The Front

film by Ritt [1976]

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Allen

  • Woody Allen
    In Woody Allen: The 1970s

    …performance as the protagonist in The Front (1976), Martin Ritt’s fine drama about Hollywood blacklisting, Allen made Annie Hall (1977), a breakthrough work that dramatically elevated his status as a filmmaker. An elliptical account of the rise and fall of a romance between the quirky title character (played by Keaton)…

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discussed in biography

  • In Martin Ritt: Films of the 1970s

    In The Front (1976), released roughly a quarter of a century after Ritt’s blacklisting, Woody Allen gave a much-praised performance as a part-time bookie hired by a group of blacklisted television writers to affix his name to their work so it could be sold. Walter Bernstein,…

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Hollywood blacklist

  • Ronald Reagan testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee
    In Hollywood blacklist

    Guilty by Suspicion (1991) and The Front (1976). Those movies reinforce the popular notion of the blacklist as a blight on the history of American entertainment, a time when the film industry pandered to the hysteria of both the HUAC and private anticommunist organizations. As part of the wider sweep…

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Mostel

  • Zero Mostel in Ulysses in Nighttown
    In Zero Mostel

    …played a major role in The Front (1976), a serious film about the blacklisting era in Hollywood, and he returned to Broadway in revivals of Ulysses in Nighttown (1974) and Fiddler on the Roof (1976–77). Mostel continued to paint throughout his career.

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