His career began with the adaptation for the Lancaster-Fontaine noir KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS (1948). Surreptitious TV assignments and under the table screenplay arrangements kept him in groceries throughout the fifties, during which time he was the primary but uncredited writer for such films as THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. He was deemed safe for full disclosure again in 1961 and wrote PARIS BLUES, FAIL-SAFE, THE TRAIN, and THE MONEY TRAP in quick succession. (THE MONEY TRAP is often considered to be the last classic Hollywood noir.) Another flurry of screenplay activity occurred in the second half of the seventies after he wrote a screenplay depicting a world with which he was intimately familiar: THE FRONT (1976), directed by Martin Ritt and starring Woody Allen as a schlemiel hired by three blacklisted writers to front for them.
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