He is perhaps best known as a member of the "Hollywood Ten", the group of film artists blacklisted by the entertainment industry for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In a 1983 interview, Bessie remembered his stern father as a successful businessman, inventor, and "hard-ribbed Republican, completely sold on the free-enterprise system.

[2] He later cited Scribner's editor Kyle Crichton (also known by pen name Robert Forsythe) as an important mentor in his life, both from a political and writing standpoint.

[7] Bessie continued to translate avant-garde French literature, including The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau[8] and Batouala by René Maran.

According to reviewer Gabriel Miller, Dwell in the Wilderness introduced a recurring motif in Bessie's fiction: "human isolation and the resultant painful loneliness.

[12] He was further radicalized by his conversations with fellow Brooklyn Eagle reporter Nat Einhorn who was a founder of the Newspaper Guild's New York local.

After sailing for Spain in January 1938, Bessie trained and deployed as a soldier in a front-line combat unit with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

[15] Upon his return to the U.S. in December 1938, he used the notebooks to write Men in Battle, which was praised by Ernest Hemingway as "[a] true, honest, fine book.

[18] Finally, in the winter of 1942, Bessie signed a contract with Warner Bros.[1] He moved to California, joined the Screen Writers Guild and contributed screenplays for films such as Northern Pursuit (1943), The Very Thought of You (1944), and Hotel Berlin (1945).

[21] With an assist from comedian and fellow blacklistee Irwin Corey, Bessie was hired as the club's "light and sound man".

He gradually took on the role of stage manager and was known for his humorous introductions, spoken in "a rumbling voice with elegant diction," of performers such as Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.

His biggest post-blacklist commercial success was the satirical novel The Symbol (1966) about the exploitation by Hollywood of an unhappy actress who resembles Marilyn Monroe.

[15] Bessie was partly involved in the screen adaptation of his 1941 novel Bread and a Stone, which eventually became the feature film Hard Traveling (1986) starring J.E.

In that same year, Dan wrote a memoir entitled Rare Birds (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), which listed the diverse accomplishments of the extended Bessie family that included 1960s poster artist Wes Wilson (husband of Alvah's daughter Eva) and the prominent advertising executive Leo Burnett (brother of Alvah's first wife Mary).