The Secret Defector

Clancy Sigal was born Clarence Sigal on September 6, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois. When he was five years old, he went to jail with his mother when she was arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee for violating social and legal norms when she convened a meeting of black and white female textile workers. He was drafted in 1944 and shipped to Europe during World War II. He plotted to assassinate Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He received a bachelor's degree in English from U.C.L.A.

He worked briefly for Columbia Pictures, where he made his sole screen appearance in 1951 as a savage in the B movie Bride of the Gorilla. Since he was a card-carrying Communist at the time, he was blacklisted briefly for mimeographing subversive leaflets. He later joined the Sam Jaffe Agency, where he represented Barbara Stanwyck and Humphrey Bogart as a Hollywood agent. After traveling to Paris, he stayed in London for 30 years.

He wrote memoirs and autobiographical novels including Weekend in Dinlock; Going Away: A Report, a Memoir; Zone of the Interior; The Secret Defector; A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by Her Bastard Son; and Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal, and Raging Egos. After returning to the United States, he collaborated on several screenplays with his wife Janice Tidwell and taught writing. He died from congestive heart failure on July 16, 2017 at the age of 90.

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