously received Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
Foreman was also nominated for two BAFTA Awards for Best British Screenplay, and a Golden Globe Award for his work on High Noon (1952). His other notable works included Champion (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), The Men (1950), Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), The Key (1958), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Born Free (1966), Young Winston (1972), and his only directorial effort The Victors (1963).
He once said his most common theme was "the struggle of the individual against a society that for one reason or another is hostile." Foreman elaborated that "the stories that work best for me involve a loner, out of step or in direct conflict with a group of people."
Early life and education Born in Chicago, Illinois, to a working-class Jewish family, he was the son of Fanny (née Rozin) and Isidore Foreman."Carl Foreman Biography (1914–1984)". filmreference.com
He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In 1934, at age 19, he quit college to go to Hollywood. "I was mostly on the bum and saw the underside of Hollywood", he later said.
He soon returned to Chicago and attended the John J. Marshall School of Law, working at a grocery store to earn money.
Foreman dropped out of law school and worked as a newspaper reporter, fiction writer (selling stories to Esquire), press agent, play director and carnival barker. "I was one of the few college trained barkers in the business", he said.
Foreman returned to Hollywood in 1938. He worked as a story analyst for several studios and as a film laboratory technician, while continuing to write. He was a member of the Communist Party from 1938 to 1942. "The idea was just in the air", he later said.
Career
Monogram Pictures Foreman won a scholarship for a screenwriting course, where his teacher was Dore Schary. He later gave credit to Michael Blankfort for mentoring him.
Foreman's first screen credit was for producer Sam Katzman at Monogram Pictures, Bowery Blitzkrieg (1941), starring the East Side Kids.
Foreman provided the original story (for $25) and wrote a script (for $200) for the next East Side Kids film, Spooks Run Wild (1941), with Bela Lugosi. Also at Monogram he provided the story for and wrote the script of Rhythm Parade (1942). "I expected recognition but hardly anyone noticed", he said later.
World War II Foreman's career was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II, where he was assigned to a unit that made orientation and training films. It was run by director Frank Capra. During his time in the service, he helped write the script for Know Your Enemy – Japan (1945). He provided the original story for a John Wayne Western, Dakota (1945). Foreman says "I began to learn the craft in a serious way", in this time.
Stanley Kramer On his return to Hollywood, Foreman became associated with producer Stanley Kramer and George Glass. Kramer produced Foreman's next credited screenplay, So This Is New York (1948), for Enterprise Productions - it starred comedian Henry Morgan and was directed by Richard Fleischer - it was a mild success. Foreman next wrote The Clay Pigeon (1949), which Fleischer directed at RKO.
Kramer and Foreman's next film, the boxing tale Champion (1949), was a big success and made a star of actor Kirk Douglas. Foreman received an Academy Award nomination for his script. Champion was directed by Mark Robson and he, Kramer and Foreman reunited on Home of the Brave (1949), an adaptation of Arthur Laurents's play. It was another critical and commercial success.
Kramer and Foreman's next film together was The Men (1950), which introduced Marlon Brando to cinema audiences playing as a paraplegic soldier. The film was directed by Fred Zinnemann and was critically acclaimed, although not a popular success. Also acclaimed was their fourth film, Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), an adaptation of the French classic play, starring José Ferrer, who won a Best Actor Oscar. It was adapted from Brian Hooker's English translation of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac.
Foreman worked on Young Man with a Horn (1950) next, without Kramer.
High Noon and blacklisting Foreman and Kramer's next collaboration was the western film High Noon. Foreman was summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during production of the film, as Congress was investigating communist activities in the United States. He testified that he had been a member of the American Communist Party more than ten years earlier while still a young man, but he had become disillusioned with the party and quit. As a result of his refusal to give the names of fellow Party members, Foreman was classified as an "uncooperative witness" and blacklisted by all of the Hollywood studio bosses.
Some critics have suggested High Noon is itself an allegory for McCarthyism. Frankel, Glen. "High Noon’s Secret Backstory". Vanity Fair. February 22, 2017. The Western film is considered an American classic and was No. 27 on the American Film Institute (AFI)'s "100 Years, 100 Movies", and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. High Noon was Foreman's greatest screenwriting accomplishment, but made no mention of him as associate producer – though it did credit him for the screenplay. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay by fellow members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Because of the blacklist, this was the last film Foreman was allowed to work on by a Hollywood studio for the next six years.
