Foreman on the set of High Noon.
Posted on 07/23/2005 4:50:34 AM PDT by Liz
Foreman on the set of High Noon.
It's been 50 years since the release of High Noon, a film that became an American classic not only for stylistic innovations, but as an allegory about the McCarthy era.
A documentary scheduled by PBS for September looks at the Hollywood figures behind High Noon and draws explicit parallels between the movie's sheriff who stands alone against the forces of evil and the screenwriter, the late Carl Foreman. During production of the western, Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and subsequently blacklisted.
"Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents," written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd, settles an old score between Foreman and his former business partner, Stanley Kramer.
Chetwynd asserts in the two-hour program that Kramer betrayed Foreman by severing their business ties and removing his credit as producer of High Noon, instead of fighting Hollywood's blacklist.
The primary source document is Foreman's letter to a New York Times film critic that details his creative role in High Noon.
"One of the main reasons the blacklist worked so well was not only because of the evils of studio chiefs and politicians," said Chetwynd, who produced the documentary in homage to his friend and mentor, Foreman. Though Chetwynd is known as an outspoken conservative in Hollywood and has produced right-wing issue programs for PBS, he focuses on the tragic consequences of McCarthyism. The blacklist "created a class of unprotected citizens," he says, and was enforced by those who still retained society's protection. "This was something we did to ourselves."
"Darkness at High Noon" has already drawn a vigorous rebuttal from Karen Kramer, who defends her late husband's creative claim to the film and his efforts to redress the injustices of the blacklist. Stanley Kramer, who died last year, used films to address social issues, and hired blacklisted writers and actors, said Kramer.
"They're trying to rewrite history and I'm going to stand up and say, 'This is not true.'"
She has assembled evidence to refute the documentary and mounted a publicity campaign that generated stories in the Hollywood trades, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Kramer also appealed unsuccessfully to PBS and CPB to address inaccuracies in the film or consider the legal ramifications. She contends that "Darkness at High Noon" unfairly paints her husband as a villain and gives Foreman undue credit for High Noon.
By presenting the film, PBS is neglecting its mission to present work that "provides multiple points of view" and treats "complex social issues completely," she said.
"Darkness at High Noon" is a "real one-sided hatchet-job and even PBS knows on proof that it is not correct," she said. "They are still cavalierly going to run it anyway."
Kramer asserts that Chetwynd is pursuing a political agenda with "Darkness at High Noon." "All of the Republicans in the film come off extremely well, but the leading liberal in our industry then was Stanley, and he takes the fall for everything that went wrong for Carl Foreman," she said.
"This movie defends an ex-commie who beats up on HUAC, and you know what? I'm taking a lot of heat from the hard right for it," said Chetwynd, whose last PBS series National Desk was attacked by a coalition of liberals as right-wing agitprop disguised as public affairs reporting.
The politics of the blacklist are more complex than today's conservative-liberal spectrum. "Hollywood still regards the blacklist as a sexy issue, and it helps determine your political orientation," said Tony Kahn, the pubradio newsman who produced a public radio series on the blacklisting of his father, screenwriter Gordon Kahn.
Hollywood players "like to think of themselves as liberals, but most of this happened because liberal people got so scared that they caved in."
"The truth is there is no one around who really remembers and can speak to it first-hand," acknowledged Jacoba Atlas, PBS's co-chief programmer on the West Coast. The blacklist era has "too many gray areas" for people to be able to plant their feet and say definitively, "this is the truth and this is not."
Left-wing journalist Victor Navasky, publisher of the Nation and author of Naming Names, a 1980 book on the blacklist, interviewed both men about how and why they split after Foreman was subpoenaed. He told the New York Times that "Darkness at High Noon" seemed "one-sided" because it "makes a villain out of Stanley Kramer, when it was more complicated than that."
"The real moral of this episode," Navasky said, "is the way in which the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyism caused people of goodwill like Foreman and Kramer--both of whom made great movies and had decent politics--to do things they would rather not have done."
PBS reexamined the documentary this spring and required Chetwynd to substantiate every statement.
"Lionel feels very strongly--and he's the filmmaker here--that Kramer made a huge ethical misjudgment with what he did with High Noon," Atlas said. "He feels he has backed up every single statement that needs to be made, and that he doesn't need to do two sides of the story."
Chetwynd said he is pleased that, after rigorous inspection, "PBS is supporting this version completely and will air it as delivered." CPB "has been fantastic and incredibly supportive," he said. The corporation matched PBS's $487,000 grant for the documentary, according to CPB.
"We have never, never, never accumulated as much material as we have on this," said Chetwynd, who executive produced the documentary with Norman Powell.
"We knew within the community it would be carefully scrutinized . . . . We're proud to say it has been well-received within the Hollywood community." The film was enthusiastically received during an April screening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Producers used sources with direct first-person knowledge of the events in question, a criterion that disqualifies Karen Kramer as an interview subject because she married Stanley Kramer a decade later. Other than one anecdote in which Kramer and Foreman encounter each other years later and don't speak, Chetwynd said,
"no one is allowed to speak about anything other than what they observed first hand."
PBS doesn't plan extensive promotion for "Darkness at High Noon," Atlas said, but the film will generate publicity on its own. "It will be a very controversial film. I think you'll hear about it from both sides." She hopes that Karen Kramer will appear on Charlie Rose or Now with Bill Moyers to refute how her husband is ortrayed.
"If I were doing a news program, I'd book her and Lionel," said Atlas, a former CNN producer. "I think it would make for an interesting discussion."
Chetwynd
Karen Kramer is defending the liberal reputation of her late husband, right.
==========================================
To Current's home page (links)
Earlier news: When Chetwynd's National Desk went off the air two years ago, PBS said it planned to continue working with him.
