Grapes of Wrath was a controversial film on its release, and the controversy grew after the Second World War.
Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.com.
Kevin Brianton, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University
Eric Johnston, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, supposedly remarked ‘we’ll have no more Grapes of Wrath’ in response to an investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities into communism in the American film industry in 1947. Many film historians have employed the quotation as evidence that the investigation had created strict controls that led to fewer politically and socially motivated films in the United States in the 1950s. It has also linked Johnston to the highly conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. However, the quotation was based on a suspect source and was possibly derived from material said or written by other people. Johnston may well have made this comment, but if so, the context of the comment has been ignored. A more nuanced interpretation is needed to assess Johnston’s views and actions.
Kevin Brianton, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University, Melbourne
The fate of one member of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, was recently the subject of a widely released film. Trumbo (2015) foreshadowed a renewed interest in Hollywood’s Red Scare of the 1950s. The film premiered six months before Donald Trump began his Presidential campaign with its ‘America first’ message – the slogan was the title of another right-wing populist group dating back to isolationist debate before the Second World War. It appears that the rise of a new form of right-wing populism which culminated in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021 has led to greater interest in the McCarthyite period of the 1950s. Links between the two periods are easy to find. Donald Trump’s one-time legal advisor was Roy Cohn, an assistant to the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose legal and political tactics gave rise to the term McCarthyism.
The reissue of Bernard F. Dick’s Radical Innocence, a 1988 critical study of the Hollywood Ten, is another indicator of that growing interest.[1] Professor Dick is a prolific writer on the film industry and has recently released a book on films that dealt with communism in the 1950s called The Screen is Red. His Anatomy of Film is a standard text. He has also written a history of American cinema in World War II, Second World War:The Star-Spangled Screen, which has been highly influential. Dick has recently published a book on Columbia Pictures and he has also written books on the playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman and directors Billy Wilder and Joseph Mankiewicz.
The Hollywood Ten – as they became known – appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in October 1947. The longwinded title for the committee quickly shortened to become HUAC, and its history is infamous. These HUAC hearings were highly unfair and vindictive. These investigations uncovered little or nothing about communism in the film industry that wasn’t already known and were more about pre-election publicity for the committee members. Many historians have labelled the hearings a ‘show trial’ for good reasons.[2] HUAC handpicked some conservatives to testify about the perils of communism in American cinema. They relied on the FBI to determine suitable communists or left wingers to interrogate.
These ‘unfriendly witnesses’ which came to be called the Hollywood Ten comprised Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Alvah Bessie, Edward Dmytryk, John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Albert Maltz, Herbert Biberman, and Ring Lardner, Jr. They were called unfriendly witnesses as they refused to answer the committee’s questions about their political affiliations and were eventually imprisoned for contempt of Congress. One of its members, Ring Lardner Jr once said that the Hollywood Ten was a group of people who were thrown together. Some people he liked and others he didn’t. Right through the hearings and beyond, they argued over strategy and tactics and with each other. They were never a cohesive unit.
Dick agrees with Lardner that the Hollywood Ten were an accidental group of writers and directors selected by the committee. His conclusion is backed by the FBI reports that show the investigations were chaotic, with a constant reshuffling of witnesses right up to the public hearings in October 1947. Nonetheless, they were depicted as a homogenous group of left-wing writers and directors. Dick points out: “They did not come to a particular place for a particular purpose, nor did they have a common aesthetic; they represented different talents within the industry as well as different traditions within the arts.”
The reputation of the Hollywood Ten has always been looked at through a political prism, and the group’s critical reputation was never high. Dick noted that: ‘For more than forty years, they have also been stigmatized by Billy Wilder’s quip “Of the unfriendly Ten, only two had any talent; the other eight were just unfriendly.”’ Dick fails to mention that while the quote has been attributed to Wilder and has been widely used, it may just be a spurious Hollywood anecdote. It certainly sounds like Wilder’s sense of humour, but it has never been linked to him directly from any contemporary source.[3] It is also at odds with the actions Wilder took during the hearings. Wilder provided nominal support for the Hollywood Ten through the Committee of the First Amendment. Wilder was also not a man who routinely savaged the reputation of his fellow writers and directors. He was normally polite and often complimentary.[4]
Even if the quote is fictitious, Dick is correct in saying that the Hollywood Ten’s cinematic contribution has been largely ignored. Initially, the most visible figure was John Howard Lawson, whose highly volatile and adversarial testimony set the scene for the group. Lawson was dragged screaming from the hearings. Dick rightly notes that Lawson has been the subject of some academic research. Yet, the most prominent members of Hollywood Ten would be Edward Dymytrk and Dalton Trumbo, who took different paths to reinvigorate their careers. The others were largely ignored.
