Albert Maltz

Albert Maltz (October 28, 1908 – April 26, 1985) was an American author and screenwriter. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were later blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Maltz was educated at Columbia University and the Yale School of Drama. Maltz worked as a playwright for the Theatre Union during the early 1930s and wrote his first of eighteen screenplays for Hollywood in 1932. At the Theater Union he met Margaret Larkin, whom he married in 1937. He won the 1938 O. Henry Award for "The Happiest Man on Earth", a short story published in Harper's Magazine. In 1944 he published the novel The Cross and the Arrow. In 1970 he published a collection of his short stories 'Afternoon in the Jungle'.

For his script for the 1945 film Pride of the Marines, Maltz was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. His screenplay for Broken Arrow won the 1951 Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Western. However, due to his blacklisting at the time, fellow MPAA screenwriter Michael Blankfort agreed to put his own name on the script in place of Maltz's as the only way to get it accepted by any of the Hollywood movie studios, and as such, Blankfort was named the winner. In 1991, in the course of correcting screen credits for blacklisted screenwriters, the Writers Guild of America officially recognized Maltz as the only credited screenwriter for Broken Arrow.