Hollywood: Bastion Of 'Hate-Americanism'

Lange, right, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) rub shoulders at a film premiere in New York City.

Jessica Lange, a movie actress of no particular distinction, told the press at a film festival this year in Spain, "I'm ashamed to come from the United States," where it is "poisonous, intolerable for those of us who are not right wing." She thanked festival organizers for "allowing me to get out" of the United States and its horrors for a few days.

These remarks caused little stir in Hollywood where filmdom's moneyed proletarians drive around in Porsches and Jags, envious of those who can afford a Rolls, and frequently speaking of the country in much the same terms as Lange. Rolling in moola always has seemed to some to provide a license for hating this country. Those with memories that go beyond Monica and Bill will recall that it was the heirs to some of the biggest American fortunes, shrill twits such as Corliss Lamont and Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who carried the most water for Marxism-Leninism when that was the fashionable wallow.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was talk of "Moscow gold," but it was Moscow that raked it in from Beverly Hills fat cats. The Soviets no longer are around to pass the hat, but there remain plenty of "hate-America" movements to substitute. And sad little Jane Fonda still is here to fulminate for such causes.

It brings to mind the year 1947, when the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), in its all-thumbs way, decided to look into what was going on in the film capital. They could have saved themselves a lot of time by listening to labor leader Roy Brewer or Morrie Ryskind or Irene Dunne instead of subpoenaing the gaggle of actors, writers and sundry others out to wear the Order of Lenin.

The committee heard plenty of them: John Howard Lawson, the film colony's Red führer, Dalton Trumbo, Lillian Hellman, etc. Ten of them, with leftist lawyers who did not know the law, refused to testify, citing the First Amendment (free speech) rather than the Fifth (no one may be required to testify against himself). So they landed in the slammer, crying loudly about "fascism" and ruination of a Constitution their lawyers apparently hadn't read. A few talked, honestly but reluctantly. The rest, eventually having learned a little law, took the Fifth.

The movie industry showed its mettle, firing "blacklisted" Trumbo and others of the Hollywood Ten and hiring them again under assumed names. The anticommunists who testified were simply shafted. Ryskind, a Pulitzer Prize winner and writer of some of Hollywood's biggest hits, never worked again; James Kevin McGuinness, an MGM executive producer, was hounded out of his job and died shortly thereafter of a heart attack; Adolphe Menjou, with acting credits going back to silent films, was dropped, and for several years had to make movies in Mexico. Others were merely smeared. Gary Cooper, an authentic American who liked to play polo, was accused of organizing a fascist cavalry. Just to name a few.

The Hollywood Ten, however, have been to this day memorialized as patriotic victims of Joe McCarthy, though he did not come on the scene until three years later.

HUAC's mistake was in attempting to prove that Hollywood's Red cabal was injecting communist propaganda in films. With one exception — Mission to Moscow, a big, wet kiss for Uncle Joe and the U.S.S.R., which had the backing of the State Department — this was not so. But once the period of the Hitler-Stalin Pact had passed, of course, Hollywood became 200 percent supportive of the Allies and Russian War Relief.

What the Reds sought and achieved was dominance of the movie industry — unions such as the Screen Actors and Screen Writers guilds, the control of jobs and eventually the ideological veto. The Communist Party would become a hiring hall, and the good contracts and good parts, wherever possible, would go to those with the proper views. Those in open opposition fared badly. That created an ambiance that moved into other fields close to the Hollywood establishment, spread to academia and then to young moviegoers. The Vietnam War made "Hate America" respectable, and Hollywood, indoctrinated by the cabal's successors to Lawson, Trumbo & Co., was able to propagandize not for Marxism-Leninism, but for the humiliation of America.

The Vietnam generation now was in control. Movies, which had been entertainment, became courses in violence, brutality and social obscenity — an attack on morality, the family, religion and the American credo. Language that once would not have been tolerated in a waterfront saloon became commonplace in films, and action that previously would have closed a movie house became routine. "Hate America," once implicit, now was the coin of filmdom. When Sept. 11 struck, only a few in Hollywood raised their voices against terrorism.

Which gets us back to Jessica Lange. I do not blame her. She merely is a creature of the Hollywood environment. And if there is a backlash to her remarks, the American Civil Liberties Union and the liberal media will labor to make an Anita Hill of her. It is hard to imagine but, when I was a boy in school, we memorized such lines as these from Walter Scott: "Breathes there the man with soul so dead/ Who never to himself hath said,/ 'This is my own, my native land.'/ Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned/ As home his footsteps he hath turned/ From wandering on a foreign strand./ If such there breathe, go, mark him well." He will be forever "unwept, unhonored and unsung."

That poem today would provoke laughter in Hollywood and on many campuses. But perhaps in time Lange will to her sorrow realize the imperishable truth of its words.

Ralph de Toledano is the dean of Washington columnists and a frequent writer for Insight magazine.

Receiving two oscars really means nothing. It's her peers patting her on the back, essentially, so don't go making her oscars out to be anything greater than twice chewed bubble gum. It's only as illustrous as the peer pool that bestows it on you and the wishy washy crowd in Hollyweird at this point in time can't hold a candle to the greats that preceeded them.

The point is whether she is "an actress of no particular distinction." She is an actress of particular distinction as evidenced by two Oscars, multiple nominations for Oscars, successful films, her own production company, and various other awards for her body of work.

Stating that she's "an actress of no particular distinction" leads me to believe that the author makes that judgement based on the fact that she's not as well known as some Hollywood stars. The key here is who gets to define distinction. The author of this article uses the term as it is widely defined - someone with accomplishments. She has accrued significant accomplishments in her field whether she deserved them or not.

We may not like her political views, but in my opinion, the author loses credibility by characterizing her as "an actress of no particular distinction." Perhaps that's more charitable, however, than being an actor or actress of "particular distinction" such as the likes of Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, or Martin Sheen. ;>)

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