- Inventor of the microwriter, a replacement for the keyboard that requires one hand to operate.
- In the 1950s he was blacklisted by Hollywood studios as a result of his name being brought up by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in its now-discredited hunt for "Communist subversives" in Hollywood. Unable to support his family because producers were terrified to hire him, he accepted work in England and moved there, where he wrote several screenplays--although not under his real name--and eventually directed a few films.
- He was at one time a professional magician, and in the early 1940s even instructed Orson Welles, who had a lifelong interest in magic.
- In England he directed several movies starring Stanley Baker, and several they produced together --including Zulu (1964) and Sands of the Kalahari (1965). They began their collaboration with Hell Drivers (1957), followed by Sea Fury (1958). All were adventure films.
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