Crossfire, was nominated for the Best Director Academy Award. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster
At the time of the hearings, Dmytryk looked certain to be a successful director. He had directed a series of low-budget films until he made a major film noir in Murder, My Sweet (1944). Just before the hearings, Dmytryk had made a strong film about anti-Semitism called Crossfire (1947). Even though it was a low-budget B film, it received several Academy Award nominations. The producer was Adrian Scott, who was called to testify before HUAC. Dmytryk would eventually distance himself from the group and then give names as requested by the committee in later years. Following his rejection of the Hollywood Ten’s approach, Dmytryk returned to Hollywood. In the later part of his career, he was celebrated for his films, such as The Caine Mutiny, and he had a successful film career that ran until 1975. Dick spends a great deal of time on the director and his work.
Dalton Trumbo’s script for Spartacus (1960) helped break the blacklist. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
In sharp contrast to Dmytryk, Trumbo would never testify and remained an unrelenting opponent of HUAC and was contemptuous of those who did. Trumbo would use ‘fronts’ to write a series of screenplays over the next ten years. He would then be noted as the man who broke the blacklist when he received credit for Spartacus (1960). Trumbo would return to Hollywood on his terms. He is also recognised for his “Only victims” speech at the Laurel Award dinner on 13 March 1970. It was a speech arguing that everyone involved lost from the HUAC investigation. The term was used by many, including Robert Vaughn, for his study of the blacklist and has become a defining statement of the period.[5] In this respect, Dick’s book is now a little dated. In 2021, Trumbo has become a hero since the release of a popular film and books about his life.
Dick looks beyond these three dominant figures and demonstrates that each of the Hollywood Ten contributed to film history. Some of the contributions were relatively minor, while others made major impacts. For example, Lester Cole made some interesting films, such as Among the Living (1941), described as a mixture of film noir, social drama, horror films with suspense. Samuel Ornitz wrote novels in a similar vein to James Joyce. Herbert Biberman would defy the blacklist and somehow direct Salt of the Earth, a film about a strike with strong feminist messages – everyone is equal.[6] Albert Maltz would write a highly regarded film noir in The Naked City (1948), his last screen credit for twenty-two years, and he was denied a screen credit for The Robe (1953) and many other successful films. Maltz would eventually return to being credited with Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970). While Maltz was prolific, Alvah Bessie had not written a great deal for Hollywood. Still, Dick shows he made a strong impact through his novels, particularly Men in Battle, where he used his experiences as a volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Ring Lardner Jr. left a legacy of sparkling wit with some of his screenplays, but Dick shows he had a broad range of skills. For example, along with John Howard Lawson, he was not credited for the legendary film noir Laura (1944). Lardner would revive his career in later years with films such as M*A*S*H (1970).
A Russian poster of Salt of the Earth, the 1954 Herbert J. Biberman historical melodrama starring Juan Chacon, Rosaura Revueltas, Will Geer, David Wolfe, and David Sarvis. Banned fron beingscreend at the time of its release. In 1992 the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Image and caption information courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Each of the Hollywood Ten is given a dedicated chapter, and Dick proves to be a fair-minded critic of their work. In doing so, Dick highlights the hidden tragedy of the hearings and the subsequent blacklist. The book shows that tremendously talented people were shunted aside for no good reason other than holding unpopular political views or engaging in lawful protest. Yet it is hard to agree with Dick’s general conclusion that: “It is a truism of American film history that the blacklist which followed the 1947 hearings contributed to the decline of the movie industry after World War II.” He further argued that “The greatest irony of the blacklist, then, was the way it backfired on the industry that set it in motion: it weakened the industry that it was supposed to strengthen; it strengthened some whom it was supposed to destroy by eliciting from them work that was often better than they had done previously. Yet some aspects of the blacklist transcend irony: the premature deaths and suicides it caused, the dull and sanctimonious films it spawned.”
The reality was that television was emerging after the Second World War, and it would undercut the industry far more aggressively than any political investigation. Yet even with its conservative slant, some of the cinema from the 1950s is among the greatest to reach the screen. Harvey (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), High Noon (1952), The War of the Worlds (1953), Rear Window (1954), Night of the Hunter (1955), The Searchers (1956), Twelve Angry Men (1957), Vertigo (1958) and Ben Hur (1959) are among the films made during this time, and it is not evidence of a film industry in creative decline.
