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Bess Taffel

American politician (1913-2000)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 24, 2023
Entity authorityQ4896374
Source-derived summary

Bess Taffel Boyle (December 10, 1913 – July 21, 2000) was an American screenwriter, whose career was effectively ended after she was identified as a member of the Communist Party during the McCarthy period.

Taffel is known for writing such films as Elopement.

She wrote only a few television scripts from 1969 to 1974, before she ended her career entirely. She had worked in the Yiddish theatre before becoming a writer in Hollywood.

Family

She was married to Robert F. Boyle, an Academy Award-winning film production designer and art director, until her death from a stroke in 2000 at age 86. They had two children. Her widower died at the age of 100 on August 1, 2010. His career was not impacted by his wife's blacklisting.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bess Taffel” as american politician (1913-2000). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1913, 2000, 1969, 1974—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1913-12-10. The account is most persuasive where Bess, Taffel and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american politician (1913-2000). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q4896374. VIAF identifies the subject as 234902350. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 2000, 1969 and 1974.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bess Taffel”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bess Taffel primary sources, Bess Taffel archive and Bess research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bess Taffel”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Bess Taffel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.