Ben Maddow
Ben Maddow | |
|---|---|
| Born | David Wolff August 7, 1909 Passaic, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | October 9, 1992 (aged 83) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, film director |
Ben Maddow (born David Wolff;[1] August 7, 1909 – October 9, 1992)[2] was an American screenwriter and documentarian from the 1930s through the 1970s.[3] Educated at Columbia University, Maddow began his career working within the American documentary movement in the 1930s.
In 1936 he co-founded the short-lived left-wing newsreel The World Today. Under the pseudonym of David Wolff, Maddow co-wrote the screenplay to the Paul Strand–Leo Hurwitz documentary landmark, Native Land (1942).
He earned his first feature screenplay credit with
As a documentarian he directed and wrote such films as Storm of Strangers, The Stairs, and The Savage Eye (1959), which won the BAFTA Flaherty Documentary Award.[4] Maddow made his solo feature directorial debut with the striking, offbeat feature An Affair of the Skin (1963), a well-acted story of several loves and friendships gone sour and marked by the rich characterisations which had distinguished his best screenplays.
In 1961, Maddow and Huston co-wrote the episode "The Professor" of the 1961 television series The Asphalt Jungle. In 1968 he wrote a screenplay based on Edmund Naughton's novel McCabe; while a film adaptation of the novel was ultimately produced as McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Maddow wasn't credited on the film.[5] His final screenplay was for the horror melodrama The Mephisto Waltz (1970).
References
Notes
- AFI Film Catalog
- ^ From Social Security Death Index.
- Honan, William H. (October 14, 1992). "Ben Maddow, 83, Prolific Writer in Many Genres". The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2008.
- ^ Weiler, A. H. (June 7, 1960). "The Savage Eye (1959)". The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2008.
- ^ Dessem, Matthew (October 2, 2014). "The making and unmaking of McCabe & Mrs. Miller". The Dissolve. Archived from the original on October 24, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2016.
Bibliography
- Vosburgh, Dick (October 13, 1992). "Obituary: Ben Maddow". The Independent. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
Further reading
- Burns, Jim (2011). "Ben Maddow". Radicals, Beats, and Beboppers. Penniless Press. ISBN 978-1447630722. Recent essay on Maddow, including a discussion of the effects of his blacklisting and of the possibility that he "named names" in 1958.
- Hagan, John (2000). "Ben Maddow", in Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast (editors), International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers, Edition 4 (St. James Press), ISBN 978-1-55862-449-8. Online version of article retrieved January 9, 2008.
- Haut, Woody (2008). "Ben Maddow: Affairs of the Skin," blog posted by a film critic who has published several books. Archived by WebCite from the original 2008-02-26.
External links
- Ben Maddow at IMDb
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