Moreover, the HUAC investigation was never about strengthening the film industry; it was about publicity for the Congressional investigators. Certainly, each of the Hollywood Ten suffered greatly due to the HUAC investigation. They suffered alongside tens of thousands of other people across the United States in the Red Scare period. In broad terms, American democracy was shown to have an Achilles heel regarding right-wing populism – a flaw even more evident today.
One clear shortcoming of the reissued book is that there is no attempt to update or place the work in its contemporary context. More than 30 years after its initial publication, the work deserves some form of updating. Even a short biographical essay or afterword would have been useful to examine the scholarship on the Hollywood Ten over the past decades. A revised bibliography should have been included to refer to works published after 1989. Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo’s work on Dalton Trumbo is an important addition to the literature,[7] as is Gerald Horne’s detailed study of John Howard Lawson.[8] Jennifer E. Langdon has written well about Adrian Scott and Crossfire.[9]Other articles on the critical and political contributions of individual members of the Hollywood Ten have should also have been noted. Radical Innocence remains interesting and important, but its publication represents a lost opportunity to refresh a key work.
[1] Bernard F. Dick, Radical Innocence, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988 and re-released in 2021.
[2] Among others see Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
[3] Most historians quote secondary sources or say it is widely quoted. See Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard. New York: Hyperion, 1998 or Donald T. Critchlow, When Hollywood was Right, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
[4] Robert Horton (ed.). Billy Wilder: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
[5] Robert Vaughn, Only Victims: a Study of Show Business Blacklisting. New York: G P Putnam, 1972.
[6] The remarkable history of this film is told in H. J. Biberman, and Michael Wilson, Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film. Beacon Press, 1965.
[7] Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical. 2015.
[8] Gerald Horne, The Final Victim of the Blacklist John Howard Lawson: Dean of the Hollywood Ten. University of California Press, 2006.
[9] Jennifer E. Langdon, Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2010.
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
The Westerns hold pride of place in American cinema. They retold the legends and myths of America’s frontier past and had been a feature of cinema virtually since its inception. In the 1950s, hundreds of westerns were made which dealt with many aspects of American life. It was perhaps inevitable, with the stifling of direct political criticism, and the pressing concerns of McCarthyism and communism, that westerns would take on a political dimension in the 1950s.
High Noon was one of the most important westerns of the 1950s and many films followed its pattern of a lone law officer facing a threat to the town. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
The
1947 investigation proved to be only a testing of the waters for HUAC. The Hollywood 10 went to prison in September
1950 and the committee re-gathered momentum to pounce on Hollywood again. The Hollywood 10’s imprisonment had increased
the power of HUAC to make it feared throughout the film industry. Director Joseph Losey told an interviewer
that ‘the most terrifying thing about the atmosphere was seeing people succumb,
and seeing all protest disappear.
Because if you did protest, you’d had it.’[1] The second HUAC investigations were to be
larger and more systematic and they destroyed the remnants of the liberal-left
in Hollywood without any effective opposition.
In the middle of these rising fears about HUAC’s return, Carl Foremen
was writing the screenplay for a western called High Noon.
The
film was about the desperate efforts of the Sheriff Will Kane, played by Gary
Cooper, to get help from the townspeople to fight Frank Miller and his gang,
who were being released from jail that day, and who had promised revenge on the
town and Kane. Miller, who Kane put in
prison for murder, had been pardoned, and his gang were gathering at train
station to meet when the train arrived at noon.
Kane approached all the town leaders for assistance to fight Miller but
they all abandoned him. The town and
church leaders demanded that he leave town, claiming that the gang would leave
the town alone if he was not there. Kane
failed in his attempts and faced the gunmen alone. After defeating the four outlaws, Kane threw
his badge onto the street in disgust at the town and left. The screenwriter wanted the audience to
equate the people of Cooper’s town with those who suddenly deserted their
blacklisted friends in Hollywood.
Kane’s
disgust equaled Foreman’s as friends humbled themselves and begged for help
from the Hollywood community without success.
Foreman had been called to testify in front of HUAC and intended to be
an un-co-operative witness. He said his friends began turning their backs on
him even though he was not a communist:
My associates were
afraid for themselves – I don’t believe them – and tried to get off the film,
unsuccessfully. They went to Gary Cooper
and he refused (to go along with them).
