One film which broke the anti-communist mould was Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953). Image courtesy of eMoviePoster
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University
In the early 1950s, conservative forces in Hollywood began to see that their anti-communist cinematic efforts had been failures. The films were not popular at the box office and the critical responses were poor or weak. During the Second World War, the reverse was true. Hollywood had made many popular anti-Nazi and anti-Japanese films during the Second World War at a furious pace. There were no anti-communist equivalents of Casablanca or Mrs Miniver. Somehow these anti-communist films did not work. My Son John had an established and acclaimed director in Leo McCarey working from his own script, its main star Robert Walker was still basking in his triumph of Strangers On A Train, the celebrated stage actress Helen Hayes had returned to the screen to play John’s mother and Dean Jagger had recently won an academy award for Twelve O’Clock High (1950), yet the film was a complete disaster. Accoldades were in short supply. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did nominate McCarey for an Oscar for Writing (Motion Picture Story). Even with the star power of John Wayne, Big Jim McLain, was the twenty-seventh most successful film of 1952, grossing $2,600,000.
The reasons for their failure lay elsewhere. When Cecil B. DeMille was appointed to the State Department’s International Motion Picture Unit as a consultant to make cold war films in 1953, he decried the lack of support for anti-communist pictures.
The American
Government would not arm its soldiers with guns made by amateurs. Neither should it arm … (the State)
Department with films by amateurs.[1]
DeMille claimed that the Soviet Union had spent $14 billion on propaganda while the United States spent $75 million. The Soviet Union was producing better propaganda than the United States. He argued that more resources were needed to win the propaganda cold war. Yet the studios had poured in considerable resources for anti-communist films and none had worked. The films were not allocated second rate talent. Directors William Wellman, Gordon Douglas, Leo McCarey, William Dietrele, William Cameron Menzies, Elia Kazan, Samuel Fuller, Anthony Mann, and Josef von Sternberg and others represent a group of highly talented people. It was not the lack of talent which caused their failure or the pace at which they were cranked out by the studios.
After
the release of Walk East on Beacon
and other anti-communist efforts, the New
York Times film critic Bosley Crowther lashed out at Hollywood for its
failure to make effective anti-communist films.
He argued that the United States was in a state of confusion and anxiety
over the threat of communism and he wanted Hollywood to ‘clarify the realities
of the situation and the true extent of domestic peril.’ Crowther thought that the plots of the film
were reworkings of old ideas and reflected a deeper problem in the film
industry.
(In Hollywood) no one,
resenting aspersions, dares raise a clear contentious voice. Caution is king. Intellectually Hollywood is paralyzed.
In this grave state of
apprehension, it isn’t likely that the people out there are going to come
through with any … literal dramatization of the actual shape of the Communist
peril. Indeed it is not very likely that
anyone will henceforth want to touch the subject of communism with a ten foot
pole. Not only is it ticklish as a
topic, but pictures about it have proved conspicuously unbefitting as far as
the paying public is concerned.[2]
One film which broke the anti-communist mould was Samuel Fuller’s Pick Up on South Street (1953). It was not an easy film to make. According to Lisa Dombrowsi, in her book The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill you, the script ran afoul of the the PCA, for “excessive brutality and sadistic beatings, of both men and women”. Although a revised script was accepted soon after, the studio was forced to shoot multiple takes of a particular scene in which the manner of Jean Peters and Richard Kiley frisk each other for loot was considered too risqué.
The film begins when a pickpocket Skip McCoy, played by Richard Widmark, stole some microfilm from the purse of Candy, the former mistress of communist Joey. The film contained a secret chemical formulae and Candy attempted to get the film back from McCoy for the psychopathic Joey. She falls in love with McCoy whole doing so, but McCoy was not interested and wanted to sell the microfilm back to the communists for $25,000. He eventually also falls in love with Candy, but only after he found out that she would not betray him to the communists. He was enraged when Candy was beaten and shot by Joey. He followed Joey and dealt out a savage beating in revenge.
McCoy
was not interested in seeking revenge until he has his own personal motives to
do so. When an FBI agent asked him, ‘Do
you know what Communism is?’ Skip replies ‘Who cares?’ They press him to act out of patriotic
motives and he refused.
McCoy was not interested in seeking revenge until he has his own personal motives to do so. It is his love for Candy – not his political interests – that drive his revenge.
Detective: If you refuse to co-operate you’ll be as
guilty as those traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb
Fuller later argued that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had lunch with him and studio head Zanuck, and was told that he detested Fuller’s work and especially Pickup on South Street. Hoover particuarly did not like Widmark’s character saying “Are you waving the flag at me?”, He did not approve of the the scene of a Federal agent bribing an informer and other things. “Zanuck backed Fuller up, telling Hoover he knew nothing about making movies, but removed references to the FBI in the film’s advertising.” It is simple to identify Hoover’s annoyance. McCoy was only interested in money. He said to Candy: ‘So you are Red. Who cares? Your money is as good as anybody’s.’ The film was a clear break from any other anti-communist film of the time. Indeed it turned everything on its head. The criminal world looked down on communism. Moe, who informed on Skip for $50 to the police, refused to give Skip’s address to the communists because ‘even in our crumby kind of business, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere’.[4] Moe doesn’t even know why she doesn’t like communism. She says ‘What do I know about commies? Nothing? I know I just don’t like them.’[5]
Most
other anti-communist films defended the role of the informer. In Pickup
On South Street, the stance on informing was reversed.
Director Sam Fuller was laughing at the seriousness of patriotic films and in doing so produced one of the most eccentric and individual anti-communist films of the 1950s. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster
Moe:
Some people peddle apples, lamb chops, lumber. I peddle information. Skip ain’t sore. He understands. We live in a different kind of world. Once in while he gets how under the collar if I sell him short.
