Anecdotes

(1950s) Blacklisted by film studios after he was accused of being a Communist. He was one of the "Hollywood Ten".

(1933-1934) President of the Screen Writers Guild.

His papers are at the University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale, deposited in the Morris Library's Special Collections Research Center.

Once the communist domination of the League of American Writers had been publicly declared, by Francis Biddle adding it to the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations, its Hollywood branch renamed itself as the Hollywood Writers' Mobilization, led by Lawson.

Lawson also wrote Counter-Attack (1945), a tribute to the Soviet-USA alliance during the late stages of the Second World War.

Using a pseudonym, he wrote the screenplay for Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), an adaptation of Alan Paton's novel about South Africa that was critical of apartheid.

In 1941, Lawson ordered Budd Schulberg to make changes to his novel What Makes Sammy Run? to better fit the Communist message; Schulberg refused and quit the American Communist Party in protest.

Lawson organized and led a critical attack in 1946 on Albert Maltz after he published an article, "What Shall We Ask of Writers", in The New Masses, challenging the didacticism of the American Communist Party's censorship of writers. Surprised by the ferocity of attack from his fellow writers, including Lawson, Howard Fast, Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner, Jr., Samuel Sillen, and others, Maltz publicly recanted.

When John was five, his mother died. She had named her three children after people she admired: John Howard Lawson was named after prison reformer John Howard, his sister Adelaide Jaffery Lawson was named after a friend of hers who was active in social causes, and Wendell Holmes Lawson was named after reforming American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

In the 1880s, Lawson's father was living in Mexico City, where he started a newspaper, the Mexican Financie.

In 1951, Edward Dmytryk testified before HUAC that Lawson, among others, had pressured him to put communist propaganda in his films.

Despite the blacklist, Lawson was hired to teach at several American universities including: Stanford University, Loyola Marymount University, and Los Angeles University of Judaism.

He was the first president of the Writers Guild of America, West after the Screen Writers Guild divided into two regional organizations.

John Howard Lawson was an American writer, specializing in plays and screenplays.

After studying at Williams College (1910-1914) and graduating with a B.A., Lawson became a successful writer, gaining production of early plays such as Standards (1916) and Servant-Master-Lover (1916).

Lawson wrote the screenplay for several films during the 1930s that were political, including Blockade (1938), which starred Henry Fonda. This film on the Spanish Civil War earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Story.

He moved to Mexico, where he wrote some books about theater. After returning to the US, he taught at some universities in California.

At age seven, John attended Elizabeth and Alexis Ferms' "Children's Playhouse" school, an experimental school for children.[5] Later he and his siblings went to Halstead School in Yonkers, New York and then to Cutler School in New Rochelle, New York.

After starting with plays for theaters in New York City, he worked in Hollywood on writing for films.[1].

Lawson was one of the Hollywood Ten, the first group of American film industry professionals to be blacklisted by Congress during the 1950s McCarthy era's investigation of communist influence in Hollywood. He and his colleagues refused to testify; he was convicted of contempt of Congress and served a year in prison.

Lawson wrote his first play, A Hindoo Love Drama, while at Williams. Mary Kirkpatrick, faculty leader of the Williams College Drama Club, was impressed by this effort and encouraged him. Lawson was inspired to write three plays in 1915-1916: Standards, The Spice of Life, and Servant-Master-Lover. Standards was bought by George M. Cohan and Sam Harris, and was given a tryout in Albany and Syracuse in 1915. It never made it to Broadway. Oliver Morosco produced Servant-Master-Lover in a run in Los Angeles, but received bad reviews.

While Lawson was working in Hollywood, New Playwrights Theatre decided to produce his play, The International, with set design by John Dos Passos. It opened on January 12, 1928, and ran for twenty-seven performances.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Lawson was opposed to joining. His father helped him to get a position in the Norton-Harjes Volunteer Ambulance Corps. In June 1917, he left for Europe and aboard the ship met John Dos Passos, also a writer. In November, when Norton-Haryes was folded into the American Red Cross's Ambulance Service, Dos Passos and Lawson decided to become drivers; they went to Italy. At this time, Dos Passos was working on One Man's Initiation: 1917 and Lawson on Roger Bloomer. While serving, they were outfitted to Paris. Lawson attended performances of the Comédie-Française and Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In January 1918, Dos Passos wrote a letter that was critical of the ambulance company. It somehow reached Red Cross officials, and they forced Dos Passos to resign. Lawson was under suspicion for his attitudes, as well, but he managed to stay in Italy and do public-relations work for the Red Cross.

He wrote the critically acclaimed Algiers (1938), and the Humphrey Bogart vehicles Sahara and Action in the North Atlantic in 1943.

Before their first child was born, his father changed the family name from Levy to Lawson, joking that this was so that his son could "obtain reservations at expensive resort hotels".[.