Biography
Ben Maddow (also credited as David Wolff) was an American screenwriter and documentarian whose career spanned the 1930s to the 1970s. Educated at Columbia University, he began in the documentary movement, co-founding the newsreel The World Today in 1936 and co-writing the screenplay for Native Land (1942) under the pseudonym David Wolff.
He received his first feature screenplay credit for Framed (1947). Notable credits include Intruder in the Dust (1949), The Asphalt Jungle (1950, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay), Johnny Guitar (1954), The Unforgiven (1960), The Way West (1967) and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969). During the blacklist period he worked uncredited or with fronts such as Philip Yordan on several projects. As a documentarian he co-directed The Savage Eye (1959), which won a BAFTA Flaherty Documentary Award. He also directed the feature An Affair of the Skin (1963).