Fred Zimmerman, too, was very staunch and very loyal, so was out backer,
Bruce Church.
There are scenes in the
film that are taken from life. The scene
in the church is a distillation of meetings I had with partners, associates and
lawyers. And there’s the scene with the
man who offers to help and come back with his gun and asks, where are the
others? Cooper says there no others … I
became the Gary Cooper character.[2]
Foreman
depicted Hollywood society in a poor light as the threat of McCarthyism
approached. The pillars of the community
were afraid that a gunfight would jeopardise business and possible future
investment in the town and urged Kane to leave.
Their attitude was similar to the studio heads who abandoned their
employees on the slightest of pretexts to avoid bad publicity and poor box
office returns. The religious leaders
also pulled back from Kane because they cannot sanction violence. He was only offered help by only a 14 year
old boy and the town drunk and he turned down both. The retired marshal wanted to help but could
not because of his arthritis.
The
point of the film was that the town united could have easily defeated the
threat. Instead the Hollywood community
pursued their own individual selfish ends and were torn apart. The point was not lost after the film’s
release and Foreman was blacklisted for his efforts for many years. He was ‘morosely pleased’ when the message of
the film was understood by the conservatives.[3]
Grace Kelly supports her husband in High Noon Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
High Noon was one of the most
important westerns of the 1950s and many films followed its pattern of a lone
law officer facing a threat to the town.
Foreman certainly had no doubts when he wrote the screenplay that the
town was Hollywood and the four men approaching represented HUAC and when the
film was released The New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote:
It is a story that bears
a close resemblance to things that are happening today where people are
traumatised by bullies and surrendering their freedoms … (Kane) is a man with the
sense to meet a challenge, not duck and hope it will go away … The marshal can
give a few lessons to the people of Hollywood today.[4]
However,
it is doubtful whether the audience of the time saw it in that light. One of the Hollywood 10, Ring Lardner Jr, who
knew Carl Foreman, said he could see no anti-HUAC message in the film beyond
the general theme of standing up for oneself.[5] If members of the Hollywood 10, who were more
sensitive on the topic did not get the message, and knew the screenwriter, what
hope was there for the general audience.
The film had an anti-HUAC message but it is uncertain whether that
message got across to the audience.
Director Zinnemann said he did not make films to prove anything.[6]
The
film can also be read as a defence of McCarthy with a lone figure standing up against the communist threat. The heroic figure of Kane could be seen as
McCarthy desperately trying to awaken the community to the impending threat of
communism. Critic Phillip French has
also suggested that the film was about the United States reluctantly renewing
its role in world affairs.[7]High
Noon started a cycle of movies with the lone or aloof law official figure,
struggling with both the town and some form of menace on the horizon. Something in that formula clicked with the
audience and the film finished eighth in the box office for 1952.[8] The audience responded to the film but it is
unclear to exactly what they were responding.
[1] Tom Milne (ed.). Losey on Losey, Secker & Warburg, London,
1968, p. 90.
[2] Rudy Behlmer, Behind the Scenes: The Making of, Samuel French, New York, 1990, p.
276.
[3] Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of he Cold War, Dial, New York, 1982, p. 176.
A king in New York’s attack on the destructive paranoia of McCarthyism was similar to his attack on Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940) where Chaplin used slapstick to cut his enemies down to size. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Kevin Brianton
Senior lecturer La Trobe University
The only direct depiction of the HUAC investigations in a negative light came in Charlie Chaplin’s A King in New York (1957). Chaplin had been one of he earliest victims of the anti-communist hysteria and had always been a target for the American Right. Several of his films had enraged the conservatives such as Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). His controversial private life had added fuel to the fire of conservatives who considered him to be a moral threat to the country. An editorial in the Los Angeles Herald Express said:
Charlie Chaplin shelf
proclaimed “citizen of the world” and “man without a country,” is fast nearing
the end of the trail as far as the United States is concerned.
The complacent
self-worship of the man, in a New York press conference is amazing.
In boasting that he was
neither a patriot nor an American citizen, he said, in part:
“I am not nationalist of
any country … You might say I am a citizen of the world … I never voted in my
life … I did a great deal for the war effort … I made a speech in favour of
opening a second front in 1942 … I believe that voting for people … leads to
fascism.”
What a
moral non-eternity that Chaplin is!
