Wexley

13Though Scott no doubt applauded the overt antifascism in Wexley's script, other elements presented problems for him.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

And Warner obliged, proclaiming his own patriotism and his horror of Communism and insisting that he had already identified and fired twelve obviously Red screenwriters, including many of the Nineteen, as well as John Wexley, Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, and even the staunchly anti-Communist Emmet Lavery.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

When Scott received the script from the right wing writer, he promptly tossed it in the trash without reading it, told Dozier the "material was unusable" and hired Wexley.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

Dmytryk offered to help make the case for Wexley, but Scott said he would handle it himself.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

In Dmytryk's words: "After a long Kafkaesque meeting in which Wexley took his lumps, nothing had changed."

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

Screenwriter John Wexley, together with the European émigrés involved in the project, "saw the idea in terms of educating the public about the threat of pro-Nazi organizations in America."

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

Now Molly has a new home (a 60-acre organic farm on Long Island) and a new “boyfriend” (a steer on the farm named Wexley).

Meet your meat 2009

The Cornered budget file, however, lists only two writers — John Wexley and, later, John Paxton.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

Certainly there were other equally prominent Hollywood leftists — John Wexley, Ben Barzman, Paul Jarrico, Abraham Polonsky, to name only a few — who escaped HUAC's net in 1947, lending credence to Dalton Trumbo's tongue-in-cheek assertion that the Committee "pulled [the names] out of a hat."

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007

An ardent Communist, Wexley was very active in Left politics, working on the defense of the Scottsboro Boys (about whom he wrote another successful play, They Shall Not Die), Upton Sinclair's 1934 EPIC campaign, and the highly publicized and volatile strikes by the Conference of Studio Unions in 1945.4

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood 2007