|
|
|
|
|
The symbolic significance that Hollywood has for America may be deduced most simply from the Tale of the Blacklist. The politicians of the House Un-American Activities Com-mittee, whose members then included California representative Richard Nixon, certainly understood that, as Hollywood equaled publicity, it was the precise place to begin their extensive Cold War purge of universities, government agencies, and trade unions of all past, present, and possible Communists.
The committee members dispatched their fact-finders to the movie colony in the spring of 1947. They discovered, among other things, that Ginger Rogers felt compelled to articulate a Communist sentimentShare and share alike, thats democracyin a 1943 movie with the suspicious title Tender Comrade. Subpoenas went out in September and a month later HUACs hearings on the Communist subversion of the American movie industry opened.
Autograph hunters thronged the corridors, according to the wire services, as studio heads (Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Walt Disney) and movie stars gave friendly testimony.
Dalton Trumbothen a $4,000 per week man at MGMand seven other screenwriters, as well as one director and a producerlater known as the Hollywood Tenwere all asked about their membership in the Communist Party, but they adamantly refused to either admit or deny their involvement. As the hearings ended, members of the press were shown copies of witness Party cards. Widespread indus-try support for the Ten soon disappeared and, after representatives of the major studios met in late November, the unfriendly witnesses were effectively fired. That winter, the fear set in.
The Ten were charged with contempt of Congress and, in April 1948, found guilty. Two years later, they ex-hausted their appeals and began serving prison sentences. By then, Senator Joseph McCarthy had emerged as Americas Witchfinder-General. The Korean War broke out in June 1950; a few weeks later, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested and charged with handing the Soviets the secret of the atomic bomb. In show business, even liberals were on the defensive. People lost work; marriages, partnerships, and friendships broke up. The movie industry was divided against itself. At the Screen Directors Guild, a vociferous minority led by Cecil B. DeMille tried to oust Joseph Mankiewicz, the president, because he had declined to have members sign loyalty oaths.
Hollywood was rife with informers. Ronald Reagan was one, reporting to the FBI on the membership he represented as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Two former FBI agents published Red Channels, a report on Communist influence in radio and television, which gave the Communist front affiliations of 151 radio and TV entertainers. To have ones name in Red Channels was enough to end a career, unless the listee managed to get rightusually by confessing his political sins and making amends through the ritual naming of Com-munist associates.
In the spring of 1951, HUAC returned to Hollywood with a ven-geance. The Committee was hoping to snare an authentic Red movie star: Sterling Hayden, José Ferrer, and Judy Holliday were candidates, as were Larry Parks, who admitted his CP membership, and Gale Sondergaard, who did not. John Garfield, grilled by the committee on his fellow actors in the Group Theater, may have been the prime target. Elia Kazan, who worked with Garfield both at the Group Theater and later in Hollywood, was subpoenaed in early 1952, along with playwright-screenwriter Clifford Odets.
Kazan confessed in a closed session his own long-ago Communist past, but declined to name former comrades. Before long, the Hollywood Reporter received the secret transcript of Kazans uncooperative testimony and made public the story that although the director had confessed Commie membership, he refused to supply any new evidence on his old pals from the Group Theatre days, among them John Garfield. In April 1952, Kazan named names. So did Odets. In fact, they named each other. Garfield, who had not worked in Hollywood in more than a year, was to be recalled by HUAC when he died of heart failure at age thirty-nine.
The western High Noon, a movie interpreted as an allegory of the blacklist in its representation of civic cowardice, opened during the summer of 1952. Screenwriter (and unfriendly witness) Carl Foreman was already in London, where he remained for some years after the U.S. government rev-oked his passport. As the U.S. elections approached, HUAC grew increasingly interested in snaring the big one. Edward G. Robinson, a longtime liberal activist, was called before HUAC and publicly humiliated. Charlie Chaplin, the greatest star of all, who was then visiting England, was reveal-ed to be the subject of a massive, decades-long FBI investigation and effectively prevented from returning to the United States for two decades.
The Cruciblein which Arthur Miller portrayed the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for McCarthyismopened on Broadway in January 1953, the same week that Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated president. Miller himself would be the last of the big-time (unfriendly) HUAC witnesses, called by the committee in 1956 in a blatant attempt to exploit his upcoming marriage to Marilyn Monroe.
Four years later, the blacklist was officially broken when Dalton Trumbo received onscreen credits for the movies Spartacus and Exodus. Ninety percent of those who had been driven from the movie industry never returned.
J. Hoberman is the senior film critic of the Village Voice. His most recent book is The Magic Hour: Film at Fin de Siècle (Temple University Press).
page 1
|
|
|
