FOREMAN, CARL

FOREMAN, CARL (1914–1984), U.S. writer, producer, and director. Born in Chicago, Foreman saw army service during World War II, after which he began movie scriptwriting and prepared the scenarios for films such as So This Is New York (1948), Champion (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), The Clay Pigeon (1949), Young Man with a Horn (1950), The Men (1950), Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), High Noon (1952), The Sleeping Tiger (1954), A Hatful of Rain (1957), and Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Called before a congressional committee during the McCarthy era, he declined to testify on whether he was a member of the Communist Party on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment; in 1956 he himself chose to testify before Congress, and was given what he described as "a clean bill of political health." From the early 1950s he lived and worked in London, and headed his own production company there. He wrote and produced Guns of Navarone (1961); wrote, produced, and directed Victors (1963); produced Born Free (1965), MacKenna's Gold (1969), The Virgin Soldiers (1969), Living Free (1972); wrote and produced Young Winston (1972). He served as president of the Writer's Guild in England (1968), board member of the British Film Institute, and honorary president of the Screen Writers Guild of Israel (where he conducted a course in screenwriting). Foreman returned to the U.S. in 1975, where he wrote such films as Force 10 from Navarone (1978); EB (1980); and When Time Rain Out (1980). In 1958 he was a winner of the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Bridge on the River Kwai. However, as he had been blacklisted at the time and received no screen credit, the Oscar was awarded to him posthumously in 1984. In his lifetime, Foreman earned five other screenwriting Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe nomination. As a producer, he was nominated six times for a Laurel Award. (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)