Sergei Eisenstein
Eisenstein proposed a biography of munitions invester Sir Basil Zaharoff and a movie version of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw.  He also made plans for a movie of Sutter's Gold by Jack London. But the studio's producers did not like the plan. Paramount then proposed a movie version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. This excited Eisenstein, who had read and liked the work, and had met Dreiser at one time in Moscow. Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930. Paramount disliked it completely.  They also found themselves intimidated by Major Frank Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-communist, started a public campaign against Eisenstein. On October 23, 1930, Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract canceled. Eisenstein and his movie partners were given return tickets to Moscow, at Paramount's expense.