The youth of Abraham Polonsky was filled with the same kind of diverse activity that his professional career would later exhibit. Polonsky was born in New York City on December 5, 1910, and by the time he was thirty he had received his law degree from Columbia Law School, taught at City College of New York and served as a merchant seaman. During this time he also began to write, and it was this occupation that came to claim most of his attention.
Polonsky wrote both for publication and for that most popular medium of its day, radio. During the 1940s he worked with the Columbia Workshop and Orson Welles, and during World War II he was engaged in radio operation with the OSS. In 1940 the young writer published his first novel, The Enemy Sea, and collaborated with Mitchell Wilson on a mystery story, The Goose Is Cooked. The novels were succeeded by several short stories; “No Neutral Ground” (1944), “The Marvellous Boy” (1946), and “A Little Fire” (1946) are among the most important. Another dimension was added to his literary career in the late 1940s when he became an editor of the journal, Hollywood Quarterly.
His editorship of Hollywood Quarterly reflected the fact that Polonsky had, in the 1940s, moved west and started writing for the screen. His first two produced screenplays, Golden Earrings and Body and Soul, were released within weeks of each other in 1947. Body and Soul won much acclaim and Polonsky was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay. Little more than a year later Polonsky directed his first movie, Force of Evil (1948), and Bosley Crowther hailed his direction as “a real new talent in the medium.” Polonsky also collaborated on the screenplay of the film.
In view of the acknowledged success of his first attempt at directing, it is ironic that Abraham Polonsky did not direct another picture for more than twenty years. For the years of the Hollywood blacklist intervened, and Polonsky was to find no work within the industry throughout the 1950s and most of the 1960s. After refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Polonsky found his new career nipped in the bud. From his last accredited screenplay, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, in 1951, the name Polonsky did not appear in any film credit until 1968.
During those silent years, Polonsky continued to write. Like most blacklisted writers, he did some movie work under a pseudonym. He also wrote for the television program You Are There, and published the novels The World Above (1951) and Season of Fear (1956).
The blacklist died a slow death, but by the mid 1960s writers were once again beginning to receive credit for their own work. In 1968 Polonsky collaborated on the screenplay for Madigan, and in 1969 he directed and wrote the screenplay for Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. The highly-praised film dealt with a young Indian who was an exile in his own country--a reflection, perhaps, of Polonsky's own feelings toward the United States.
Following his success with Willie Boy, Polonsky continued his career as a filmmaker. Abraham Polonsky died of a heart-attack in Beverly Hills, California, on October 26, 1999.
