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Paul Jarrico was born in Los Angeles, California, on 12th January, 1915. He attended the University of California before moving to Hollywood where he found work as a screenwriter. Early films include The Men in Your Life (1941), Bar 20 (1943), Border Patrol (1943), Colt Comrades (1943) and Forty Thieves (1944).

In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named several people who they accused of holding left-wing views.

One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions.

Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.

Others called before the HUAC were willing to testify and the screenwriter, Richard Collins, named Jarrico as a former member of the Communist Party. Jarrico refused to identify people who were members of left-wing groups and after being sacked from his $2,000 a week job with Columbia Pictures, was blacklisted by the Hollywood studios.

In 1954 Jarrico worked with Michael Wilson, Adrian Scott and Herbert Biberman on Salt of the Earth (1954), a film about a mining strike in New Mexico. Although the film earned critical acclaim in Europe, winning awards in France and Czechoslovakia, it was not allowed to be shown in the United States until 1965.

Jarrico continued to write under assumed names. This included the film The Girl Most Likely (1957). After the blacklist was lifted he write the screenplays for: All Night Long (1961), Treasure of the Aztecs (1965) and Messenger of Death (1988). Paul Jarrico was killed in a road accident on 28th October, 1997.

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(1) Richard Collins gave information about Paul Jarrico's activities in the Communist Party when he testified in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee on 12th April, 1951.

Paul Jarrico visited me and wanted my personal assurance that I would not give any names. I didn't give that assurance. We then had a long political discussion. Paul Jarrico feels the justice of his position, and he went over the situation that he believes the Soviet Union is devoted to the interests of all people and is peace-loving as well.

(2) Paul Jarrico, interviewed on 28th January, 1955.

There is a direct relation between the blacklist and the increasing emphasis of the Hollywood film on prowar and anti-human themes. We have seen more and more pictures of violence for the sake of violence, more and more unmotivated brutality on the screen as the blacklist grew.

(3) Paul Jarrico was interviewed by Elizabeth Farnsworth in 1997.

Elizabeth Farnsworth: Paul Jarrico, tell us how you came to be blacklisted.

Paul Jerrico: Well, I was pretty well known as left of center, considerably left of center. There was no secret about my political orientation, and I, in fact, produced a film about the "Hollywood Ten," called the "Hollywood Ten" in the summer of 1950, on the eve of their going to prison. So I was not at all surprised when the committee began its new hearings in the spring of ‘51 as the ten were, in fact, coming up to be called.

Elizabeth Farnsworth: So you were called and then were you automatically blacklisted? How did you know? When was the moment you knew you’d been blacklisted?

Paul Jerrico: Well, I knew I was blacklisted the moment I arrived at RKO Studio in my car and was barred from the lot, but that was before I testified. That was the morning after I had been served a subpoena and had said to some of the reporters who accompanied the marshal and who asked me what stand I would take, I had said I wasn’t sure but if I had to choose between crawling in the mud with Larry Parks or going to prison like my courageous friends, the Hollywood Ten, you might--you could be sure I would choose the latter. And that was in the papers the following morning, and I was barred from the lot within an hour or two of that.

Elizabeth Farnsworth: Paul Jarrico, once you found out you were blacklisted, once you could no longer work in Hollywood, what did you do? How did you manage to produce Salt of the Earth.

Paul Jerrico: The hard way. I and Herbert Biberman and Adrian Scott, both of whom were - had been members of the Hollywood Ten and were blacklisted, of course, formed a company to try to use the growing pool of talent of the blacklistees. And we had several projects underway with - that is to say being written and came across - I came across by coincidence - this strike and in New Mexico in which Mexican-American zinc miners were on strike, the company got an injunction, saying that company - that striking miners may not picket - the wives said the injunction doesn’t say anything about their wives - we’ll take over your picket line, and the men were reluctant to, as they put it hide behind women’s skirts. But there really was no other alternative. The women found themselves on the picket line being attacked by force, arrested in droves.

Elizabeth Farnsworth: And did people try to stop you from making this film?

Paul Jerrico: Well, of course. There was a concerted effort to stop the making of the film after it became known that we were making the film. We had started the film in quite a normal fashion with contracts with Pate Lab to develop our film and rental of the equipment from Hollywood, people who supplied such things. A whistle was blown by Walter Pigeon, the then president of the Actors Guild, and the FBI swung into action and movie industries swung into action and we found ourselves barred from laboratories, barred from sound studios, barred from any of the normal facilities available to film makers, and we found ourselves hounded by all kinds of denunciations on the floor of Congress and by columnists.

The public was told that we were making a new weapon for Russia, that since we were shooting in New Mexico, where you find atom bombs, you find Communists, and every kind of scurrilous attack - vigilante attacks - on us while we were still shooting developed.

Our star, who had come up from Mexico to star in the film - LeSoro Regueltos - was arrested and deported before we were finished shooting her role. We had difficulty getting permission to shoot the remaining scenes with her in Mexico, which we absolutely had to have, and so on.