 An American blacklist victim of the McCarthy hearings, Chicago-born screenwriter and producer Carl Foreman had had a distinguished career as writer and/or producer of such socially aware and Academy Award nominated films as The Men (US, d. Fred Zinnemann, 1950) and High Noon (US, d. Zinnemann, 1952), before leaving for the comparative political tolerance of Britain.
Even there, he had first to work under another name (Derek Frye) on such films as The Sleeping Tiger (1954), directed pseudonymously by fellow-blacklistee Joseph Losey, and Born for Trouble (1955), and the Academy would not allow him to collect the Oscar for the screenplay of Bridge on the River Kwai (d. David Lean, 1957).
In mellower times, and with his own company, Open Road, established since 1958's The Key (d. Carol Reed), he was nominated for the screenplays of The Guns of Navarone (d. J.Lee Thompson, 1961) and Young Winston (d. Richard Attenborough, 1972), and went on to produce, write and direct The Victors (1963), a rather heavy-handed anti-war epic, and somewhat surprisingly to produce both Born Free (d. James Hill, 1965) and Living Free (d. Jack Couffer, 1972). Though it gathered momentum in Britain, his career was virtually over by the time he returned to Hollywood in 1975.
He was made CBE in 1970.
Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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