Leftism
While he attended Columbia, he was drawn to the political left by Whittaker Chambers, who was a fellow student at the time, and by the harsh Great Depression world in which he lived. He would openly describe himself as opposed to capitalist class society and to imperialism, with all its racist foundations. While living in Hollywood Endore was interviewed several times and wrote articles for multiple leftist publications, including Black and White, The Clipper, and New Masses.
Endore was a member of the Communist Party in Hollywood and was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee during its search for Communist infiltration of the film industry. He was, however, never called before a “witch-hunting committee” and did not spend any time in jail. Because of his Communist associations, some studios blacklisted him and he had to sell his screenplays under the pseudonym Harry Relis. (Relis was actually the husband of Endore's wife's eldest sister.) However, he remained defiant, claiming that he was a failure as a human being if he was not subversive to everything HUAC stood for.
After the release of Khrushchev Report (1956) he abandoned the fight against the blacklist, only a few years before the reinstatement of many leftist sympathizers in the film industry. This has cast him into obscurity amongst the more prominent pro-Communist writers. Endore struggled to produce significant works of leftist fiction, but he often felt resigned to composing what he believed would sell--especially after the public failure of Babouk, with its more explicitly sympathetic depiction of the Haitian Revolution. He retained his profound interest in historical subjects, however.
Endore studied and was greatly inspired by Marx. He had strong interests, intellectual and moral, in mysticism, yoga, vegetarianism, theosophy, and anti-vivisectionism. Endore was a friend of Lillain Smith.
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