In October 1951 Foreman sold his interest in the Stanley Kramer Corporation for a reported $250,000. He formed a new company, Carl Foreman Productions, whose stockholders originally included actor Gary Cooper. Foreman signed a three-picture deal with Robert L. Lippert to write, produce and direct the films. Lippert said he "had no doubt of Foreman's Americanism." Yet, his films were never made because of political pressure, which also resulted in Gary Cooper and other investors withdrawing their support. Denied a passport because of the blacklist, Foreman successfully sued the United States Department of State to regain it. In 1952 he emigrated to Britain.
Foreman later said that if the blacklist "hadn't happened I was moving towards becoming a director. That was where the action was."
Britain A number of blacklisted American writers were working in Britain at the time, such as Ring Lardner Jr. As "Derek Frye", he and fellow blacklistee Harold Buchman wrote the thriller The Sleeping Tiger (1954) which was directed by Joseph Losey, also blacklisted in the US. Foreman used the names of friends Herbert Baker, John Weaver, and Alan Grogan on his scripts as a personal signature.
In November 1953, the State Department ordered Foreman to surrender his passport to the US Consul in London, and in September 1954 the department ruled that Foreman was not entitled to his passport.
In 1954, Foreman worked as an assistant for British director Alexander Korda. "I was very angry: full of rage, and self-pity", he said of this time.
After working on Born for Trouble (1955), he wrote a draft of the screenplay for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) for Sam Spiegel and David Lean. Foreman later fell out with Lean, but was the one who recommended his replacement, fellow blacklisted writer Michael Wilson. The two did not receive a credit on the film. The resulting Academy Award for adapted screenplay went to French author Pierre Boulle, who had written the source novel but who had no involvement in the script (and could not speak English). The two scriptwriters did not receive credit for their work on this film until 1984, after their deaths, when the two writers' names were added to the award. By 1958, however, Foreman was publicly claiming credit for the screenplay.
Foreman also worked on A Hatful of Rain (1957), for which he received no credit. It was directed by Zinnemann.
Eventually a court ruled that the State Department could not take away someone's passport without a quasi-judicial hearing. In January 1956 Foreman's passport was reinstated and returned to him. In August 1956, Foreman gained approval to go to the United States and testify in executive session before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he refused to become an informant. He invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer some questions.
Writer-Producer Bridge on the River Kwai had been a massive commercial and critical success, and Foreman's contribution was recognized. He set up his own production company, Highroad. In March 1957, he signed a deal with Columbia Pictures, which had released Kwai, to make four films over three years.
In 1957, Foreman announced he would make Insurrection, about the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland, with director John Guillermin. It would have been adapted from a novel by American writer Herman Wouk, but the film was not made.
Foreman wrote and helped produce The Key (1958), a war film directed by Carol Reed. Highroad next made the comedy The Mouse that Roared (1959), starring Peter Sellers, which was a big hit. Mouse was meant to be part of a four-picture slate from Foreman worth $11 million; the others were The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Holiday.
Foreman wrote and produced The Guns of Navarone (1961), based on a best-selling novel by Alistair McLean. He fired director Alexander Mackendrick shortly before production started, and replaced him with J. Lee Thompson. The resulting movie was a massive hit. He was intending to follow it with The Holiday, with Anthony Quinn, Charles Boyer, Earl Holliman and Ingrid Bergman, but the film was never produced.
The success of Guns of Navarone enabled Foreman to direct as well as to write and produce his next film, The Victors (1963) for Columbia. A war story, this film was a box office disappointment.
He signed a contract with MGM to adapt The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, at a fee of $275,000, but this film was never made. In 1962, he said "the bulk of Hollywood movies are old fashioned and creaky. There is nothing here to compare with the ferment of Great Britain, Italy, France or even Poland."
Foreman's next big success was the film Born Free (1966), which Foreman produced. In 1968, Foreman announced he would produce a musical, The House of Madame Tellier, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, with music by Dimitri Tiomkin, and book and lyrics by Freddy Douglas, but it was not produced.
He wrote and produced Mackenna's Gold (1969) for Columbia. It had the same director, J. Lee Thompson, and star Gregory Peck, as Guns of Navarone. Mackenna's Gold was his first film shot in the US since High Noon. "I tried very hard to break the blacklist but I never succeeded", he said. The film was a flop on release, but remains a perennial revival on TV.
The Virgin Soldiers (1969), which his company made for Columbia, was a hit in Great Britain. His company also worked on Monsieur Lecoq (never completed) and Otley (1969). It developed a project called Fifteen Flags, about the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, but this was never completed as a film.
Foreman's next big production was Young Winston (1972), about British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, which he wrote and produced, with Richard Attenborough directing. It was not particularly successful; neither was Living Free (1972), a sequel to Born Free.