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My Landlord Was a Blacklisted Screenwriter
In 1987, I was a struggling screenwriter living with two friends in a Hancock Park house. The property owner was a gentle man in his 70s named Robert Lees. He wore ascot ties and fedora hats and carried himself with a quiet dignity. One day Mr. Lees came by to collect rent. I invited him inside and upon seeing the page in my typewriter he asked what I was writing. I told him it was a screwball comedy about a Hollywood Production Assistant who steals a movie star’s prized toupee and is pursued by police, private detectives, studio bosses and a violent bounty hunter.
“What happens in act two,” Mr. Lees replied.
I stammered something like, “Uh, I, ahhh…”
“…You don’t have an act two?”
“I thought I did,” I said.
He smiled.
“Are you a writer?” I asked.
“Used to be.”
“Anything I heard of?”
“That was a long time ago.”
Over the next year I saw Mr. Lees monthly as he came to collect rent. He always asked about my screenplays and listened as I complained about the difficulty I was having. “Don’t think too much,” he said. “It kills creativity.” On one occasion Mr. Lees came by with his adult daughter. As he spoke with my roommate, I asked his daughter about her father’s writing career. She said he wrote several movies for Abbott & Costello and Martin & Lewis. Then she added, “Please don’t ask him about those days. They’re too painful to talk about.”
“Why,” I asked.
“You don’t know about my dad?”
“No.”
“He was blacklisted. He appeared before Congress and refused to name names. He went from being a successful screenwriter to a pariah. It was horrible.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
During the Blacklist, Lees continued writing under the alias J.E. Selby. He penned television scripts for Rawhide, Lassie, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Adventures of Robin Hood for British television. Eventually he moved his family to Arizona and became a maître d’ at a high-end restaurant.
In the early 70s, Lees moved back to Los Angeles. He experienced good luck when he…
