The Front (1976): Cast & Plot

In New York City, 1953, at the height of the anti-Communist investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), television screenwriter Alfred Miller [Michael Murphy] is blacklisted and cannot get work. He asks his friend Howard Prince [Woody Allen], a restaurant cashier and small-time bookie, to sign his name to Miller’s television scripts in exchange for ten percent of the money Miller makes from them, i.e. to serve as a “front” for Miller. Howard agrees out of friendship and because he needs the money. The scripts are submitted to network producer Phil Sussman [Herschel Bernardi], who is pleased to have a writer not on the television blacklist. Howard’s script also offers a plum role for Hecky Brown [Zero Mostel], one of Sussman’s top actors.