Biography
Screenwriter Lester Cole, primarily remembered as a member of the "Hollywood Ten," a group blacklisted for resisting the House Committee on Un-American Activities' investigation into their political beliefs, was born on June 19, 1904, in New York to a Polish immigrant family. Initially aspiring to be an actor, Cole left high school at sixteen in 1920. He began writing and directing plays, and throughout the 1920s and '30s, he mainly acted on stage. He appeared in Painted Faces (1929) and Love at First Sight (1929), but gained recognition as a screenwriter. His first screenplay was the 1932 W.C. Fields comedy If I Had a Million. In 1933, during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first year in office, Cole and eight other screenwriters, including future Hollywood Ten members John Howard Lawson and Samuel Ornitz, founded the Screen Writers Guild (SWG), the earliest and most radical Hollywood guild. Politically aligned with the hard left, Cole joined the Communist Party USA in 1934.
Cole followed the Hollywood Ten's collective stance of challenging HUAC's authority to question them about their political beliefs. He was convicted of contempt of Congress, fined, and served one year in prison. His unfinished script about Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was later completed by John Steinbeck and adapted by Elia Kazan—both former CPUSA members—for the film Viva Zapata! (1952), starring Marlon Brando.
After his release from federal prison, Cole took on various odd jobs. He moved to London in 1961 but eventually returned to the U.S., where he resumed screenwriting under a pseudonym. One of his scripts, written as "Gerald L.C. Copley," became the successful film Born Free (1966). He also authored his autobiography, Hollywood Red (1981), reviewed films for The People's World, and taught screenwriting at the University of California, Berkeley.
Lester Cole passed away from a heart attack on August 15, 1985, at the age of 81.
