[1] In 1929, Bransten married his first wife Louise Rosenberg, the San Francisco heiress to a dried fruit fortune.
As Louise Bransten, she was a close contact of Nathan Silvermaster and Grigory Kheifets and was accused of being a Soviet spy.
Under the pen name Bruce Minton, Bransten published The Fat Years and the Lean in 1940, a book describing the labor movement from 1918 to 1939.
[5] During World War II, Bransten assisted Jacob Golos and Silvermaster in passing information from Washington to KGB sources in New York.
[7] Bransten moved to Hollywood for a short period between 1944 and 1945,[8] where he worked as a screenwriter on the films Margie, San Diego I Love You, and The Trouble with Women.