Moe was in informer to the police and yet despised informers to communists. The hero of this film was a unrepentant and unpatriotic criminal. The law enforcement agencies appeared to be flat-footed and easily misled by the criminals. The police even needed informers like Moe to round up suspects. Fuller was laughing at the seriousness of patriotic films and in doing so produced one of the most eccentric and individual anti-communist films of the 1950s. The communism angle is so slight that when the movie was released in France, the dubbed soundtrack changed the villains from communist spys to drug dealers. The French title “Le port de la drogue” can be translated as “Pier of Drugs”. [7]
Fuller repeated the formula of personal, rather than political revenge, with Richard Widmark leading a submarine in Chinese controlled waters, in Hell And High Water (1954). Widmark was a mercenary who would sell his services to the highest bidder. The submarine crew uncovered a plot by the Chinese to have a disguised B29 drop atomic bombs on Manchuria to blame the United States for starting a nuclear war. Widmark couldn’t care less until his most loyal crew member was killed by a communist prisoner. Only after his friend’s, did he become committed to stopping the communist plot. Critic Nicholas Garnham argued that ‘the Fuller protagonist is always caught in a crossfire between warring totalitarian organizations.’ Pickup on South Street finished 62nd in the Variety rankings for 1953.[8]
[7] For a discussion of Fuller’s anti-communism and his views on national identity see Nicholas Garham, Fuller, Secker and Warburg in association with the British Film Institute, 1971, pp. 106 – 133.
My Son John was a serious attempt to alert America to, what director Leo McCarey considered, a dangerous and pressing threat. The film seemed to have absorbed the political tensions of Hollywood during that strained time. From its opening scenes, it was a gloomy tense depiction of strangling the American family. Image from eMoviePoster
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University
The links between sexuality and communism were seen in other films, but none more pointed than My Son John (1952) which linked political subversion to sexual activity. Producer, writer and director Leo McCarey was one of the leading anti-communist campaigners in Hollywood,[1] and his film My Son John was a serious attempt to alert America to, what he considered, a dangerous and pressing threat. McCarey was a staunch anti-Communist and had joined Wood in testifying to HUAC in October 1947. He had directed Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Marys (1945), which were very popular films with Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley. McCarey told HUAC his films were not successful in Russia because they contained God. He wanted Hollywood to produce anti-Communist films as it had done in the Second World War against fascism. In 1952, McCarey would do just that and direct one of the more feverish anti-Communist films in My Son John – the final political messages of which were fashioned by DeMille. The film seemed to have absorbed the political tensions of Hollywood during that strained time. From its opening scenes, it was a gloomy tense depiction of strangling the American family.
The story began as Ben and Chuck Jefferson, played by James Young and Richard Jaeckel, went off to fight in the Korean War. They were blonde clean-cut American boys who played football. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
The film witnessed the return of Helen Hayes – the first lady of american Theatre – after 18 years away from the screen. The story began as Ben and Chuck Jefferson, played by James Young and Richard Jaeckel, went off to fight in the Korean War. They were blonde clean-cut American boys who played football, while their brother John, played by Robert Walker, was dark haired and read books. John worked at some mysterious job in Washington. Their mother, played by Helen Hayes, was distressed that he did not return for their farewell party. When he did return, Hayes was shocked to learn that he scoffed at his father’s membership of the American Legion. Suspicions increased when he told his parents that he believed that Bible stories should be taken on a symbolic rather than literal level.
With
the evidence mounting fast, his mother Lucille, played by Helen Hayes, made
John swear on the Bible that he was not a communist. He was quite happy to oblige because he was
an atheist and was not afraid of eternal damnation by making such an oath. The Bible was also used in a scene where
John’s father Dan sang John a song he composed for his American Legion Friends.
He
then bashed John over the head with the bible when he laughed. The scene appeared to be strongly influenced
by a similar scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, where a mother read the story of Exodus from
the bible to her two sons. One son also
scoffed at the reading and was struck over the head by the other son with a
newspaper. In an earlier draft of the
screenplay of My Son John, the father
struck John when he scoffed at the commandment about honoring your
parents. The similarity was no accident
as DeMille’s political speech writer Donald Hayne wrote the original drafts for
the final speech by John Jefferson.[3] To scoff at the ten commandments was the
equivalent of extolling communism for DeMille who saw them as the moral basis
to fight communism.[4] Furthermore, to scoff was direct proof of
communist tendencies, hence the father’s righteous and violent reaction.
Director Leo McCarey watches Robert Walker and Helen Hayes. The relationship between Mother and Son was a bizarre subtext to this anti-Communist film. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster
DeMille
exercised absolute control over his staff and it would be impossible to believe
that Hayne wrote the speech without DeMille’s direction, approval and
consent. DeMille’s writers considered
themselves to be ‘trained seals’ who merely translated the director’s thoughts
onto paper.[5] Even though he has not listed in the credits,
it is clear that DeMille had a great deal of power within Hollywood’s
anti-communist community and that power extended to influencing the
anti-communist content of films of other directors.
John’s
father Dan, played by Dean Jagger, swore that if he even thought his son was a
communist, he would take him into the back yard and shoot with a double-barrel
shotgun. McCarey’s depiction of the
all-American father was drunk, violent, and stupid. Throughout the film, the father was extremely
hostile to John’s intellectual achievements, and yet the mother’s character was
even worse. She hovered on the edge of a
nervous breakdown and there were several hints to her being menopausal. In an earlier draft of the film, the message
was clear that she was going through a ‘stage of life’ and needed to constantly
take pills.[6] When the mother heard that John was being
investigated by the FBI for being communist, she regarded it as solid evidence
that he was guilty. In the draft script, she actually collapsed before
testifying that her son was a communist.
The audience was meant to conclude that her communist son was undermining
her mental and physical health. It would
be easier to believe that these demented parents led their children into
communism.
Like I Married a Communist, My Son John linked intellectual activity to communism. John was constantly compared with his blonde brothers. They played football and were doing their patriotic duty in Korea while John was an intellectual and a traitor. T seemed failure to play football was one of the key elements of becoming a political subversive. The mother recalled going to a football game to see Ben and Chuck play. As she supported their football team, she would turn to John and barrack for him in his own personal football game. The audience was told that John’s brothers were pulled out of school to pay for John’s education. These ideas neatly fitted with the anti-intellectual atmosphere of the McCarthyite investigators. It was a time when the word ‘egghead’ became a pejorative term for intellectuals.[7] While making the film, McCarey told The New York Times:
(My Son John) is about
a mother and father who struggle and slaved.
They had no education. They put
all their money into higher education for their sons. But on of the kids gets too bright. It poses the problem – how bright can you
get?
