The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate

by Norma Barzman

Book Overview

Norma Barzman's extraordinary memoir, The Red and the Blacklist, fizzes with the wit and energy of the classic Hollywood comedies of the forties. But it is also laced with the fear and claustrophobia... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560254661
• ISBN13: 9781560254669
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Nation Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The morals of the writer?

If we start to eliminate all the great writers who had less than perfect morals, we'd have precious little to read. If we rejected all the literary practitioners who committed adultery, we'd enjoy the company of very few. Since writers are by nature and practice, cannibals, feeding on their observations and regurgitating them transformed by imagination, why of all people should we turn to them when searching for moral paragons? So, yes, when a reviewer complains of being sickened by the writer's immorality in sleeping around while married, pardon me but this is perhaps the wrong book for such a refined sensibility. "Love" and "Sex" are mentioned in the title, so we have been warned. The faint of heart should retreat immediately to the safety of Kate Douglas Wiggin's "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." However, Norma Barzman's "The Red and the Blacklist" makes much better reading than "The End of Romance," so read that one first.

Writers are cannibals, but.....

This is a very funny book, with a lot of vivid characters and entertaining incidents. Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren are only a few of the famous figures who are shown here in unguarded moments. And the blighting of Hollywood by the Blacklist is shown in intimate portraits of the destruction of both individuals and families. It is, however, only secondarily the story of Ben Barzman, a promising screenwriter forced into thirty years of European exile. The main story is about Norma Barzman, a talented writer herself, who falls in love with a man who is aggressively progressive on most subjects, but has reactionary ideas about women working. Norma and Ben fall in love almost at first sight (and do they ever meet cute!). Though she is a working writer when they marry, he forces her to quit her job. He then takes her movie story ideas and passes them off as his own (as in "El Cid"), takes joint projects she initiated and demotes her to "researcher," or steals her work completely. Basically, he gets apoplectic and abusive every time she gets within hailing distance of professional recognition. Norma Barzman loves and takes pride in the many children she raises, but the book laments the complete destruction of her self-confidence in her own talent. She stays married to the man who tries to destroy her, but occasionally strays into other men's beds in her unhappiness (which will disturb prudish, superficial and judgmental readers, but sadden the rest of us.) When her husband dies after 47 years together, she slowly but surely regains her writing voice. The results are both satisfying and uncomfortable, as the Blacklist had a tendency to deform the personalities of its victims. But the story has more universal resonances than just the sad song of a life bent out of shape by circumstance and a tyrannical husband, and is well worth the read.

One reviewer here appears to have an ax to grind

Please read the "Look Inside" to make your own mind up, rather than take heed of the two reviews by "A Customer" (are you allowed to write multiple reviews?) who obviously has a (political?) ax to grind.

Bravo !A Racy and Riveting Read!

God, this book is so sexy and thrilling, compared to the other worthy, dull, snoozy blacklist memoirs out there. Ms. Barzman has really lived a very full life and leaves no stones unturned, about her personal and professional frustrations, her life as a commie, her hubby being jealous, the umpteen affairs, her glitzy starstudded life in Hollywood and in Europe...the gossip is worth the price alone, but its much more than that; its fiercly political, feministic...and get this, she's still a political toughie, uncomprising and stilling fighting the good fight! Bravo!