John Sanford (1904–2003)
| Julian Shapiro | |
|---|---|
| Born | Julian Lawrence Shapiro May 31, 1904 Harlem |
| Died | March 5, 2003 Montecito, California |
| Pen name | John Sanford, John B. Sanford |
| Notable works | The Old Man's Place, The People From Heaven |
| Spouse | Marguerite Roberts |
| Website | |
| psych |
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John Sanford or John B. Sanford, born Julian Lawrence Shapiro (May 31, 1904 – March 5, 2003), was an American screenwriter and author who wrote 24 books. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature describes him as, "Perhaps the most outstanding neglected novelist." A one-time member of the Communist Party, after he and his wife Marguerite Roberts refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, they were blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood for nearly a decade.
Sanford wrote half of his books after he was 80. He published a 5-volume autobiography, for which he received a PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Lifetime Achievement Award. He left three unpublished novels and was writing up until a month before his death at 98.
Julian Shapiro was born in Harlem, New York to a first-generation American mother and Russian immigrant father, who was a lawyer. Both were Jewish. His mother died in 1914 when he was only 10, which marked his life. He attended local public schools as a boy.
After graduating from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, Shapiro studied law at Fordham University, obtaining his degree in 1929. A childhood friend of Nathanael West, Shapiro decided to focus on writing when West said he was writing a book.
Shapiro then wrote for avant-garde magazines (The New Review, Tambour, Pagany, Contact) and gave up working as a lawyer. In the summer of 1931, isolated in a log cabin in the Adirondacks, he finished his first novel, The Water Wheel. When he was close to publishing his second book, The Old Man's Place, his friend West (born Weinstein), suggested he change his name to one less identifiably Jewish. Shapiro used the name of a character from his first book and published his second under the pseudonym of John B. Sanford (which he adopted as his legal name in 1940). They both thought that antisemitism could hurt their book sales. In 1935, the success of The Old Man's Place allowed Sanford to consider a screenwriter's career, and he moved to Hollywood.
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