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Title: Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley ISBN: 0-7615-1376-0 Publisher: Prima Lifestyles Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (23 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Overall an Informative Account of Communism in Hollywood
Comment: This book finally addresses the motivation behind the blacklist of the movie business in the 1950's and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Far from being an out of control government committee, HUAC had exposed to the light of day the communist party in Hollywood and the party's attempt to shape public opinion about communism. This would ordinarily be the right of an American group, but the USA communist party wasn't an independent American group. Rather it was a puppet of Joe Stalin and was under direct control from Moscow. Undeniable proof of this is offered in the form of the USA communist party's reaction to Nazi Germany. Before the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the party hated Germany. After the pact, the party forgot all of its propaganda and supported the Third Reich. After Hitler launched his invasion of Russia, the party AGAIN changed its position under the direction of Moscow. The book also includes the blacklist of people (Elia Kazan) who cooperated with HUAC and how they were targeted by the communist party and their sympathizers. While the book does lag in sections, overall it is a worthwhile read of a little-known chapter of Hollywood history.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hollywood's blacklist and reality
Comment: We have been educated in the myth. During that reign of terror known as the McCarthy era, congressional witch-hunts of Hollywood led to blacklisting that shattered the lives of thousands of innocents.
A recent book, "Hollywood Party," is an effective antidote to the prevailing Leftist version of what happened 50 years ago. Author Kenneth Billingsley details the Communist-Hollywood connection.
Lenin himself recognized the power of cinema, saying "Communists must always consider that of all the arts the motion picture is the most important." His successor Stalin viewed film as "not only a vital agitprop device for the education and political indoctrination of the workers, but also a fluent channel through which to reach the minds and shape the desires of people everywhere."
Communist infiltration of the American motion picture industry began in the trade unions. Expanding into the ranks of actors, writers, directors and producers wasn't terribly difficult. One writer for the Communist Daily Worker claimed that the established view among party leaders was that 99 percent of movie people were "political morons." Judging by the antics of today's Hollywood personalities, that figure hasn't improved.
During the 1930s Communist opposition to the Nazi threat attracted substantial support from film stars and other influential folks from Hollywood. They ignored the obvious similarities between these two faces of Leftism - the mass murders and torture, the secret police, the suppression of the most basic rights, the intimidation, the focus on government rather than the individual, the total ignoring of man's spiritual side - and contributed their fame, money and time to Communist front organizations.
Red influence in Hollywood was pervasive. One former Communist screenwriter noted that there were a number of "awful writers" who managed to get jobs only because they belonged to the party.
For many Hollywood luminaries, anyone who opposed Hitler was their friend. Being a Communist was considered the same as being a Republican or Democrat or Prohibitionist or Vegetarian. It was simply a matter of which party you felt best represented your interests.
The problem with that theory is that Communism was never just another political party; it was the only one directed from a foreign country. It was the only one that would have shredded the Constitution and immersed the U.S. into the subhuman slavery of totalitarian terror. It was the only one that considered Stalin, who made Hitler look like a piker when it came to slaughter, a god.
Of course, not everyone joined the party or one of its many fronts purely for philosophical reasons. One actor told a potential recruit that "you will make out more with the dames" if he'd sign up. So he did.
Throughout the 30s many in Hollywood, encouraged by comrades, agitated for America to assume an active role in crushing Nazism. Rallies, ad campaigns and fundraisers were held. America had a moral obligation to get involved.
All of that changed immediately in 1939 when Hitler and Stalin joined in a pact. Now, the party line was that the U.S. had no business in interfering with the internal affairs of other sovereign nations. President Roosevelt was denounced as a warmonger.
Even some of the dimmest bulbs started figuring it out when the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League transitioned into the Hollywood League for Democratic Action overnight. All they were saying, is give peace a chance.
Less than two years later, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, it was back to Plan A. Lurching back and forth didn't present any difficulty for the true believer. The party always knew what was best and no independent judgement was needed.
Penetration of the film industry was sometimes subtle. One Red screenwriter and instructor counseled his students to get just five minutes worth of party propaganda in each film. Try to get the message across in dialogue from one of the major stars. This would make it less likely to be edited out of the movie.
