Oral Histories

Interview of Edward Anhalt

Screenwriter, producer, and documentary filmmaker. Winner of Academy Award for Panic in the Streets.
Subtitle:
Recollections of Edward Anhalt
Series:
Oral History of the Motion Picture in America
Topic:
Film and Television
Biographical Note:
Screenwriter, producer, and documentary filmmaker. Winner of Academy Award for Panic in the Streets.
Interviewer:
Changas, Estelle
Interviewee:
Anhalt, Edward, $d 1914-2000
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
Length:
3.5 hrs.
Language:
English
Copyright:
Interviewee Retained Copyright
Series Statement:
These interviews with prominent individuals in the motion picture industry were completed under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Film Institute to the UCLA Department of Theater Arts. The project was directed by Howard Suber, UCLA Department of Theater Arts. The UCLA Oral History Program provided technical advice but was not involved in respondent selection, research participation, research preparation, interviewing, editing, or transcript preparation.
Abstract:
Participation in Turman and Hollingsworth educational experiment for gifted children at Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1920s; making first l6 mm sound film, Problem Child, 1935; awarded Rockefeller Fellowship; work on documentaries with Paul Rotha, Willard Van Dyke, Ralph Steiner, and others; study with Paul Felix Lazarsfeld at Princeton University; security work during army service in World War II; cutter, assistant cameraman, and sound man; early screenwriting for Warner Baxter and Richard Dix; changes in writer's position since 1950s; Becket and The Boston Strangler; hearings, House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1947; anticommunist record; Fred Zinnemann, Julie Harris, and Member of the Wedding; realistic treatment of intelligence establishment in The Salzburg Connection; court suits against Columbia Pictures over The Sniper; effect of ratings system; censorship of The Young Lions by Defense Department; need to sustain interest throughout film; use of big-city background in Panic in the Streets, The Young Savages, and other films; Pathé News assignment to cover picketing during Congress of Industrial Organizations organizing, 1935-36; held in "protective custody" in Braddock, Pennsylvania; origin of scene of boy being drowned in The Young Savages; the degradations of poverty; casting Dean Martin in The Young Lions; Marlon Brando's effect on role; Montgomery Clift; making The Madwoman of Chaillot; relationship with Hal Wallis; Academy Award for Becket screenplay.