The Bounty Hunter (1954) can be read as a pro-McCarthyite film and as rebuttal of High Noon. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Kevin Brianton
Strategic Communication Senior Lecturer, Melbourne: Australia.
The themes raised in High Noon were also picked up by those who supported the investigations. The Bounty Hunter (1954) can be read as a pro-McCarthyite film and as rebuttal of High Noon. Randolph Scott played a bounty hunter who arrived in the frontier town of Twin Peaks on the trail of three armed robbers. The townspeople resented his appearance and some with guilty secrets left town. He had no idea who the culprits were and bided his time. The townspeople want them to leave because they don’t like the past being dug up. The people then tried to buy him off but he would not be deflected from his pursuit of the criminals. The film can be read as a defence of HUAC investigators who had to burrow into the past of respectable people to uncover their dark secrets, no matter what the cost. Some of the criminals occupied high positions. One was even sheriff, but the criminals were only able to maintain their positions by blackmail and threats. By rooting out these criminal elements, true peace was attained in the town.
Director and producer Howard Hawks and actor John Wayne were disgusted by Fred Zinneman’s High Noon and the cycle it created and set out to refute it. Some of that anger can be seen in an interview with John Wayne in 1974 when asked about High Noon screenwriter Carl Foreman:
Hawks was convinced that professional law enforcement officers would refuse help, even in a desperate situation. In High Noon, Gary Cooper rejected the help of two men who offer assistance – a drunk and a kid. The retired marshal refused to help Kane because he would be a burden. In Rio Bravo, Chance chose a drunk, a kid and a retired marshal to help him against the gunfighters. For Hawks and Wayne, authority was responsible and benign. It defended the weak and attacked the guilty and the best people could do was to simply co-operate with it. It was not to be questioned or assisted, it was simply to be obeyed.[4]
What about Carl Foreman? I’ll tell you about Carl Foreman and his rotten High Noon. Everybody says High Noon is a great picture because Tiomkin and Grace Kelly were in it … It’s the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The last thing is old Coop putting the United States marshall’s badge under his feet and stepping on it. I’ll never regret having helped run Foreman out of town … Here’s the church, supposed to be an American church and all the women are sitting on one side of the aisle, and all the men on the other. What kind of American church is that? And all those women are getting out there and fight those killers and all the men are afraid. What kind of Western town is that?[1]
Wayne was mistaken about the film, Cooper never stands on the badge. The church also has men and women sitting together on both sides. These statements indicate that Wayne may have either never seen the film or not viewed it closely. Nonetheless, having seen it or not, Wayne despised the film. Hawks, on the other hand, wasn’t as violent in his denunciation of High Noon. He said in an interview about his film:
Rio Bravo was made because I didn’t like a picture called High Noon … I didn’t think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help and finally the Quaker wife had to save him. That isn’t my idea of a good western sheriff.[2]
As a refutation of High Noon and its anti-HUAC sympathies, Rio Bravo was quite weak. The film was made long after the issues raised by the HUAC investigations were gone. If it was a rebuttal at all, it was a rebuttal on the weakest terms. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
But Wayne and Hawks were able to have their say in the Rio Bravo (1959). In the film, John T. Chance, played by John Wayne, was the sheriff of Rio Bravo who arrested Joe, the brother of a ruthless rancher Nathan Burdette. The rancher swore that he would get his brother out of jail and began to gather an army of hired guns to do the job. In one scene Chances’ friend Pat Wheeler, played by Ward Bond, asks him if he needs help.