He takes up a lot of
things including atheism… The mother only knew two books – her Bible and her
cookbook. But who’s the brighter in the
end – the mother or the son.[8]
But
there was something more sinister than intellectual curiosity which led to
communism. In his review of the film
Bosley Crowthey in the New York Times wrote that intellectuals were seen as
‘dangerous perverters of youth.’[9] It was not only in the field of ideas that he
was corrupt. John’s twisted relationship
with his mother indicated murkier reasons for the descent into the abyss. Nora Sayre noted that John was deceitful and
charming toward her and there was an undisguised hostility towards his
father. His performance was as close as
Hollywood would dare come to that of a homosexual.[10] The father looked on in disgust when he met
his professor from his old University.
In the early draft of the screenplay, Dan says to his wife: ‘Did you see that greeting? I thought they were going to kiss each
other.’[11] John’s communism was the result of a
combination of anti-athletic, intellectual and homosexual tendencies.
In
the original screenplay, John’s mother was in a position to put John in prison
for his communist activities. She could
not bring herself to testify against John to the FBI and collapsed and was then
put into a hospital. The draft
screenplay was incomplete, but it did include notes of a speech where John
renounced his communist past while making a speech to a high school. The speech, which incriminated him, was made
even though the FBI was unable to convict him.
John was arrested and taken to prison.
In the final scene, he visited his mother in hospital and told her of
his return to the ‘side of the angels’.[12]
The
film required a different ending as Walker died before the end of My Son John. Some hasty rewriting was needed, and McCarey
used some outtakes from Strangers On A
Train given to him by director Alfred Hitchcock to spin out an ending.[13] To complete the film. John went through a remarkable conversion to
capitalism at the end of the film and was immediately gunned down by his fellow
communists beneath the Lincoln Memorial.
In
the film from the 1930s through to the 1950s, the figure of Lincoln was used to
bolster the political viewpoints of the filmmakers. Abraham Lincoln was the most deified on the
Presidents in the American popular imagination.
In Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939),
the dejected Smith returned to fight the corrupt politicians in the Senate after
seeing a small child in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Director John Ford repeatedly used Lincoln as
an icon of fundamental American wisdom in films such as The Iron Horse (1924) and Young
Mr Linclon (1939). In Cheyenne Autumn (1964), the Secretary of
State, played by Edward G. Robinson, looked at a picture of Lincoln, while
pondering the fate of the Cheyenne
Indians, and said ‘What would he do?’ and the problems of Cheyenne Indians
were soon resolved. Lincoln was also
used to support the closing anti-communist message in I Was a Communist for the FBI and The FBI Story (1958).
Lincoln
was once again the icon of traditional American values. John’s death at the feet of the memorial
showed that his political conversion and redemption was complete. He had paid his price for becoming a
communist. In the original script he
cried out: ‘I am a native American
communist spy – and may God have mercy on my soul!’[14] The final film made John pay for his
communism with his death. At the
conclusion, a tape recording of his planned speech was played to a graduating
class.
I was going to help to
make a better world. I was flattered
when I was immediately recognized as an intellect. I was invited to homes where only superior
minds commuted. It excited my freshman
fancy to hear daring thoughts … A bold defiance of the only authorities I’d
ever known: my church and my father and my mother. I know that many of you have experienced that
stimulation. But stimulants lead to
narcotics. As the seller of habit-forming
dope gives the innocent their first inoculation, with a cunning worthy of a
serpent, there are other snakes waiting lying to satisfy the desire of the
young to give themselves something positive…[15]
The
concluding speech described communism as an addictive drug. This did not explain why John was able to
break his addiction so easily. During
his final speech a ray of light shines down on the stage indicating God’s
approval, when John asked for God’s mercy, it was surely given.
The
final speech was quite different form Hayne’s original script.[16] Hayne wanted to emphasise that the laws
against communist agents were weak and the FBI could not have convicted
John. He gave up any chance of escape
and confessed that he had been passing secrets to the Russians.[17] McCarey, however wanted to drive home the
inherent evil of communism. McCarey’s
draft for John’s final speech was extremely close to the final film and it
seemed that Walker’s death did little to change its direction.
Once again, communism was expunged by a severe act of contrition. Both Robert Ryan in I Married A Communist and Robert Walker in My Son John had to perform this painful act to clear themselves of communism, just as those in Hollywood had to name names before the HUAC investigations in order to clear themselves. McCarey’s depiction of communism was the blackest of the 1950s. It was as an addictive drug peddled by intellectuals with homosexual tendencies to young impressionable minds. The thin academic air of college was a breeding ground for these delusions. Young people who wanted to do something positive may fall victim to its clutches. Yet the alternative in McCarey’s world was not much better. Violent and threatening, verging on psychotic, fathers and neurotic mothers were the all-American couple. These parents would sacrifice their children to the authorities through guilt by association. He film rationalized that the techniques used throughout America and Hollywood were necessary and desirable. It argued that being investigated was the same as being guilty; that authorities were impeccable in their research and pursuit of enemies and never made mistakes. John’s confession at the end of the film justified the physical and mental battering he had received from his mother, his father and the authorities. The confession was a justification of HUAC’s investigations and the stance taken by the studio heads. When the film was released, it was not surprising that DeMille said it was a great film and showed that McCarey was a great American.[18] The film was, however, universally condemned by film reviewers. My Son John represented the low water mark of Hollywood’s dealing with communism and the film did not make Variety’s list for the year despite some heavy advertising.[19] Most reviewers slammed the film, aside from Bosley Crowther in The New York Times who praised some aspects of it; but even he had grave concerns about its political dogmatism.
Bernard Dick focuses on Leo McCarey’s anti-communist film My Son John (1952) in some detail in his book The Screen is Red. The film’s production fell into a shambles with the death of lead actor Robert Walker, and an ending of sorts was created – with some unheralded assistance by Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock. The remaining film is uncomfortable to watch; it contains one disturbing scene in which an angry father attacks his communist son for laughing at his conservative jingoism. Despite the contrived conclusion, Dick describes McCarey as a master of plot resolution. He argues that McCarey gave viewers an ending that was “dramatic and reflective,” [117] providing an accurate description of America in the early years of the Cold War. His respectful analysis is at odds with both contemporary reviewers and later critics, who see it as a mixture of hysterical anti-communism tinctured with a vague homophobia – along with some disturbing ideas about motherhood.
