Conservative ideologue Ayn Rand was angry about the focus of the 1947 HUAC hearings, as she had wanted to examine The Best Years of Our Lives. Committee head J. Parnell Thomas argued with her saying that if the film was attacked, there would be a furor. The fact that Rand may have been able to approach the head of the committee to complain about the way she had been interviewed strongly indicated that the friendly witnesses were stage managed. No unfriendly witness had such an opportunity. [1] It also demonstrated the obsession of the committee with publicity. He would later link the investigation of communism in the film industry to the leaking of atomic secrets to the Russians. Journalists were intrigued and showed up in droves to find it was a media stunt and Thomas had nothing.
TheBest Years of Our Lives dominated the box office and scooped the Oscars, becoming the most successful film of the year. After the HUAC investigations of 1947, director William Wyler claimed that he wouldn’t be allowed to make films such as The Best Years of Our Lives anymore because of HUAC. He warned that the committee was making decent people afraid to express their political opinions by creating fear in Hollywood. Wyler said fear would lead to self-censorship and eventually the screen would be paralysed.[2]
Crossfire is a 1947 film noir which deals with antisemitism. It was part of a liberal flowering of films in post war period. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Wyler’s warnings about censorship seem unjustified. Several films were made on sensitive topics such as racial prejudice from 1947 through to 1951. These films included Crossfire (1947), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Pinky (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), No Way Out (1950), and Storm Warning (1950). Even westerns began taking a liberal turn with films such as Broken Arrow (1950) and Devil’s Doorway (1949) depicting Indians in a positive light. To varying degrees these films showed that Hollywood could tackle social subjects well. Capitalism was also the subject of allegorical attack. Abraham Polonsky made two successful radical films in his short-lived film career as screenwriter and director in the 1940s. Both Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948) have been read as Marxist critiques of capitalism.[3]All My Sons (1948), based on Arthur Miller’s play, depicted an industrialist was willing to sell defective planes to the Airforce to stay in business. But this brief flowering of liberal and radical films was cut short in 1951 at the time of the second HUAC investigation of Hollywood and the lead up to the 1952 Presidential election.
Hollywood’s political vision in the immediate post-war period was in turmoil. The caustic anti-communism was competing with a vision of liberal tolerance. Overall it was the liberal films which won the popularity stakes, with Pinky being the second most popular film of 1949.[4] But their popularity did not guarantee their production. With the second and more extensive HUAC investigation in 1951, the political pendulum had swung so far to the right that liberalism was tainted with being soft on communism. Some people argued that the State Department and the Truman administration had lost China to the communists. This was idea so pervasive that it even strongly affected the Kennedy administration. He was determined to be seen to be strong on communism as a Democrat President. His determination led to events like the Bay of Pigs invasion and intervention in Vietnam. [5] After 1951, there was no such confusion in the political message from Hollywood. The diet of films was straight anti-communism with no liberal trimmings.
Big Jim McLain (1951), was more of a public relations exercise for the HUAC investigators, than a film. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Big Jim McLain (1951), was more of a public relations exercise for the HUAC investigators, than a film. It was produced by the ultra-conservative actor John Wayne and was based on the experiences of HUAC investigator William Wheeler and it claimed to be made with the full co-operation of the committee with access to cases from HUAC files. The film linked HUAC to American icons. After the opening credits, the narrator quotes from the short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benet. It then immediately praises the House Committee on Un-American Activities for its attack on communism despite “undaunted by the vicious campaign of slander launched against them.” Wayne was targeting HUAC’s opponents in Hollywood.The film began with the assumption that anybody who was a communist after 1945 was a traitor or spy or both – a few clearly stated by J. Edgar Hoover. HUAC investigators were able to track down communist subversives but the committee could do little with them once they had took the fifth amendment. The investigators taped several conversations about a far-fetched plot to tie up the wharfs by infecting them with some kind of bacteria. The infestation would be the basis for long industrial dispute which would be prolonged by communist agents in management and unions. Once again it was a waterfront union as in I Married A Communist. This effort would be the same as putting ‘another division in the field’ in Asia. European distributors were not so impressed with the plot. According to Wikipedia, “In some European markets the film was retitled as Marijuana and dispensed with the communist angle, making the villains drug dealers instead. This was achieved entirely through script changes and dubbing. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Jim_McLain
Jim
McLain, played by John Wayne, and the Hawaiian police force uncovered the plot,
but only arrested those responsible for the accidental death of a communist
stooge. The audience were left wondering
why the communists were not behind bars for murder of McLain’s partner. The film’s aim, however, was to reinforce
Wayne’s view that the constitution was designed to protect good citizens, not
those who would tear it apart. The
communists were straight out criminals and thugs, who betrayed each other and
murdered Wayne’s partner. At one stage,
McLain fought the entire gang single handedly and was so honorable that he
would not punch out one communist because he was too short. McLain said: ‘We don’t hit the little
guy. That’s the difference between us
and you.’[6] The communists take a fifth amendment and go
free at the end of the film.
The real objects of Wayne’s attack, however, were those who refused to testify before HUAC, while informers on communists were greatly praised. At one point, McLain and his partner visited an old couple who told them that their estranged son was a communist. This evidence provided the vital clue which broke a communist cell in Hawaii. Informing was a selfless act of patriotism, even if it meant naming your own son. Big Jim McLain was ranked 27th by Variety making $2.6 million in rentals.[7] It was the most successful of the anti-communist films of the early 1950s possibly because of the immense popularity of John Wayne.
According to the film’s Wikipedia entry “Nancy Olson (pictured left) hated the script but figured that six weeks in Hawaii and a chance to work with a star like John Wayne seemed a good enough reason to accept. She thought the film would flop and nobody would see it. She was right to a degree – it wasn’t one of Wayne’s more successful pictures – but she didn’t count on how often it would appear on television. She later said people stopped her all the time to mention it. Olson, a staunch liberal Democrat, said she and Wayne would often have political arguments but she would always let Wayne have the last word. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Jim_McLain Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
[2] Gordon Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, Boni and Caer, New
York, 1948, p. 221.
[3] Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The
Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness,
Despair and Politics From The Depression to the Fifties, Midland, USA,
1981, p. 278.
[4] Cobbett Steinberg, Reel Facts: The Movie Book of Records,
Vintage, New York, 1982, p. 20.
[5] For a treatment of the fears of the liberals in the Kennedy administration see David Halberstam The Best and the Brightest, Fawcett crest, USA, 1973.
