ABSTRACT
Bessie (1904–85) worked as an actor and stage manager for the experimental Provincetown Players during the early 1920s. He later held staff positions on the New Yorker, New York Herald Tribune, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New Masses. Bessie fought for the Loyalists in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and returned to America to launch a career as a Hollywood screenwriter, only to become one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ sentenced to prison in 1950 for refusing to tell the House Committee on Un-American Activities if they had ever been members of the Communist Party. He was subsequently blacklisted.