[3] Draft of final speech of My Son
John, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Box 439, Folder 10, Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah.
[4] A full discussion will be in the
chapter on biblical epics.
[5] Quote from unnamed writer in
Motion Picture Daily, 16 December 1949.
Accounts of DeMille’s legendary treatment of writers can be found in Ring Lardner Jr., ‘The Sign of the
Boss’, Screenwriter, November 1945,
and Phil Koury, Yes, Mr DeMille, G.P.Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1976.
[6] Undated draft script of My Son
John, Box 439, Folder 10, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Box 439, Folder 10,
Brighan Young University, Provo, Utah.
[7] William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream A Narrative History
of America 1932 – 1972, Bantam, New York, 1975, pp. 625 – 626.
[8]New York Times, 18 March 1952.
At the end of the original script, John asks his mother to bake cookies
for him in prison.
[10] Sayre, Running Time, p.96. Walker’s
performance is close to his acclaimed role of Bruno in Strangers On A Train where again his performance had strong
homosexual overtones. See Donald Spoto, Art Of Alfred Hitchcock, Dolphin, New
York, 1976, p. 212 and for a differing view see Robin Wood, Hitchcock Film’s Revisited, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1960, pp. 347 – 348. McCarey did claim that Hitchcock was a strong
influence for the film, New York Times,
9 April 1952.
[11] Draft script of My Son John, p.
11 Box 439, Folder 10, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Box 439, Folder 10, Brigham
Young University, Provo, Utah.
[13] Walker died after being
prescribed some sedatives by doctors after emotional outbursts on the set of My Son John. He had a history of problems with alcohol and
had suffered a nervous breakdown in the late 1940s. David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema, Secker and Warburg,
London, 1975, p. 595.
[14] Hayne, Donald John’s Speech, 2
June 1951, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Box 439, Folder 10, Cecil B. DeMille
Archives, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
[16] Hayne, Donald John’s Speech, 2
June 1951, and Leo McCarey, Leo John’s
Speech, 10 August 1951. Cecil B.
DeMille Archives, Box 439, Folder 10, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah.
[18] Cecil B. DeMille to Leo McCarey,
3 April 1952. Cecil B. DeMille Archives,
Box 439, Folder 10, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
[19] The film’s advertising focused
on a non-existent sex scene. The film
was condemned by most film reviewers at the time. One belated defence of the film is in Leland
A. Poague, The Hollywood Professionals:
Wilder and McCarey, London, Tantry Press, 1980.
Walk East on Beacon was based on an article by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover called Crime of the Century which was published in Reader’s Digest in May 1951. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University
In 1951 FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was offered $15,000 for the rights to his article in Readers Digest which was based on the Fuchs-Gold case. Hoover had written – or it had been ghost written – the article called Crime of the Century which was published in Reader’s Digest in May 1951. British atomic scientist Karl Fuchs and American Harry Gold gave nuclear secrets to the Russians. Hoover refused the offer but granted the movie rights. His biographer Curt Gentry argued that Hoover refused the money because of the links between the case and the controversial Rosenberg trial. Gentry said that Hoover only arrested Ethel Rosenberg as a ‘lever’ to get Julius to confess. A decision he greatly regretted. The FBI’s anti-communist stance was shown in Walk East on Beacon .[1] The FBI is depicted in glowing – if somewhat – ridiculous terms throughout the film. The New York Times wrote: ” Chief J. Edgar Hoover’s story, “The Crime of the Century,” is an absorbing affair, as the law, utilizing such varied aids as hidden cameras, lip readers, television equipment and the Coast Guard, efficiently tightens the net around its elusive quarry. And, in the course of the chase, it becomes increasingly obvious that the F. B. I. cooperated in the production.” Like Big Jim McLain, which praised HUAC, Walk East on Beacon praised the Bureau. It was released with publicity material which said the country was in danger and citizens should report espionage, sabotage or subversive activities, the chattering of aircraft for flights over restricted areas, suspicious individuals loitering near restricted areas, foreign submarine landings, poisoning of public water supplies, possession and distribution of foreign-inspired propaganda, unusual fires or explosions affecting vital industry, suspicious parachute landings and possession of radioactive material.[2]
HUAC had begun its investigation by interviewing selected labor and industry leaders in the film industry in March 1947. Listening to anti-communist figures in Hollywood did not provide HUAC chair J. Parnell Thomas and investigator Robert Stripling with enough evidence to proceed with a full investigation. They needed the FBI, which had been building up a massive dossier of communist involvement in Hollywood over the past three years. At first, Hoover declined to support the venture because he did not want HUAC linked to the FBI, but Thomas and Stripling promised discretion when they contacted Los Angeles FBI agent R. B. Hood for support. Under this agreement, Hoover arranged to assist the committee on the basis that the FBI remained unidentified. With this assurance, Hoover testified to it in an open session on March 26, 1947, where he declared “the aims and responsibilities” of the HUAC and the FBI were the same: “The protection of the internal security of the Nation.” Hoover used the opportunity to argue that the Communist Party was penetrating many “public opinion mediums,” particularly the film industry, and that it would achieve its goal of capturing American institutions through infiltration of the unions and creative outlets. Hoover said, “I would have no fears if more Americans possessed the zeal, the fervor, the persistence and the industry to learn about this menace of Red fascism. I do fear for the liberal and progressive who has been hoodwinked and duped into joining hands with the communists.” Hoover’s testimony to HUAC was a clear blurring of the lines between liberals and radicals. Congress further ordered that 250,000 copies of Hoover’s address were to be printed and distributed. The FBI and HUAC were now allies. The FBI would gather the evidence and the committee would disclose it. By making films about these entities were certainly trying to appease their new political masters.[3]
The plot was the unlikely plan about the blackmail and kidnapping of a scientist working on an important new computer called Falcon. Throughout the film, the FBI was depicted as a highly efficient organisation following up hundreds of leads. One such lead gives the name of a possible communist agent. The suspect was followed by FBI agents to the Polish freighter where he was substituted by an agent from Moscow who was able to use his papers. The Russian agent in turn was then followed by a series of FBI agents. The communists were involved in a complex plot to extort important mathematical formulae from a scientist Dr Krayer. The scientist’s son had been captured in East Germany and the communists told Krayer that he would be safe provided that the critical information he was working on was handed on to their agents.
