The Red and the Blacklist

Norma Barzman
April 2003     ISBN: 1560256176

When Norma Levor first hit Hollywood, she was a vivacious 21-year-old, fresh out of Harvard and her first marriage. Within an hour of being unleashed on Hollywood society she was squabbling with a left-wing screenwriter named Ben Barzman, who claimed technology had made modern cinema "way too tough for women." Angry, Norma plunged a lemon-meringue pie into his face. Three months later they were married by a defrocked rabbi.

So begins Norma Barzman's extraordinary memoir, The Red and the Blacklist, which fizzes with the wit and energy of classic Hollywood comedies, yet is also laced with the fear and claustrophobia of film noir. As the McCarthyite witch hunt gathered momentum in the postwar years, Norma and Ben were driven from Hollywood into an emotionally difficult thirty-year exile in France.

The Red and the Blacklist is a unique record of the political tempests of the time, marked by the author�s dazzling power of reflection and insight, and animated by a larger-than-life cast of supporting characters including Pablo Picasso, Harold Robbins, Sophia Loren, Charlton Heston, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Losey, John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Groucho Marx and--in a delightful cameo--a very young Marilyn Monroe.

"This is not merely a book about the blacklist. It's a book about a heroic, difficult (by her own account) and marvelous woman who participated with passion in times that tried many souls, including her own. It's full of lessons without being one iota didactic."

--Victor Navasky, author of Naming Names

"Her unique, absorbing and richly detailed memoir is a contribution to both, restoring women to the history of this period and documenting the bravery with which some people stood by their ideals."

---Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The raunchy memoir of a Hollywood insider turned outsider by the McCarthy witch-hunts."

--Vanity Fair

"I read your book, gulping it down, delighting in the narrative of your life, and found myself slowing down as the end approached to make it last longer. It is not only the story of your life, but the story of a moving and colorful time in recent American history. In short the book is a triumph."

--Robert Littell, bestselling author of The Company and The Defection of A.J. Lewinter

"Barzman...may be the most vivacious octogenarian in America."
--Boston Globe

"Politics, paranoia, and preening starts: a sometimes funny, sometimes rueful memoir of filmmakers in exile during the McCarthy inquisition. [The Red and the Blacklist is a] dishy, and substantial, contribution to film history, and to studies of the unfortunate McCarthy era."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Of the dozens of memoirs and oral histories about the blacklist, only a few are memorable. Lillian Hellman's 'Scoundrel Time,' for its fictionalizing; Lester Cole's 'Hollywood Red,' for its mean-spiritedness; Ring Lardner Jr.'s 'I'd Hate Myself in the Morning' for its reflectiveness; John Sanford's 'Maggie' for its tenderness; and now Norma Barzman's 'The Red and the Blacklist' for its colorfulness and candor. Barzman has written a very engaging account of her life in, and exile from, Hollywood. It has been an eventful life, filled with fascinating individuals and adventures."

--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Barzman writes a tantalizing expose of political, philosophical, and personal upheaval as only an insider can. Whether recounting titillating behind-the-scenes exploits of entertainment icons or reflecting on the daunting struggles of expatriate Americans whose movements and motives were constantly scrutinized, Barzman brings a brooding, yet legitimate, perspective to a complex and confusing era in American history."

--Booklist

"The story spins forward from 1942 in a whirl of Hollywood glamour, global political unrest, and the ever-lengthening shadow of American 'justice.' Barzman goes into exile for 30 years, befriending Picasso, Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman and other passionate souls.... [Norma Barzman's] feminist consciousness grows...and by the time she mounts a successful campaign against informer Elia Kazan at the 1999 Oscars, we are proud of this woman's uncommon life and more ready to fight our own fears. "

--Bust magazine