[6]Big Jim McLain (d) Edward Ludwig, James Edward Grant.
One of the oddest anti-communist films to come out of Hollywood in the period between the first and second HUAC investigations was the The Fountainhead (1949). Based on Ayn Rand’s bestselling book, and directed by MPAPAI founding executive committee member King Vidor, the film was a defence of the creative individual against the deadening collective. The film should be seen as Rand’s own personal vision rather than Vidor’s. Rand had such power in Hollywood at the time that when Vidor wanted some scenes cut from the film, Rand made Warner restore them.[1]
One of the oddest anti-communist films to come out of Hollywood in the period between the first and second HUAC investigations was the The Fountainhead (1949). Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Gary
Cooper played visionary architect Howard Roark who the public hated because of
his individualism. He was expelled from
school because his ideas were too original.
His architecture was criticised by Ellsworth Touhy through his column in
the populist The New York Banner,
arguing that ‘artistic value is achieved collectively, by each man
subordinating himself to the standards of the majority.[2] Touhy doesn’t like genius as he believed it
to be ‘dangerous’. He explained his
reasons to be compromised architect John Keating.
KEATING:
What are you after?
TOUHY: Power! What do think is power? Whips, guns, money. You can’t turn men into slaves unless you
break their spirit. Kill their capacity
to think and act on their own. Tie them
together. Teach them to conform. Untie to agree to oblige. That makes one neck for the leash.[3]
Roark
agreed to design a housing development for the poor using Keating as a front,
provided his designs were exactly followed.
When they were not, Roark destroyed the building with dynamite. Before the trial, Touhy began a storm of
protest against Roark. The owner of the
New York Banner, Gail Wynand, played by Raymond Massey, wanted to support Roark
and sacked Touhy. Touhy virtually closed
down the paper as the entire office walked off in support. Touhy explained his strategy to Wynand and
his assistant.
ASSISTANT: I can’t
understand how Ellsworth got so much power.
I never noticed it. But he got
his gang in little by little. And now he
owns them.
WYNAND: And I own the Banner.
TOUHY: (entering the room) Do you Mr Wynand? So you were after power, Mr Wynand and you
thought you were a practical man, you left to impractical intellectuals the
whole field of ideas to corrupt as we please as you were making money. You thought money was power. Is it Mr Wynand? You poor amateur.[4]
Touhy
represented the communist – with a liberal façade – who was destroying the
system from within. Just as Rand
believed that the communists were inserting corrupt ideas into films to undermine
capitalism, the character of Touhy reflected her concern.[5] It was he, not the capitalists, who had the
real power. Eventually Touhy reasserted
his control over the paper after a popular boycott. He was quite open about his aims in a public
attack on Roark.
We don’t have to wait
for the trial to convict him. Howard
Roark is guilty by his very nature. It
is his work that designed Courtland. What
if he did? Society needed a housing
project. It was his duty to sacrifice
his own desires and contribute any ideas we demanded of him on any terms we
chose. Who is society? We are. Man can only be permitted to exist in order
to serve others. He must be a tool for
the satisfaction of others. Self
sacrifice is the law of our age. The man
who refuses to submit and to serve is a man who must be destroyed.[6]
At
his trial, Roark argued for the role of the individual against the
collective. He made no pretense at
innocence and defended his actions by conjuring up a vision of an ancient
struggle between the evil collective and the vision of the individual.
Man cannot survive
except through his mind. He comes on
earth unarmed. His brain is his only
weapon. But the mind is an attribute of
the individual. There is no such thing
as a collective brain. The man who
thinks must think and act on his own.
The reasoning mind cannot be subordinated to the needs, wishes or
opinions of others … Look at history.
Everything we have. Every great
achievement has come from the independent work from some independent mind. Every horror and destruction from attempts to
force men into a level of brainless, soulless, robots without personality,
without rights without will or hope or dignity.
It is an ancient conflict. The
individual against the collective.[7]
Despite
his obvious guilt, Roark was acquitted by the jury to pursue his own
career. The decision was nonsense. In dynamiting the building, he was guilty of
a range of crimes and should have been sent to prison. But it was a political trial and Roark was
set free. The individual had triumphed
over the collective.
The Fountainhead hinted at the existence of an blacklist of anti-communists in Hollywood. Roark could not find work while he fought with Touhy and his associates. This suggestion was a calculated insult to those who had been blacklisted by the studios. Rand argued that talented individuals like Roark could lose their jobs because of their beliefs. She later told her biographer that there was a blacklist of anti-communists in force in the HUAC years. She said almost everybody who testified for the committee who were considered dispensable, such as freelancers or writers or actors without a contract to a major studio lost their jobs. ‘Morrie Ryskind had more work than he could handle; he never worked again in Hollywood’ while ‘Adolphe Menjou got fewer and fewer jobs’ and soon could ‘find no work at all’.[8]
No evidence exists of a blacklist of anti-communists and Rand’s statements are not supported by an available evidence. Screenwriter Morrie Ryskind had many screen credits in the 1930s. In the 1940s he received one for Penny Serenade in 1941, Where Do We Go From Here? In 1945 and Heartbeat in 1946. After this his film career began to slow down. But three credits in six years is not more work than you can handle. It seems clear that his career was already in decline when he testified to HUAC. When conservative critic William F. Buckley Jr. made similar claims in 1963 about Morrie Ryskind, screenwriter Phillip Dunne, one of the co-founders of the Committee for the First Amendment, told Buckley that Ryskind could have a job by turning up at 20th Century Fox Studios. According to Dunne, Ryskind failed to show. After Hollywood, Ryskind worked as a columnist for the Hearst Press. He also secured a position from the government in writing anti-communist films for the United States Information Agency. Menjou made three films in 1947, one in 1948, two in 1949, one in 1950, two in 1951, one in 1952 and continued to make films up to 1960. This was about the rate before the HUAC hearings. He also had two television series in 1951 and 1953. See Halliwell, Leslie. Filmgoer’s Companion seventh edition, Paladin, London, 1980, p. 546. Kazan also claimed that Menjou was on a left wing blacklist in his autobiography and he broke the blacklist by employing Menjou for Man on a Tightrope (1952). The facts are that Menjou enjoyed regular employment in Hollywood. [9]
Publicity for the film was firmly based on Ayn Rand’s novel. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
DeMille
was clearly an influence on the production of The Fountainhead. The
closing scene of the film showed a woman rising in an open elevator and looking
up at the make figure of Roark on top of the building and which then cut to
look across at the city skyline. The
scene was almost identical to one in DeMille’s 1932 version of The Ten Commandments. Vidor was either strongly influenced by the
scene and incorporated it into the film or DeMille was playing a advisory
role. In either event, DeMille certainly
agreed with the politics of the film.
