Hollywood screenwriter, Jewish, parents from Iasi, Romania. They arrived in America one month before he was born. Born Sept. 29, 1900 in and died March 28, 1989 in Los Gatos, California. His father and mother were divorced by 1910 and his father may have subsequently died by 1920.

Known for

• The Black Room, a 1935 mystery-horror film, directed by Roy William Neill. The movie stars Boris Karloff in a dual role as twin brothers. The film also starred Marian Marsh and Robert (Tex) Allen. The film was released in Great Britain as The Black Room Mystery.
• The Man Who Lived Twice, a 1936 movie starring Ralph Bellamy about a criminal who has plastic surgery done to change his identity. However, during the operation, he loses his memory; when he comes to after the surgery, he has a change of heart and decides to help people by becoming a doctor.
• Flight to Mars a 1951 Cinecolor science fiction film, produced by Walter Mirisch for Monogram Pictures (which also distributed) and directed by Lesley Selander. The film has some similarities to the Russian silent film Aelita. The movie was filmed in five days.
• Hiawatha, a 1952 film based on the 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, centering on Native Americans in pre-Columbian times. Directed by Kurt Neumann, with stars Vincent Edwards and Yvette Dugay, it became the final feature produced by the low-budget Monogram Pictures, a mainstay of Hollywood's Poverty Row.

Hiawatha was the last play Arthur Strawn wrote before he was blacklisted and generated controversy (from Wikipedia article):

"...Hiawatha's original production planning schedule, in early 1950, was reported by Time magazine in September to have been put on hold due to the main character being a proponent of pacifism and speaking dialog "too close, for current U.S. taste, to the Communist 'peace' line".[3]

At the same time, the Los Angeles newspaper Illustrated Daily News, whose publisher, Manchester Boddy, was in the midst of an ultimately losing campaign for nomination as a strongly anti-Communist candidate in the California United States Senate election, published an interview with Monogram Pictures president Steve Broidy who stated that, "because of the tremendous influence that the motion picture industry exerts internationally, producers are being extremely cautious in preventing any subject matter to reach the screen which might possibly be interpreted as Communistic propaganda to even the slightest degree. The Hiawatha screenplay, written by a scenarist whose Americanism is unquestioned, still left us with the feeling that Communistic elements might conceivably misinterpret the theme of our picture, despite its American origin, and that is why we have postponed its production."[3]

Variety reported in January 1951 that Hiawatha resumed production, with Broidy quoted as explaining that "the avalanche of editorial comment which greeted our announcement convinced us unquestionably that the American public would not be dupes for any Communist line, and that our Hiawatha picture could only serve the highest ends of education and entertainment".[3]

Contrary to Broidy's statement that the Hiawatha screenplay was "written by a scenarist whose Americanism is unquestioned", film and television historian Paul Mavis, who devotes a considerable portion of his DVD Talk review of Hiawatha to this controversial aspect of the film, posits that the name of the screenwriter, Arthur Strawn was, in fact, among those of Communists and sympathizers listed in the anti-Communist pamphlet, Red Channels, and states that "Hiawatha was his last official credit, no doubt before he was blacklisted (Others first blacklisted after June 1950).[4]

Describing it as a "[Modest, respectful little Indian tale...lousy with Red Commie propaganda", Mavis details how "then-contemporary 1950s politics lie not so subtly beneath the so-called biographical surface, with the real Hiawatha's purported role as a peacemaker and tribe-uniter used as a framework for some thinly veiled jabs at American military might" and goes on to point out "how clearly screenwriter Strawn (with an assist by Dan Ullman) grafts Red-tinged Daily Worker pacifist carps about American muscle onto Hiawatha's efforts to unite his fellow tribesmen"."

"Mavis also describes that "[W]hen Hiawatha defeats Pau PukKeewis in their first death match, Hiawatha refuses to kill him, which the movie takes as another positive sign of the innate "rightness" of Hiawatha's pacifism. Of course what the movie doesn't comment on is the price of Hiawatha's pacifism: had Hiawatha killed the clearly evil, troublemaking Pau PukKeewis when he first had the chance, the many subsequent deaths caused by Pau PukKeewis's continued duplicitous war campaign, would not have happened." He concludes that "muscular Vince Edwards looks and sounds right as the soft-spoken, determined Hiawatha. Had Monogram and company stuck with this relatively realistic look at Indian life before the White man came, and ditched all the phony Cold War platitudes, Hiawatha might have turned out to be a minor little gem".[4]..."

Sources

Wikipedia article