Although also a prolific writer himself, he served as a front for
friends and other writers who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy
era. Living in Paris during the blacklist days, his basement was often
filled with blacklisted writers working in cubicles, churning out
screenplays.
[on serving as a "front" for blacklisted writers in the 1950s]: I tell you, I never read a newspaper until I was fifty. I never looked at television until the 1970s. I never read "Time" magazine. I never tended to be political, I never voted. So I didn't understand this whole blacklist thing.
