A Dash of Salt (Waldo and Jennifer)

We love multigenerational show biz stories here on Travalanche, and this one is especially rewarding.

It begins with screenwriter Waldo Salt (1914-1987). Having just written about Waldo Pepper a few days ago, it seems obligatory to complete the set of shakers on the table. (Believe it or not, no one is sure if the fictional barnstormer’s name is an homage to the writer. Both George Roy Hill and William Goldman died before anyone seems to have asked them).

Why, you may ask, would anyone pay homage to a screenwriter by naming a movie character after him? One reason might be that Waldo Salt was martyred by the Un-American Activities Committee, essentially blacklisted through the 1950s and ’60s. He’d joined the Communist Party in 1938 and it came back to bite him. He refused to testify during the Red Scare and so he was out in the cold. But he did manage to come back. The other interesting aspect of Salt’s career is that he was one of the few Hollywood screenwriters to have a major footprint in both the classic studio era and the time of New Hollywood. In fact, when he came back to Hollywood, he was was more successful than ever. Which is unusual, if you think about it. Most of the creatives of his generation had a really hard time adjusting to the post-Bonnie and Clyde aesthetic of the late ’60s and ’70s. Somehow Salt knew how to do it. Having a beef with previously sacrosanct American institutions surely helped.

Salt’s scripts from back in the day included: The Shopworn Angel (1938),The Wild Man of Borneo (1940), Tonight We Raid Calais (1943), Rachel and the Stranger (1948), and The Flame and the Arrow (1950). His screenplays following his triumphant return included Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), Serpico (1973), The Day of the Locust (1975), and Coming Home (1978). He won two Oscars and was nominated for a third. I mean, that is a good batch of movies.

Like most blacklisted screenwriters, Salt continued to work during the period when he was ostensibly banned, often using the pseudonym Mel Davenport. For much of the 1950s he wrote for British television.

Three years after he died, Salt was the subject of the documentary Waldo Salt: A Screenwriters Journey. Two years after that, Sundance instituted the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Speaking of which: Hey! Mr. Redford! Is Waldo Pepper named in honor of Waldo Salt?

No discussion of New Hollywood would be complete without at least a mention of Jennifer Salt (b. 1944), even if she weren’t Waldo’s daughter. She was the subject of one of Brian De Palma’s first films, the short Jennifer (1964), and then became a key member of his early stock company, appearing in nearly every one of his movies through Sisters (1972), in which she co-starred with her then room-mate Margo Kidder. Salt had attended New York’s prestigious High School of Performing Arts and Sarah Lawrence College. She also acted on Broadway in the plays Watercolor and Criss-Crossing (1970) and Father’s Day (1971), the latter with Marian Seldes,Brenda Vaccaro, and Donald Moffat, who also directed. Her early credits are a perfect New Hollywood resume. In addition to the De Palma films, she’s also in Midnight Cowboy (no shock), John and Mary (1970) with Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, The Revolutionary (1970) with Jon Voigt, Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud(1970) and Woody Allen’sPlay It Again Sam (1972).

An appearance in the ABC TV Movie of the WeekGargoyles (1972) marked a transition to television and a pragmatic move towards the center of the entertainment world. To this day, she may be best known for her role as Eunice Tate on the smash hit ABC sit-com Soap (1977-81). After Soap wrapped she continued to guest star on such shows as Magnum PI,It’s a Living,Family Ties, and Murder She Wrote. One of her last acting credits was as a regular on a short-lived series called The Marshall Chronicles in 1990.

Salt then went on to bigger and better things as a writer and producer. She is best known for her association with Ryan Murphy, working with him on the series Nip/Tuck (2003-2010), the movie Eat Pray Love (2010), and the shows American Horror Story (2011-2022), and Ratched (2020).