Biography
Paul Jarrico was an American screenwriter and film producer. Born Israel Shapiro in Los Angeles in 1915, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in 1936 and began writing screenplays in the late 1930s, initially for Columbia Pictures on low-budget comedies and dramas.
He received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of Tom, Dick and Harry (1941). After refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he was blacklisted. In 1953–54 he produced Salt of the Earth (1954) alongside other blacklisted artists; the independent film about a New Mexico miners' strike faced distribution barriers in the US but later entered the National Film Registry.
Jarrico moved to Europe in 1958, writing under the pseudonym Peter Achilles, and returned to the United States in the 1970s. He worked on later films including Messenger of Death (1988) and led efforts to restore screen credits to blacklisted writers. He died in a car accident in California in 1997.