Suppose I got them. What would I have. Some well meaning amateurs. Most of them worried about their wives and kids. Burdette has got 30 to 40 men. All professionals. The only thing that worries them is seeing their pay … All it would be doing is making more targets to shoot at. A lot of people would get hurt. Joe Burdette isn’t worth it. He isn’t worth one of whose who’d be killed.[3]
As a refutation of High Noon and its anti-HUAC sympathies, Rio Bravo was quite weak. The film was made long after the issues raised by the HUAC investigations were gone. If it was a rebuttal at all, it was a rebuttal on the weakest terms. Its conservative message of the responsibility of authority fitted in with many films of the right. Perhaps what made this film so popular was that these authority figures demanded that no freedoms be lost while the fight was on. It was ranked 8th in the 1959 with rentals of $5.2 million.[5]
The persistence of the theme of the relationship between the lone sheriff figure, the violent thereat and townspeople in Westerns from 1952 until the end of the decade showed the relationship between authority and the people was an area of tremendous concern. The answers given in the films were not consistent and came from all points of the political spectrum. The films may not have provided the answers for the audience but their popularity showed that the questions about authority and dealing with threats were being asked.
[1] Playboy May 1974 interview by Mike Parkinson in Donald Shepherd, Robert Slatzer and Dave Grayson, Duke: The Life and Times of John Wayne, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York, 1983, p. 244. A careful examination of the badge throwing scene shows a second badge from an earlier take buried behind his foot. It appeared that Cooper was standing on the second badge from an earlier take. Wayne may have heard about this flaw in the film second hand which could have distorted his perception.
[2] Joseph McBride, Hawks on Hawks, University of California Press, London, 1982, p. 136.
[3]Rio Bravo, (d) Howard Hawks, Jules Furtham, Leigh Brackett.
[4] This point is remarkably close to the position put by Mankiewicz against DeMille about the role of authority. Adding strength to Elia Kazan’s belief that it was the conservatives that defeated DeMille, rather than the left. Elia Kazan A Life, Doubleday, New York, 1988, p. 393.
Johnny Guitar (1954) was also directed against HUAC in a different way to High Noon. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer Strategic Communication, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Johnny Guitar (1954) was also directed against HUAC in a different way to High Noon. In the film, Johnny Guitar, played by Sterling Hayden, returned to this estranged lover Vienna, played by Joan Crawford, who owned a disreputable bar. A stage robbery occurred in town, and a banker was killed. The dead man’s sister Emma Small, played by Mercedes McCambridge, convinced a wealthy rancher John McIvers, played by Ward Bond, that the crime had been committed by the Dancin’ Kid, Corey ad Young Turkey, when they were innocent. Small was jealous of the Dancin’ Kid’s attraction to Vienna. The accused trio decided to rob a bank since they were being forced to flee the area anyway. Small made the bank teller swear that Vienna was involved in the robbery. In response, a posse rode to Vienna’s bar and burned it down. The posse hanged the injured Turkey who was hiding there. Eventually, the posse learned the truth about Emma and stood back while Emma and Vienna shoot it out. Vienna killed Emma and rode off with Johnny.
The plot had all the
elements of a standard western plot, even a final shootout, yet it can be read
as a political film. The outlaws can be
seen as communists who were blamed for every wrongdoing in town. Critic Michael Wilmington argued that former
gun-man Johnny, represented an ex-Communist called before the HUAC. Wilmington saw Vienna as a fellow traveller
and Emma as a vindictive witness or a politician who used the investigations to
destroy the careers of rivals. McIvers
represented big business or law enforcement authorities which, while basically
good, had succumbed to the pressure of McCarthy’s tirades. The townspeople were the American middle
class.[1]
Lynching was a key theme in Johnny guitar. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Wilmington’s argument
can be taken further, Turkey was promised that he could be saved when he was caught
by the posse if he would point an accusatory figure at Vienna. For Ray and writer Yordan, this was the
dilemma of the witnesses before the HUAC investigators. The fact that he was hung was a reminder that
informing did not guarantee survival.