Sometimes the penetration wasn't subtle. Producer Hal Wallis, learning of an intended anti-Communist film, said not to even bother. The party would toss stink bombs into any theater attempting to show it. Rumors were started about actors who opposed the party. They'd be portrayed as pro-Nazi, knowing that Jewish producers would not be inclined to hire them.
Controversy surrounded the honoring of director Elia Kazan at this year's Academy Awards. Kazan had done the unthinkable. He'd actually named names.
His wife, Molly, has written about what many in Hollywood still characterize as witch-hunts: "Those witches did not exist. Communists do. Here, and everywhere in the world. It's a false parallel. The phrase would indicate that there are no Communists in the government, none in the trade unions, none in the press, none in the arts, none sending money from Hollywood to Twelfth Street. No one who was in the Party and left uses that phrase. They know better."
Readers of "Hollywood Party" will know better, too.
Rating: 5
Summary: You'll never see this movie made
Comment: The fact that it is called the "red scare" or "McCarthyism" says a lot about how the post World War II communist problem is looked at from the modern perspective. From the earliest times I can remember gavels coming down by angry congressmen as meek witnesses calmly express their disagreement with a committee that would make them "name names." The witnesses seemed real pathetic and the committee chairmen all come off as power mad scoundrels looking for a headline. The poor Hollywood Ten went to jail or fled to Europe to write movies under fictitious names.
What none of the pictures or narration ever told me was that every member of the Hollywood Ten had been a communist at some point in his life and that half of the Hollywood ten were still communists when they went to jail for contempt of court. Since they weren't making the defense in front of Congress that they had the right to be communists, the event was portrayed as a "witch hunt." These were just misunderstood new deal liberals that wanted more socialism than the House Un-American Activities Committee.
What Mr. Billingsley shows in his excellently researched book is that they weren't just a bunch of artistic idealists, but a group of avowed Marxists being funded by and taking orders from Moscow. It's not an open question. They were given orders to get collectivist messages into Hollywood films. They were told not to portray capitalism or businessmen in a good light. Writer Budd Schulberg was criticized by the party because his book "What Makes Sammy Run?" didn't achieve any of the party's goals. Some of these guys were even writing articles for the communist Daily Worker under their own names.
Modern Hollywood liberals make the communist party members the victims of some horrible black period in American history without any thought to what Stalin was doing to his people in Russia (or would have liked to have done here). Somehow, the liquidation and forced starvation of millions is nothing compared to a few screenwriters that have to write under an alias.
Quick can you name one innocent blacklisted person whose life was ruined? I can only think of the fictional Robert DeNiro character from Guilty by Suspicion. The character had to be fictional in order prove their dramatic point. Had they made the movie about a real person who went through such things he would have had to have been an actual communist. DeNiro plays a clueless liberal that is blacklisted because he was at a few parties. There weren't any of these misunderstandings in real life.
Until I read Mr. Billingsley's book I had no idea that Hollywood was plagued by violent strikes in the 1940s whose purpose was bringing all the Hollywood trade unions under the control of communist, Herbert Sorrell. John Howard Lawson was trying to gain control of the Screenwriters Guild at the same time with the overall plan of controlling the content of Hollywood movies. Isn't it a little scary that this was being funded by a totalitarian government?
None of the facts of this period are ever discussed. It's simply boiled down to communists as idealists and anti-communists as opportunists. In order to perpetuate that myth, Hollywood has since ignored the many opportunities to present the horrors of Communist Russia the way they have presented the horrors of Nazi Germany. The recent film, The Pianist, about Jewish life in World War II Warsaw, Poland doesn't even once mention that the Nazis and Russians divvy up Poland at the beginning of the war. All you hear is that the Germans invade in 1942 and the Russians liberate in 1945. That misses the whole point of what happened to Poland in the 20th Century. But it does perpetuate the myth.
The tactic used in front of the committee hearings was to pretend that it was no one's business what their political affiliation was. That's cute, but would Hollywood have stood up for Nazis or Ku Klux Klan members under the auspices of first amendment freedom? The answer is readily available today. Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of Christ" was roundly criticized for having the "wrong kind" of independent thought. They tend to like the kind of independent thought that also coincides with their prejudices like "Fahrenheit 911." Now that's free expression worth getting behind.
Mr. Billingsley's book is so on target with what isn't discussed by Hollywood when they cry about the blacklist that it will forever be an indictment of those people who perpetuate the common myth.
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