In joining the ranks of
subversives who have the overthrow of the American way of life as their avowed
objective, he insults the American people, the very people who have poured
millions into his lap.[1]
The FBI had more than 1900 pages of reports devoted to Charlie Chaplin during his 50 year residency in America.[2] Just as John Jefferson’s sexual preferences in My Son John were seen as evidence of his political leanings, Chaplin’s divorces and paternity litigations were seen as pointers to his communist sympathies. Certain scenes in Modern Times comment on communist issues such as when the tramp walked down the street waving a red flag, trying to signal a driver after it fell off a truck. A communist parade turned the corner behind him and police arrest him as a communist leader. More important was his depiction of the dehumanizing nature of industrial work which Chaplin delighted in satirizing, along with bosses and police. It was these scenes and his support for issues such as a second front against the Nazis in 1942 which left him tainted as a communist sympathizer. It was in this cold war atmosphere of 1952 that United States Attorney General James McGranery rescinded Chaplin’s re-entry permit while he was travelling to London for the premiere of his film Limelight.[3]
Chaplin was to remain away from the United States for the rest of his life, apart from one visit to pick up a life achievement award at the Academy Awards in 1971. But although he was never to return, he left his thoughts on he HUAC investigations and he whole atmosphere of paranoia in his film A King in New York (1957). The film’s attack on the destructive paranoia of McCarthyism was similar to his attack on Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940) where Chaplin used slapstick to cut his enemies down to size. The exiled King Shahdov of Estrovia sought refuge in the United States where he hoped to fund his plans for the peaceful use of nuclear power. Unfortunately the crooked Prime Minister, played by Jerry Desmonde, had run off with the funds. The King and his loyal ambassador Jaume, played by Oliver Johnston, were introduced into various aspects of American culture. The King visited a progressive school and met a precocious child Rupert Macabee, played by his son Michael Chaplin, who launched into Marxist critique of society.
Chaplin was to remain away from the United States for the rest of his life, apart from one visit to pick up a life achievement award at the Academy Awards in 1971. But although he was never to return, he left his thoughts on the HUAC investigations and he whole atmosphere of paranoia in his film: A King in New York (1957). Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
The
King later met Rupert wandering homeless in the streets because he was running
away from the Un-American Activities Committee who wanted to question him about
his parents’ loyalties. The FBI
eventually captured the boy in the King’s apartment and the King was called
before the committee. Before appearing
he was wrapped up in a fire hose and proceeded to douse the committee with
water. He was cleared of any wrongdoing and before leaving visited Rupert who
was destroyed after naming names. The
film’s subject matter was so contentious it was not shown in the United States
until 1976.[4]
The
pro-HUAC pictures were popular with the American audience. Both On
the Waterfront and The Caine Mutiny
were in the top 20 grossing films of 1954.
It is almost impossible to determine whether the main cause of their
success was their pro-HUAC message, but it does seem that conservative films
had more resonance with the American public.
Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three
Wives was a determined attack on the McCarthyite mentality and the
anti-intellectual atmosphere of the time.
It was a popular film and part of the post-war liberal flowering of
films. The high-minded aspirations of Storm Centre did not attract an
audience. A King in New York never had a chance. Although the stinging verbal jab by Wilder on
informers in Stalag 17 struck some
kind of chord, the attacks mad on HUAC by Chaplin, Miller, Taradash had a
little, if any, impact on the American public.
They were pot shots against a well armored opponent. It is doubtful that the American Right ever felt
the sting in the lines delivered in the films.
From
the lack of popular reaction to his set of films it would seem that the
American public were more behind McCarthy and the HUAC investigations. The efforts of Hollywood’s liberal community
failed to impress the American public that the communists were victims. However, the pro-HUAC films were also
one-offs, and no cycle of films began from On
the Waterfront with the informer as hero or from the garbled political
message of The Caine Mutiny. At the close of the decade and in the early
1960s, the political tone of films became more and more anti-McCarthyite. Films such as Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus
(1960), The Manchurian Candidate
(1962), and Seven Days in May (1964)
attacked McCarthyism in many different ways.
However, these films were looking at McCarthyism in retrospect when
controls were looser and there was little likelihood that a career could be
ended by a political statement. Even
though the anti-HUAC films did not strike a chord with the public, it is a
credit to the courage and the integrity of the filmmakers that they were made
at all.
[1] Los Angeles Herald Express 15
April 1947 printed in David Robinson Chaplin: His Life and Art, McGraw Hill,
New York, 1990, p. 546.
[2] Ibid. p. 750. A detailed summary
of the FBI’s campaign can be found in this biography.
In Night People (1954), Gregory Peck played an American colonel Stephen Van Dyke who was in charge of an operation to return a kidnapped American soldier called John Leatherby. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.
Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer Strategic Communication
As the Korean War petered out in 1953, and memories of the HUAC investigations began to fade, most of the real sting went out of anti-communist films. The new style of anti-communist film depicted Russia as a dangerous and determined enemy which had to be treated ruthlessly. In Night People (1954), Gregory Peck played an American colonel Stephen Van Dyke who was in charge of an operation to return a kidnapped American soldier called John Leatherby. The soldier had been kidnapped because the Russians wanted an anti-Nazi couple and hoped to swap the corporal for them. The film informed us that Himmler’s men now worked for the Russians, and they wanted their revenge on the couple.[1] The central conflict of the story rested between Van Dyke and the father of the soldier, ad American businessman Charles Leatherby played by Broderick Crawford. Leatherby felt that the Russians could be negotiated with as if they were hard-headed businessmen. Van Dyke refuted his ideas.
This is not a cash and
carry business. You are not dealing with
A & P. These are cannibals. Head hunting, blood thirsty cannibals who
want to eat us up.[2]
The conflict between civilians and the military in dealing with the Russians was one of the central themes in many anti-communist films. Originally called The Cannibals, the film plays out the emerging confidence of dealing with the Russians. Crawford was identified with the Eisenhower administration by the fact that he played golf and had heavy political connections. Peck was a soldier who was on the cutting edge of the cold war in Berlin.
Charles
Leatherby was a tough businessman who wanted results. He found that this attitude got him nowhere
in the cold war diplomacy of Berlin.
When he arrived at Berlin Airport, he asked State Department official
Frederick Hobart what the situation was:
HOBART:
It’s another big squeeze
apparently. We get them from time to
time. You know. Yesterday, they held up the autobans and
they cut phone lines into East Germany.
Anything they can think of to make nuisances of themselves.
LEATHERBY:
What do you think they want
really?
HOBART:
Well, for one thing they want us
out of here?
LEATHERBY:
Alright so we get out?
HOBART:
Then they may take a fancy to
Toledo.
LEATHERBY:
Are you trying to be funny?
HOBART:
… I’m only sure that whatever
happens is not isolated. They kidnap a
19 year old boy, your son, and we can’t tell if its just a local needle or
another Korea.[3]
By
the end of the film, Leatherby had seen the error of his ways and realised that
the military had the answers for the cold war.
He told Van Dyke that he could not let two innocent people be exchanged
for his son. Van Dyke replied that
although it was a major decision for Leatherby, that his opinions had never
mattered in the first place. The military,
not the civilians, made the decisions about dealing with the Russians.
Van
Dyke discovered that his mistress and contact with the Russians was a Soviet
spy and fooled the Russians by swapping her for the soldier. When it was needed, Van Dyke was ruthless. After strangling and punching his former
mistress, he had poisoned absinthe poured down her throat. Night
People showed a blend of the paranoia of the early anti-communist films
with the a return of an assurance that America had in its military. The opening sequence of marching soldiers,
tanks and helicopters was quite impressive as they moved across the wide
CinemaScope screen. Subversion still
existed, but it was not from within the American ranks. It is interesting that they spy had been carefully
replaced by Russians, rather than indoctrinated. The final scene had Van Dyke looking over the
skyline of Berlin confident that he could handle the Russians. The film added a note of reassurance to
anti-communist films that had been missing since The Big Lift. The more
positive tone appeared to helped it at the box office. Variety ranked it 51st, making
$2.1 million.
In
The McConnell Story (1955) directed
by Gordon Douglas, a General introduced the story of an American ace who shot
down more planes than any other person in Korea. He said that because of people like McConnell,
women were safe in their homes, children in their schools. People were free because ‘there are no chains
on your mind’.[4] When McConnell arrived in Korea, he was told
that this was the communist testing ground.
‘If they succeed here, there’ll be no part of the world that’ll be
safe’.[5] The role of the army was simply to slaughter
and make them think twice before trying anything again. There was no mention of subversion within the
American ranks. The threat was simply
external. The film was reasonably
popular and was ranked 27th by Variety
with rentals of $3.5 million.
[1] Linking the Soviet Union with the
German Nazis in the popular imagination to become a totalitarian blur is
discussed in Les K. Alder and Thomas G. Paterson, ‘Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia
in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s- 1950s,’ American Historical Review, April 1970, pp. 1046 – 1064.
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.
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.
