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Alfred Hayes

Alfred Hayes

Alfred Hayes was born in Britain in 1911. He was a novelist, television writer, screenwriter, and poet. He worked principally in Italy and the United States. He is perhaps best known for his poem Joe Hill, set to music by Earl Robinson.

Hayes graduated from New York's City College, worked briefly as a newspaper reporter, and began writing fiction and poetry in the 1930s. During World War II he served in Europe in the U.S. Army Special Services. He stayed on in Rome and became a screenwriter of Italian neorealist films. His screenplay for Roberto Rossellini's film, Paisan (1946) was nominated for an Academy Award.

All Alfred Hayes's books

Latest reviews

  • from Mostly Fiction The liberation of Rome during World War II was not a "liberation" to many of its inhabitants after the occupying American and British armies took up residence.  The initial joy at the Germans' departure had faded, six months later, as many Italians...
    — Jun 26 2007
  • Hayes (1911-1985) was a novelist (My Face for the World to See), screenwriter (The Bicycle Thief;Clash by Night) and songwriter ("The Ballad of Joe Hill"). This grim novel of WWII, first published in 1949, opens on the Pulcini family of Rome's Via Flaminia, reduced to poverty...
    — Oct 26 2006
  • Lonely GI in meets a signorina who's available…or is she? This superb short novel, a reissue originally published in 1949, is by unjustly neglected American poet, novelist and screenwriter Hayes (1911-1985).  Rome, December 1944. The Allies have liberated the...
    — Oct 11 2006

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