Maltz, Albert

Maltz, Albert (1908–85) writer; born in New York City. He studied at Columbia University (B.A. 1930), and at Yale's drama school (1930–32). He began his career as a playwright and teacher (1937–40). He moved to Hollywood (1941), and wrote numerous screen plays, such as This Gun for Hire (1941). He also wrote short stories, radio plays, and novels. He was a member of the "Hollywood Ten," a group that refused to answer Senator Joseph McCarthy's questions about membership in the Communist Party. He was imprisoned for contempt of Congress (1950–51), and, like many others in the entertainment industry of that era, was blacklisted; he was unable to find work in his field for almost 20 years and therefore concentrated on novels and short stories.

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Maltz, Albert 

Born Oct. 8, 1908, in New York. American writer.

Maltz was born into an affluent Jewish family. He graduated from Columbia University in 1930. His first plays were antibourgeois and against war (Peace on Earth, 1934; Black Pit, 1935; Private Hicks, 1935). The protagonists of Maltz’ short stories are victims of the capitalist system. In his novel The Underground Stream (1940), about the workers’ struggle in Ford plants, Maltz paints a vivid picture of the Communist Princie. In the novel The Cross and the Arrow (1944; Russian translation, 1961), he writes about resistance to Nazism in Germany. During the McCarthy era, Maltz served a prison sentence (1950). His highly dramatic novel A Long Day in a Short Life (1957; Russian translation, 1958) depicts the rise of social protest and the solidarity between whites and blacks in prison. Maltz returned to the theme of antifascism in his novella Once in January (1966).

WORKS

The Journey of Simon McKeever. Boston, 1949.
In Russian translation:
Izbrannoe. Moscow, 1951.
Chelovek na doroge: Rasskazy. Moscow, 1962.

REFERENCES

Mendel’son, M. “Al’bert Mal’ts.” In Sovremennyi amerikanskii roman. Moscow, 1964.
Gilenson, B. “Al’bert Mal’ts.” In Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1971.

B. A. GILENSON