Critic Danny Peary contended that Emma’s attack on Vienna was similar to
the techniques used by McCarthyite investigators who assumed that social
deviance of any kind was an indication of communism.[2]
The personal political viewpoints of the actors were also interesting. Ward Bond, who was one of the leaders of the lynching party, was President for the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, which helped HUAC weed out communists in Hollywood. Sterling Hayden, who played Johnny Guitar, testified before the committee and regretted it all of his life. Hayden wrote in his autobiography about his testimony that: ‘Not often does a man find himself eulogized for having behaved in a manner that he despises. I subscribed to a press clipping service. They sent me two thousand clips from papers, east and west, large and small, and from dozens of magazines. Most had nothing but praise for my on-shot stoolie. Only a handful – led by the New York Times – denounced this abrogation of constitutional freedom.’[3] This casting may have been deliberate or accidental. Yet the end result was to have actual participants acting out their roles in a political allegory.
Ina Lonely Place, also directed by Ray, did not discuss the political situation in Hollywood, but it was a commentary on the HUAC-inspired witch hunt, the blacklisting and the paranoia that affected the film industry. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Apart from Johnny Guitar, Ray had already attacked the investigations in In A Lonely Place (1950). James W. Palmer, writes about in ‘In a Lonely Place: Paranoia in the Dream Factory’, Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 12, 1985, No. 3, pp. 202 – 210. The film did not discuss the political situation in Hollywood, but it was a commentary on the HUAC-inspired witch hunt, the blacklisting and the paranoia that affected the film industry. The film focused on a writer Dixon Steele, played by Humphrey Bogart, who had been rejected by the Hollywood community. Since returning from the war, he had been unable to write and his drinking and aggressive behavior had led to him become an isolated figure in the Hollywood community. At the beginning of the film, he invited a hatcheck girl back to his apartment for her to tell him the story of a book which he might turn into a movie. Dixon sent the woman home and the next morning, her body was found brutally murdered. Steele was considered to be a prime suspect by the police. After being questioned and then released by the police, Steele was further isolated by the Hollywood community who saw him as guilty. Bu the end of the film, Steele, who was a violent man, became a borderline psychotic. After succumbing to the pressure, he attacked his fiancé and his life was ruined, even though he was eventually cleared of the murder charge. Steele with his persecutions and paranoia can be read as a symbol of the Hollywood Ten.
This group were a part
of the Hollywood community until accused of the ‘crime’ of communism. Eventually they were abandoned by the
community to their own fate. Film critic
James W. Palmer noted that everybody in the film was guilty of not supporting
people in need. He wrote that the real
crime was the undermining of human trust through a process of social exclusion.
Ray’s allegorical attack against HUAC in Johnny Guitar probably would have gone over the heads of its audience of the time. No evidence exists in any reviews of Johnny Guitar that anyone considered it anymore than an interesting western with strong performances from both Crawford and McCambridge. Indeed Nora Sayre in her survey of cold war films, mentions it only in passing as a light entertainment.[4] A member of the Hollywood 10, Ring Lardner Jr. had never heard of the film,[5] although Ray has insisted that contemporary audience got the message about the lynching party being a McCarthyite investigation.[6]
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
The Westerns hold pride of place in American cinema. They retold the legends and myths of America’s frontier past and had been a feature of cinema virtually since its inception. In the 1950s, hundreds of westerns were made which dealt with many aspects of American life. It was perhaps inevitable, with the stifling of direct political criticism, and the pressing concerns of McCarthyism and communism, that westerns would take on a political dimension in the 1950s.
High Noon was one of the most important westerns of the 1950s and many films followed its pattern of a lone law officer facing a threat to the town. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
The
1947 investigation proved to be only a testing of the waters for HUAC. The Hollywood 10 went to prison in September
1950 and the committee re-gathered momentum to pounce on Hollywood again. The Hollywood 10’s imprisonment had increased
the power of HUAC to make it feared throughout the film industry. Director Joseph Losey told an interviewer
that ‘the most terrifying thing about the atmosphere was seeing people succumb,
and seeing all protest disappear.
