Posted on 04/18/2005 10:47:45 AM PDT by Liz
In 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began a series of official inquiries into the penetration of the Hollywood film industry by the American Communist Party (CPUSA).
Major public hearings were held in 1947 and 1951, with smaller hearings throughout the mid-1950s. In the course of these inquiries, dozens of “friendly” Hollywood witnesses denounced hundreds of people as secret members of the Communist Party, while dozens of “unfriendly” witnesses refused to discuss their politics with the Committee. Those who were either publicly or privately denounced as members of the CPUSA found it almost impossible to get employment in the motion-picture industry for at least for a decade.
The most famous victims of the resulting blacklist were the original group of “unfriendly” witnesses, known as the “Unfriendly Ten” or “Hollywood Ten.” These individuals–mostly screenwriters– refused to give political information about themselves before HUAC in October 1947.1
The blacklist functioned in part officially, as demonstrated by a joint public announcement of the motion picture firms in November 1947 that henceforth no studio would knowingly employ any member of the Communist Party, or the members of any other group which advocated the overthrow of the United States government by revolution.
The blacklist also operated unofficially, through instruments such as the irresponsible red-baiting newsletter Red Channels, which named whole swaths of people as subversives. This, for example, ruined the career of the left-wing but non-Communist actress Marsha Hunt. 2
The blacklist also often functioned in secret: jobs just dried up. As a result, “fixers” emerged to get people unofficially “pardoned” by anti-Communist organizations and film industry managers, therefore making them employable again. One famous “fixer” was the fiercely anti-Communist actor Ward Bond. 3
“Fronts” arose as well in the form of people offering scripts ghost-written by blacklisted screenwriters in exchange for official credit for the script and often a cut of the payment. One famous example of such a “front” was Philip Yordan, himself a quite famous screenwriter. 4
Some film careers were totally destroyed as a result of the blacklist system. For instance, Mickey Knox, “the next John Garfield,” was a rising star of the late 1940s, turning in a star performance in the great gangster film White Heat (1949). If you have never heard of Mickey Knox, well, that is the point. Many other careers suffered severe setbacks, such as that of actor Howard Da Silva. 5
Actors and directors suffered more severely than screenwriters because they could not act or direct under assumed names, whereas screenwriters could use the “front” system, which allowed the most talented of them to continue to write. The CPUSA, however, had made its largest inroads in Hollywood among screenwriters, and many screenwriters’ careers suffered greatly or ended.
It is generally not a good idea to attack professional writers because they tend to write, and to write well, to get in the last word. This has certainly been the case with the blacklist. None of the HUAC committee or staff (which originally included Congressman Richard M. Nixon) has written memorably on the events of 1947 and 1951, let alone on the later, smaller investigations.
A few of those who appeared as “friendly witnesses” before HUAC, such as directors Edward Dmytryk and Elia Kazan, and actor Sterling Hayden. have written important memoirs, often defending their conduct and sometimes expressing self-doubt. 6
But such figures are far outnumbered by the self-justifying and bitter memoirs of those who were denounced: Norma Barzman; Walter Bernstein; Alvah Bessie; Herbert Biberman; Conrad Bromberg; Lester Cole; Lillian Hellman; Howard Koch; Ring Lardner, Jr. (and now his daughter Kate); Donald Ogden Stewart; Dalton Trumbo; and Ella Winter. 7
The publication of these works, and more fundamentally the cultural shift in Hollywood to domination by a bien peasant Left that started around 1960 and accelerated in the 1970s, has led to the lionization of the Unfriendly Ten as American “rebels” and martyred “non-conformists.”
Meanwhile, the anger within the current filmmaking elite at those who originally “named names” in the 1940s and 1950s has been unremitting. A now unalterable view of what occurred is held by people who have little knowledge of what it actually meant in the 1940s to be a Communist; that is, a Stalinist. Two examples demonstrate the current political situation.
Long read---rest at link.
We have a "formal" library, complete with fireplace and floor to ceiling bookshelves on every inch of wall space,where there isn't a window.
I have a study, with one wall of bookcases; my husband has his study, which has a wall of bookshelves. There are filled bookcases in our daughter's room; though she took quite a lot of books with here, when she moved away and now she and her husband have run out of bookshelf space, even though they bought a lovely antique secretary that has shelf space, for the overflow.
I have books in my living room ( I also have an antique secretary. LOL ), books in the guest room, books in the kitchen, books in the master bathroom, books still in boxes in the basement, two shelves of books in the train room, and I have now run out of book room! :-(
Oh, I don't read Clancey's books; not my cuppa.
