Background
Born in New York City, the son of Polish immigrants to the United States, his father was a Marxist garment industry union organiser, and Cole was a dedicated socialist from childhood.
Born in New York City, the son of Polish immigrants to the United States, his father was a Marxist garment industry union organiser, and Cole was a dedicated socialist from childhood.
Lester Cole began his career as an actor but soon turned to screenwriting. His first work was "If I had a Million." In 1933, he joined with John Howard Lawson and Samuel Ornitz to establish the Writers Guild of America. In 1934, Cole joined the American Communist Party.
He became one of the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their Communist Party membership.
Cole was convicted of contempt of Congress, fined $1,000 and sentenced to twelve months confinement at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut, of which he served ten months. As a result of his refusal to testify, Cole was blacklisted.
Between 1932 and 1947 Cole wrote more than forty screenplays that were made into motion pictures. His best-known screenplay was that for the highly successful 1966 film Born Free (credited to Gerald LC Copley).
In 1981, Cole published his autobiography, entitled Hollywood Red: The Autobiography of Lester Cole.
In it he recounted a 1978 incident when he called into a radio talk show on which ex-Communist Budd Schulberg was a guest. According to Cole, he berated Schulberg (who had testified before HUAC as a friendly witness) on the air as a "canary" and a "stool pigeon" before he was cut off: About this incident, Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley comments, "Whether this actually happened is uncertain, but one can guess." Lester Cole died of a heart attack in San Francisco, California in 1985. Ronald Radosh, emeritus professor of history at City University of New York, wrote that Cole "remained a hardcore Communist" until his death.