Alvah Bessie

Alvah Bessie was born on June 4, 1904 in New York City, New York, USA as Alvah Cecil Bessie.

Won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935, publishing his first novel, "Dwell in the Wilderness", the same year. In 1936 and 1937, was drama editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

As Alvah C. Bessie, won a 1936 O. Henry Award for his short story "A Personal Issue", which appeared in Scribner's Magazine.

Ernest Hemingway, the most prominent of the American supporters of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War against Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist Falangists, said that Bessie's Spanish Civil War novel "Men in Battle" was one of the best war novels of its time. Hemingway's own Spanish Civil War novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls", won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

He was a writer and actor, known for Objective, Burma! (1945), Northern Pursuit (1943) and The Very Thought of You (1944). He was married to Sylviane L. Martin.

Was a member of the U.S. Communist Party when he fought with the famous Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and during his tenure as a Hollywood screenwriter. He resigned from the Party in 1954.

Refused to write under a pseudonym after his blacklisting, working instead as a publicist, book reviewer and lighting technician at the hungry i nightclub in North Beach, San Francisco. In 1965, he wrote a book about his experiences during the McCarthy era, entitled "Inquisition in Eden".