hollywood communist gets decapitated

Left-to-right: communist “Adrian Scott socializing with Norma Barzman, Jeannie Lees, Bobby Lees, and Anne Scott (seated on floor), circa 1946.” As all of the photos I’d seen of Norma Barzman were of her when she was presumably in her nineties, old and hideous, and she functioned as a living communist, er, “progressive” (aka “leftist”) souvenir, I searched for a pic of her as a young woman, and seem to have found one of her as a young knockout. This is from her memoir, The Red and the Blacklist. Norma Barzman spent the 1950s and ‘60s giving birth to and raising seven little red diaper babies.

[“communist Norma Barzman and plagiarism.”]

By RM
friday, december 22, 2023 at 12:30:00 a.m. est

Interesting to see the photo of Robert Lees, who with his co-writer Frederic Rinaldo (and another scribe, John Grant) penned many classic Abbott and Costello movies. Lees (1912-2004) was decapitated in his home at the age of 91 by a sword-wielding intruder who was high on drugs- something unlikely to have occurred if the Communists hadn’t undermined every aspect of American life, including the promotion and normalization of drug use, and the undermining of law enforcement (remember when cops used to patrol neighborhoods at night, watching out for suspicious activity?).

Lees’ murderer, Kevin Lee Graff, 27, then murdered retired doctor, Hal Engelson, while Engelson was on the phone, booking a plane ticket. The ticket clerk—they used human beings, in those days—heard the commotion, and immediately called the cops, who saw Engelson’s corpse through the window, and forced their way inside.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blacklisted-screenwriter-murdered/

The cbs news item adds the info that the killer “had a ‘War is Not the Answer’ bumper sticker on his car” (therefore, hippie-Leftist), and that Lees was yet another blacklist “victim” who continued to work under an assumed name.

By RM
friday, december 22, 2023 at 8:43:00 a.m. est

The published screenplay of Hold That Ghost greets the reader with a foreword by (I believe-don’t have it handy) the son of either Lees or Rinaldo, and-surprise!-it’s yet another diatribe about the blacklist.

The info about the killer being “high” comes from a fascinating book called Show Business Homicides, by David Frasier. Published by McFarland, which means you’d have to have patience to get it for a reasonable price (say, 30 bucks or less-their books seem generally aimed at libraries, price-wise).

Most of the murders detailed therein occur from the 1960s onward, and most are drug-related... -RM