Because if you did protest, you’d had it.’[1] The second HUAC investigations were to be
larger and more systematic and they destroyed the remnants of the liberal-left
in Hollywood without any effective opposition.
In the middle of these rising fears about HUAC’s return, Carl Foremen
was writing the screenplay for a western called High Noon.
The
film was about the desperate efforts of the Sheriff Will Kane, played by Gary
Cooper, to get help from the townspeople to fight Frank Miller and his gang,
who were being released from jail that day, and who had promised revenge on the
town and Kane. Miller, who Kane put in
prison for murder, had been pardoned, and his gang were gathering at train
station to meet when the train arrived at noon.
Kane approached all the town leaders for assistance to fight Miller but
they all abandoned him. The town and
church leaders demanded that he leave town, claiming that the gang would leave
the town alone if he was not there. Kane
failed in his attempts and faced the gunmen alone. After defeating the four outlaws, Kane threw
his badge onto the street in disgust at the town and left. The screenwriter wanted the audience to
equate the people of Cooper’s town with those who suddenly deserted their
blacklisted friends in Hollywood.
Kane’s
disgust equaled Foreman’s as friends humbled themselves and begged for help
from the Hollywood community without success.
Foreman had been called to testify in front of HUAC and intended to be
an un-co-operative witness. He said his friends began turning their backs on
him even though he was not a communist:
My associates were
afraid for themselves – I don’t believe them – and tried to get off the film,
unsuccessfully. They went to Gary Cooper
and he refused (to go along with them).
Fred Zimmerman, too, was very staunch and very loyal, so was out backer,
Bruce Church.
There are scenes in the
film that are taken from life. The scene
in the church is a distillation of meetings I had with partners, associates and
lawyers. And there’s the scene with the
man who offers to help and come back with his gun and asks, where are the
others? Cooper says there no others … I
became the Gary Cooper character.[2]
Foreman
depicted Hollywood society in a poor light as the threat of McCarthyism
approached. The pillars of the community
were afraid that a gunfight would jeopardise business and possible future
investment in the town and urged Kane to leave.
Their attitude was similar to the studio heads who abandoned their
employees on the slightest of pretexts to avoid bad publicity and poor box
office returns. The religious leaders
also pulled back from Kane because they cannot sanction violence. He was only offered help by only a 14 year
old boy and the town drunk and he turned down both. The retired marshal wanted to help but could
not because of his arthritis.
The
point of the film was that the town united could have easily defeated the
threat. Instead the Hollywood community
pursued their own individual selfish ends and were torn apart. The point was not lost after the film’s
release and Foreman was blacklisted for his efforts for many years. He was ‘morosely pleased’ when the message of
the film was understood by the conservatives.[3]
Grace Kelly supports her husband in High Noon Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
High Noon was one of the most
important westerns of the 1950s and many films followed its pattern of a lone
law officer facing a threat to the town.
Foreman certainly had no doubts when he wrote the screenplay that the
town was Hollywood and the four men approaching represented HUAC and when the
film was released The New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote:
It is a story that bears
a close resemblance to things that are happening today where people are
traumatised by bullies and surrendering their freedoms … (Kane) is a man with the
sense to meet a challenge, not duck and hope it will go away … The marshal can
give a few lessons to the people of Hollywood today.[4]
However,
it is doubtful whether the audience of the time saw it in that light. One of the Hollywood 10, Ring Lardner Jr, who
knew Carl Foreman, said he could see no anti-HUAC message in the film beyond
the general theme of standing up for oneself.[5] If members of the Hollywood 10, who were more
sensitive on the topic did not get the message, and knew the screenwriter, what
hope was there for the general audience.
The film had an anti-HUAC message but it is uncertain whether that
message got across to the audience.