Communists who left the party or who pretended to leave were subject to constant recall. One party member was threatened with blackmail after he was tracked down by his colleagues. He said that it was impossible to leave and informing to the FBI meant death.[4] Those who pretended to leave the party were only sleepers waiting to be activated by Moscow. Those people lived and worked in the community and could not be detected. Nevertheless, the FBI appeared as a ruthlessly efficient operation with thousands of agents working around the clock to stop subversion. The audience was reminded that foreign agents in the United States were given great freedoms. A list of agents who have been ‘sleeping’ for years before being activated was repeatedly shown.
The FBI enjoyed strong publicity from the film. The film was released with publicity material which said the country was in danger and citizens should report espionage, sabotage or subversive activities, the chattering of aircraft for flights over restricted areas, suspicious individuals loitering near restricted areas, foreign submarine landings, poisoning of public water supplies, possession and distribution of foreign-inspired propaganda, unusual fires or explosions affecting vital industry, suspicious parachute landings and possession of radioactive material. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster
Most of the film was about setting up an elaborate web to send the information to Moscow. The web included exchanging papers in parks, taxi cabs, airport lockers and other means. When this complex apparatus fell apart, the communists adopted the more direct route of kidnapping the scientist and smuggling him out of the country. The film ended with the capture of all the communist agents, but with a warning that hundreds of other plots were being hatched across the United States. The audience was told that a small group of highly trained communist agents can do the damage of millions. Yet, as critic Nora Sayre points out, these communist agents were grossly incompetent, allowing themselves to be followed, bugged and filmed at every turn.[5] When one communist courier was told that he was being followed by the FBI, he immediately walked over to the agent and said: ‘You’re FBI and I know you are following me.’[5] The stupidity of the communists may be explained by the scientist who attacked the communists saying that ‘minds in chains cannot think.’[6]
The
film claimed that the United States was blessed with great freedoms and this
could lead to its undoing. The message
of too much freedom, and freedoms being abused, was repeated in The FBI Story (1958) which also had the
backing of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and Big
Jim McLain (1951). Despite those
comments, communist agents appeared to be subject to intensive surveillance
around the clock. They were filmed in parks, bugged in their houses, have their
mail opened and were constantly followed.
All this was in response to a single anonymous tip that a person may be
a communist. The FBI said that hundreds
of tips were received every day giving rise to an image of surveillance in the
United States of Orwellian dimensions. Walk East on Beacon was an image of
society where the only way to survive was in the hands of the FBI. Freedoms had to be given up to retain
freedom. The film was ranked 88th
in the Variety rankings taking in
$1.3 million.[7]
[1] See Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets, Norton, New York, 1991 and Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search For Truth, Vintage, New York, 1984.
[3] Athan G. Theoharis, The FBI & American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 89. O’Reilly, Red Menace, 89–91. Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 154–159.
[4]Walk East on Beacon, (d) Alfred Werker, Leo Rosten.
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.
Senior Lecturer, Strategic Communication, La Trobe University
I Married a Communist was one of the most distinctive of the early anti-communist films. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
The initial failure of anti-communist films deterred some filmmakers. A Hollywood producer John Sutherland scrapped plans for anti-communist film Confessions of an American Communist after he found that exhibitors were ‘indisposed towards films touched with propaganda’.[1] But the major studios were not deterred and a series of anti-communist films followed in 1949 including The Red Menace, The Red Danube and I Married a Communist.
I Married a Communist or Woman on Pier 13 (1949) was one of the
most distinctive of the early anti-communist films. It was the second of Howard Hughes’ attempts
at an anti-communist film,[2] and was an important film
for RKO, as the New York Times noted, because it signaled the switch at the
studio from its traditional liberal views Hughes’ ultra-conservative values.[3] The film was beset with production problems,
the screenwriters had to ensure its attacks on communist unions were not seen
as attacks on all unions. Making the
distinction was proving difficult. The
writers had to create a story about industrial unrest on dockyards without ever
mentioning the word ‘strike’. Instead
they had to contend with ‘walk-out’, or ‘work stoppage’ or ‘tie-up’. Actors Merle Oberon and Paul Heinreid were
pressed into appearing in the film and then walked out.[4]
The
film was also used as a political barometer for RKO directors. Joseph Losey along with 13 other directors
were offered the job before it was picked up by Rovert Stevenson. Losey told that the film was the ‘touchstone
for establishing who was a “red”’.
Directors were offered I Married a
Communist and if they turned it down, they were blacklisted. Nicholas Ray was also one of the directors
offered the film. He began working on
sets and on the script thinking that the film was so idiotic that it would
never be made. When he realized that it
was going to be produced, he walked off the set.[5] Ray later claimed that he told Hughes that
the film was a ‘loser’ and wanted nothing to do with it.[6]
After
its first disappointing commercial screenings, the film was retitled The Woman on Pier 13, in the hope that a
hint of sex and mystery on the waterfront would attract the crowds.[7] Despite the screenwriting problems about unions,
the film was, in large measure, a smear campaign against the head of the West
Coast Longshoreman’s and Warehousemen’s Union Harry Bridges. The union leader was born in Australia and
FBI head J. Edgar Hoover tried hard and failed to have him deported.[8] The choice of Bridges as a target by the
studio may also have been made because of the links between the ILWU and the
Hollywood’s 10’s Dalton Trumbo who had been a noted supporter of the union
leader for many years.[9] In return, the ILWU had also been a strong
promoter of the Hollywood 10.[10] The ultra-conservative director Cecil B.
DeMille had said that Harry Bridges should be in jail and wanted laws to stop
him from having a ‘stranglehold on a critical American industry’.[11]
The
film focused on Brad Collins, played by Robert Ryan, who played a reformed
communist. He was blackmailed by his
former colleagues who threatened to tell his wife and employer of his communist
and criminal past. Ryan, who worked for
the waterfront management, was forced to prolong a litter union dispute on the
waterfront. His brother-in-law Don Lowry
was indoctrinated by the communists to lead the waterfront union towards
confrontation. The communists acted by
manipulating key agents in sensitive positions.
