Daniel Lewis James Jr. (January 14, 1911 – May 18, 1988), was an American writer, best known for his novel, Famous All Over Town, about Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles.

James's own agent Carl Brandt did not know his real name until it was revealed by fellow author and friend, John Gregory Dunne.

The two became friends with John Steinbeck at the time he was working on The Grapes of Wrath, at his home in Los Gatos, California.

[8] James moved back to Hollywood and was an assistant director on the movie The Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplin in 1940.

It was his business association with Chaplin, as well as his time in Hollywood, that brought him to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In 1942, James released Winter Soldiers, a play presented at the New School of Social Research on the efforts of the underground to impede the Nazi advance toward Moscow during World War II.

[2] In order to keep his identity a secret, he kept in contact with his New York agent through a post office box in Pacific Grove, California.

The Jameses rented their Hollywood house to writer John Gregory Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, for several years beginning in 1966.

His real identity came to light when Dunne wrote an article for the August 16, 1984, issue of The New York Review of Books.

[2] His publisher, Simon & Schuster, wanted to submit the novel for the Pulitzer Prize, but James refused to supply personal information.

He is survived by his two daughters: Barbara James Willard of Carmel, California(now passed), and Catherine McWilliams of Westchester County, New York, His granddaughters Martha Diehl, and Ellen James, and his great-granddaughters Laura James-Hiner and Jamie Werger [1] His wife continued to live at Seaward for another 10 years.

Hispanic youths found the novel inspiring and considered the main character a role model; they believed in Danny Santiago as a man who had endured situations like their own and had become the author of a best seller.

James took a pseudonym because "...he had been blacklisted after he was identified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951 as having been a member of the Communist Party.

[16] Laura Browder suggests that Danny Santiago was an alter ego through which James was able to forge a new, strong public identity and to avenge himself against the repressive America that had wrecked his life.

[15] The review in The New York Times described Famous All Over Town as ``an honest, steady novel that presents some hard cultural realities...”