Storm could have cared less if he made any money from his, " I was swindled " book. It was purely written for revenge and to hurt the reputation of Columbia Pictures Corporation.
In 1947, Columbia Pictures bought the rights to Storms book, Thunder God's Gold. They told Storm they would write a screenplay based on his book and make a feature film based on it. Columbia led Storm to believe and Storm took that to mean Columbia would follow his storyline as written. Columbia however had a much different idea.
Columbia needed an adventure action film to rival Republic Pictures Treasure of the Sierra Madres. At first Columbia's film was called Bonanza but just before its finish was changed to, Lust for Gold.
The film butchered Storm's book even though the credits billed the picture, " the true story of a secret treasure based on the book Thunder God's Gold written by Barry Storm.
Columbia portrayed Storm as the grandson of Jacob Waltz and led audience to believe several other unsavory untruths about Storm and his personal life.
Storm was furious and sued Columbia to write out the lies about him and stick to the original books storyline. Columbia settled with Storm for a pittance then turned around and released the film the way they always planned to anyway.
Storm sued again but Columbia's lawyers bled him out of money and Storm was forced to walk away disgraced and empty handed.
Storm decided to get back at Columbia by writing a book that exposed their lies and treachery and used the red communist scare of the late 1940's to paint Columbia as dirty anti American communists. Storm wanted to tarnish Columbia's reputation just as they had tarnished his.
Storm's book, I was swindled by red movie makers, was financed by backers of Wisconsin Senator Eugene McCarthy to aid in the red scare of the late 40s and early 50's. Storm made little or no money from the book sales but achieved his goal of striking back at Columbia for what they had done to him.