With agents in management and in the union, the communists inflamed and
prolonged an industrial dispute which caused economic damage to the United
States. They did this because Moscow had
ordered that the docks had to be ‘tied up for 60 days’.[12] Eventually Lowry became aware of he communist
plans and was killed by them. Angered by
Lowry’s murder, Ryan fought and exposed the communist ring, but while regaining
his honour, he lost his life.
Throughout
the film, the structure of the Communist Party was not made clear; the leader
Thomas Gomez took his orders from a shadowy figure on a telephone. The appearance of this shadowy figure who
directed operations from behind the scenes, and who was never caught, was one
of the consistent images in anti-communist films. The figure appeared to be rich and wealthy; a
member of the establishment. The film
implied that communists were present throughout society and their senior
officials occupied high levels of power.
This hinted that the officials were connected with the Democrat administration.
Former
communist membership could be an instrument of blackmail. If Ryan’s communist past – which included
murder – were discovered, he was told he would lose both his wife’s love and
his career at the shipyards. This was a
clear attack on those Hollywood radicals who defended their party membership on
the grounds of a youthful indiscretion.
Party membership was a lifetime commitment, regardless of the intentions
of the individual. Once a member of the
party, it took an extreme act of contrition to remove the taint. I
Married a Communist can be read as Hollywood’s version of its own internal
politics. The hysterical tone of the
films and the slimy depiction of communists was a reflection of how the moguls
saw the communist threat. In one scene,
an FBI informer was killed by the communists and this was a calculated insult
to those who refused to testify.
Informing on communists was depicted as an act of bravery. Those who attempted to purge themselves of
their past were the only ones who could be free from the taint of communism,
just as those who did not recant before the various committees could ever again
be trusted.
Exploration
of the reasons for becoming a communist were confined to those weak-minded
young men who were seduced – both literally and metaphorically – by
communists. The script of I Married A Communist claimed that one
party member can indoctrinate a thousand Americans.[13] The means of indoctrination looks to be
sexual in nature. Critic Nora Sayre has
noted that there was a common figure running through the anti-communist films
called ‘the Bad Blonde’. The role of the
blonde was to seduce ‘impressionable’ young men into joining the Party.[14] Certainly as the communist agents Nixon[15] and Christine discussed
indoctrination of Lowry in I Married A Communist, they equated it with
seduction.
INTERIOR
DARKROOM-NIGHT
We begin on
Christine’s hands rinsing a short piece of Leia film in tray-pull back as she
hands the film to Nixon, who slips it in viewer and studies it closely.
CHRISTINE: (in moment) Important?
NIXON: (continues
studying film) Very. As a matter of
fact, it’s what I’ve waited for – for he last eight months. (still studies film while questioning) How
close is young Lowry to his brother-in-law?
CHRISTINE:
Very close. Why?
NIXON: (still studies
film) In that case – I’ve changed my
mind about him. Continue with his
indoctrination. I’ll inform headquarters
you personally guarantee he’ll be delivered for use when and if he’s
needed.
Christine takes this
with mingled reaction: pleasure about Don, puzzlement about Nixon’s new
purpose. She smiles answering:
CHRISTINE: (with
slight mockery) Why – that will be a very interesting assignment- that I will
enjoy very much.
He gives
her an unreadable side-look – hands strip of film to her.
NIXON:
Destroy it.
She drops film I tray
– takes bottle of chemical from shelf.
Nixon exists. Christine pours
acid on film. Fumes and vapor rise. She still smiles – about herself and Don.[16]
Anti-intellectualism
was another theme of I Married a
Communist. In one scene, communist
agent Nixon reminded Brad Collins of his communist past.
Nixon
sits – opens briefcase – rummages through folders.
NIXON: (during this
action) I’m a student of contracts.
They’re what makes this country of ours fabulous to the rest of the
world. (finds what he seeks) On one hand, we have Bradley Collins – the great
success story. On the other – here I
have the record of a very unsuccessful young man named Frank Johnson.
Brad shows no visible
reaction – asks:
BRAD:
Who’s he?
NIXON: He was typical
of the lost generation – produced by the 30’s.
He left school – ambitious, strong, intelligent – hunting a job, to make
his start up ladder. Unfortunately –
there were no jobs.
BRAD:
(calmly) Why tell me about him?
NIXON: I’m coming to
that – Mr. Collins. (consults documents) Embittered – and violent by nature –
Frank Johnson joined the Young Communist League – then became a full fledged
member of the Party… (seem to skip through document – hitting only the salient
details).. Party card listed Frank J… Agit-prop activities, strikes in New
Jersey … Very prominent in strong-arm work .. Then suddenly – broke all
connections with the Party and disappeared … Reason unknown.
He stops – puts folder
down – removes spectacles in a gesture we’ll learn is characteristic. With spectacles off, Nixon is a changed man:
cold, hard, the complete “intellectual”
NIXON:
(continued) … Or was unknown until now…[17]
For
these screenwriters being an intellectual was to be suspect, and being ‘the
complete “intellectual” was to be a communist.
[2] The first was a film called The Whiphand (1951) which was originally
on Nazis but had the focus changed to communists because of Hughes’ ownership
of RKO.
[5] Tom Milne (ed.). Losey
on Losey, Secker & Warburg, London, 1968, pp. 73 – 76.
[6] Michael Goodwin and Naomi Wise,
No. 6. ‘Nicholas Ray: Rebel!’ Take One,
5 January p. 11.
[7] Andrew Velez (ed.). Robert
Stevenson’s The Woman on Pier 13, RKO Classic Screenplays, Frederick Ungar,
New York, 1976. From introduction by
Andrew Velez. No page Number.
[8] Harry Bridges was the president
of the International Longshormen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. He is remembered for leading a strike in 1934
on the West Coast which eventually became a general strike. The Congress of Industrial Organizations
expelled the ILWU on the grounds of communist domination. Bridges never denied his sympathy for
communist and radical causes, but always denied being a party member. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets, Norton, New York, 1991,
pp. 245 – 264.