After the launch of the film, Rand wrote to DeMille saying The Fountainhead was doing extremely
well at the box office, particularly at the neighborhood houses, where
‘audiences everywhere break into applause at the end of Roark’s speech’. Rand wrote that this made her happy, because
it showed that ‘the political sympathy of the country is with us’.[10]
The
reality was quite different and the film was not well received. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times wrote:
If Miss Rand intended
this drama to be a warning against the present threat of Communism muscling in
on our fair democracy, then she might have shown more confidence in the good
old body politic and less growing admiration for the genius who is a law unto
himself… For it is out of such deadly cynicism and reckless reverence as are
shown in this film that emerges a form of fanaticism which is a peril to
democracy.[11]
Rand wrote back on July 24 and accused Crowther of being an Ellsworth Toohey and ignoring the real issues of the film. She also claimed that because of her stance, approved screenplays would reach the screen unaltered at Warner Brothers. The studio later claimed on July 31 that she had been mistaken and that actors were no longer permitted to improvise with scripts. As a novel, The Fountainhead was a bestseller, but this did not translate to the box office: The film was ranked 38th by Variety, making $2.1 million.[12]
The
initial stage of the anti-communist crusade was an attempt to exonerate the
moguls for their actions in dealing with HUAC.
The political never-never land of I
Married A Communist and The
Fountainhead contained calculate insults aimed at Hollywood’s liberal and
radical community. The Fountainhead was perhaps the more insulting as it inverted the
political order to make it appear that the communists were in control and were
attempting to crush the work of talented individuals.
[1] Raymond Durgnat and Scott
Simmon, King Vidor, American,
Universtiy of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, p. 263.
[9] See Phillip Dunne, Take Two: A Life in Movies and Politics, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980, p. 217. as reported in Hollywood Reporter, 18 March 1954.
See Elia Kazan, A Life, Doubleday, New York, 1988, p. 478 – 480.
No doubts exist about
the effectiveness of the blacklist which ended many careers. See John Cogley Report on Blacklisting, 2 vols, The Fund for the Republic, New
York, 1956. Rand’s claim of a blacklist
for friendly witnesses are also dubious because of her own career in Hollywood
began after testifying.
[10] Ayn Rand to Cecil B. DeMille, 29
April 1949, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Box 418, Folder 3, Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah.
Pinky was a 1949 American drama about a light-skinned African – American woman who could pass as white.
Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University
Liberalism and less extreme political viewpoints did not cease to exist after the Second World War. The political tensions in Hollywood remained between liberals and conservatives. Many looked to cinema as a way to project progressive idea and views, yet Hollywood’s political vision in the immediate post-war period was in turmoil. The caustic anti-communism was competing with a vision of liberal tolerance. Overall it was the liberal films which were winning the Box Office, with Pinky being the second most popular film of 1949.[1]Pinky was a 1949 American drama about a light-skinned African – American woman who could pass as white.
But the popularity of
these films did not guarantee their production.
With the second and more extensive HUAC investigation in 1951, the
political pendulum had swung so far to the right that liberalism was tainted
with being soft on communism. Some
people argued that the State Department and the Truman administration had lost
China to the communists.[2]
The Red Scare period
reached its anti-communist climax in 1950. After trials lasting two years,
former State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted for perjury for his
alleged involvement in a Soviet spy ring on 25 January 1950. The case brought
former HUAC member Richard Nixon to national prominence – and would launch his political
career. On 9 February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy declared at a speech in
Wheeling, West Virginia, that there were 205 card-carrying members of the
Communist Party in the State Department. Even though the senator was a late
arrival on the anti-Communist scene, the sheer viciousness and near hysteria of
his anti-Communist campaign would designate the period the McCarthyite era.1
The political temperature was certainly on the rise in Hollywood. The Waldorf Statement, and even the imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten, did not end demands for stronger anti-Communist intervention. In May 1950 John Wayne, in his role as president of the Motion Picture Alliance, called for a complete delousing of the film industry. “Let us, in Hollywood, not be afraid to use the DDT,” he told newspapers. The blacklist created by the Waldorf Statement was only part of the equation. More corrosively, people could be put on a “graylist”—a list of those who were not Communists but were believed to have Communist sympathies. These people also could not obtain work.
On June 22, 1950, the American Business Consultants published a report titled Red Channels, listing 151 names of show business figures accused of Communist ties, including many in the film industry. The editors openly stated they were not interested in whether people actually were Communists, and the evidence presented was often fragmentary or simply incorrect. Even so, those who appeared in such a publication required a political clearance in order to return to work. The clearance process was haphazard, and people with no Communist connections could lose their livelihood. The Waldorf Statement had created within the film industry a toxic work environment, in which any self-styled patriotic organization could label any producer, actor, director, or writer a Communist and jeopardize his or her career. To heighten matters, on June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea—the Cold War had become hot. his was idea so pervasive that it even strongly affected the Kennedy administration. He was determined to be seen to be strong on communism as a Democrat President. His determination led to events like the Bay of Pigs invasion and intervention in Vietnam.2
On June 22, 1950, the American Business Consultants published a report titled Red Channels, listing 151 names of show business figures accused of Communist ties, including many in the film industry.
While the studios were
beginning to bring out anti-communist films, the right began to look for other
targets. Not content with driving
communists out of Hollywood, the right turned its attention to films with
liberal messages – and by implication the liberals who write and directed them. Ayn Rand had written a Screen Guide for Americans in 1947 for the MPAPAI which said that
free enterprise, industrialists, and the independent man shouldn’t be smeared;
that failure and the collective shouldn’t be glorified; and that communist
writers, directors and producers shouldn’t be hired. The alliance did not see it as a ‘forced
restriction’ on Motion Picture studios, rather that each man should do ‘his own
thinking’ and for the guide to be adopted as a ‘voluntary action’. Its impact has been overstated. Rand told her
biographer that the guide had such a huge impact that it was printed in full on
the front page of arts section of the New
York Times; it was actually mentioned in summary in a column by Thomas F.
