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The son of a St. Louis grocer, Morris Carnovsky inaugurated his stage career in 1919. He played an extensive variety of roles on Broadway, from Shakespeare to Clifford Odets. In films from 1937, he was seen in such noteworthy roles as Anatole France in the Oscar-winning Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Papa Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945). He was also an effective "civilized heavy" opposite Humphrey Bogart in Dead Reckoning (1947). Carnovsky's film career came to sudden halt in 1951 when he was blacklisted after an appearance as an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Though he was denied film and TV work, Carnovsky and his actress wife Phoebe Brand worked steadily on-stage in New York and Europe. He returned to films in the French-Italian production of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge (1962), and in 1974 made his first appearance in a Hollywood film in nearly a quarter of a century. Still active into his late eighties, Morris Carnovsky worked as an actor and director on the regional theater circuit.