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Ayn Rand wrote The Screen Guide for Americans for the Motion Picture Alliance of American Ideals
The MPAPAI’s efforts were reinforced by the studio heads’ desire to crush the studio unions and the obtain political favour with the emerging Republican and McCarthyite forces. The efforts of the alliance were not wasted. The conflict between the ultra-conservatives and the radicals came to a head at the HUAC hearings into communist involvement in Hollywood on 20 October 1947. The Washington-based committee planned to interview both communist and anti-communist witnesses for the next 10 days.
In
January 1947, studio head Jack Warner had received a Medal of Merit from the
Federal government for his work in government training films, yet in October
his studio was being investigated for subversion.[1] With the Republicans in control of Congress
since the 1946 elections, it was clear that the political pendulum was moving
toward the right and Hollywood was one of the first targets. The committee lined up several
ultra-conservative leaders in Hollywood to begin the investigation.
HUAC
has also subpoenaed 19 Hollywood producers, directors and writers as unfriendly
witnesses. Eleven of these had worked
for Warner Brothers, the studio which produced the most wartime propaganda and
had aligned itself with the Roosevelt administration. The studio had also been prominent for its
‘social conscience’ films of the 1930s.[2] The HUAC investigations had a special reason
for singling out the Warner Brothers studio, for its film, Mission to Moscow, as it was based on the work of Davies, a
prominent member of the Roosevelt administration. If they could establish a link between the
White House and the production of the pro-Russian pictures of the Second World War,
it could cause the Truman administration enormous political damage, the type
that was to occur later with the Alger Hiss trial.
Studio
head Jack Warner assured the committee that no subversive propaganda had ever
made it to the screen, not even in Mission
to Moscow. He was initially
forthright in his defence of his studio.
Warner told the committee that if making Mission to Moscow in 1942 was a subversive activity, then so too
were ‘the American Liberty ships and naval conveys which carried food and guns
to Russian allies’.[3] Warner defended Mission to Moscow as being necessary because of the danger that
Stalin would make a treaty with Hitler if Stalingrad fell. Such an alliance would lead to the
destruction of the world.[4] The film was designed to cement the friendship
between the USSR and the United States in a desperate time.
Following
studio heads Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer came novelist Ayn Rand, who was
considered by the committee to be an expert witness on the Soviet Union. Her expertise was derived from her Russian
origins and right-wing views. Rand
viewed Song of Russia for the committee and described at length its
inaccuracies, failings and lies. Her
criticism of the film clustered around the depiction of Russian peasant life..
She said that at least three and a half million, possibly seven million people,
had died from starvation in the drive to collectivization of farms and the film
makes no mention of them.[5] Rand said the depiction of Soviet village
life was ridiculous. Women were dressed
in attractive blouses and shoes. She
said if any person had the food shown in the film in the Ukraine, they would
have been murdered by starving people attempting to get food.[6] Rand summed up her position on pro-Russia
films like Song of Russia saying it was
unnecessary to deceive the American people about the Soviet Union.
Say it is a
dictatorship, but we want to be associated with it. Say it is worth being associated with the
devil, as Churchill said, in order to defeat another evil which is Hitler. There may be a good argument for that. But why pretend that Russia is not what it
was.[7]
The
hearings were highly unpopular at this state and the New York Times wrote in an editorial saying that the investigation
was unfair and could lead to greater dangers than it was fighting.[8] In Hollywood, the Committee for the First
Amendment was formed by writer Phillip Dunne, directors John Huston and William
Wyler and actor Alexander Knox to oppose censorship of films and to prevent a
blacklist.[9]
The
group had a massive backing and took out huge advertisements in trade
newspapers. The Committee for the First
Amendment wanted the Hollywood 19, as they were known, to take the first
amendment, and do nothing else. Instead,
when the unfriendly witnesses were called they tried to answer the committee’s
questions in their own way which led to shouting matches in the hearings. The first unfriendly witness, screenwriter
John Howard Lawson, attempted to yell down the committee saying it was on trial
before the American people. When he was
finally dragged from the stand, he set a precedent for the remaining
witnesses. Other witnesses were simply
asked if they had ever been a member of the Communist Party. When they failed to answer, they were charged
with contempt.
On
the 19 subpoenaed, ten were called before the committee and refused to testify
citing constitutional rights of privacy and freedom of political thought and
association. Screenwriter and playwright
Bertolt Brecht denied all knowledge of the communist party and later fled the
country. For unknown reasons, Chairman
Parnell Thomas cancelled the hearings before the remaining nine were heard.
