miss him so much when he's offscreen." Roger Ebert dismissed the political value of The Front: "What we get are the adventures of a schlemiel in wonderland". He felt that the Woody Allen character was too comic and unconvincing a writer to represent the true nature of "front" writers. He added that Hecky Brown was a worthwhile character: "The tragedy implied by this character tells us what we need to know about the blacklist's effect on people's lives; the rest of the movie adds almost nothing else". As of April 2021, The Front holds a rating of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes from 25 reviews. Accolades For The Front, Walter Bernstein was nominated for the 1977 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay and Zero Mostel was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. Andrea Marcovicci was nominated for the 1977 "Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress". Historical basis The movie draws from real life incidents in its depiction of the characters. A scene in which Hecky (played by Mostel) goes to entertain at a mountain resort, and then is cheated out of part of his fee, is based on an incident described by Bernstein in his memoirs Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. In the book, Bernstein describes how Mostel came to entertain at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills, where he used to entertain as a rising comic because he desperately needed the money. The manager of the Concord promised him $500, but when he arrived, reduced that to $250, according to Bernstein. In the movie, Hecky has a violent scene when, after the performance, he learns he has been cheated. In real life, Mostel was told before the performance and acted out his hostility during the performance by cursing at the customers, who thought it was part of the act. Hecky Brown, and his suicide, was based on blacklisted actor Philip Loeb, a personal friend of Mostel who was investigated by HUAC and fired from his leading role in the television series The Goldbergs in 1951. He died by suicide in 1955. Mostel personally was motivated to participate in the project because he wanted to educate future generations of Americans. As he pointed out in his biography by Jared Brown, "It's part of this country, and a lot of kids don't even realize that blacklisting ever existed." An informal collective of