The Red and the Blacklist: A Memoir of a Hollywood Insider [Hardcover]

Norma Barzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2003 | Series: Nation Books

Norma Barzman’s extraordinary memoir, The Red and the Blacklist, fizzes with the wit and energy of the classic Hollywood comedies of the forties. But it is also laced with the fear and claustrophobia found in the forties film noirs, as Norma and her husband Ben Barzman are driven from Hollywood—during the postwar McCarthyite witch hunt—into an emotionally difficult 30-year exile in France. While their hair-raising and amusing adventures continue, Ben battles depression as he attempts to rehabilitate his career, while frustrating Norma’s own aspirations as a writer. She seeks solace in a string of affairs, one of them ending in a pregnancy that she aborts. However, Norma’s passion for life, Ben and her seven children, and her radical instincts, shine throughout this dazzling memoir. 20 black-and-white photographs are included.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barzman arrived in Hollywood from Radcliffe in 1941, a good-looking 21-year-old who wanted to be a writer or director, not an actress. She met Ben Barzman at a party for Hollywood "progressives"; before long, they were in the Communist Party together. Ben stayed focused on his career of script writing. Norma, especially after they married, made do with anything, mainly writing for Hearst's Examiner. By 1944, they knew they were both under surveillance; by 1949, they realized they had to leave the country or face HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) and jail for refusing to inform. They settled in Paris, their base for nearly 20 years. Even though Ben subscribed to leftist ideals about equality, his wife's career made him uncomfortable, so from 1955 on, Norma made babies, had affairs and researched movie ideas for Ben. From her stories-dealing with the likes of Picasso, Sophia Loren, Peter Sellers, Anthony Quinn and Ingrid Bergman-it seems the life of a Cold War expatriate was more attractive than anything America was offering. Still, blacklisted men like Ben and his sometime collaborator Joseph Losey "hugged their bitterness," while the women just adapted. Visiting the Soviet Union and watching the Communist betrayal of May 1968 in France were profoundly disillusioning, but Norma found new hope stateside in the '70s amid women's liberation and the push to restore the reputations of the blacklisted Hollywood artists. Her unique, absorbing and richly detailed memoir is a contribution to both, restoring women to the history of this period and documenting the bravery with which some people stood by their ideals.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

She wouldn't name names then, but she does now. Blacklisted along with her husband, Ben, during McCarthy's Hollywood witch hunts, Barzman has written an explicit memoir of their HUAC-inposed European exile that reads like a "who's who" of the entertainment community during its most controversial and creatively challenging decades. Thwarted by her specific situation and by society in general, Barzman would find inconsistent success in her attempts to forge an independent career, serving instead as her husband's muse, collaborator, and, frequently, adversary. As such, she was destined to sit at both the periphery and center of a core of defiant artists who defined a cultural revolution. From this unique and unorthodox vantage point, Barzman writes a tantalizing expose of political, philosophical, and personal upheaval as only an insider can. Whether recounting titillating behind-the-scenes exploits of entertainment icons or reflecting on the daunting struggles of expatriate Americans whose movements and motives were constantly scrutinized, Barzman brings a brooding, yet legitimate, perspective to a complex and confusing era in American history. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560254661
• ISBN-13: 978-1560254669
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,171,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo !A Racy and Riveting Read!, June 28, 2003

By 

Martin Prague (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Red and the Blacklist: A Memoir of a Hollywood Insider (Hardcover)

God, this book is so sexy and thrilling, compared to the other worthy, dull, snoozy blacklist memoirs out there. Ms. Barzman has really lived a very full life and leaves no stones unturned, about her personal and professional frustrations, her life as a commie, her hubby being jealous, the umpteen affairs, her glitzy starstudded life in Hollywood and in Europe...the gossip is worth the price alone, but its much more than that; its fiercly political, feministic...and get this, she's still a political toughie, uncomprising and stilling fighting the good fight! Bravo!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Writers are cannibals, but....., February 17, 2008

By 

Mike Simonsen (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate (Nation Books) (Paperback)

This is a very funny book, with a lot of vivid characters and entertaining incidents. Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren are only a few of the famous figures who are shown here in unguarded moments. And the blighting of Hollywood by the Blacklist is shown in intimate portraits of the destruction of both individuals and families.

It is, however, only secondarily the story of Ben Barzman, a promising screenwriter forced into thirty years of European exile. The main story is about Norma Barzman, a talented writer herself, who falls in love with a man who is aggressively progressive on most subjects, but has reactionary ideas about women working.

Norma and Ben fall in love almost at first sight (and do they ever meet cute!). Though she is a working writer when they marry, he forces her to quit her job. He then takes her movie story ideas and passes them off as his own (as in "El Cid"), takes joint projects she initiated and demotes her to "researcher," or steals her work completely. Basically, he gets apoplectic and abusive every time she gets within hailing distance of professional recognition.

Norma Barzman loves and takes pride in the many children she raises, but the book laments the complete destruction of her self-confidence in her own talent. She stays married to the man who tries to destroy her, but occasionally strays into other men's beds in her unhappiness (which will disturb prudish, superficial and judgmental readers, but sadden the rest of us.)

When her husband dies after 47 years together, she slowly but surely regains her writing voice. The results are both satisfying and uncomfortable, as the Blacklist had a tendency to deform the personalities of its victims. But the story has more universal resonances than just the sad song of a life bent out of shape by circumstance and a tyrannical husband, and is well worth the read.

3.0 out of 5 stars A light, breezy look at the McCarthy years, mostly from Europe, January 14, 2011

By 

Robin Wolfson "Reliza" (Cameron Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate (Nation Books) (Paperback)

A title this great really deserves a better book. But the book it has is fun, nonetheless. Norma Barzman gives us her view of the blacklist, on which appeared the names of both her and her husband, but the view is mostly that from the high life of Paris and the South of France, with a few sidetrips to Spain (even under Franco) and England. On the upside, she offers us an intimate story of the making of "El Cid," a marvelous insider's view of the censorship process (which, alone, is probably worth the price of the book), and the hardships of not being able to work in your own country and under your own name (see Woody Allen's The Front for a closer look at those who "fronted" for blacklisted writers). The author herself cites The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 as a more "comprehensive treatment" of the years of the blacklist. Unfortunately, she and her husband didn't suffer nearly as much as those who couldn't just pick up a family and settle in Paris or on the Riviera. I know it's unfair to fault those who had the money to go live in Europe, but it also explains some of the book's superficialty: they just weren't there. So, in the end, the glamour of her life abroad and her affairs with other, powerful members of the film community, overwhelm the story of those who had to stay home and find some way to earn a living -- in another trade, under a different name. Any really good story of the blacklist would end with a list of those who committed suicide because of their inability to get work and support their own families.

The book's primary problem, however, is the issue of the history of millionaire Communists, including Picasso. You always have to deal with questions like, "If they were so rich, AND Communists, why didn't they take other blacklisted writers with them to Europe and support them there? Picasso is only the most famous millionaire Communist. There is no answer, of course. I'm sure Mz. Barzman would explain that they didn't have all THAT much money. In the end it's a matter of conscience and available funds. We can't really fault the rich blacklisted Communist writers. More power to them, and let's hope they supported charities wholeheartedly.

I grew up during the McCarthy years, and remember my father becoming practically apoplectic when watching the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). The years of the McCarthy reign of terror were a serious time and deserve some serious writing. I plan to order The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 soon. Still, the book itself is fun and a quick read. For a bit of history that reads more or less like a gossip column from Hollywood and points east, you could certainly do worse than The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate (Nation Books).