LOS ANGELES -- Alfred Lewis Levitt, 87, a Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted in the 1950s for his involvement with the Communist Party, died here Nov. 16 after a heart attack.
Long after the McCarthy era, Mr. Levitt led the effort to correct the screen credits on dozens of 1950s scripts whose writers, like him, were forced to use a pseudonym.
Despite his frequent grumblings about television writing -- "It grinds you down and has nothing to offer but money" -- Mr. Levitt is best known for his work on popular television series. He wrote for "The Donna Reed Show" in the 1950s, "The Brady Bunch" in the 1960s and "All in the Family" in the 1970s. He often co-wrote scripts with his wife, Helen Slotte Levitt. She died in 1993.
He wrote feature film scripts with his wife, including "The Misadventures of Merlin Jones" (1964) and "The Monkey's Uncle" (1965). He signed them Tom August; she signed them Helen August.
In 1968, after Mr. Levitt began to put his own name on his work again, he helped form the Hollywood Blacklisted Writers Credits Committee. Its members gradually corrected the script credits for dozens of movies for which writers had used an assumed name or a "front," a borrowed name that actually belonged to one or another recognized Hollywood screenwriter.
In 1995, the Writers Guild of America West honored Mr. Levitt for this revisionist work. By then, the Blacklisted Writers Credits Committee had restored accurate screen credits to 82 films, including those of the Levitts.
Mr. Levitt, a New York native, began his writing career as the sports editor for the school paper at New York University's Bronx campus. He joined several political groups as a student, including the Young Communist League in 1932.
"He saw communism as a way to achieve an egalitarian society," Mr. Levitt's son, Tom, said this week. By 1951, the elder Levitt was disenchanted with the party, but when he was subpoenaed, he felt he could not quit. "He didn't want to leave the party when it might appear he left out of fear," the younger Levitt said.
Alfred Levitt did quit in 1956, and from then on he rejected all political ideologies and called himself a political agnostic, his son said.
Mr. Levitt came to Hollywood to work as a script reader in the late 1930s. During World War II, he served with the Army in Europe. In 1948, he received his first movie credit as co-writer of "The Boy With Green Hair."
In recent years, he taught script-writing classes at several schools. He also worked on a Writers Guild project to supplement the pensions of blacklisted writers. He served on the guild's board from 1981 until 1984 and was secretary-treasurer from 1985 until 1989.
In addition to his son, Mr. Levitt is survived by a daughter, a brother and two grandchildren.
