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THE FRONT
November 28, 2017  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

This 1976 drama stars Woody Allen, but isn’t a Woody Allen film. It’s one of his relatively rare acting-only roles, playing a cashier in the early 1950s who agrees to earn money to offset his gambling debts to agreeing to pose as a “front” for a blacklisted show-business writer – a job description that expands as more and more blacklisted writers hire him to pretend to write their scripts, in exchange for a percentage. Co-stars include Zero Mostel, who, like The Front director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein, were victims of the actual Communist-hunting “Red Scare” of the era.

 
 
 
 
 
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