- Born
- Died
- Birth nameCharles Leonard Appleton
- Height5′ 9″ (1.75 m)
- Charles Leonard, born Chaim Leb Eppelboim, worked in Hollywood from the early 1920's to the early 1960's as a publicist, screenwriter, and script doctor. A member of the Rodeo Drive Radicals in the leftist Hollywood Theatre Alliance, he collaborated with Langston Hughes and gave Hughes the idea for the skit "Young Black Joe." He claimed to have been the ghostwriter for L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics, "when he worked as Head of Publicity for the L. Ron Hubbard Foundation in Wichita, Kansas circa the early 1950's, although no evidence of that has been uncovered. He was fired from the Foundation position for his past membership in the Communist Party, after David and Babette Lang named him at the McCarthy HUAC hearings. Leonard then worked as a script doctor for Twentieth Century Fox, and wrote "To the Actor" for his friend and mentor Michael Chekhov, whose name appears as author of the book.
Leonard moved to Europe in 1963 with his young daughter, remaining there until 1966 and completing his book, "To the Director and Playwright." Upon his return to the United States, Leonard was unable to find work in Hollywood, and accepted a one year professorship at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, teaching Method acting. It was to be his last job. He returned to California to live at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, where he died in 1986.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Julietta Appleton
- SpousesHelen Jacobs (divorced)Betty Appleton(? - 1961) (her death)Margaret P. Breil(? - 1984) (her death)
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