Maurice Rapf (May 19, 1914 – April 15, 2003) was a Jewish American screenwriter and professor of film studies. His work includes the screenplays for Song of the South, Winter Carnival, and So Dear to My Heart. He was a co-founder of the Screen Writers Guild. He was blacklisted in 1947 due to his association with the Communist Party. He later taught at Dartmouth College.
How, one might ask, did I rationalize the Moscow purge trials of 1937? (I believed the Trotskyites were plotting with the Nazis to undermine the socialist experiment.) How did I accept the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 which led to the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of World War II? (I had a hard time with this but became convinced that Stalin was just buying time to prepare for the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union, which, in fact, was what Churchill and his European allies had wanted all along.) To this day, I don't know the correct answer to these questions.
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I never knew anyone in the Party - in all the years I was associated with it, which was a long, long time - who was seeking anything but humanistic goals. Certainly, there was never any attempt on the part of the people I knew to overthrow the government of the United States.... We did believe in class struggle. I still believe in class struggle.
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Fact
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Blacklisted in 1947 because of his support for the Communist Party and his union work, Rapf later moved east with his family, settled in Norwich, Vermont, and helped establish the Dartmouth Film Society, the country's first college film society.
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Became an advocate for the rights of screenwriters and helped found the Screen Writers Guild, later renamed the Writers Guild of America.
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Returned to Dartmouth in 1967 where he began a long career as a teacher of film.
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Lectured at Dartmouth during the sixties, and eventually founded the college's film studies program.
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Blacklisted by Hollywood during the McArthy era, and never worked there again.
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