Brady on page 5 of the arts section on 16 November 1947. It was printed in full in an
ultra-conservative newsletter Plain Talk
in November 1947 which also featured articles on the influence of ‘communism on
youth’. Rand wrote that the guide aimed
to keep the screen free from any ‘collective force or pressure.’[3] The irony being that this was precisely what
the alliance was doing.
The real point of
Rand’s pamphlet was that only a conservative vision of America should be
allowed on the screen. The alliance
wanted the present wave of films which attacked or criticised capitalism
halted. One of alliance’s supporters,
Cecil B. DeMille was making similar speeches:
The American people know that with all its faults
capitalism has given them the highest standard of living and the greatest
personal freedom known in the world. The
communist cannot deny that. But they can
– and do – make a banker or a successful businessman their villain. They can – and do – pick out the sordid and
degraded parts of all America, leaving the audience – especially the foreign
audience – to infer that all America is a vast Tobacco Road and successful
people are all ‘little foxes’.[4]
The screenwriter of Little Foxes was Lilian Hellman who was
a prominent leftist and who was called before the HUAC hearings. Tobacco Road was a film about poor white
families being driven off their land in Georgia, directed by John Ford. Little
Foxes, directed William Wyler, dealt with an unscrupulous rich and powerful
family, who exploited their workers, and who would stop at nothing to cheat,
steal or kill each other. DeMille’s
reference to the banker was from another Wyler film Best Years ofOur Lives
(1946), where Fredric March played a banker who must overrule bank policy to
give a returning GI a loan for a small farm.
Both Ford and Wyler would play key roles in having DeMille removed from
the board of the Screen Directors Guild for his drive against liberal director
Joseph Mankiewicz.[5]
Ayn Rand had been
particularly upset about the 1947 HUAC hearings because she wanted to focus on
films such as Best Years of Our Lives
which she considered to be communist inspired.
Rand claimed the depiction of the banker undermined capitalism and
promoted communism. She told her
biographer Barbara Branden that she later spoke to HUAC chairman Parnell Thomas
and complained bitterly about her treatment before the committee. She said that Song of Russia was an ‘unimportant movie’ and it was not the worst
Hollywood had done. For Rand, it was
much more important to show the ‘really serious propaganda’.[6] The fact that Rand may
have been able to approach the head of the committee to complain about the way
she had been interviewed strongly indicated that the friendly witnesses were
stage managed. No unfriendly witness had
such an opportunity.
Ayn Rand had been particularly upset about the 1947 HUAC hearings because she wanted to focus on films such as Best Years of Our Lives which she considered to be communist inspired.
Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
In their survey of
films about the Second World War, Koppes and Black have shown that the
underlying message of films about the home front was one of promise. Sacrifices made during the war would bring
security and prosperity in the post-war world.
They concluded that Hollywood helped foster the social myth that social
problems were the result of individual flaws.
Problems could be easily identified and simply resolved.[7] The success of The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946 reflected an appetite for a
more realistic approach by audiences and film makers after the Second World War
to social problems. The film contained
muted, but well focused criticism, of the capitalist system and the hardships
faced by returning servicemen. Although
the film was critical of American society, it was also optimistic, with all the
characters adapting to their new lives. In
1946, the film scooped the Oscars and was the most successful film of the
year. After the investigations of 1947,
director William Wyler claimed that he wouldn’t be allowed to make films such
as The Best Years of Our Lives
anymore because of HUAC. He warned that
the committee was making decent people afraid to express their opinions by
creating fear in Hollywood. Wyler said
fear would lead to self-censorship and eventually the screen would be
paralysed.[8] These films were bitterly
opposed by ultra-conservatives such as Ayn Rand because they criticised the
aspects of the capitalist system. According
to Rand, Thomas said that because the press coverage had been so damning, that
if an acclaimed film like Best Years of
Our Lives was attacked, there would be a furor.[9]
Wyler’s warnings about censorship seem unjustified. Several films were made on sensitive topics such as racial prejudice from 1947 through to 1951. These films included Crossfire (1947), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Pinky (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), No Way Out (1950), and Storm Warning (1950). Even westerns began taking a liberal turn with films such as Broken Arrow (1950) and Devil’s Doorway (1949) depicting Indians in a positive light. To varying degrees these films showed that Hollywood could tackle social subjects well. Capitalism was also the subject of allegorical attack. Abraham Polonsky made two successful radical films in his short-lived film career as screenwriter and director in the 1940s. Both Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948) have been read as Marxist critiques of capitalism.[10]All My Sons (1948), based on Arthur Miller’s play, depicted an industrialist was willing to sell defective planes to the Airforce to stay in business. After 1951, there was no such confusion in the political message from Hollywood. The diet of films was straight anti-communism with no liberal trimmings. This brief flowering of liberal and radical films was cut short in 1951 at the time of the second HUAC investigation of Hollywood and the lead up to the 1952 Presidential election. The blacklist was now in full force and the content of films was effectively being censored.
[1] Cobbett Steinberg, Reel Facts: The Movie Book of Records,
Vintage, New York, 1982, p. 20.
[2] For a treatment of the fears of
the liberals in the Kennedy administration see David Halberstam The Best and the Brightest, Fawcett
crest, USA, 1973.
[3] Motion Picture Alliance For the
Preservation of American Ideals, Screen Guide For Americans, 1947 p. 1. See
also Branden, p.199
[4] ‘Spotlight on Hollywood’, 9
October 1947, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Box 212, Folder 1. Tobacco
Road was directed by John Ford and Little
Foxes was directed by William Wyler.
[5] For a full account see Kevin
Brianton, Hollywood Divided.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2016.
[7] Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D.
Black, Hollywood Goes To War: How
Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies, Free Press,
New York, 1987, pp. 143-184.
[8] Gordon Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, Boni and Caer, New
York, 1948, p. 221.
[10] Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The
Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness,
Despair and Politics From The Depression to the Fifties, Midland, USA,
1981, p. 278.
In Jet Pilot, John Wayne played an American pilot who takes the Russian defector on a tour of American military bases and demonstrated the United States military prowess. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
While the mood of the United States was anti-communist, cinema depicting the politics was not popular. Perhaps one of the main reasons for the failure of the anti-communist message in American cinema was the amount of studio interference in these films. There were often trivial reasons for the failure of the films.
