Blankfort, Michael, 1907-1982

Born in 1907 in New York, Michael Blankfort was a writer, lyricist, director, and producer. He wrote a number of plays and musicals early in his career beginning with Merry-Go-Round in 1932; Battle Hymn was his sixth work, produced by the Federal Theatre Project of the WPA. In the 1940s he moved into film and then television, penning Westerns, dramas and adventure tales, and in 1950 he won the Writer's Guild of America's award for Best Written Western for Broken Arrow . He also wrote novels and short stories, many of which were adapted for the screen. He served as president of the Writer's Guild of America (West) from 1967-1969, and from 1969-1971 he was a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Michael Blankfort died in 1987.

Michael Gold, writer, was also born in New York in 1894, the son of Jewish immigrants (his original surname was Granich). Although not born into poverty, his father's health and business failed when Gold was still young, forcing him to go to work at age 12 to help support his family. While working as a manual laborer, Gold began to write about his experiences with poverty and about his fellow laborers. His radical political views found a congenial home in socialist journals such as the Masses and the Call, and he became successful enough that he was able to leave manual labor altogether and support himself solely through his writing. In 1920 he became associate editor of The Liberator and six years later Gold and his friend, John Sloan, became joint editors of the New Masses . At the time of Battle Hymn, he had one play and one musical to his credit and had recently published a successful novel, Jews Without Money . His other books include 120 Million (1929) and Change the World (1937). Michael Gold died in 1967.

From the guide to the Battle Hymn, Typescript, 1936, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)