Abraham Polonsky's importance as a screenwriter rests both on his body of work--one of the strongest, continuously radical political statements in commercial American film--and on his role as symbol of the oppressed Hollywood writer, driven underground by Cold War hysteria, only to reemerge undaunted, still creative, and still radical. Polonsky was a successful screenwriter and had just begun a career as director when he was blacklisted in 1951. One of the last in Hollywood to break the blacklist, he did not receive a screen credit for another seventeen years. His early films, particularly Force of Evil (1949), have gained in reputation over the years; his output since 1968 has been limited but distinctive.

Abraham Lincoln Polonsky was born in the East Side of New York City, the son of a Russian émigré pharmacist, Henry Polonsky, and Rebecca Rosoff Polonsky. He has described his youth as "the usual restless street...