Samuel Ornitz, author, screenwriter, and one of the Hollywood Ten, is a prominent figure in American letters. A native of New York City, born in 1890, he attended the City College of New York for two years, and subsequently attended New York University.
Ornitz spent twelve years in his first career as a social worker in New York City. First employed by the Prison Association of New York City in the years 1909-1914 performing penal research, probation, and parole work, he then became assistant superintendent of the Brooklyn Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a post he held until 1920.
Throughout the early and middle twenties, Ornitz for the first time began to write, while associated with the MacCauly and McFadden Publishing companies. In 1923 he published his first novel, Haunch, Paunch, and Jowl, which became a best seller, receiving both critical acclaim and wide public attention. Two years later, Ornitz followed this success with Round the World with Jocko the Great, a book for children, and, again, after a two year interim, A Yankee Passional, another novel.
The turning point in Ornitz' creative work came in 1928, when he moved to Hollywood and devoted his energies completely to writing for the screen. He produced himself, or collaborated on, a number of screenplays, of which this collection includes only Caucasus and Passover Story. Others were The Case of Lena Smity, Chinatown Nights, Follow Your Heart, Hell's Highway, The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, Mark of the Vampire, Men of America, One Man's Journey, Portia on Trial, The Richest Man in the World, Secrets of the French Police, and Three Kids and a Queen. Ornitz also wrote a number of plays, many of which were never produced. This collection includes The Bronx Story, Mythical Kingdom, a stage adaptation of Haunch, Paunch, and Jowl, and others.
Throughout his life, Ornitz was vitally interested in human rights. An early play, Deficit (1919), illustrates Ornitz' interest in the problems of large city tenement dwellers. In 1931, Ornitz again attracted attention by traveling to Harlan County, Kentucky, with the committee headed by Theodore Dreiser to investigate the injustices inflicted upon the coal miners of the area by unscrupulous mine owners.
The supreme test of Ornitz' personal convictions came sixteen years later when, together with nine other famous Hollywood screen writers, he was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in October, 1947, and he refused to admit to membership either in the Screen Writers' Guild or the Communist Party. Ornitz was cited for contempt of Congress, and, although ill, he served nine months of a one-year term in 1950-1951 at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri.
Ironically, Ornitz had ceased screenwriting several years earlier, his last known work of this genre being an adaptation for the picture Circumstantial Evidence, which had been written for 20th Century Fox in 1944. Following this, Ornitz had devoted himself to research for a new novel, and while incarcerated he put the finishing touches on Bride of the Sabbath, his first book-length work in twenty-five years. Published a few months after his release in 1951, the book became an immediate best seller and was hailed as a sequel to Haunch, Paunch, and Jowl. Ornitz had originally planned to make Books I and II of Bride of the Sabbath part of a trilogy, but the third volume never appeared.
Other demonstrations of Ornitz' loyalties were evinced by his membership in the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, the International Labor Defense Committee, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and the Motion Picture Artists Committee.
In 1914, Ornitz married Sadie F. Lesser, by whom he had two sons, Arthur J., and Donald R. Ornitz. He died in March, 1957, at the age of 66.
