Sapphire Films was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 production company, active in the 1950s. Amongst their best-known series are The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot

The Adventures of Sir Lancelot

The Adventures of Sir Lancelot is a British television series first broadcast in 1956, produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment and screened on the ITV network...

, The Buccaners

The Buccaneers (TV series)

The Buccaneers was a 1956 Sapphire Films television drama series for ITC Entertainment, networked by CBS in the US and shown on ATV and selected ITV companies in the UK....

, and The Four Just Men produced for ITC Entertainment

ITC Entertainment

The Incorporated Television Company was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.-History:...

 and screened on ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 in the UK, as well as being networked in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Sapphire Films was founded by producer Hannah Weinstein

Hannah Weinstein

Hannah Weinstein was an American journalist, publicist and left-wing political activist who moved to Britain and became a television producer. She is best known for having produced The Adventures of Robin Hood television series in the 1950s...

, allegedly with funds provided by the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party USA

Communist Party USA

The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....

. Weinstein hired many blacklisted

Hollywood blacklist

The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...

Hollywood writers to write scripts for The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Four Just Men under pseudonyms, and instituted elaborate security measures to ensure that the writers' true identities remained secret.