Director Joseph Von Sternberg was listed as the director of Jet Pilot, which begun production in 1950, and was finally released in 1957, and was produced by Howard Hughes. Von Sternberg had been Hollywood directorial royalty in the 1930s, but his fortunes had declined by the early 1950s. RKO had already flopped with I Married A Communist and The Whip Hand, and its third attempt at anti-communist propaganda almost failed to get a release. The plot was about a Russian pilot, played by Janet Leigh, who defected to the United States. John Wayne played an American pilot who takes the Russian defector on a tour of American military bases and demonstrated the United States military prowess. He then faked a defection to feed false information to the Russians. The pair fell in love and she helped him escape back to America. Von Sternberg loathed the picture and resented the amount of studio interference.
“I was told, step by step, day by day, movement for movement, word for word, precisely what I was to direct … My name is on the film as director, and there are other names also to which are given credit are just as shadowy, but the names of all those who had a finger in the celluloid pie are mercifully omitted.”[1] Studio interference played a key role in the poor quality of these films particularly at RKO.
The Big Lift (1950) was one of the few anti-communist films with a liberal view of the world.
Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Not
all anti-communist films were unbalanced in their approach. The Big
Lift (1950) was one of the few anti-communist films with a liberal view of
the world. It focused on the story of the
Berlin Airlift in 1949 when the Russians blockaded the city and the western
allies began supplying Berlin with all its needs from the air. It was depicted as dangerous work and the
film showed a quiet confidence in America in dealing with the communists. The airlift was physically and mentally
demanding on aircrews who were forced to work long hours to supply the city
with food and coal.
One
of the airmen, Danny MacCullough, played by Montgomery Clift, spent a day in
Berlin and travelled through the Russian sector to see the life of ordinary
Berliners. Russian soldiers searched a
railway carriage for smugglers and one man informed on a women for smuggling
coffee. The coffee was confiscated and
the Russians left. The crowd in the
train was about to vent its anger on the man, when he revealed that he was a
carrying a huge parcel of coffee and gave the woman, twice the amount she was
smuggling. The Russians were shown as
strong but think-headed and easy to deceive.
In a separate incident another American airman Hank, played by Paul Douglas, debated the merits of the American system with a critical communist. She said that American democracy was a farce as the results were determined by big business. Hank argued that in the 1948 election, President Truman was written off by the newspapers and just about everyone else. But in the end, Truman was elected by the people, despite what a big business and the papers were saying. This was an interesting scene as it was one of the few where the merits of communism and capitalism were actually debated. The debate was slanted against the communists, but it was clear that writer and director George Seaton was not afraid of communism and felt it could be dealt with through intelligent debate and, if necessary, through the sensible use of force. At a later time, he spoke about his research for this film, and of being held by the Communists for 56 hours on a dirty train with his wife and daughter after attempting to enter Berlin. Seaton quoted the organizer of the airlift General Lucius D. Clay, who said that if we “resort to totalitarianism to defeat totalitarianism we have lost our democratic soul by doing it.” Seaton’s film even contains some comedy which was lacking in other anti-communist films of the period. Seaton’s effort would be the final liberal statement from Hollywood on communism for some time. The film was ranked at 91st by Variety for 1951.[2]
The anti- communist plots of some films were often absurd. In Tokyo Joe (1949), a plot to return Japanese militarists was described as ‘communist inspired and communist directed’. This ludicrous idea was either a last minute rewrite of the script or a dubbing of the original soundtrack. From internal evidence I the film, it appeared as though the words were dubbed at some late stage. The voice of the General talking to Humphrey Bogart goes oddly deep while this was being said. The words were also spoken when the camera was focused on Bogart. This suggests dubbing as it would be difficult to synchronise the General’s mouth movements with his speech. In either event, the communist element plays no logical part in the film at all. Communism was not mentioned again.
[1] Joseph von Sternberg, Fun In A Chinese Laundry, Secker &
Warburg, London, 1965, p. 282.
[2] Variety, 3 January 1951. A film called Destination Moscow is listed at 88th. The film is not listed in Halliwell’s Film
Guide, 5th edn, Paladin, London, 1986, but it would be reasonable to
conclude that it was an anti-communist film.
The Red Menace looked at the links between illicit sex and communism.
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University
The apparent links between illicit sex and political subversion were a central theme of many anti-communist films. In The Red Menace (1949) directed by R.G. Stringsteen, an ‘impressionable young man’ called Bill Jones was seduced and indoctrinated by a communist agent. He was angry about being cheated in a land deal. He was then taken to a demonstration against a local real estate agent which was orchestrated by communist agitators to become violent. As the crowd attacked the real estate office, the violent demonstration was broken up by the police. The narrator said:
The introduction of
Bill Jones to communist strategy; a misguided young man fallen under the spell
of Marxian hatred and revenge. Unaware
of that he is only the tool of men who would destroy his country. The signs [of the demonstrators] don’t tell
of a whole wide Marist racket intent on spreading dissension and treason.[1]
Two
days later, Bill Jones was taken along with other recruits to introductory
classes at workers school where he was taught Marxist principles, strategy and
tactics. The narrator said the classes
explain the basis of communism.
It teaches that man is
the product of natural forces which are constantly changing. There are no positive values, no external principles
of right and wrong. Actually it is the
old doctrine of atheism sugar-coated with highbrow terms. It says that men cannot be responsible to
anyone except the totalitarian socialist state and yet the American communist
party claim that they do not wasn’t to overthrow the government by force.[2]
Towards
the end of the film, Bill Jones comes to his senses and decides to quit the
party, but his communist girlfriend Anna Petrovka cannot because she had signed
in her immigration papers that she was not a communist. The Party need only
send her card to the immigration department and she would be deported back to
Eastern Europe. The studios were once
again sending out the message that those who are involved in the communist
party could never leave.
Yet
the irony was that the communist party in Red Menace seemed to be more
interested in stomping on any deviation than in subverting the United
States. One member was murdered after
leaving the party, another committed suicide when forced to recant that Marxism
was based on Hegel’s writing, and another broke down and confessed to murder
after almost three minutes of mild questioning by immigration officials about
illegally entering the country. One
member refused to attack an ex-member in their newspaper and then left the
party. Another was influenced by the
speech of her priest and returned to her family. The two remaining communists that we see were
about to be arrested by the police. The
communist party appeared to be absolutely useless.
Despite
these major organisational flaws, social problems were worsened by the
communists. The audience was told that
the greedy real estate agent would be dealt with, but that it ‘takes
time’. The communists promised a
speedier solution, but it was merely a trap to recruit people to the
party. They also claimed to be against
racism, but call Italians “Mussolini spawned dago’s’ and Blacks ‘African
Ingrates’. The communists admitted that
they were merely using people’s suffering to further their own cause.
