Posted on 09/13/2002 1:09:17 PM PDT by GeneD
Filed at 3:35 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A ghost is haunting Hollywood -- the specter of the long-abandoned anti-communist blacklist of the 1950s.
In a testament to the staying power of the controversial list, the widow of famed liberal film producer Stanley Kramer is thinking of suing the Public Broadcasting Service for a documentary she calls ``a hatchet job'' on her late husband and his relationships with a blacklisted writer of that era.
Karen Sharpe Kramer says that the documentary, ``Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents,'' scheduled to air on PBS Sept. 17, defames her husband by suggesting that he turned against partner Carl Foreman, depriving him of credit for the film ``High Noon,'' after Foreman was declared an ``uncooperative witness'' by a communist-hunting congressional committee.
Kramer, who died last year at age 87, produced such socially conscious movies as ``Judgement at Nuremberg,'' and ``Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.'' He is also credited as producer of ``High Noon,'' whose script was written by Foreman.
The PBS documentary, produced and directed by film writer and self-styled neoconservative Lionel Chetwynd, contends that ``High Noon'' was originally a Foreman production but that Kramer ``hijacked'' his colleague's executive producer credit after Foreman was blacklisted. Foreman continued to be listed as writer of the film.
A FRIEND NOT FOE
Mrs. Kramer says that far from being an unsympathetic film industry kingpin, Stanley Kramer stood up for blacklisted writers and gave them work. ``Stanley always said he didn't believe in the blacklist,'' Mrs. Kramer said in an interview. ``He said, 'I'll hire anybody I damn well please.'''
She also said that Foreman ``voluntarily'' severed his connection to the ``High Noon'' production after his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee and that her husband bought Foreman out of his company for $250,000.
Similar emotions were stirred up three years ago when the Motion Picture Academy awarded an honorary Oscar to director Elia Kazan, who cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The Hollywood community was split over the award because Kazan had named names of former and current Communists in the film industry.
After discussions between PBS and Karen Kramer's legal representatives, the network scheduled a discussion following the documentary at which Kramer's defenders will participate.
PBS officially calls the follow-up show ``a round-table of expert guests'' who will address ``the legacy of the blacklist in the movie business and how power, politics and prestige often collide in the Hollywood of both the past and present.''
PBS senior vice president for programming Jacoba Atlas denied that the follow-up show was in response to legal threats. ``Whenever you follow the blacklist, there are three sides to every story,'' Atlas said on Monday. ``Lionel's documentary takes Carl Foreman's version of what happened and says that's what happened. Historians say there could be a different interpretation. That's what I think the follow-up will do.''
Mrs. Kramer says that she continues to keep open her option to sue, particularly in European countries where, unlike the United States, an allegation of posthumous defamation of character can be the basis of a legal action.
Chetwynd, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, testily defends his documentary as scrupulously researched. ``There's no allegation in the film that's not supported by documents `` he said. ``This isn't a film about Stanley Kramer.''
A BIO OF CARL FOREMAN
The PBS documentary is essentially a biography of Carl Foreman, who died in 1984. Before he was called before HUAC, he was an Oscar-nominated screen writer for ``Champion'' (1949) and ``The Men'' (1950), both of them Kramer productions. ``High Noon'' was also nominated for best screenplay in 1952. Foreman and Kramer had met in the Army, and Foreman subsequently became a partner in Kramer's company.
After his appearance before HUAC, Foreman exiled himself to London, where he continued to produce screenplays. His script for ``The Bridge on the River Kwai'' won the best screenplay Oscar in 1957, but the blacklisted Foreman was not credited as the screenwriter. In the 1960s, after returning to Hollywood, he started his own production company, writing and producing the 1961 action movie ``The Guns of Navarone.''
According to Chetwynd's documentary, ``High Noon,'' which won four Oscars including the Best Actor award for Gary Cooper, was from the beginning Foreman's pet project. He bought the rights to a magazine story called ``The Tin Star,'' transformed it into a taut screenplay and began to put together a production.
Much of Foreman's side of the story is taken from a lengthy letter he wrote to New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther.
Until Foreman was summoned before HUAC, Chetwynd contends Foreman was considered executive producer. ``All the early documents show him as the producer,'' Chetwynd said. ``Then when they fired him, he was listed as associate producer.''
But in an agreement signed by Foreman on Sept. 13, 1951, he's listed as ``High Noon's'' associate producer, Mrs. Foreman said, producing a copy. ``Stanley never took away Carl's credit,'' said Mrs. Kramer, who was not married to Kramer at the time. ``He negotiated himself out of it.''
Hollywood - where self-centered, wealthy and free Americans equate a writer's loss of a byline, or having to switch careers with the starvation of millions, mass-murder or death in a concentration camp.
McCarthy was right. Anyone with a soul, a keyboard and concern for the truth can find it in minutes today. Hollywood betrayed the world. The newsmedia continues the deadly cover-up while millions more are dying of starvation or imprisoned for their beliefs today in Communist dictatorships around the world.
My take - the liberal commies in Hollywood keep coming back to this perceived inquisition as though it was worse than concentration camps in Germany or Russia and moviegoers today don't know that it mostly a fable perpetuated by the left. Either Hollywood blows it out of proportion or makes it to look like the victims received a fate worse than death.
I just rented a Jim Carey movie for entertainment but got propaganda. Consertatives beware the BS is very deep in this flick!
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