The Front

Howard Prince is the talentless friend of television writer Alfred Miller. The time is the 1950s, during the height of the "Communist witch-hunt". Unable to sell a script under his own name because of his alleged left-wing sympathies, Alfred ask howard to act as his "front". Alfred will write the script, Howard will offer it to the networks as his own. The quality of Howard's "writing" creates a huge demand for "his" work, whereupon he becomes the front for a whole group of blacklisted scriveners; before long, he's rejecting their work as "not up to my standards"! At first willing to exploit the political paranoia for his own gain, Howard's conscience is aroused by the suicide of a once-popular TV comedian who has been ruined by the blacklist.