The
only real solution to the communist threat was religion, as one priest in the
film said:
God isn’t very popular
in some countries, just as he wasn’t in a lot of countries which are now
dead. The atheistic systems are always
based on hatred. Race hatred when they
are Nazi, class hatred when they are communist.[3]
According to the priest, ‘the best way to defeat communism is to live Christianity and American democracy everyday.’[4] These ideas woudl re-emerge with the biblical epics, whihc wer far more popualr than the overt anti-communist films..
[1]The Red Menace, (d) R.G. Springsteen, Albert LeMond, Gerald
Gerharty.
Mission to Moscow glorified Stalin at a time when the United States desperately wanted to maintain the alliance with the Soviet Union. It was despised by J. Edgar Hoover. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
While popular films showed there was deeply felt anti-communism in the United States in the 1930s , there was no expressed desire to lurch to fascism. Perhaps the sentiments of the American people were best summed up in the popular Frank Capra film You Can’t Take It With You which was released in 1938. In the film, a fatherly figure commented on the latest developments in politics.
Communism fascism, voodooism … Everybody got isms
these days… When things go badly, you go and get yourself an ism… Nowadays they
say, ‘Think the way I do or I’ll bomb the hell out of you.’[1]
When the United States
entered the war, Hollywood’s film output changed tack. Many films were made which praised the effort
of the Russian armies. The scripts for
these films were often written by communist or leftist writers such as John
Howard Lawson, Lillian Hellman, Howard Koch or Paul Jarrico. These films were filled with praise for the
heroic efforts of the Soviet army and people.
The presence of left leaning and communist writers involved in
pro-Russian footage, in American cinema was to provide the fuel for the
conspiracy theorists of the right after the cold war had set in.
The most controversial
of these films was Mission to Moscow
(1943) which was based on the autobiography of the United States Ambassador to
the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies. The
film glorified Stalin at a time when the United States desperately wanted to
maintain the alliance with the Soviet Union.[2] The film glossed over Stalin’s disastrous
collectivization of peasants and it also accepted the Stalinist line on the
show trials of the 1930s. Adjusting and
simplifying history was a time-honored Hollywood tradition, but Mission presented a gross distortion.[3] As film historian David Culbert has observed
the Soviet purge trials asked people to believe that the Soviet equivalents of
the American Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had all plotted
against their country.[4]Mission
to Moscow showed only one trial, that of Nikolai Bukharin, who was a strong
ally of Lenin in the Russian revolution and supported Stalin against Trotsky
after Lenin’s death. He broke with
Stalin after opposing the collectivization of the Kulaks and attempted to
overthrow Stalin through the Central Committee of the Party. In March 1938, Bukharin was put on trial in
Moscow with other prominent Bolsheviks and subsequently shot.[5]
All of Hollywood’s
skills were needed to sell the message of a benign Russia to the American
public. Warner Bothers allocated the top
talents of director Michael Curtiz and screenwriter Howard Koch, who were riding
high on their success of Casablanca. In the trial scene, Nikolai Bukharin made his
final speech at his trial in Mission to
Moscow where he admitted collusion with the fascists:
CLOSE SHOT
BUKHARIN
As he speaks to the
courtroom with deep feeling and sincerity.
BUKHARIN:
For three months I
refused to testify – then I decided to tell everything. Why?
Because while in prison I made an entire re-evaluation of my past. For when you ask yourself, ‘If you must
die, what are you dying for?’ an absolutely black vacuity rises before you
with startling vividness… My hope is that this trial may be the last severe
lesion in proving to the world the growing menace of Fascist aggression and
the awareness and united strength of Russia.
It is in the consciousness of this that I await the verdict. What matters is not the personal feelings
of a repentant enemy, but the welfare and progress of our country.[6]
Film producer Robert
Bruker later claimed that he wanted some ambiguity in the trial scenes but
Davies insisted that the accused be depicted as guilty traitors and
Trotskyists.[7] Davies’ own book contains some concerns about
the trials which the film entirely lacked.
Off the record, one is admitted, to wit: that the
occasion was dramatized for propaganda purposes. It was designed: first, as a warning to all
existing and potential plotters and conspirators within the Soviet Union;
second, to discredit Trotsky abroad; and third, to solidify popular national
feeling in support of the government against foreign enemies Germany and
Japan. During the trial every means of
propaganda was employed to carry to all parts of the country the horrors of
these confessions.[8]
Davies’ more balanced
assessment was disregarded during the film.
Extremely wild assertions were made about the role of Stalin’s exiled
rival Leon Trotsky who was linked to both Hirohito and Hitler in their plans to
invade Russia. Immediately after the
scene with Bukharin, the action crossed to the German embassy in Oslo where
Leon Trotsky was plotting with German Minister of Norway. The Nazis abandoned Trotsky because of the
bungling of his plot against Russia. The
film managed to turn one of the fiercest and most persistent critics of
fascism, Leon Trotsky, into a Nazi pawn.
But the scene had actually been toned down from an earlier version of
the script by novelist Erskine Caldwell where after the trials of Bukharin,
Hitler met with Trotsky.
HITLER: We are not ready for this turn of
affairs. You have completely bungled the
work you were supposedly directing with judicious ability. That forces us to withdraw our hand completely
for the minute. That means Russia will
be able to buildup its army and augment its supplies of war materials. You are trying to force us to act in Russia
before we are ready!
TROTSKY: No, no, Herr Hitler. This is all an unfortunate accident. You know I am in perfect accord with your
plans.[9]
The Office of War
Information was ecstatic in its praise of the film. They described it as a ‘magnificent
contribution to the Government’s motion picture program as a means of
communicating historical and political material in a dramatic way.’ It said that the presentation of the Moscow
trials was a high point and:
Should bring understanding of Soviet international
policy in the past years and dispel the fears which many honest persons have
felt with regard to our alliance with Russia.
The clarity and conviction with which this difficult material is
presented is a remarkable achievement for the screen and should do much to lay
the ‘ghosts of fascist propaganda’ which still haunt us and delay the forgoing
of that international unity which is essential to the winning of the war and the
peace.[10]
The OWI said the film
would help create a friendly relationship between the Soviet Union and the
United States. The Office gave the film
immediate release for domestic and international markets.
