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Regnery History | 2015 | Allan Ryskind
Hollywood Traitors
Blacklisted
screenwriters, Agents of Stalin, Allies
of Hitler
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CONTENTS
Cast of Characters
PREFACE Morrie Ryskind: Hollywood
Anti-Communist (and My Father)
CHAPTER 1 The Stalinist Ten
CHAPTER 2 The Birth of the Screen Writers
Guild
CHAPTER 3 “Communism . . . Must Be Fought
For”
CHAPTER 4 Anti-Fascist, or Pro-Stalin?
CHAPTER 5 The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League
CHAPTER 6 The Pro-Hitler Congress
CHAPTER 7 Red and Brown Sabotage
CHAPTER 8 The American Peace Mobilization
Goes to War
CHAPTER 9 Red Propaganda in Films
CHAPTER 10 Blockade: The Party
Targets Spain
CHAPTER 11 Ninotchka Slips
through a Red Filter
CHAPTER 12 Red Heyday in Hollywood
CHAPTER 13 Mission for Stalin
CHAPTER 14 The Great Escape
CHAPTER 15 The Anti-Communists Weigh In
CHAPTER 16 The Cold War Begins
CHAPTER 17 Screenwriters Embrace a Comintern
Agent
CHAPTER 18 HUAC
CHAPTER 19 More Friendly Witnesses
CHAPTER 20 Phil Dunne’s Strange Crusade
CHAPTER 21 The Writers Self-Destruct
CHAPTER 22 Portents of Disaster
CHAPTER 23 The Screen Writer:
Red as a Rose
CHAPTER 24 Emmet Lavery’s Critical Turnaround
CHAPTER 25 The Blacklist Begins
CHAPTER 26 Game, Set, Match
CHAPTER 27 Herb Sorrell and the CSU Strike
CHAPTER 28 Reagan Outwits the Reds
CHAPTER 29 The Silencing of Albert Maltz
CHAPTER 30 Dalton Trumbo, Communist
Conformist
CHAPTER 31 From Pacifist to Holy Warrior
CHAPTER 32 Lillian Hellman: Scarlet Woman,
Scarlet Lies
CHAPTER 33 Donald Ogden Stewart: Hollywood
Revolutionary
CHAPTER 34 John Howard Lawson: The CP’s
“Grand Pooh-Bah”
CHAPTER 35 Elia Kazan Deserved His Oscar
CHAPTER 36 Arthur Miller -- Was He or Wasn’t
He?
CHAPTER 37 The Curious Case of Michael
Blankfort
CHAPTER 38 Reds on the Blacklist
CHAPTER 39 Rehabilitating Ex-Reds
CHAPTER 40 Red Reminiscences
CHAPTER 41 Hollywood Today
APPENDIX A The Communist Cards of the
Hollywood Ten
APPENDIX B Selected Filmography
APPENDIX C Scrubbing Robert Taylor’s Name
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
[W.Z.
Below, we summarize and copy/paste excerpts (in quotation marks) of
particularly relevant material in the book. Also, we sometimes insert
additional information in square brackets.]
Cast of Characters
Hollywood
Ten: Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring
Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian
Scott, Dalton Trumbo.
Other Key Players: Laurence Beilenson,
Michael Blankfort, Roy Brewer, James Cain, John Bright, Hugo Butler,
Richard Collins, John Dewey, Martin Dies, Max Eastman, Gerhart Eisler,
Benjamin Gitlow, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Hook, Rupert
Hughes, Paul Jarrico, Dorothy Jones, Gordon Kahn, Elia Kazan, Eugene
Lyons, Joseph McCarthy, Arthur Miller, Willi Münzenberg, Clifford
Odets, Ernest Pascal, Abraham Polonsky, Ayn Rand, Morrie Ryskind,
Donald Ogden Stewart.
PREFACE Morrie Ryskind: Hollywood
Anti-Communist (and My Father)
Allan
Ryskind (author) pays tribute to his grandparents, Abe and Ida Ryskind,
who were Russian Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia to Brooklyn in
the late 1890s, and his father, Morrie Ryskind, who was a brilliant
student and who eventually became enamored with Hollywood and moved to
Los Angeles. He then describes his own childhood and experiences with
his father, who was involved with the Hollywood fiilm industry and was
very familiar with the HUAC hearings.
CHAPTER 1 The Stalinist Ten
- Allan
Ryskind describes how a false mythology was created about the evil
"McCarthy witch hunt" and HUAC (House of Un-American Activities
Committee) hearings starting in 1947 and continuing into the 1950s that
interrogated suspected Communist-Stalinist subversives in the film
industry. This is contrasted with the "noble" victims, who refused to
cooperate and answer questions on the grounds that this violated the
Constitution and the First Amendment.
- HUAC had identified 19
people that they wished to interrogate, ten of which refused to
cooperate, were cited for contempt of court and were eventually
convicted and sentenced to one year in jail. These became known as the
Hollywood Ten (heroes to their supporters) or perhaps the Stalinist Ten (villains to their detractors).
-
In addition, many screenwriters and directors, who would not sign an
affidavit that they were not members of the Communist Party of the
United States were "blacklisted", that is, they were not allowed to be
employed within the film industry.
- "The Hollywood Communists,
Ceplair and Englund admit, defended the Soviet Union “unflinchingly,
uncritically, inflexibly -- and therefore left themselves open to the
justifiable suspicion that they not only approved of everything they
were defending, but would themselves act in the same way if they were
in the same position.” "
- "All of which
makes one wonder why anyone would
be opposed to questioning such folks
before a congressional committee
concerned with protecting U.S. citizens from Stalin’s American
agents."
