The Front

It's the early 1950s New York City. Unmotivated in life, Howard Prince works as the night cashier in a diner, he squandering whatever little money he earns and more on bad investments, mostly of the gambling kind, he thus in debt to a number of people. He is approached by his childhood friend Alfred Miller, a successful television script writer, who has just been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Alfred who had never hid his Communist sympathies since well before the government witch-hunt through HUAC. Knowing that writing under a pseudonym would not work to get writing jobs, Alfred asks Howard to be his writing front i.e. Alfred would write the scripts for the network show for which he was working for producer Phil Sussman, and Howard would submit them under his name for a ten percent cut, Phil none the wiser. Beyond Howard needing to learn how to seem credible as a writer to Phil and others, Alfred sees Howard as the perfect person for this job in this era as someone who HUAC would never investigate in he being overtly non-political. Beyond the money, Howard agrees purely in an act of friendship. But as Howard as Alfred's front becomes entrenched in the world of network television as a success, and now swayed by the money, Howard gets Alfred to convince two of his other blacklisted writing friends to let him act as their fronts for the same percentage cut. In the process, Howard meets two people who would influence him in this work. One is Florence Barrett, the show's story editor, who doesn't much like what the blacklist is doing to the business especially in being "left" leaning herself. She and Howard fall for each other, Florence's attraction to him in large part because of his insightful scripts. And two is comedian Hecky Brown, who doesn't know what to do about HUAC as he previously had some connection to left wing activities solely to impress a girl, HUAC who wants him to name names or find out others who HUAC may suspect as Communists, with he blacklisted if he doesn't cooperate. The blacklist is more devastating to actors than writers if only because actors cannot get a front to be them. Howard's relationship with the two will influence what he decides to do when, due solely to his increasing success leading to a covert investigation, he is asked to testify to HUAC.