| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left. By Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. x, 275 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-520-22383-7.)

For many, Abraham Polonsky symbolizes the lost lives and careers of a generation that underwent anticommunist persecution during the Cold War. Polonsky was the brilliant Jewish intellectual, writer, and director who was acclaimed for his work on two classic independent films, Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948). Like many others, he was blacklisted, banished, and abandoned. His early achievement, however, generally has been taken as a sign of inevitable future success if his work had not been stymied by anticommunist crusaders. This sense of unfulfilled promise and cultural loss makes Polonsky's story especially poignant to those who recognize the achievement of his art, sympathize with the idealism of his politics, and identify with the passion of his Jewish roots on the fabled streets of New York's Lower East Side. Fusing Yiddishkeit sensibility and working-class stolidity, Polonsky attained mythic status for those who shared his values and aspirations. 1

Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner's new study indicates how Polonsky's fate during the blacklist enhances his reputation. They write, 2

A New York Times reviewer noting Polonsky's return from the blacklist hailed him as American film's greatest single loss to McCarthyism. Martin Scorsese echoed this judgment, personally rereleasing Polonsky's Force of Evil in 1996 and introducing it on-screen as the gem of neglected 1940s art cinema and a major influence on his own work.

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