Millen Brand facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Millen Brand
|
|
|---|---|
Brand in the 1930s
|
|
| Born | January 19, 1906 Jersey City, New Jersey |
| Died | March 19, 1980 (aged 74) |
| Occupation | Novelist, screenwriter, poet |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Years active | 50 |
| Notable works | The Outward Room, Savage Sleep, Local Lives |
| Spouse | Pauline Leader, Helen Mendelssohn |
| Children | 4 |
Millen Brand (born January 19, 1906 – died March 19, 1980) was an American writer and poet. He was known for his novels, especially The Outward Room (1938) and Savage Sleep (1968). These books talked about mental health hospitals and were very popular when they came out.
Contents
Early Life and Family
Millen Brand was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on January 19, 1906. His family was working-class. His dad was an electrician, and his mom was a nurse. When he was young, his father bought a farm. Millen liked helping with farm chores and stopped going to school for a while.
After a few years, his family moved back to the city because farming was not making enough money. Millen Brand had family roots from the Pennsylvania Dutch people on his mother's side. He lived in Greenwich Village in New York City and also on a small farm in Bally, Pennsylvania. He was married twice and had four children.
Becoming a Writer
Millen Brand studied at Columbia University, where he earned degrees in arts and journalism. After college, he worked as a copywriter for the New York Telephone Company from 1929 to 1937.
In 1935, Brand joined a group called the League of American Writers. This group included many famous writers like Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman. Many members of this group shared similar political ideas with the U.S. Communist Party.
Brand lived in New York City with other artists and writers. They often used their friends and experiences in their creative work. For example, the painter Alice Neel lived near Brand. Her time in a psychiatric hospital helped inspire Brand's novel The Outward Room.
Writing About Mental Health
In 1937, Brand wrote his first novel, The Outward Room. This book was a huge success! It sold over half a million copies and was chosen by the Book of the Month Club. It was translated into six languages and even became a Broadway play and a TV show starring Charlton Heston.
The Outward Room tells the story of Harriet, a young woman who was in a mental hospital for seven years. She escapes to New York City. There, she meets a kind machinist and union activist named John. They fall in love and get married. The book suggests that Harriet gets better through her relationship with John and by connecting with ordinary people.
Critics loved the book's writing. They said it showed how people try to connect and support each other during tough times like the Great Depression. The book also suggested that mental illness can make people feel alone. It showed that while doctors can help, true healing often comes from caring relationships. Even Eleanor Roosevelt praised the play, saying its message was about how people deal with suffering and help others.
Teaching and Screenwriting
In the 1940s, Millen Brand taught writing at the University of New Hampshire and New York University. During World War II, he wrote manuals for the Office of Civilian Defense.
In 1948, Brand was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the movie The Snake Pit. He wrote the screenplay with Frank Partos. This movie, like his own novel The Outward Room, was about a mental health institution. While working on the film, Brand became friends with Mary Jane Ward, who wrote the original novel, and met many important psychiatrists.
Plans to turn another of Brand's novels, Albert Spears, into a movie fell apart. This was because of the Hollywood blacklist, a time when many people in the film industry were prevented from working due to their political beliefs.
Brand also worked with a psychiatrist named John M. Rosen. Based on his experiences with Rosen's methods, Brand wrote his 1968 novel Savage Sleep.
Later Career and Activism
Because of the Hollywood blacklist, Brand could not work in film or theater for a while. He became an editor at Crown Publishers for about 20 years, starting in the early 1950s. He also continued to teach writing.
Brand wrote about the Pennsylvania Dutch culture in two of his works: Fields of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album (1970), which included photos, and Local Lives (1975), a book of poems about his neighbors.
Millen Brand was also an activist. He supported groups that fought against fascism in the 1930s. Later in his life, he was active in the peace movement. He also worked to help writers of color and younger writers get their poetry published, through his friendship with the poet June Jordan.
In 1953, Brand was called to appear before a U.S. Senate committee led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Brand refused to speak against his friends from the League of American Writers, using his right under the Fifth Amendment. Because of this, his books were banned from U.S. State Department libraries in other countries.
