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Beat the Devil is a 1951 thriller written by Claud Cockburn under the pseudonym James Helvick. [1] Cockburn used the pseudonym because, although he had left the British Communist Party in 1947, he was still considered a "Red" during the early years of the Cold War, which was rife with anti-communist sentiment. Beat the Devil was Cockburn's first novel, and the first work of fiction that the long-time political journalist had written since the 1920s. The title was later used by Cockburn's son Alexander for his regular column in The Nation .
The novel was published in the United Kingdom by Boardman and in the United States by J. B. Lippincott & Co. The publishers paid Cockburn an advance of between £200–300 and $750, respectively. Beat the Devil was made into a 1953 film by director John Huston, who paid Cockburn £3,000 for the rights to the book and screenplay. Cockburn collaborated with Huston on the early drafts of the script, but the credit went to Truman Capote.