The film was
disturbing because it was not only historical drivel but contradicted Davies’
own reports form the time as well as his own book. At the time, he described the trials with
terms like ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ and it was clear that he had not been hoodwinked.[11] Davies was not a fool and had previously had
a career as a Wisconsin lawyer who had made his fortune representing Standard
Oil. Yet when he introduced the film, he
must have been aware of the misrepresentations, and distortions contained
within it. Davies even had the nerve to
call upon his ‘sainted mother as an ordained minister of the gospel’[12] to add weight to his
claims that it was historical truth. He
also claimed that:
No leaders of a nation have been so misrepresented
and misunderstood as those in the soviet government during those critical years
between the two world wars. I hope that
my book will help correct that misunderstanding in presenting Russia and its
people in their gallant struggle to preserve the peace until ruthless
aggression made war inevitable.[13]
Davies accepted the
distortions of his own book and had a fair amount of say in the production of
the film.[14] Screenwriter Howard Koch later wrote that
Davies was annoyed by the fact that actor Walter Huston did not look like
him. He told this to director Michael
Curtiz who replied that Roosevelt, Kalinin, Churchill and Litinov were famous
men while Davies was not. After a stony
silence, Davies told Curtiz that he was well known, with thousands of
friends. To cool down the situation,
Davies was permitted to personally introduce the film.[15] The incident showed that Davies had a fair
amount of his own self-image tied up in the film and wanted it to depict film
as a hero mixing with the ‘Great Men’ of the day.
United States
diplomats were embarrassed by the film when it was shown to Stalin and other
Soviet officials on 24 May 1943.
Ambassador William Standley reported to the Secretary of State that
Stalin had sat silently through its presentation and grunted once or
twice. He wrote that the glaring
historical discrepancies provoked resentment from the Soviet officials and that
its depiction of the 1930s trials meant that it would not be released in the
USSR. He felt that the film would not
contribute to a better understanding between the countries.[16] Davies, by contrast, thought that the picture
was well received by both Stalin and Molotov.[17]
When it was released
in the United States, the film was heavily criticised in many quarters. In a massive letter, published on the
editorial page of the New York Times
professor John Dewey from Columbia University, who headed a commission into the
Russian trials of the 1930s, wrote that Mission
to Moscow was the first instance of ‘totalitarian propaganda for mass
consumption’ in the United States. Dewey
described the film as propaganda which falsified history through distortion,
omission or pure invention of fact.[18] He claimed that the film falsified not only
the trials, but Davies’ own reports to the State Department and his comments in
letters of the time.[19]
A small group of
academics and writers also condemned the picture.[20] The group argued that the film falsified
history, distorted Davies’ own book, glorified Stalin’s dictatorship and had
serious implications for American democracy.
The group said that:
(Mission to Moscow) corresponds in every detail with
what the Kremlin would like the American people to think about its domestic and
foreign policies. It denounces British
appeasement of Hitler, but the appeasement of the Stalin-Hitler pact is glossed
over as… realism! It shows half the map
of Poland in flames when Hitler attacks but the other half, invaded by the Red
Army appears unaffected. The invasion of
Finland is presented as anti-fascist action.[21]
Many film critics were
even less impressed. Writing for Nation,
influential critic James Agee said the film was almost ‘the first Soviet
production to come from a major American studio.’ He described the film as a:
Mishmash; of Stalinism with New Dealism with
Hollywoodism with journalism with opportunism with shaky experimentalism with
mesmerism with onanism, all mosaicked into a remarkable portrait of what the
makers of the film think the American public think the Soviet Union is like – a
great glad two-million bowl of canned borscht, eminently approved by the
Institute of Good Housekeeping.[22]
While the film was
made to simply serve the war needs of the United States in 1943, it did raise
some disturbing questions about the propaganda of the Second World War. Many people colored their world view by what
they saw on the screen and Hollywood had to at least take some critical
distance. The film recorded a modest return
of $1.2 million in rentals according to Variety. This was much lower than other pro-Russian
films such as Action in the North
Atlantic which made $2.6 million and North
Star which made $2.8 million in the same year.[23]
The FBI director J Edgar Hoover was deeply concerned about
communism, but felt constrained during the war, as the Soviet Union was an ally
against Germany and later against Japan. The release of Mission to Moscow, with its pro-Stalin message,caused uproar, with the Republicans attacking the film industry
for doing the bidding of the Roosevelt administration.[24]
The FBI reacted to the release of the film by beginning a comprehensive surveillance
of the film industry, ranging from scrutiny of industrial issues, the political
activities of directors, actor and writers, through to the content of films. At one point in 1944, Hoover
demanded a report by the 15th of each month on the infiltration of Hollywood by communist
agents and ideas.[25]
[1]You Can’t Take It With You, (d) Frank Capra, Robert Riskin.
[2] The publication of Mission to
Moscow in 1943 became part of an internal wrangle within the State Department
between those who were suspicious of Stalin’s motives and those like Davies who
felt he could be negotiated with in the post war world. See Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security
State, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1977.
[3] George MacDonald Fraser argues
that, as a rule, Hollywood was very accurate in its presentation of the
past. See George MacDonald Fraser, The Hollywood History of the World,
Michael Joseph, London, 1988.
[4] David Culbert, Our Awkard Ally: Mission to Moscow
printed in O’Connor, John E., Jackson, Martin A. (eds) American History/American Film: Interpreting the American Image,
new exp edn, Continuum, New York, 1988, p. 124.
[5] Alan Palmer (ed.), The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth Century
History 1900 – 1978, Penguin, Harmindsworth, 1962, pp. 63 – 64.
[6] David Culbert, (ed.). Mission to Moscow, Wisonsin/Warner Bros Screenplay Series, University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1980, pp 159 – 160.
[10] Report, Hollywood Office, Bureau
of Motion Pictures, Office of War Information, April 29, 1943, Box 1434, Entry
264, Record Group 208, Office of War Information Records, Archives Branch,
Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Md in Culbert, Mission, p. 257.
[15] Howard Koch, As Time Goes By, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, New York, 1979, pp. 125 – 126.
[16] Telegram form Ambassador William
Standley to Secretary of State, May 25, 1943, Box 68, President’s Secretary’s
file, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY. In Culbert, Mission, p. 262.
[17] Letter from Joseph Davies to
Harry M. Warner, May 24, 1942, box 13, Joseph E. Davies Papers, Manuscript
Division, Library of congress, Washington DC in ibid p. 261.
[18]New York Times, 9 May 1943.
Letter signed by John Dewey and Suzanne La Folette.