The
Hollywood 10, as they became known, were sent to prison for contempt of
congress and the rest were blacklisted from work in Hollywood.[10] The group, along with most legal experts at
the time, believed that their contempt charges would be overturned in the
Supreme Court on the constitutional ground of the right to hold private
political beliefs.[11] Unfortunately for the Hollywood 10, two
liberal judges died before their cases were heard and they were replaced by
conservatives. The deaths changed the
political composition of the Supreme Court which then backed the contempt
citations. This decision by the Supreme
Court opened the legal door for the McCarthyite era. People were now in the position of taking
either the fifth amendment protecting them against self incrimination and
facing blacklisting and other harassment, or informing on people with communist
views.
[2] Richard Maltby, ‘Made for Each
Other: The Melodrama of Hollywood and the House Committee on Un-American
Activities’ in Phillip Davies and Brian Neve, (eds.). Cinema, Politics and Society in America, Manchester University
Press, Manchester, 1981, p. 87.
[3] US Congress, House Committee on
Un-American Activities, Hearings
Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry, 80th
Congress, 1st sess., 20 October 1947, vol. 1169 (5) p.10.
[9] The signatories to the Committee
for the First Amendment were Larry Adler, Stephen Morehouse Avery, Geraldine
Brooks, Roma Burton, Lauren Bacall, Barbara Bentley, Leonardo Bercovici,
Leonard Berstein, DeWitt Bodeem, Humphrey Bogart, Ann and Moe Braus, Richard
Brooks, Jerome Chodorov, Cheryl Crawford, Louis Calhern, Frank Callender, Eddie
Canto, McClure Capps, Warren Cowan, Richard Conte, Norman Corwin, Tom Carlyle,
Agnes DeMille, Delmar Davesm Donald Davies, Spencer Davies, Donald Davis,
Armand Deutsch, Walter Doniger, I.A.L. Diamond., L. Diamond, Muni Diamond, Kirk
Douglas, Jay Dratler, Phillip Dunne, Howard Duff, Paul Draper, Phoebe and Harry
Ephron, Julius Epstein, Phillip Epstein, Charles Einfeldm Sylvia Fine, Henry
Fonda, Melvin Frank, Irwin Gelsey, Benny Goodman, Ava Gardner, Sheridan Gibney,
Paulette Goddard, Michael Gordon, Jay Goldberg, Jesse J. Goldburg, Moss Hart,
Rita Hayworth, David Hopkins, Katherine Hepburn, Paul Heinreid, Van Heflin,
John Huston, John Houseman, Marsha Hunt, Joseph Hoffman, Uta Hagen, Robert L.
Joseph, George Kaufman, Norman Krasna, Herbert Kline, Michael Kraike, Isobel
Katleman, Arthur Lubin, Mary Loss, Myrna Loy, Burgess Meredith, Richard
Maibaum, David Millerm Frank L. Moss, Margo, Dorothy McGuire, Ivan Moffat,
Joseph Mischel, Dorothy Matthews, Lorie Niblio, N. Richard Nash, Doris Nolan,
George Oppenheimer, Ernest Pascal, Vincent Price, Norman Panama, Marion
Parsonnet, frank Partos, Jean Porter, John Paxton, Bob Presnell Jr., Gregory
Peck, Harold Rome, Gladys Robinson, Francis Rosenwald, Irving Rubine, Irving
Reis, Stanley Hubin, Slyvai Richards, Henry C. Rogers, Lyle Rooks, Norman and
Betsy Rose, Robert Ryan, Irwin Shaw, Richard Sale, George Seaton, John Stone,
Allan Scott, Barry Sullivan, Shepperd Sturdwick, Mrs Leo Spitz, Theodore
Strauss, John and Mari Shelton, Robert Shapiro, Joseph Than, Leo Townsend, Don
Victor, Bernard Vorhaus, Billy Wilder, Bill Watters, Jerry Wald and Cornel
Wilde. Myron C. Fagan Documentation of Red Stars in Hollywood printed in Gerald
Mast The Movies in Our Midst: Documents in the Cultural History of film in
America, 2nd edn., Oxford University Press, New York, 1979, p. 549.
[10] The Hollywood Ten were
screenwriters John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole,
Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Ring Lardner Jr; the writer-producer Herbert
Biberman; the writer-producer Adrian Scott; and the director Edward Dymytryk.
[11]Hollywood on Trial, (d) David Helpern Jr, Annie Resman.
Nunnally Johnson.
Cinema history 