CHAPTER 2 The Birth of the Screen Writers
Guild
- The Screen Writers Guild (SWG) was initiated
in early February 1933, when ten writers gathered in Hollywood to
organize a writers' union. "Far-Left ideologues were present at the
initial meeting." including John Howard Lawson, Lester Cole, Samson
Raphaelson, Louis Weitzenkorn, John Bright.
[W.Z.
We note that the timing was right in the middle of the Holodomor -- the
genocidal famine during 1932-1933 in Ukraine resulting in some 7
million deaths by starvation.]
- "The SWG was originally founded by a mix of Communists and
non-Communists, with the laudable purpose of improving the working
conditions of the writers. But the radicals, in league with Moscow, had
a more revolutionary vision for the Guild. They wanted it to be an
all-powerful union that would further Soviet goals."
- Over
the next few years Lawson, Ornitz, Ernest Pascal, Dick Collins, Paul
Jarrico and others promoted the Stalinist, Communist agenda, which
caused a great deal of dissension. In 1936 a rival organization, the
Screen Playwrights (SP) was formed which drained the SWG membership
such that it was threatened with extinction.
- "The revised
Guild held its first open meeting on June 11, 1937, at the Hollywood
Athletic Club. It was attended by more than four hundred writers, most
of whom had been active in the old Guild. The new Guild tilted even
further to the left, with such radicals as Lillian Hellman, Dashiell
Hammett, Dorothy Parker, and Donald Ogden Stewart gracing the board."
- "Within a few years, the far Left had propelled itself to control of the most powerful writers’ group in Hollywood."
CHAPTER 3 “Communism . . . Must Be Fought
For”
- "In 1934, Max Eastman wrote Artists in Uniform,
charging that the “bureaucratic political machine” in the Soviet Union
had begun a systematic effort “to whip all forms of human expression
into line behind its organization plans and its dictatorship.”
-
Eastman reported on a congress of artists and authors held in Kharkiv,
Ukraine in 1930, where it was demanded that artistic expression be
“systematized” and “collectivized” under the “firm guidance of the
Communist party.” Journalist Eugene Lyons [familiar with the Holodomor] confirmed that the Kharkiv Congress was controlled by the Russians.
-
"The First American Writers’ Congress, held in New York in 1935 [on 26
April], clearly partook of the spirit of the Kharkiv Congress."
- "The
Congress was directed to “create the League of American Writers [LAW],
affiliated with the International Union of Revolutionary Writers,”
headquartered in Moscow."
- Invitations to the Congress were signed
by numerous American authors including "Erskine Caldwell,
Theodore Dreiser, Guy Endore, James Farrell, Granville Hicks, Langston
Hughes, Lewis Mumford, John Dos Passos, Lincoln Steffens, and Richard
Wright", as well as Earl Browder [father of Bill Browder of Magnitsky Act fame], Michel Gold and Clarence Hathaway.
- The participants did not seem to care that the Soviets "had deliberately starved several million people in the Ukraine."
- "The major purpose of the Congress was clear: to persuade those gathered to push for a Communist revolution in America."
CHAPTER 4 Anti-Fascist, or Pro-Stalin?
-
"There were three more major American Writers’ Congresses, in 1937,
’39, and ’41. Despite the softer tone ... the bottom-line message was
always the same: American writers were obligated at all times to
embrace the Soviet Union and its Stalinist policies and enterprises.
- At the 1937 Congress, "Walter
Duranty, the former Moscow correspondent for the New York Times who had
somehow overlooked the man-made 1932–33 Soviet famine that took over
three million lives (a very conservative figure), was still offering up
soothing words about the Soviet Union."
- "Earl Browder, the general
secretary of the Communist Party USA, had sharp words for writers and
intellectuals who were at all critical of the Soviet Union, its
“alleged” artistic rigidity, the Moscow show trials, or Stalin’s
intervention in Spain."
- "The Third American Writers’ Congress,
held in New York City in June of 1939, followed the same script; it was
also designed to please the Communists’ masters in Moscow."
- "In The Red Decade,
Eugene Lyons, the United Press’s disenchanted former Moscow
correspondent," noted the pro-Communist and pro-Soviet message: “The
attempt to hide behind neutrality, nonintervention or isolationism has
become a mockery.”
- "But the “anti-fascist” sentiment of the
Congress and the League was soon to undergo a dramatic change -- within
a little over two months."
CHAPTER 5 The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League
- "Organized in June 1936,
the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (originally the Hollywood League against
Nazism) became one of the most popular anti-fascist groups in the
country."
- Its sponsors and supporters included Fredric March,
Eddie Cantor, Oscar Hammerstein, Robert Benchley, Ernst Lubitsch,
Dorothy Parker, Frank Tuttle, Reverend John J. Cantwell, Prince
Hubertus zu Loewenstein, Donald Ogden Stewart.
- "The League pledged
to boycott Japanese goods" ... "mobilized its forces to blacklist Leni
Riefenstahl" ... protested employment of "German actress Louisa Ulrich
in 1937".
- "In a nationwide broadcast in August 1938,
Representative Martin Dies ... announced that his Committee
[HUAC] would come to Hollywood in September “to hold hearings at which
members of the film colony will be afforded an opportunity to reply to
charges that they were participating in communistic activities." "
- Because of the uproar and vicious attacks "Dies eventually buckled. No hearings were held."
- Nevertheless, more and more people became convinced that the Anti-Nazi League was just a Communist front.
- "The League continued its spirited anti-Hitlerism for most of 1938" [and 1939].
-
"Then came Stalin’s stunning about-face, a “peace” agreement with Adolf
Hitler in August 1939. Once the Hilter-Stalin Pact was signed, the
Anti-Nazi League’s campaign against fascism, Hitler, and Nazi
aggression was suddenly shelved."
- "The fervent Hollywood
anti-Nazis had suddenly become appeasers -- simply because opposing
Hitler no longer served Stalin’s purposes."
- The "Anti-Nazi League"
immediately changed its name to "Hollywood League for Democratic
Action", which no longer attacked Hitler, but did lobby Congress to
abolish HUAC.
CHAPTER 6 The Pro-Hitler Congress
- "Three American Writers’ Congresses had
revealed that their participants were enthusiastic supporters of the
Soviet Union, eager to be used as Moscow’s pawns. But none of the
Congresses, not even the first, was more illuminating as to the abject
loyalty of its backers to Stalin’s Russia than the Fourth American
Writers’ Congress, held in New York City, June 6–8, 1941."
- "The
speakers and the delegates at the Fourth Congress called for a policy
of total isolationism, harshly condemned Great Britain and the West as
“imperialists” ..., and frantically urged a massive campaign to disarm
the United States and cripple its ability to aid any nation threatened by the fascist powers that had now conquered virtually all of Europe."
- In September 1939, Comintern head George Dmitrov sent CPUSA boss Earl Browder instructions to abandon the Anti-Nazi strategy,
since Hitler was destroying the capitalist nations in Europe (England,
France, Poland, etc). and, secondly, to prevent the United States from
providing aid to these countries.
- "Thus the fight against fascism
was now “secondary,” for the main struggle was now “against
capitalism,” the “bourgeoisie,” and the “imperialists” in Western
Europe and the United States."
- Six of the Hollywood Ten were of
Jewish origin (Lawson, Bessie, Ornitz, Maltz, Cole, Biberman), Lardner
had a Jewish wife, Trumbo insisted he was a defender of the Jewish
people (which left Dmytryk and Scott with no Jewish heritage). They
were obliged to support Hitler's anti-Jewish regime.
- "There
is an ironic addendum to this ferociously anti-war Congress. Two weeks
later [22Jun1941], Hitler invaded Russia. The League of American
Writers, through Hammett, its new president, issued an urgent call to
all writers and writers’ organizations for “immediate and necessary
steps in support of Great Britain and the Soviet Union to insure the
military defeat of the fascist aggressors.” "
- "Hollywood’s
Communist writers had proved themselves Stalinists to the core through
all these Congresses. They were Hitler’s enemy when Stalin felt
threatened by the rising power of the Third Reich. When Stalin embraced
the Fuehrer, they gave a warm hug to the Nazi warlord. When Hitler
invaded Russia, the American writers cast off their pacifist pose and
began frantically beating the drums for massive aid to England, a
policy that they had just weeks before proclaimed would shove America
into a bloody and senseless war. Now that their beloved Soviet Union
was under attack, they didn’t mind a bit if American soldiers were to
be tossed onto foreign battlefields -- not to defend their own country,
but to rescue the Soviet despot they worshipped."
CHAPTER 7 Red and Brown Sabotage
-
This chapter lists a number of Communist-inspired strikes in the United
States just prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union on
22Jun1941:
- North American Aviation
- Vultee Aircraft in November 1940
- Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company
- "America’s
radical writers had given their wholehearted support to the Red-Brown
effort to sabotage the American armaments industry. But when Hitler
betrayed Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union, the writers turned on a
dime. American Communists and their fellow travelers in Hollywood began
wildly beating the drums for a massive rearmament program in America
and frantically urging the formerly evil, warmongering FDR to lavish as
many military weapons as he could possibly spare upon the Soviet Union
and even “imperialist” England."
CHAPTER 8 The American Peace Mobilization
Goes to War
- "The American
Peace Mobilization (APM) was born on September 2, 1940, in Chicago,
Illinois. From its inception it was inspired by Communists,
saturated with Communists, and run by Communists."
-This chapter describes a number of communist-inspired machinations prior to and after the establishment of the APM.
CHAPTER 9 Red Propaganda in Films
-
This chapter titled "Red Propagnda in Films" outlines the methods used
to insert pro-Soviet and pro-Communist propaganda into movies.
CHAPTER 10 Blockade: The Party
Targets Spain
- "No event energized the Left in the late 1930s so much as the civil war in Spain."
- The Communist (i.e. Stalinist) scenario is that: "General
Francisco Franco, with assistance from Hitler and Mussolini, initiated
a bloody rebellion in July of 1936 against the democratically elected
government of the Spanish Republic."
- "Thousands of left-wing
Americans even volunteered to slug it out against Franco’s military.
American celebrities rushed to support the Republic." This included
Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman and Paul Robeson.
- John Howard Lawson was instrumental in producing the film Blockade and inserting pro-Soviet propaganda into the script.
-
In Spain itself, Stalin's agents had been agitating violence and
insurrection even before the election in 1936 of the "Loyalist"
government dominated by Francisco Largo Caballero, who boasted about
instituting the "dictatorship of the proletariat". With the onset of
the civil war, Stalin's agents attempted to take over and control all
the forces fighting against Franco.
- "Stalin may have stumbled in Spain, but it was not for lack of support from his devoted friends in Hollywood."
CHAPTER 11 Ninotchka Slips
through a Red Filter
- "Surprising as it may seem, probably the most effective anti-Communist movie [Ninochka]
ever made was filmed in 1938 by MGM and released the following year. It
featured one of the greatest movie stars of all time, Greta Garbo.
Ironically, it was directed and scripted by those whose politics tilted
to the left."
- "Ninotchka was a terrific spoof of Stalin’s Moscow laced with biting anti-Soviet satire and combined with a pleasant love story."
CHAPTER 12 Red Heyday in Hollywood
-
"David Lang, a screenwriter and former Communist himself, described the
situation to HUAC in March of 1953. ... He testified that there
was a cabal of top Communist writers who indoctrinated men and women
like himself using classic Communist works, including the teachings of
Lenin and Stalin. Those who devoured the lessons were expected to lace
their scripts with scenes and dialogue compatible with the Party line."
- The rest of the chapter refers to several films where this technique was utilized.
CHAPTER 13 Mission for Stalin
- Mission to Moscow,
released by Warner Brothers on 30Apr1943 and based on the pro-Russian
book by former US ambassador to Moscow, Joseph Davies, is considered to
be the most pro-Stalinist/Russian/Soviet film ever made. Stalin, the
CPUSA and the pro-communist Hollywood writers were ecstatic. [and, presumably, FDR]
- "Mission to Moscow’s remarkable whitewashing of Stalinist Russia -- including even the notorious show trials of the 1930s [and the Holodomor] -- is a key reason House Committee members were concerned about Red writers’ influence over Hollywood."
- "Jack Warner, whose Warner Brothers Studios made the film, was thoroughly grilled on the subject in two hearings before HUAC.
- "Warner was on the defensive before HUAC when it came to Mission." -- claiming that it was meant to support the Soviet war effort.
-
"What’s clear from the record is that the pro-Soviet Davies and his
trusted friend, President Roosevelt, teamed up to persuade Warner
Brothers to do a movie based on Davies’s book and that Jack and Harry
Warner were eager to oblige."
- Davies made dozens of edits and "insisted that FDR, with whom he was in constant contact, supported his recommendations."
- The rest of the chapter is devoted to criticising the film and Joseph Davies himself.
CHAPTER 14 The Great Escape
-
After World War II, many prominent "liberals", unionists and even SWG
members became disillusioned with the Far-Left and started to distance
themselves from it.
- "In the May 13, 1946, issue of the New
Republic, James Loeb, national director of the Union for Democratic
Action (UDA), issued a historic challenge to the progressive wing of
the Democratic Party, urging it to break completely with American
Communists."
- A 03Jan1947 gathering of liberals in Washington
resulted "with the establishment of the Americans for Democratic Action
(ADA)".
- "The new organization had attracted the cream of the
liberal elite, including Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Mayor Hubert Humphrey
of Minneapolis (soon to become a famous liberal Minnesota senator), and
UAW president Walter Reuther." and including Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
Joseph Rauh Jr., Marquis Childs, David Dubinsky, Melvyn Douglas and
Ronald Reagan.
- "The year 1946 was also a turning point for the
heavily Communist-infiltrated Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), which had become a bulwark for radical politics."
- "But at
the November 1946 CIO convention in Atlantic City, the anti-Communists
launched the beginning of an extended campaign -- which eventually
proved successful -- to end direct Communist influence in the labor
federation."
- "Even liberal members of the Screen Writers
Guild, where the Communist writers were still exerting considerable
political influence when those HUAC hearings began, had begun to hatch
a plot to oust the Communists and fellow travelers in their midst."
CHAPTER 15 The Anti-Communists Weigh In
-
"The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
[MPA] was unveiled in Beverly Hills, California, on February 4, 1944,
with a single purpose: to combat the visibly increasing Communist
influence in the movie industry."
- The founders included Sam Wood, Walt Disney, James Kevin McGuiness and Morrie Ryskind [Allan Ryskind's father].
-
Supporters included John Wayne, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Robert
Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, Charles Coburn, Lela Rogers, Ayn Rand, Roy
Brewer.
- Jim McGuiness named several communist-run organizations,
"including the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the Motion Picture
Democratic Committee, the Hollywood unit of the League against War and
Fascism, and Hollywood’s Emergency Peace Committee, which had later
become the American Peace Mobilization."
- "Thus the MPA’s challenge to the Communists drove the Left to fury."
- An article in the 11Nov1944 issue of the Saturday Review of Literature
by playwright Elmer Rice slamming the MPA led to an extended
heated exchange with Morrie Ryskind in the 23Dec1944 issue of the Review.
-
In his response to Ryskind, Rice made further accusations: “The MPA
leaders are, in the main, men and women who, however guarded they
may be in their public utterances, are known in the Hollywood community
to be anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, anti-alien and anti-labor; in short,
fascists.”
- "The Left reviled the MPA, but the effort to
portray it as some kind of Hitler-lite organization proved a dud. In
the end, the MPA achieved a good part of what it set out to do:
drastically reduce the Communist influence in Hollywood."
CHAPTER 16 The Cold War Begins
-
"From the time the USSR was invaded by Nazi Germany [22Jun1941] until
Hitler’s suicide in April of 1945, the Communist Party was the stoutest
supporter of a U.S. victory over the Third Reich."
- "Few observers understood that Party members were using their talents to save not the United States but the Soviet homeland."
- This is best illustrated by the so-called Duclos Letter [reprinted in 24May1945 issue of Daily Worker].
-
"Shortly after his return from
Moscow to France in the spring
of 1945, Jacques Duclos, a prominent French Communist leader who
had been a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International (Comintern), allowed to be published under his
name a scorching attack on Earl Browder in the April issue of Cahiers du Communisme, a publication of the French Communist Party."
-
"In this article, Duclos accused Browder, who had headed the Communist
Party USA since the early 1930s, of having grossly misinterpreted the
1943 Teheran Conference, attended by Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt,
when he instructed his fellow comrades that in the postwar period
capitalism and Communism might have long periods of peace between them."
-
"Duclos excoriated Browder for reading into the events at Teheran any
change in Moscow’s long-held view that capitalism and Communism would
always be in conflict."
- "The Duclos letter set off convulsions
among American Communists, who accurately saw it as another dramatic
change in the Party line. Stalin was commanding CPUSA members to
transform the Party once again into an uncompromisingly anti-American
organization."
- "At a special emergency national convention held
toward the end of July of 1945, Browder was unanimously removed as
president of the Communist Political Association, and the CPA was
reconfigured once again as the uncompromising Communist Party. Seven
months later, Browder was expelled from that Party."
- "Having
approved the ejection of Browder, Hollywood’s Communist writers were
back where they had begun in the 1930s, when so many of them had been
drawn to the Kremlin-controlled League of American Writers: supporting
a militant Soviet Union working for the violent demise of the United
States of America."
CHAPTER 17 Screenwriters Embrace a Comintern
Agent
- Gerhart Eisler was a major Soviet agent during the 1930s and 1940s, who had entered the United States illegally several times under various aliases.
-
"Using his real name, he came to Ellis Island in June of 1941 as an
alleged political refugee from France." -- Presumably to legitimize
himself for his subversive work in the USA.
- On 04Feb1947, he was arrested and sent to
"Ellis Island for detention as an enemy alien. Two days later, HUAC
cited Eisler for contempt because he refused to answer questions about
his Communist activities. On the same day, HUAC, in a blockbuster
hearing, exposed him as a major Soviet agent."
- "On May 2, 1947, the Civil Rights Congress took out an ad in the People’s Daily World hailing Gerhart Eisler as a “world renowned anti-fascist fighter framed by the Thomas-Rankin Un-American Committee.” "
- "Two years later, still never having served a day in jail, Eisler fled the country as a stowaway on the Polish liner Batory."
Although detained by Scotland Yard at the Southampton, England dock, he
was released by a British magistrate and ended up in East Germany.
CHAPTER 18 HUAC
-
"When the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC] opened its
probe of Communism in Hollywood on October 20, 1947, the famous Caucus
Room in the Old House Office Building was jam-packed with reporters,
spectators, and witnesses."
- "Just five members of the nine-man
Committee (technically a subcommittee) were customarily in attendance:
Chairman J. Parnell Thomas (Republican of New Jersey), John McDowell
(Pennsylvania Republican), Richard Vail (Illinois Republican), Richard
Nixon (Republican from California), and John Wood (Georgia Democrat)."
- The Chief Investigator was Robert Stripling.
-
"HUAC’s entire hearings -- the transcript runs 549 pages in the
Committee’s single-volume edition -- produced a wealth of information
on the Red infiltration of various guilds and unions, and the strike
against the industry by Herbert Sorrell’s pro-Communist Conference of
Studio Unions (CSU). But the main focus of the Committee and the
“friendlies” became the writers and the activities of the Screen
Writers Guild."
- The rest of the chapter discusses the testimony of the first six "friendly" witmesses:
Jack Warner, Samuel Grosvenor Wood, Louis B. Mayer, Ayn Rand, John Moffitt and Howard Rushmore.
CHAPTER 19 More Friendly Witnesses
- The next seven "friendly" witnesses were:
Morrie Ryskind, Fred Niblo, Richard Macaulay, Oliver Carlson, Robert Montgomery, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan
CHAPTER 20 Phil Dunne’s Strange Crusade
-
"Phil Dunne was a left-wing activist who in the 1930s happily joined
three major Communist-controlled organizations: the Hollywood Anti-Nazi
League, the Motion Picture Artists Committee, and the Motion Picture
Democratic Committee (MPDC)."
- Although he supported communist
causes, he never became a member and was outraged when Molotov and
Ribbentrop signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on 23Aug1939 on
behalf of Hitler and Stalin. Although his resolution condemning this
Pact was approved by the MPDC Executive Board, it was later rescinded,
such that Dunne eventually resigned.
- "Dunne’s anti-Communism was sincere, but he always appeared to have a soft spot for the very totalitarians he opposed."
-
In September 1947, Phil Dunne, WilliamWyler and John Huston created the
Committee for the First Amendment (CFA), which was supported by Ira
Gershwin, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth,
Frank Sinatra and Danny Kaye.
- Dunne assured everyone that “no
member of our group is a Communist or sympathetic to the totalitarian
form of government practiced or advocated by Communist parties in
different parts of the world.”
- "Dunne and Co. had done a fabulous
job of rounding up high-voltage support to protest the hearings. The
plane the CFA charted from Burbank, California, to D.C. carried
thirty-five people, twenty-five of them actors and actresses, including
such big names as Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall. Gene
Kelly, Danny Kaye, Jane Wyatt, June Havoc, Marsha Hunt, and Richard
Conte were also on the flight."
- "The CFA and its unpaid
clients, the Hollywood Nineteen, believed that the mood of the country
was swinging against the congressional investigation of Communism in
Hollywood. But they were in for an unpleasant surprise."
CHAPTER 21 The Writers Self-Destruct
-
"The week of October 27 would prove far more momentous [than the week
of 20Oct1947], setting off a train of events that would change
Hollywood forever: the American people would see in the newsreels, hear
on the radio, and read in the papers about real, live revolutionary
Communists in action -- and they would not like what they saw, heard,
or read."
- Although nineteen unfriendly witnesses had originally
been subpoenaed, only ten of them actually appeared. "They have gone
down in history as the Hollywood Ten."
- "[T]he Ten, in a
strategy worked out with lawyers Ben Margolis and Charles Katz (both
Communist Party members at the time), Bartley Crum (a radical civil
rights attorney), and Robert Kenny (a far-Left Democrat who belonged to
the Communist-run National Lawyers Guild), deliberately turned the
hearings into guerrilla theater."
- Rather than calling Eric
Johnston as the first witness, as originally scheduled, Chairman Thomas
called "the fervent Communist John Howard Lawson, a major controversial
figure in Hollywood, who proved to be the most unfriendly of the
unfriendly witnesses."
- The rest of the chapter describes the antics and testimony (or lack of it) of the following witnesses:
John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr.
Presumably, also testifying (but not recorded here) were:
Alvah Bessie, Samuel Ornitz, Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, Adrian Scott and Lester Cole.
- [All ten were cited for contempt and were eventually convicted and sentenced to one year in jail.]
CHAPTER 22 Portents of Disaster
- The hostile antics of the Ten were counter-productive.
- Emmet Lavery President of the SWG co-operated with Thomas, his
testimony was well received, but he was never forgiven by the Hollywood
Ten.
- Bertholt Brecht from Germany needed an interpreter
- The hearings adjourned abruptly on October 30, 1947, at 3:00 in the
afternoon.
- The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post all criticized Thomas and the Committee hearings.
-
Nevertheless "HUAC had revealed that Hollywood was packed with
Communists and fellow travelers, that the guilds and the unions had
been heavily penetrated, and that wartime films, at least, had been
saturated with Stalinist propaganda. Red writers were an elite and
powerful group in Hollywood -- many of them working for major studios."
CHAPTER 23 The Screen Writer:
Red as a Rose
- The SWG's newspaper publication The Screen Writer was headed by Dalton Trumbo and Gordon Kahn -- both devoted communists.
-
Although originally very pro-Soviet as Moscow correspondent for United
Press from 1927 to 1933, Eugene Lyons became disillusioned and wrote Assignment in Utopia in 1937 and The Red Decade in 1941-- both very critical of the Soviet Union and the pro-Soviet elite in the USA.
- Nevertheless, pro-Soviet and pro-communist writers dominated the SWG ranks.
CHAPTER 24 Emmet Lavery’s Critical Turnaround
- The relentlessly anti-communist William Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, viciously attacked the communist screenwriters and questioned the integrity of Emmet Lavery.
-
However, Lavery successfully manouvered against the SWG's far-Left
faction via a 09Sep1947 telegram concerning "certificate of
non-Communist affiliation" as required by the Taft-Hartley Act.
- On 19Nov2017, the All-Guild slate overwhelmingly elected 14 of 15 Executive Board seats.
-
"The Guild was now in the hands of what might be called the “soft left”
and Roosevelt-Truman liberals; the hard-core Reds and their allies had
been swept away."
CHAPTER 25 The Blacklist Begins
- On 24Nov1947, "By a
347-to-17 roll-call vote ..., the
House upheld HUAC’s contempt citation against Maltz." -- followed
by the rest of the Hollywood Ten.
- On 25Nov1947, three "Motion
Picture Producers" associations announced the "official exclusion of
Communists from the movie business" -- the implementation of a
"blacklist".
CHAPTER 26 Game, Set, Match
- "The Screen Actors Guild under
Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly passed a resolution on November 16, 1947
requiring officers, board and committee
members, and executive employees to
sign non-Communist affidavits, a measure
even more sweeping than Taft-Hartley required."
-
On 03Dec1947, Humphrey Bogart (with his wife Lauren Bacall) apologized
for flying to Washington to support the Hollywood Nineteen earlier that
year.
- On 19Apr1948, Lawson and Trumbo were sentenced to one year
in jail and fined $1,000.00, which was upheld on appeal on 13Jun1949 and
by the Supreme Court on 10Apr1950.
CHAPTER 27 Herb Sorrell and the CSU Strike
- Herb Sorrell, the
boss of the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU, pro-communist Sorrell),
competed with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees
(IA, anti-communist Brewer) for union membership. Starting in March
1945, Sorrell initiated a 7-month strike against Warner Brothers and
other studios. (Because WW2 was still on and Stalin needed America's
support, this was not initially supported by the Communist Party until
the "Duclos letter" signaled that U.S. bashing was again permitted.) After
much violence and controversy, a 10Oct1945 NLRB ruling favored Sorrell
and an AFL Executive Council ruling ended the strike at the end of
October 1945 by appointing three arbitrators, who reported on
25Dec1945.
CHAPTER 28 Reagan Outwits the Reds
- Sorrell of the CSU was losing influence to Brewer of the rival IA.
- Sorrell issued a strike call in late September 1946.
- "Ronald
Reagan would play the lead role in persuading the Screen Actors Guild
to reject Sorrell’s arguments and thus help deal a crippling blow to
the pro-Communist labor leader and his Red allies in Hollywood.
(Reagan’s skillful handling of the matter would also get him elected
SAG president in 1947.)"
- "Reagan had helped torpedo a major Hollywood organization [HICCASP] backing Sorrell."
- Reagan "marathon meetings and telephone conversations with all the major players, ..."
- "Reagan had soaked up the complicated information on the dispute like a sponge."
- Former communist supporter Sterling Hayden "had joined the Marines
early in WWII, fought with the Communist Partisans in Yugoslavia
against the Nazis, and performed daring exploits behind enemy lines
with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central
Intelligence Agency."
- "In February 1952, Sorrell’s local union was dissolved, and he dropped out of all union activities."
CHAPTER 29 The Silencing of Albert Maltz
- The CPUSA (Communist Party in the USA) tried to influence and control actions and writings of all its members.
- For example, Budd Schulberg wrote What Makes Sammy Run? in 1940 despite pressure from Lawson to first submit it for approval by the CP. It was published in March 1941.
- Director Edward Dmytryk was upbraided by Lawson for removing "anti-fascist" scenes from the melodrama Cornered.
- Albert Maltz published an article in the 12Feb1946 issue of New Masses
implying that “much of leftwing artistic activity” had been stifled by
the CP. At a meeting at Abraham Polonsky's home he was viciously
attacked by his CP colleagues but refused to break.
- However, at
the followup meeting the next week, "Maltz not only abjectly apologized
at the meeting but groveled in print as well. In an article appearing
in the April 9 [1946] New Masses,
Maltz, imitating victims of the Moscow purge trials, publicly clawed
himself bloody for being guilty of “revisionism.” ".
CHAPTER 30 Dalton Trumbo, Communist
Conformist
-
The very pro-communist Dalton Trumbo "was a writer of novels, plays,
and more than a score of motion pictures during his
lifetime, including such successful
movies as Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Roman Holiday, Exodus, Spartacus, and Papillon.
Stars including Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Audrey Hepburn, and Steve
McQueen graced his films, and by 1945 he commanded top dollar from the
major studios."
- After 10 months in jail in 1951, Trumbo did
screenwriting under the alias "Robert Rich", who won an Oscar as best
scriptwriter in 1957 for The Brave One.
- The "blacklist" was broken in 1960 by director Otto Preminger, who used Trumbo for Exodus and Spartacus.
- His son, Christopher Trumbo, wrote a two-man playlet titled "Trumbo: Red, White, and Blacklisted
toured the country to rave reviews, as famous actors clamored to read
his literary gems. Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Brian
Dennehy, Richard Dreyfuss, Paul Newman,
F. Murray Abraham, Tim Robbins, and other notables
were given lead roles."
- In 2008, Christopher Trumbo produced a documentary Trumbo,
featuring Michael Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Donald
Sutherland, and Liam Neeson, which also drew liberal accolades.
-
Trumbo "was anti-Nazi when Stalin
demanded it, virulently anti-British (and
virtually pro-Nazi) when the Soviets made their Pact with Hitler, an
extreme advocate for unilateral disarmament after Stalin had blessed
Hitler’s war against the West, and a bellowing warmonger when Stalin
was betrayed by his good friend in Berlin. During the Cold War, Stalin
had no more trustworthy ally."
- "HITLER’S ENABLER: Indeed,
despite Trumbo’s repeated condemnation of
fascism over his lifetime, few embraced the Soviet-Nazi
wedding with more exuberance."
CHAPTER 31 From Pacifist to Holy Warrior
- When Hitler attacked
the Soviet Union on 22Jun1941, Trumbo abandoned his pacifist views and
became a full fledged warmonger for the U.S. to enter the war to save
his beloved Soviet Union.
- Even comedian Charlie Chaplin jumped on the bandwagon.
-
The Duclos letter of April 1945 condemned Earl Browder, had him
replaced as CP boss and signaled a "return to the hard line against
America and the West".
-
Dalton's "writings, speeches, and activities show he was one of
Stalin’s most slavish followers -- albeit one of his most talented
propagandists. And this is the man the Hollywood Left will always
consider an authentic American hero."
CHAPTER 32 Lillian Hellman: Scarlet Woman,
Scarlet Lies
- "Lillian Hellman [of Jewish ethnic origin] died on June 30, 1984, of heart failure. She was seventy-nine."
- She lied about her membership in the Communist Party and so many other things that "She
tells so many untruths that Mary McCarthy’s famous line that
“every word she writes is a
lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’”
appears almost understated."
- At her testimony before HUAC on
21May1952, Hellman successfully managed to avoid admitting her CP
membership and implicating other people.
- In her "astoundingly false 1976 memoir" Scoundrel Time,
Hellman is fairly sure that her longtime lover, Dashiell Hammett,
"joined the Communist party in 1937 or 1938", but refuses to admit her
own membership.
- However, in response to her attorney's letter of
14Apr1952, Hellman states: "My own story is simple. I joined the
Communist Party in 1938."
- "When the Soviets attacked Finland on
November 30, 1939", Hellman declined to support a benefit concert for
the Finnish relief proposed by such movie stars as "John Barrymore,
Edward G. Robinson, Ethel Merman, Joan Fontaine, Bert Lahr, Jimmy
Durante, and Abbott and Costello".
- However, after the German invasion on 22Jun1941, Hellman wrote The North Star
supporting the Soviet Union so well that "they invited her to Moscow in
1944 on a three-month cultural mission (where she instantly and
notoriously bedded John Melby, a high-ranking American foreign service
officer)."
- After the war, Hellman continued to support Stalin.
-
"Hellman never publicly criticized the Soviet Union for any of its
actions while Stalin was alive: the purges, the manmade famine, the
show trials, the mass murders, the Pact with Hitler, the seizure of
Eastern Europe, the Berlin blockade, the Korean War, the prison camps,
the imprisonment and murder of writers and artists.
All these things she excused,
dismissed, or fervently supported."
CHAPTER 33 Donald Ogden Stewart: Hollywood
Revolutionary
- "Donald Ogden Stewart was one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood."
-
"Stewart had a wonderful career, was surrounded by such
good Hollywood friends as [Katharine] Hepburn and Bob Benchley, and
celebrated a rich life in his autobiography, By a Stroke of Luck!",
that describes how he became bored with a successful life, went to
London in 1934, read a couple of books on communism, came back to
America and evolved into a communist believer and supported the Soviet
Union unquestioningly, which he believed “was the country where the
underdog had taken power into his own hands, and I wanted to be on the
side of the underdog.”
- The rest of the chapter describes some of Stewarts actions in support of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
CHAPTER 34 John Howard Lawson: The CP’s
“Grand Pooh-Bah”
- John Howard Lawson was dubbed the "strongest of the strong" communists in Hollywood.
-
"Lawson was in fact a bitter-end agent of Stalinism who had been
dispatched by the Communist Party’s Central Committee to Hollywood to
recruit Party members and cajole and intimidate writers into hewing to
the Soviet line."
- In March 1934, two of Lawson's plays The Pure in Heart and Gentlewoman were scathingly reviewed by Mike Gold in the Communist New Masses.
- The rest of the chapter describes how Lawson's career evolved until he died in 1977.
-
"Why Hollywood is still hailing this ferocious enemy of American
freedoms as a champion of human liberty remains an inexplicable
mystery."
CHAPTER 35 Elia Kazan Deserved His Oscar
- On 22Mar1999, Elia Kazan (of Greek ethnic
origin) received a lifetime achievement award (Oscar) "for directing
such celebrated films as East of Eden, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gentleman’s Agreement, Panic in the Streets, Viva Zapata, Splendor in the Grass, and, perhaps his greatest triumph, On the Waterfront."
- His Braodway hits included Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
- His lusty autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, provides fascinating details of the drama and movie world.
-
On 10Apr1952, Kazan testified before HUAC and named eight people who
had been in the Party with him for eighteen months in the 1930s (Lewis
Leverett, J. Edward Bromberg, Phoebe Brand (later Mrs. Morris
Carnovsky), Morris Carnovsky, Tony Kraber, Paula Miller (later Mrs. Lee
Strassberg), Clifford Odets, Art Smith.)
- Two days later (prompted by his wife, Molly), "he took out an ad in the New York Times urging others who knew about Communism to follow his lead".
- Although heavily criticized, "Kazan not only refused to fold but in 1954 directed On the Waterfront, which he considered a metaphor about his life." (It starred Marlon Brando and the script was written by Budd Schulberg.)
- Critics of Kazan's 1999 Oscar award were Maureen Dowd (New York Times), Sharon Waxman (Washington Post)
Other detractors were Bernie Gordon, Norma Barsman, Abe Polonsky,
Robert Lees, Freank Tarloff. At the awards "Steven Spielberg did
applaud but remained in his seat. Actors Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, and Amy
Madigan stayed glued to their chairs and conspicuously refused to clap."
CHAPTER 36 Arthur Miller -- Was He or Wasn’t
He?
-
In this chapter, it is not clear if the famous playwright, Arthur
Miller, was a member of the Communist Party or just a supporter.
CHAPTER 37 The Curious Case of Michael
Blankfort
-
Michael Blankfort claimed that he was actually anti-communist, but HUAC
cited many instances where his name appears in pro-communist
publications and events.
CHAPTER 38 Reds on the Blacklist
- "Over one hundred people in
the industry were called before HUAC in the early ’50s, with more than
half deciding to cooperate. Altogether, cooperative witnesses named
some three hundred people who were Communists at the time of their
testimony or whom they knew had been Party members in the past."
- Some of the uncooperative witnesses were Howard Da Silva, Paul Jarrico, Waldo Salt, Michael Wilson, Abraham Polonsky.
CHAPTER 39 Rehabilitating Ex-Reds
-
After the 1947 HUAC hearings, Edward Dmytryk married actress
Jean Porter, went to London, came back, was sentenced to six months
prison and publicly divorced himself from the Party. With the
assistance of anti-Communist labor leader, Roy Brewer, "Dmytryk became
the first of the ex-Communists to go back to work, but he would not be
the last."
- Brewer sought out and sent ex-Communists to his
ex-Communist employee, Howard Costigan, who arranged a meeting with the
FBI and HUAC to testify against the Party and name fellow conspirators..
- "Brewer’s compassionate anti-Communism proved a spectacular plus for the entire industry."
- Other "reformed" ex-Communists included Sterling Hayden.
-
Lawyer Martin Gang represented fifty people called by the House
Committee, which especially appreciated the testimony of Collins and Meta
Reis Rosenberg.
- Dunne obtained clearance for 15 people.
CHAPTER 40 Red Reminiscences
- The reminisences and reflections of many of the unrepentant Comunists can be found in Tender Comrades,
a 1997 collection of interviews with blacklisted movie writers and
directors, which include Paul Jarrico, Jules Dassin, John Bright,
Maurice Rapf, Norma Barzman.
CHAPTER 41 Hollywood Today
- Allan Ryskind (the
author) laments that, although Hollywood is no longer enamored with
Stalin, anti-American films are the norm in Hollywood today.
- Many
idolize Fidel Castro: Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Naomi Campbell,
Chevy Chase, Robert Redford, Spike Lee, Danny Glover, Shirley MacLaine,
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Costner.
- Others support Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, including Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Kevin Spacey.
-
Ryskind concludes by accusing Stalin's American screenwriters of
wrapping themselves in the American flag and the First Amendment, but
in reality working to undermine the country and eliminate the freedoms that Americans cherish.
APPENDIX A The Communist Cards of the
Hollywood Ten
APPENDIX B Selected Filmography
APPENDIX C Scrubbing Robert Taylor’s Name
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
[END]