[20] Form letter, Dwight MacDonald et
al. to ‘Dear Friend,’ May 12, 1943, NAACP MSS, Manuscript division, Library of
Congress, Washington DC in Culbert, Mission
pp. 257 – 259.
[21] Form letter, op cit, in Culbert,
Mission, p. 259.
[22] Nation May 22, 1943 in Agee, Agee on Film, Grosset &
Dunlop, New York, 1969, p. 37.
[24]Hollywood Reporter, 15 April 1943. The
publication of the book Mission to Moscow
in 1943 had become part of an internal wrangle within the State Department
between those who were suspicious of Stalin’s motives and those such as the
author Soviet Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who believed the Soviet could take
its place in the world community. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover remained on the
side of those who distrusted Stalin and his motives. J Edgar Hoover to SAC Los
Angeles – 21 June 1943, Volume 1, COMPIC 100 -138784. For a full account of the
politics of Mission to Moscow see David
Cuthbert, “Our Awkward Ally: Mission to Moscow,” 1988, printed in John E.
O’Connor, and Martin A Jackson, (eds) American History/American Film:
Interpreting the American Image, New expanded edition, Continuum, New York, 1988. See
Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security
State, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1977.
[25]Variety 4 January 1944. Hollywood Reporter, 15 April 1943. The publication of the book Mission to Moscow in 1943 had become part of an internal wrangle within the State Department between those who were suspicious of Stalin’s motives and those such as the author Soviet Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who believed the Soviet could take its place in the world community. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover remained on the side of those who distrusted Stalin and his motives. J Edgar Hoover to SAC Los Angeles – 21 June 1943, Volume 1, COMPIC 100 -138784. For a full account of the politics of Mission to Moscow see David Cuthbert, “Our Awkward Ally: Mission to Moscow,” 1988, printed in John E. O’Connor, and Martin A Jackson, (eds) American History/American Film: Interpreting the American Image, New expanded edition, Continuum, New York, 1988. See Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1977. FBI report, 29 April 1944, COMPIC – PSM.
Sergeant York (1941) was the film which finally raised the ire of the isolationists in Washington. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
The 1930s were not an easy time for political players in the left or right. While Roosevelt remained a popular President, the economic carnage of the depression meant that political certainties began to fade. During the 1930s, both liberal and conservative political certainties started to crumble in the face of the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. Communism seemed to offer a solution to many.The tone of films such as Gabriel Over the White House (1933) often verges on the hysterical. There was a faint desperation in the political solutions offered by both the left and the right, verging on despair. A political consensus did emerge in the United States after Pearl Harbor, when it was shaken out of its isolationist stupor and became a reluctant ally of the Soviet Union to fight Nazi Germany. While Fascism appeared rampant in Europe, American cinema was mute on the topic.
The political censorship of the production code meant for a long time almost no anti Nazi or fascist films were made in Hollywood during the 1930s. While fascism rose in Europe, isolationism was a strong and formidable force in the United States. The possibility of a war in Europe or Asia, redoubled the efforts of isolationists to stay out of the war. The isolationists were particularly strong in the Republican Party, which constantly goaded the Roosevelt administration that it was seeking an unnecessary war. The isolationists also had considerable support across the Untied States.
Sergeant York (1941) was the film which finally raised the ire of the isolationists in Washington. It was based on the life of First World War hero Alvin York and was launched with an amazing amount of fanfare, even by Hollywood standards. The Astor theatre in New York was decorated with 15,000 flashing red, white and blue lights. York was marched down Broadway with an escort of First World War soldiers to a premiere attended by Roosevelt, General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing and other dignitaries. Roosevelt enjoyed the film and welcomed Alvin York to the White House following the screening. The army used the occasion to give out recruiting material.[1]
The
film followed the transformation of a devout Christian pacifist in to a war
hero. York represented the dilemma of
America in many ways. It was a nation
which clearly did not want to fight in Europe, but in the end, found it had to
do so. In a key scene, York wrestled
with his conscience over the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.’ After failing to register as a conscientious
objector, he went to boot camp where he was recognised as a crack shot. After spending a day and a night debating the
conflicting demands of country and God, he read the verse form the Bible about
rendering unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and decided to travel to France.[2] The film was one of the most popular of the year.[3]
The
success of this and other pro-interventionist films, finally sparked the
isolationists into action. On 1 August
1941 Senator Gerald Nye attacked Hollywood for plunging America into war fever.
When you go the
movies, you go there to be entertained…And then the picture starts – goes to
work on you, all done by trained actors, full of drama cunningly devised…Before
you know where you are you have actually listened to a speech designed to make
you believe that Hitler is going to get you.[4]
Nye
reasoned that the Roosevelt administration wanted to glorify war and British
actors and directors wanted to lure America into the war. With Europe dominated by the Nazis, the major
diplomatic issue of the time was whether America should intervene in the European
war. Roosevelt had committed America to
the Lend Lease program and the isolationists feared that it would slowly drag
the United States into the war. Time pointed out the Senate
investigative committee was ‘stuffed with die-hard isolationists.’ The committee was not even established by any
Senatorial vote.[5]
If
the isolationists had proven their case, it would have meant the introduction
of federal legislation to control Hollywood’s film content. The industry responded with a forthright
defense headed by the former Republican party presidential aspirant Wendell
Willkie who fired off a press release where he denounced Nye as un-American and
questioned the legality of the hearings.
The committee demanded that Hollywood product films showing both sides
of the dispute and Willkie responded:
This, I presume, means
that since Chaplin made a laughable caricature of Hitler, the industry should
be forced to employ Charles Laughton to do the same on Winston Churchill … the
motion picture industry and its executives are opposed to the Hitler regime …
we make no pretence of friendliness to Nazi Germany.[6]
Warner
bothers studio head Harry Warner was even more blunt. Sergeant York was: ‘a factual portrayal of
one of the great heroes of the last war … If that is propaganda, we plead
guilty.’[7]
A
remarkable contrast exists between the Senate investigation of 1941 and the
HUAC investigations six years later. The
Hollywood industry was vigorous in its defense.
Accusations were not taken lying down and were thrown back at the
committee. Under pressure, the committee
bungled by not being thoroughly prepared for the investigation. While facing tight questioning from Senator
Ernest McFarland, Nye admitted that he had not seen some of the films. Nye also confused the plots and titles of
films and could only make weak attacks on the films he could remember.[8] The hearings became a disaster for the
isolationists who were forced to abandon the whole issue after Japan bombed
Pearl Harbour on 8 December.
James Edward Grant.
Cinema history 