Philip Yordan

Although also a prolific writer himself, he served as a front for friends and other writers who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Living in Paris during the blacklist days, his basement was often filled with blacklisted writers working in cubicles, churning out screenplays.
He was, unusually, not included in the Memoriam Tribute at the 76th Annual Academy Awards, despite being a three-time nominee and receiving the Best Writing Oscar in 1954 for Broken Lance (1954).
Born to Polish immigrants, he earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois and a law degree at Kent College of Law in Chicago.
Father of actress Phyllis Yordan and actor/dancer Byron Yordan (adopted).
Grandfather of director producer Spencer McAndrew.

[on serving as a "front" for blacklisted writers in the 1950s]: I tell you, I never read a newspaper until I was fifty. I never looked at television until the 1970s. I never read "Time" magazine. I never tended to be political, I never voted. So I didn't understand this whole blacklist thing.
What interested me in "55 Days At Peking" was $400,000. That's what Bronston was paying me for the script. He pre-sold to the whole world. You could find a marvelous story for the United States, and they wouldn't buy it in England. So we had to have some idea the whole world would buy in advance. Very difficult. I bought "Brave New World" by Huxley. We had a meeting of all the distributors, and - boy! - there was almost a riot, they hated it, wouldn't touch it. I had to unload it and think up an idea they'd buy. The Boxer Rebellion? Big sets, suspenseful, colorful. Coming up with a title was kind of hard, but "55 Days" and "Peking", along with everything else - they bought it. So it was a commercial manufacture job.

Suggest an edit or add missing content

Biography