(1976) "You're so unexpected," Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci) says to Howard Prince (Woody Allen). This film, which Allen neither wrote nor directed, is full of unexpected surprises, both funny and tragic, especially the ending.

With Frank Sinatra singing "Young at Heart," clips of Senator Joe McCarthy, Gen MacArthur, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, women in new fashions, beauty queens, Marilyn Monroe, the Rosenbergs, vets returning, precede writer Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) requesting a favor from his friend. After explaining to Howard, who cashiers in a New York City bar and takes bets on the side, that he's been blacklisted for being a Communist sympathizer and can no longer get work with the television studios, Alfred asks Howard to become his front.

Howard (who admits, "I couldn't write a grocery list") poses as a writer, delivering Alfred's scripts to the producer, Phil Sussman (Herschel Bernardi), and his assistant, Florence, with whom he meets for romantic script conferences. With success (Sussman says: "Best writer I've got. Only writer I've got") and in need of additional funds to pay off his bookmaking customers and repay his brother Myer for loans, Howard agrees to adding two more blacklisted authors to his stable, Herb Delaney (Lloyd Gough) and William Phelps (David Margulies), at 10% apiece.

Meanwhile, actor Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), desperate to keep working (with a wife and two kids to support) and avoid being accused of being a pinko - he signed a petition supporting the Loyalists in Spain, took part in a May Day parade, subscribed to a leftist workers' magazine - tells Frances Hennessey (Remak Ramsay) he'd been duped by "a girl with a big ass" whose name he can't recall and with whom he didn't even get laid: "I'm an actor. What do I know about politics?" When another man swears he's done nothing illegal, Hennessey, in charge of background checks for the Committee of the House on Un-American Activities, dedicated to rooting out from the entertainment industry "a ruthless and tricky enemy" bent on destroying the American-way of life, replies that he can only help those who make "a clean breast" of their guilt; those who insist they're innocent can't be helped. Hecky must "desire to cooperate fully," so the comedian accepts the task of being a spy to find out what kind of politics interest Howard Prince.

Sussman panics when a gas company sponsoring a program balks at a terrific script that involves Jews being exterminated in gas chambers and demands an immediate rewrite from Howard, substituting firing squads. Dropping her stock-broker boyfriend for Howard, Florence announces she's quitting her job, guilty of "watching people destroyed," no longer willing to remain silent, wanting to fight back. But Howard - "For the first time in my life I've everything I wanted" - cautions making waves or looking for trouble. Accusing Howard of being interested in success and sex, not human rights, Florence admits she'd mistaken the artist for the man and leaves him.

Howard, attracted to girls with smaller noses but bigger boobs, accompanies Hecky to a nightclub where the standup comic gets into a brawl with the owner for only paying him $250 (originally offered $500) for a performance; pressured by Hennessey, Sussman - his enormously popular show with great ratings having expanded from half an hour to an hour - fires Hecky. When a sponsor remarks, "Some of them [actors] are pretty pink," Howard quips: "It's the makeup." Later Hecky drops by Howard's well-appointed apartment to apologize: "It's nice when nice happens to somebody nice."

Subpoenaed to appear before the Committee, Howard challenges Sussman to refuse the Committee's demand: "If just one person says 'no' … Take a stand. The real you." But after Phil caves in, Howard says during a preliminary interview when asked if he knew about Alfred Miller's being a Communist: "He was only twelve."

Meeting together in Miller's hospital room (the writer suffering from a bleeding ulcer) with Delaney (urging Howard to take the Fifth and protect himself) and Phelps, Alfred tells Howard that the Committee wants to prove there's nothing they can't get people to admit: they want to make examples of people like Howard. Determined not to go back to running a cash register or to make Florence ("We don't think alike") feel ashamed of him, Howard testifies before the Committee.

Director Martin Ritt was blacklisted in 1951; scriptwriter Walter Bernstein and Zero Mostel in 1950; Lloyd Gough, Joshua Kelley (who played Sam), and Herschel Bernardi in 1952.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .