‘Red Star over Hollywood’
libertyfilmfestival.com
— Jason @ 7:05 pm
Today Govindini and I attended a lunch featuring authors Ron and Allis Radosh, whose new book Red Star over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance With the Left is just coming out now. The Radoshes’ new book challenges the prevailing mythology of Hollywood’s ‘blacklist’-period of the 1950’s - namely, that the only victimized parties were political innocents. Mr. Radosh recently debated this subject at a ‘blacklist’ forum at UCLA, which we notified our readers about in this recent post. You can also read an excellent summary of the Radoshes’ book in the LA Times.
We’re looking forward to reading this book, and we thank Michael Finch and the kind folks at David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture for giving Mr. Radosh a forum to discuss this vital subject. It’s a vital subject for two reasons: 1) the mythology of the ‘blacklist’ continues to inform the liberal critique of conservatives in Hollywood ("Hey, aren’t you guys guilty of The Blacklist? Aren’t you a Menace To Free Speech?!"); 2) there is a lively, ongoing struggle among conservatives as to the actual usefullness of Joe McCarthy/HUAC/the Hollywood ‘blacklist’ to the conservative cause (for example, Ann Coulter recently referred to Mr. Radosh as a “chicken-s***” for criticizing McCarthy’s legacy).
As to the liberal critique of conservatives in Hollywood, I will let readers of LIBERTAS imagine what my attitude toward that might be. Suffice it to say that I’ve often been held responsible by liberals in this town for events that took place long before I was even born ("YOU blacklisted Trumbo! YOU’VE got John Garfield’s blood on your hands!"). It’s this sort of deferred guilt (the type of thing you read about in The Old Testament - “a curse upon your sons … and their sons, as well") that tends to define the daily existence of a conservative in Hollywood.
As for conservative infighting over whether the ‘blacklist’ was a good idea or not, I tend to take Ronald Reagan’s approach to these things. At the time, Reagan believed that it would be disastrous for the government to get involved in regulating Hollywood. He preferred that the industry regulate itself - and this, in effect, was what the ‘blacklist’ was … an effort at self-regulation [support Stalin=lose a job]. But what Radosh points out in his book is that the communists were already on the outs in Hollywood by the late 1940s - having alienated a great many mainstream liberals in the town (Reagan included). Had HUAC and others simply ignored the issue, communism in Hollywood probably would’ve died a pitiful and anonymous death. Instead, HUAC revived the communists as martyrs … and they’ve been playing the role ably for the last half-century.
Conservatives occasionally pick fights they’re not willing to finish. I can’t speak authoritatively on what HUAC or the studio heads should have done in the late 1940’s. Certainly these were serious and patriotic men, facing difficult decisions. I can only say that I, personally, have been paying for their decisions for as long as I can remember - and I occassionally wonder whether they had a hand in creating the monster we now know as Liberal Hollywood.
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latimes.com
latimes.com
COMMENTARY
A Rewrite for Hollywood's Blacklist Saga
By Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh
April 25, 2005
For more than 50 years, the communists and former communists of Hollywood have written the script of the past, telling the story of the blacklist in memoirs and histories, movies and documentaries in which they depict themselves as noble martyrs and champions of democracy. It is time, finally, to put an end to the glorification of this unhappy period and take a cleareyed look at the Hollywood Ten, the blacklist and the movie industry Reds who wielded such influence in the 1930s and 1940s.
According to the familiar but utterly romanticized script, the screenwriters, directors and actors who flirted with and joined the Communist Party are unadulterated heroes — just "liberals in a hurry." It is a simple black-and-white tale, as they tell it: The villains were the Hollywood moguls who blacklisted them, the liberals who abandoned the fight, and most of all, the "friendly" ex-communist witnesses who testified about their lives in the party and named names of old associates to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
It is a fable that has acquired an almost irresistible weight as a result of half a century of telling and retelling. Read Lillian Hellman. Or go see the Irwin Winkler film "Guilty by Suspicion."
But is it true? Certainly the blacklist harmed the careers of some of Hollywood's finest. Its damage extended not only to actual party members but, in some cases, to the well-meaning who joined party-controlled "popular front" organizations. But the accepted narrative obscures the important truth about communist influence in Hollywood. The Hollywood Ten were among the most committed of the party faithful, yet they've been wrapped and protected in a romantic haze, allowed to wear their appearance before HUAC as a badge of honor. The blacklist was a godsend, enabling them to reinvent themselves as heroic victims rather than what they really were: die-hard defenders of Josef Stalin who accepted every twist and turn of the party line, whether it was the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the invasion of Finland or the purge trials.
The truth is that, by the time HUAC arrived on the scene in 1947, the communists had already worn out their welcome in Hollywood. Liberals such as Melvyn Douglas felt betrayed at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, when the communists suddenly transformed the "Anti-Nazi League" into the "Hollywood Peace Forum," calling for American neutrality and using the slogan "Let's Skip the Next War." When the Cold War began, liberals such as Olivia De Haviland were already breaking from the party's main wartime front group, arguing against unity with those "who are more interested in taking orders from Moscow and following the so-called party line."
Today, we seem to have forgotten the credible reasons that led some disillusioned former communists to reluctantly appear as friendly witnesses before HUAC. Budd Schulberg talked about how his Hollywood comrades did everything possible to stop him from working on his first novel, "What Makes Sammy Run?," because it deviated from the party line. The great director Elia Kazan told how the party created a secret cell that sought to take over the Group Theater. Others talked about how the party attacked screenwriter Albert Maltz for daring to write that perhaps art was more than just a "weapon."
The blacklist was an abomination. It was wrong to deprive artists of their livelihood because of their political views. But its most malicious contribution to postwar history was to obscure forever the truth about communism in Hollywood. The most astute former blacklisted screenwriter came to understand this. Dalton Trumbo explained that it was the party's "secret" organizational structure that gave rise to the blacklist. The Reds, Trumbo wrote, "should have all been open communists, or they should not have been members at all."
Trumbo's own son, Christopher, has mythologized his father in his recent play, "Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted." To this day, few know anything about Trumbo's willingness to befriend the hated "informers," or how he ultimately realized that he and his comrades had been used by the party leadership. In 1970, he gave a startling speech when he accepted a career achievement award from the Writers Guild. "It will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none," Trumbo said that night. "There were only victims."
Despite that, the mythology continues today, exemplifying John Ford's maxim: When there is a conflict between the truth and the myth, go with the myth.
Ronald Radosh is an adjunct senior scholar at the Hudson Institute and co-author with Allis Radosh of the forthcoming "Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With the Left" (Encounter Books).
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times |