We make ice cream too, though not often. There's a local Conn. ice cream that I love,but it isn't as good as the stuff in Florida.
A "colored herb" in their dish? LOL
My daughter started off as a rather picky eater, but just hang in there...children will grow out of that! Now, my beloved kiddo is a far more adventurous eater than I; she ate THE strangest stuff in South Africa!
My daughter was never much of a T.V. watcher and we didn't want her to be,so we showed her movies and then tapes (when VCRs came along ) of what WE wanted her to see and appreciate. If you want some suggestion re NON-Disney stuff, for you kiddos, just drop me a note in FREEPmail, with their ages and I'll be more than happy to give you a list. :-)
Long read, but worth it. It's always a pleasant surprise to read a sober story about HUAC and the Hollywood blacklisting that does not gratuitously invoke the name of Joe McCarthy (who, of course had nothing to do with HUAC) and lob the word "McCarthyism" into every other paragraph.
YIKES ! Thanks for the link. :-)
I like what Robert Mitchum said about the commie writers in the late 40's, early fifties. " It is hard to have sympathy for a bunch of spoiled brats who make $5,000 a week, and on Thursday nights, sneak off to a meeting in a fashonable house in Beverly Hills to meet with commie hotshots. Me, I kicked a couple of their asses, just on general principles"
A&E Network, 1996.
And Borges, there havent been more than 20 good films released in the last 20 years.
(Former tv writer)
Tim
Yeah, most of the great films were made between 1930, and 1970. Nine out of ten feature releases today I give up on in the first 20 minutes.
Well see I think the 1970s was a great time for American cinema..The Godfather, Taxi Driver and so on. The 1960s was weak. Transitional period.
Actually, according to a standard history of Communism among US writers, Daniel Aaron's Writers on the Left, most US Communist writers had become disillusioned with Stalin by the end of the 1930s due to the Stalin/Trotsky rift, the Purge Trials, the Nazi-Soviet alliance, and in general the Communist Party's policy flip-flops and overbearing disciplinary tactics, which had driven away even former enthusiasts like Max Eastman as early as the late '20s. By 1953 very few major US writers supported Stalin--Dreiser was actually one of the few top writers who attended the last conference of the League of American Writers in 1942, along with, notably, Donald Ogden Stewart and Dashiell Hammett. There are other specifics in this post and previous ones I'd raise questions about, but it's past midnight here, so rather than chasing down each of those rabbits, I will just say that I feel it's important to review the known facts about each individual before making an assumption of guilt or innocence. In some cases a detailed review of a person's record will show that they travelled with the Communist Party for a time but were never a committed member, or were a member but left later for any of a number of factors ranging from personal to ideological reasons. In other cases someone who seems to be a mere dilettante turns out to be more than that. In other cases the evidence is too inconclusive to decide one way or the other, and we have to settle for not knowing. By the time George Orwell died he had compiled a list of 135 writers and other figures he suspected of Communist affiliation or fellow travelling, but he only felt confident enough about the facts to turn 38 of those names over to British intelligence for further review when he was on his deathbed.
Great post. Thanks.
Have there even BEEN 20 "good" films in the last 20 years? I think that that figure is a bit on the high end. :-)
The 60's gave us Dr. Stranglove...The Man Who shot Liberty Valance and several other classics. The 70's actually were better than the 60's, if you discount all the leftist counter culture pablum they put out.
I cant think of 10 : )
Strangelove that is....
If you have a list of 20, I'm always looking for new films to watch, so I'd like to hear your picks! :-) Will check back later to see if anyone has any good film recommendations--good night, all!
Technically Dr. Strangelove was a British film wasn't it? Distributed in America by Columbia Pictures. The collapse of the studio system in the 60s resulted in these international productions...wherever the producers could scrape financing together.
Balderdash! The '60s had some great films..."THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING,THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING", "THE PAWNBROKER",and "2001; A SPACE ODYESSEY"; to name but three.
'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' was a great summation of Ford's career. It was a farwell to the legend of the West that he had put forth just before a new generation, Leone, Peckinpah would present a different vision.
"Technically Dr. Strangelove was a British film wasn't it?"
No. You might be thinking of the other Peter Sellers films, which were financed here, but produced in England.
Peter Sellers made a number of films for the Boulting Bros
and then for Blake Edwards in the early to mid sixties.
I am a great fan of Leone, but not Pecker: )
As always, a brilliant, cogent post. Now go read your E-mail. :-)
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