[9] Bernard F. Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the
Hollywood Ten, Universtiy Of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 1989, p. 219.
[11] Keep Faith, a speech before the
American Legion Convention, Dinner Kay Auditorium, Miami, Florida, 15 October
1951, Box 212, Folder 1, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Brigham Young University,
Utah, USA.
[14] Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of the Cold War, Dial, New York, 1982, p. 81.
[15] The script refers to the
communist leader as being Nixon, but the final cast list gives the name as
Vanning. It may have been changed to
avoid confusion with HUAC member, later US President, Richard Nixon. As the screenplay refers to him as Nixon, this
name will be used.
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
The anti-communist crusade of the movie moguls began when they signed the Waldorf Declaration on 24 November 1947 which was the same day that Congress met to approve the HUAC contempt citations.
The anti-communist crusade of the movie moguls began when they signed the Waldorf Declaration on 24 November 1947 which was the same day that Congress met to approve the HUAC contempt citations. The declaration was supported by the Motion Picture Association of America, the Association of Motion Picture Producers – the studio heads – and was signed at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan.[1] They voted to sack any employee who would not say under oath that he or she was not a communist. This meant that the Hollywood 10 were sacked without compensation. The studio heads also voted to refuse to employ any person with communist beliefs.[2]
The
Waldorf declaration was the action of men who were quite prepared to sacrifice
their political independence of financial gain.
Attacking the communists did not appear to be a high price to pay; after
all it was only a small group of writers who were being sacked. Moverover, the spirited resistance against
the HUAC-style investigation in 1941 was done at a time when Roosevelt was
firmly entrenched in power. The
political pendulum had swung to the right and the studios were attempting to
appease their new political masters.
The
Hollywood 10 soon lost most of its support when many in the Committee for the
First Amendment dropped their backing for the group. Some believed that they also could also lose
their jobs and others thought the Hollywood’s 10’s behavior before the
committee as unforgivable, and support for the group began to fade quickly in
the film industry.[3] In subsequent HUAC investigations, there was
little or no effective organised opposition.
The
HUAC investigations were, in part, a reaction to the Roosevelt years and the
close relationship of the film industry with its administration. But there were other links between the HUAC
investigators and Hollywood. The film
industry had encouraged the myth that America was the unblemished ‘good guy’ of
world politics, it now had to reap some of the bitter fruits of that wartime
propaganda. The myth helped give
Americans a feeling of infallibility which assisted in their massive war
effort. In fostering the belief that to
fight America was to do wrong, the films of the Second World War helped create
the mental framework for the cold war.
The adjustment from Nazi Germany to communist Russia as the Untied States
central enemy was surprisingly swift.[4] But it did raise some nagging problems. If America was always right, and Russia was
wrong, why was the United States allied to the country in the first place?
The
answer for the American right – and in particular the HUAC investigators – was
a vast conspiracy stretching from Russia, to the White House, onto communist
screenwriters in Hollywood. Historian
Richard Hofstadter has written about the attractiveness of the conspiracy
theory to Americans and its frequent explosions in American life.[5] A common theme of these theorists was that
small groups with outside backing were seeking to control the United States by
nefarious means. Conspiracy theories
were a well established part of American political culture and they flourished
during the uncertain post-war period.
According to the conspiracy theorists, the Roosevelt administration had
a long term plan to undermine capitalism in order to bring the economy under
the control of the Federal Government and to pave the way for socialism or
communism. HUAC Investigator Robert E.
Stripling believed that Hollywood was in danger of falling under the control of
communists, just as other industries had already done.[6]
The
scapegoats for the conspiracy theorists were the communist and left-wing
writers who worked on the ‘praise Russia’ films of the Second World War. Screenwriter Howard Koch had been ordered by
Warner to make Mission to Moscow and is efforts had been praised by Warner.[7] Koch was subpoenaed but did not testify, he
placed full page ads in the Hollywood trade papers saying that he was not and
had never been a communist, but reserved the right not to say it to HUAC.[8] Koch’s strong liberalism had shown out in
films such as In This Our Life (1942)
and his talent in Sergeant York
(1941) Casablanca (1943), and Letter From an Unknown Woman (1947). His efforts counted for nothing and his
refusal to answer HUAC’s questions, on the principle of his constitutional
rights meant that he did not work in Hollywood for another 12 years. The studio heads were not interested in
Justice, they were interested in scapegoats and Koch was one of those
blacklisted as a result.
For
other members of the Hollywood 10, there were more sinister motives for their
blacklisting. Action in the North
Atlantic screenwriter John Howard Lawson was a central figure in the formation
of the Screenwriters Guild. Eradicating
him would also relieve the studio heads of a radical and determined union
leader. Ring Lardner Jr had always been
a thorn in the side of the ultra-conservative Hollywood leaders. In November 1945, Lardner wrote a long,
highly critical and funny article for Screenwriter on the ultra-conservative
Cecil B. DeMille where he relentlessly attacked and satirized the director and
his politics. He focused sharply on the
Cecil B. DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom writing:
All policy and action
are determined by the self perpetuating board of directors, yet every rank and
file member is assured his political freedom to read and listen to whatever
pronouncement Mr DeMille is moved to make.[9]
He
described the foundation as essentially a right-wing organisation which had
attacked the rights of unionists to make a united stand. The editor of Screenwriter was Dalton Trumbo and the managing editor was Gordon
Kahn. All three became member of the
Hollywood 19. The article was specially
transcribed the DeMille and left in his papers in a file on background
information on communists for his autobiography.[10] DeMille was often accused by his political
opponents of providing names to HUAC and it seems clear that the selection of
Lardner, Trumbo and Kahn was no accident: Hollywood’s right-wing was exacting
revenge.
Many
have argued that it was the economic decline of Hollywood which forced the
studio heads to retreat so vigorously.[11] However, he moguls had opposed intervention
strongly before the war. It was not
economic pressures which drove them to make the Waldorf declaration. The year 1947 was the second most successful
year for the cinema in its history.[12] There was a slight dip from the figures for
1946 which had been a record year for the industry, but they were not under
savage pressure. Anti-trust legislation
and television were on the horizon, but in general the motion picture industry
was sound. The Waldorf declaration and
the consequent blacklisting was a personal failure of nerve by the studio heads
to fight the HUAC investigations.
