| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner. A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2001. Pp. x, 275. $27.50.

In film history, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky is best known for the scripts of two notable John Garfield movies, the classic fight film Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948), an important example of American film noir, which Polonsky also directed. These films, claim authors Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, "quite simply embody the highest achievement of the American left in cinema before the onset of repression . . . and . . . summarize the best work of the generation that created the critical American cinema" (p. 108). 1

Within the history of the American Left (at least the Left's own version of its history), Polonsky is even more important, and revered, as one of the scriptwriters blacklisted for refusing to answer the House Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) inquiries into their Communist Party membership or associations. Though not one of the Hollywood Ten—they went to jail; Polonsky went to Cannes—he was like them unfairly denied the opportunity to practice his craft and express his ideas where they could best be practiced and expressed, which was on the richly rewarded Hollywood assembly lines that churned out film footage at the same rate and average quality as sausage. Thus sanctified, Polonsky's name is now writ large in the Left's book of martyrs victimized by the forces of repression. . . .

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