John Howard Lawson (September 25, 1894 – August 11, 1977) was an American playwright, screenwriter, arts critic, and cultural historian.

After enjoying a relatively successful career writing plays that were staged on and off Broadway in the 1920s and '30s, Lawson relocated to Hollywood and began working in the motion picture industry.

[3] In the ensuing years, he was credited with a number of notable screenplays including Blockade (1938), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), and Counter-Attack (1945).

[4] John Howard Lawson was born on September 25, 1894 in New York City to affluent Jewish parents, Simeon Levy and Belle Hart.

[6] Before his first child was born, Simeon changed the family name from Levy to Lawson, later saying half-jokingly that he did it so he could "obtain reservations at expensive resort hotels", many of which refused to accommodate Jews.

During his sophomore year, he was denied election to The Williams College Monthly's editorial board because some students raised questions about his Jewish background.

In November, when Norton-Haryes was folded into the American Red Cross's Ambulance Service, Dos Passos and Lawson decided to become drivers.

Although the production ran for 96 performances, it failed financially, and the Theatre Guild told Lawson they would not stage any more of his plays written in the expressionistic style.

Along with Dos Passos and Michael Gold, Lawson formed the Workers Drama League to produce revolutionary plays.

It calls for "a new religion that can help people survive the swirling cyclone of jazz, new machinery, great buildings, science fiction, tabloids, and radio.

The fact that the play lasted even six performances was due to "the excellent stage design by Mordecai Gorelik and the reputation Lawson had established with Processional.

"[3] In late 1926, Lawson served with Dos Passos and Gold on a committee that attempted to establish the Proletarian Artists and Writers League.

[3] The first play produced by the New Playwrights Theater, Lawson's Loudspeaker, opened on March 7, 1927 at the 52nd Street Theatre and ran for forty-two performances.

He had been intrigued by the ceremonial laying of the cornerstone at the Theatre Guild playhouse in 1924, an event attended by both New York Governor Al Smith and Otto Kahn.

[7] In August 1927, Lawson, Dos Passos, and Gold went to Boston to protest the executions of the Italian immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Lawson would later write in his autobiography that during this time period in his life, he could "neither ignore the flaws in American politics and economics nor bring himself to become more deeply involved in the struggle.

While Lawson was working in Hollywood in 1928, the New Playwrights Theater in New York decided to produce his expressionistic play, The International, with a set designed by John Dos Passos.

[3] In Hollywood, Lawson was under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and wrote scripts for films such as The Ship from Shanghai, Bachelor Apartment, and Good-bye Love.

He later recalled how he spent most of his tenure in Washington, D.C. trying to get recognition of the union under provisions of the newly passed National Industrial Recovery Act.

In April 1934, his longtime friend Mike Gold sharply criticized him in New Masses magazine, describing Lawson as "A Bourgeois Hamlet of Our Time" who wrote "adolescent works that lacked moral fiber or clear ideas.

[3] As a result of his newfound communist commitment, Lawson wrote several politically-themed screenplays in the next decade, such as Blockade (1938) about the Spanish Civil War.

He wrote the critically acclaimed Algiers (1938), and two Humphrey Bogart war movies in 1943, Sahara and Action in the North Atlantic.

One biographer notes that Lawson "became an important member of the small CPUSA community in Hollywood, then eventually its cultural czar.

[23] In 1946, Lawson organized and led a critical attack on Albert Maltz after the latter penned a New Masses article, "What Shall We Ask of Writers?".

[24] Surprised by the ferocity of attack from his colleagues—including Lawson, Howard Fast, Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner Jr., and Samuel Sillen—Maltz publicly recanted.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), chaired by Congressman J. Parnell Thomas (R-NJ), began an investigation into communist influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry.

Like Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz and Ring Lardner Jr., he refused to answer almost all questions and would not give names of other people he knew in communist circles.

[30] He testified that Lawson, Albert Maltz, and Adrian Scott "had put him under pressure to make sure his films expressed the views of the American Communist Party.

"[37] According to Lawson, "The consistent presentation on the nation's screens of the views that working-class life is to be despised and that workers who seek to protect their class interests are stupid, malicious, or even treasonable, has its effect on every strike and every labor struggle.

[39] He wrote that in most American movies, "when a woman succeeds in the world of competition, Hollywood holds that her success is achieved by trickery, deceit, and the amoral use of sexual appeal.