The
studio heads did not realize that the declaration opened the way for constant
sackings and suspicion. In trying to get
a quick fix to a complex problem, the studios had allowed themselves to be held
hostage by any patriotic organisation which called any actor, director or
writer a communist and promised to picket a film carrying their name. These organisations were extremely demanding. When a person was named as a communist by a
patriotic organisation of some description, the studio heads either had to get
the person concerned cleared through certain channels or have them blacklisted. Red Channels was one example of the
publications circulating at the time which itemized the various offences of
actors and writers supposedly in communist from organisations. The evidence was often wafer thin, but as the
introduction to Red Channels showed the editors were not interested in
subtleties.
The information set
forth in the following report is taken for records available to the
public. The purpose of this
complications is threefold. One, to show
how communists have been able to carry out their plan of infiltration of the
radio and television industry. Two to
indicate the extent to which many prominent actors and artists have been
inveigled to lend their names, according
to these public records, to organisations espousing Communist causes. This, regardless of whether they actually
believe in, sympathize with, or even encourage actors or artists from naively
lending their names to Communist organizations or causes in the future.[13]
The
Waldorf Declaration and the acquiescence of the studio heads to the HUAC
investigators opened the way for chaos in the filmmaking industry. Blacklisting could occur for being a member
of a political group, attending a meeting or signing a petition. The Blacklisting of an actor was not a one
way street. His or her name could be
cleared by approaches to the various agencies concerned. Certain shadowy figures during the blacklist
era made a living attempting to clear people so that they could return to
work. Indeed some groups would cast
aspersions on a person’s character and then offer to redress the balance. This led to a continuing round of clearances
of actors and writers through various organisations. Blacklisted writers could also still write
for the studios using fronts to submit their scripts. People were told to avoid blacklisted people
or at least not to meet them in public.[14]
The
third phase of the crusade against communism was the release of a series of
anti-communist films. Actor Adolphe
Menjou, one of the friendly witnesses before the HUAC hearings, demanded that
the studios produce anti-communist films.
I believe it would be
an incredible success… I think it would be a very wonderful thing to see one
made. I would like to see a picture of
the Bulgarian situation; … I would like that shown to the American public to see
communism as it actually is. I would
like to see the brutal beatings, the stabbings and killings that go on through
Europe… We showed many anti-Nazi pictures.
I see no reason why we do not show anti-communist pictures.[15]
The
studios responded quickly to Menjou’s call.
The first anti-communist film to roll out of the studios was Ninotchka which was re-released by MGM
in November 1947. Earlier the State
Department had been so impressed with the film’s anti-communist message that it
helped release it in Italy to help undermine the Italian communists in 1946
elections.[16]
Ninotchka was quickly followed
by The Iron Curtain which was
released by RKO in May 1948.[17] The title of the film was the image for
Churchill’s famous speech of an iron curtain descending across Europe which he
made on 5 March 1946.[18] This film was similar in style to the
successful Confessions of a Nazi Spy
released before the war, and it also shared the same writer in Martin
Krims. The film concentrated on the
defection of a Russian clerk Igor Gouzenko, played by Dana Andrews, who
defected in Canada. Even with its
novelty value, and the huge publicity of the HUAC hearings, the film was ranked
64th in the year’s rentals.[19]
[1] Otto Friedrich, City of Nets, Headline, London, 1986, p.
332.
[2] Phillip French, The Movie Moguls, Penguin, Harmonsworth,
1969, p. 154. Producers Sam Goldwyn,
Walter Wagner and liberal Dore Schary opposed the declaration.
[3] Barry Norman, Talking Pictures: The Story of Hollywood,
Hooder and Stoughton, London, 1987, p. 205.
[4] Les K. Alder and Thomas G.
Paterson, ‘Red Fasciasm: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the
American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s-1950s, ‘American Historical Journal,
vol. 75, no. 4, April 1970, pp. 1059 – 1061. Alder and Paterson discuss how
easily the substitution from Germany to Russia occurred as a totalitarian
enemy.
[5] Richard Hofstadter The Paranoid Style In American Politics and
Other Essays, Jonathan Cape, London, 1966, pp. 3 – 40.
[6] Robert E. Stripling, The Red Plot Against America, Bell,
Pennsylvania, 1949.
[7] Jack Warner to Howard Koch,
November 24, 1942, Howard Koch Collection, Wisconsin Center for Film and
Theatre Research in David Culbert (ed.). Mission
to Moscow, Wisconsin Warner Bros Screenplay Series, University of Wisconsin
Press, Wisconsin, 1980, pp. 264 – 265.
[9] Ring Lardner Jr., ‘The Sign of the Boss’, The Screen Writer,
November 1945, pp. 1 – 12. Transcript in
Box 29, Folder 7, Cecil B. DeMille Archives, Brigham Young University, Provo,
Utah, USA. The Cecil B. DeMille
Foundation for Political Freedom was formed to campaign for right-to-work laws
and against communist infiltration.
DeMille set up the foundation when he refused to pay one dollar to the
American Federation of Radio Artists to fight right-to-work legislation on the
California state ballot in 1944. The
foundation was closed soon after his death in 1959.
[10] Other names in the files include
writers Albert Maltz, Sidney Buchman, and John Howard Lawson who were all
blacklisted. Edward G. Robinson and
Elmer Bernstein were described as not communist. Actor Howard Da Silva was also described a
‘commie’ out to get DeMille. All
appeared before HUAC. Box 29, Folder 7, Cecil B. DeMille Archives.
[16] Dorothy Jones, ‘Communism and the Movies’ in John Cogley,
Report on Blacklisting, The Fund For The Republic, New York, 1956, p. 300.
[17] For a complete discussion of the
film see Daniel J Leab, ‘The Iron Curtain
(1948): Hollywood’s First Cold War Movie’,
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television, Vol 8, No. 2, 1988, pp. 153 – 188.
[18] Rhode, Robert James (ed.), Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches
1879 – 1963, Chelsea, London, 1974, p. 7285.
[19]Variety, 5 January 1950 estimated that the film made $2 million in
rentals. No other 1949 anti-communist
made the lists.
Samuel Fuller.
Cinema history 