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Abraham Polonsky

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Abraham Lincoln Polonsky

Sign	Sagittarius
Born	Dec 5, 1910 New York City, NY
Died	Oct 26, 1999 Beverly Hills, CA
Age	Died at 88

Abraham Polonsky
Job	Director
Top Genres	Drama, Film Noir, Crime, Western, Film Adaptation
Top Topics	Book-Based, Gangsters
Top Collaborators	John Garfield, Jack Lambert, Lloyd Gough, Charles McGraw
Shares birthday with	Otto Preminger, Walt Disney, Nunnally Johnson see more..

Fan Favorites:

See Full Filmography

Force of Evil

Fan rating: 8.50

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here

Tell Them Willie Boy...

Fan rating: 7.00

Abraham Polonsky Overview:

Director, Abraham Polonsky, was born Abraham Lincoln Polonsky on Dec 5, 1910 in New York City, NY. Polonsky died at the age of 88 on Oct 26, 1999 in Beverly Hills, CA .

HONORS and AWARDS:

Although Polonsky was nominated for one Oscar, he never won a competitive Academy Award.

Academy Awards

Year	Award	Film name	Role	Result
1947	Best Writing	Body and Soul (1947)	N/A	Nominated

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Best Writing Oscar 1947

WINNER
Valentine Davies
Miracle on 34th Street

WINNER
Sidney Sheldon
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

WINNER
George Seaton
Miracle on 34th Street

Nominee
Georges Chaperot, Rene Wheeler
A Cage of Nightingales

Nominee
Herbert Clyde Lewis, Frederick Stephani
It Happened on Fifth Avenue

Nominee
Eleazar Lipsky
Kiss of Death

Nominee
Dorothy Parker, Frank Cavett
Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman

Nominee

Body and Soul

Nominee
Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin
A Double Life

Nominee
Charles Chaplin
Monsieur Verdoux

Nominee
Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, C. G. Viola, Cesare Zavattini
Shoe-Shine

Nominee
Richard Murphy
Boomerang!

Nominee
John Paxton
Crossfire

Nominee
Moss Hart
Gentleman's Agreement

Nominee
David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ronald Neame
Great Expectations

See more Academy Awards>>

Abraham Polonsky Facts

Critic Andrew Sarris said Force of Evil (1948), Polonsky's directorial debut, is "one of the great films of the modern American cinema." Blacklisted for nearly two decades after 20th Century-Fox fired him for refusing to "name names" before the House Un-American Activies Committee (HUAC), Polonsky continued to work--and earn even more money than he had before--using various pseudonyms, such as John O. Killens, for co-writing Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). In 1996, the Writers Guild restored his real name and credits.

UC Riverside has a fiction prize, named for Polonsky, given to the writer of the best short-story in their annual literary magazine. Harry Lawton, an instructor at the university, wrote a non-fiction book called "Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt" which was the inspiration for a script by Jack B. Sowards and purportedly the inspiration for Polonsky's script for Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969). In an interview with Soward at the WGA website, he claims that years after he'd given up on the script he wrote, Polonsky came by his office at Universal asking what time it was. When Soward asked what was wrong with his watch, Polonsky said, "There's nothing wrong with my watch. I just wanted to meet the man who wrote MY script." Apparently people who had read Soward's script years back were complimenting Polonsky on his decision to direct it, not realizing/knowing that he wrote an original screenplay for the movie.

Polonsky, a victim of the blacklist, was so offended when director Irwin Winkler changed the main character (a director who is blacklisted after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee) of his script for Guilty by Suspicion (1991) from a Communist Party member to a relatively apolitical liberal that he not only had his name taken off of the picture, he also refused an executive producer credit that would have earned him a substantial fee. Polonsky was very vocal in the press about his anger with Winkler and his disapproval over the resulting movie.

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