​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. John Sanford or John B. Sanford, born Julian Lawrence Shapiro (May 31, 1904 - March 5, 2003), was an American screenwriter and author who wrote 24 books. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature describes him as "Perhaps the most outstanding neglected novelist". A one-time member of the Communist Party, after he and his wife Marguerite Roberts refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, they were blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood for nearly a decade. Sanford wrote half of his books after he was 80. He published a 5-volume autobiography, for which he received a PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Lifetime Achievement Award. He left three unpublished novels and was writing up until a month before his death at 98. Description above from the Wikipedia article John Sanford, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia