Follow Us
Like Us
Historical records matching Lester Cole
view all
Immediate Family
-
wife -
Privatechild -
Privatechild
-
wife
-
father -
mother
-
sister
-
Privatestepchild
-
Privatestepchild
About Lester Cole
Lester Cole was born on June 19, 1904 in New York to a Jewish immigrant family from Poland. His first desire was to be an actor, and Cole dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen in 1920. He began writing and directing plays, and in the 1920s and '30s, he worked primarily as an actor on the stage.
His first work as a screenwriter was "If I had a Million." In 1933, he joined with John Howard Lawson and Samuel Ornitz, who were also in The Hollywood Ten cited by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), to establish the Writers Guild of America.
In 1934, Cole joined the American Communist Party. He became one of the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their Communist Party membership. Cole was convicted of contempt of Congress, fined $1,000 and sentenced to twelve months confinement at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut, of which he served ten months. As a result of his refusal to testify, Cole was blacklisted. Between 1932 and 1947 Cole wrote more than forty screenplays that were made into motion pictures.[1] After his blacklisting, just three screenplays were made into films, only after friends, and wife Gerald L.C. Copley, Lewis Copley, and J. Redmond Prior, submitted the screenplays under their names.
His best-known screenplay was that for the highly successful 1966 film Born Free (credited to Gerald L.C. Copley).
Lester Cole died of a heart attack in San Francisco, California in 1985.
See also https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/hollywood-ten-men-who-refus...
view all
Lester Cole's Timeline
| 1904 |
June 19, 1904
|
New York, New York, United States
|
|
| 1985 |
August 15, 1985
Age 81
|
San Francisco, San Francisco County, California, United States
|