Director Zinnemann said he did not make films to prove anything.[6]
The
film can also be read as a defence of McCarthy with a lone figure standing up against the communist threat. The heroic figure of Kane could be seen as
McCarthy desperately trying to awaken the community to the impending threat of
communism. Critic Phillip French has
also suggested that the film was about the United States reluctantly renewing
its role in world affairs.[7]High
Noon started a cycle of movies with the lone or aloof law official figure,
struggling with both the town and some form of menace on the horizon. Something in that formula clicked with the
audience and the film finished eighth in the box office for 1952.[8] The audience responded to the film but it is
unclear to exactly what they were responding.
[1] Tom Milne (ed.). Losey on Losey, Secker & Warburg, London,
1968, p. 90.
[2] Rudy Behlmer, Behind the Scenes: The Making of, Samuel French, New York, 1990, p.
276.
[3] Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of he Cold War, Dial, New York, 1982, p. 176.
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.
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.
A small cycle of films with anti-communist themes began with the most famous and popular of these films being Ninotchka, which was made in 1939. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Against the background of the Stalinist show trials and the Nazi-Soviet pact, there were strong anti-communist and anti-Russian sympathies in the United States. A small cycle of films with anti-communist themes began with the most famous and popular of these films being Ninotchka, which was made in 1939. Communist emissary Ninotchka was given some vicious lines by screenwriters Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch. She spoke of the recent show trials in Russia. ‘The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians’.[1] Played by Greta Garbo, Ninotchka was a humorless Soviet emissary sent to Paris to check up on three bungling bureaucrats who were doing little to negotiate the return of the Russian Royal jewelry. She found the bureaucrats were enjoying the high life and she fell for the charms of the American Melvyn Douglas. After returning to Russia, she found that her mail was censored, and she was unhappy with the communist system. She was later sent to Constantinople where she was reunited with Douglas and true love triumphed.
The
depiction of Russian life in Ninotchka was hard and bitter. In her small room, she talked to her friend
Anna:
ANNA:
Are you expecting someone?
NINOTCHKA:
A few friends … just a little
dinner party.
ANNA:
What are you serving?
NINOTCHKA:
An omelet.
ANNA (puzzled):
An omelet! Aren’t you living a little above your
ration?
NINOTCHKA:
Well, I have saved up two eggs
and each of my friends is bringing his own so we’ll manage.
ANNA:
It just goes to prove the
theory of our State. If you stand
alone it means a boiled egg but if you’re true to the collective spirit and
stick together you’ve got an omelet.
(Devilishly) That reminds me … have you heard that latest they’re
telling about the Kremlin?
At this moment a
door to one of the adjourning rooms opens and GURGANOV, a middle-aged man
with sour stool pigeon expression, walks quietly through the room to another
door, talking in the girls with one sly glance and giving the impression that
not only his eyes but ears are open.
ANNA breaks off her remark.
ANNA (whispering):
I’ll tell you later. (after GURGANOV has disappeared into the
other room she continues) That
Gurganov, you never know whether he is on his way to the washroom or the
Secret Police.[2]
Ninotchka was a gentle satire on the Russians and it was clear that they were not regarded as a serious threat.The cinema of the period reflected a society which was anti-communist but did not regard communism as more than a remote foreign tyranny. Ninotchka kicked off a minor cycle of anti-communist films which included He Stayed For Breakfast (1940), Comrade X (1940), and Public Deb Number One (1940). In Comrade X, directed by conservative King Vidor, a communist woman was forced to flee from Russia because she was too idealistic for the Stalinist powers. The power game within the Russian administration was one police chief knocking off another police chief. The Russians were depicted as nothing more than bumbling fools. When Hollywood again targeted the Russians in the late 40s, the films would tell a far different story. When Studio head Louis B. Mayer was interviewed by HUAC, he used Ninotchka as an example of the fine anti-communist cinema produced by his studio. He claimed that the film greatly annoyed communists by kidding them.
[1] Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
and Walter Reisch, Ninotchka, The MGM
Library of Film Scripts, Viking, New York, 1972, p.24.
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.
Jules Furtham, Leigh Brackett.