Earlier news: Tony Kahn's blacklist drama for public radio told a story close to home: his father's.
Web page posted June 5, 2002 Current The biweekly newspaper that covers public broadcasting
A service of Current Publishing Committee, Washington, D.C.
E-mail to webmaster (202) 463-7055
Copyright 2002
Oh no. I wasn't careless with my use of words. That's a really large subject. I've looked at it before. I simply don't have the time or interest. Let someone else do it.
I understand he had a long and successful career.
The Massachusetts Bar Association has not draped itself in glory, however. They re-instated Alger Hiss who had been disbarred from practicing law in Massachusetts. (As a resident of Massachusetts, I often wonder why they did this. Could it have been because Fred Fisher was President of the Mass Bar at that time? I am not sure about the timing, but I do believe it was in the early Seventies when Hiss's privileges were re-instated)
McCarthy may have been a jerk, I just don't know. He was very popular with most Americans, and even one of his most intractable opponents was heard to say something to the effect of "I just can't dislike the guy".
He was actually a remarkable guy. Just four years out of law school, he became the youngest circuit court judge ever in Wisconsin. When WWII rolled around, he stepped down and joined the Marines (even though he had an exemption) where he actually did fly some combat missions as a gunner in bombers in the Pacific, was fired upon and fired back, but worked mostly in intelligence. When he got out and ran for Congress, he became the youngest member of Congress and the first WWII veteran to join Congress.
In the hearings, he never voluntarily "named names" because he recognized that would be unfair to those accused. He was literally forced to do so by Democrats on the committee, who had much to gain from turning his anonymous examples of communists in government into actual victims who could be used to illustrate his excesses.
McCarthy was not trying to send these people to jail or keep them from working. He just did not want these people working in sensitive government positions, they were free to do any work they liked as civilians with membership in the American Communist Party.
In any case, thank you for the reasonable discourse. Our government would do well to emulate this!
True, it IS a large subject. I have read several books on the subject, and could recommend them to anyone who is interested.
How do we thank you - for bringing up the subject, the time invested, or what you've saved us in your worthless subject? I don't know where to start. I think I'm thanking you in advance...
In looking at the evidence my point of view I came across an article by Joseph C. Drummley. He sees everything from your point of view and has clearly done his homework. It would take a great deal of research to check every assertion, every fact. Only a specialist financed by some fund or a really dedicated amateur working long hours into the night after putting in a full days work to earn his daily bread could do it.
To do satire well you have to be able to read. I didn't bring up the subject.
Guess we are taking over PBS. LOLOLOLOL
I was 16 in 1954. That era is a part of my life. Cohn was someone I watched on television and heard about from time to time over the years.
Kinda sounds like you're wussin' out - in a major league way. Just my opinion - and I'm right...
I am not making it all up, this is material exposed by the Venona Project decodes
You wouldn't know right from wrong without a guide.
Let me throw a theory out that has nothing to do with politics -- having the hearings televised made all involved a bit crazy.
Two things: don't ignore durasell's point. And Venona does validate McCarthy because it shows that some of the people he was ridiculed for being 'excessive' with were as guilty as sin. About 100 million people were in the process of being killed by communism. McCarthy didn't think being wrong on a few haunches was bad. He also looked weird on TV. Then again, so did Nixon in the Nixon-JFK debates. Kudos for durasell for mentioning the TV angle.
Of course there were Communists and Communist sympathizers in government. How could there not be? We had just come through the great depression followed by WWII during which the Communists were our allies. Many, many people thought that communism was a remedy for the world's ills, an improvement on capitalism and nationalism. And of course, democratic capitalists and religious people had very good reasons for fearing Communism; opposing ideologies, a terrible and concealed human rights record, recent huge triumphs and conquests.
But McCarthy confused the important differences between actual Communists and sympathizers, between those who took orders from Russia and those who supported labor unions and opposed Jim Crow, between Julius Rosenberg and Albert Einstein. Given human nature the ugly realities of the conflict probably were unavoidable...but I don't have to like it and I don't have to disguise it.
Well, we certainly have LOTS of experience in seeing how Television can make everyone involved in an event crazy! Great point there-Think OJ.
Yeah, the "shape up or we'll cut-off your tax funds scare" did the trick.
Remember what happened when sound came to the movies? A lot of actors couldn't make the transition.
LOL!!!!!! That's a great one! But you're right...kind of like imagining your grandparents having sex!
In the long run, I think we're going to be much more concerned with why McCarthy was smeared by the 'liberal' press without adequate proof of their lies. It's not very different from Dan Rather's font-based attack on President Bush.
I'd be interested in seeing evidence that McCarthy attacked civil rights proponents on the basis of racism and not their communist tendencies. Remember Rhodesia. I think there are a lot of lessons for the UK and the US in that terrible story. One of them is that without proper priorities, all the "civil rights" efforts in the world only amount to a genocidal Mugabe.
Did McCarthy attack Einstein, or was it the other way around? A lot of intelligent people thought McCarthy was evil. That doesn't make them right. It may mean that their priorities were skewed.
The most interesting case for me is McCarthy's antipathy for Marshall. We've all been sold on how successful the Marshall plan has been in avoiding another war in Europe. But has it, or did it only defer it?
As we slide deeper into our illegal Hispanic invasion, and our inability to round up fanatical Muslims, what looks to me like the biggest enemy of the Republic since WWII has been its blind faith in liberal western values as the only defense against tyranny. It's a new disease from one end of the west to the other.
We wouldn't need the second amendment if that were true. The founding fathers never believed that America could maintain its classical liberal core if it lost its moral and ethical foundation, something that has definitely started to happen. Part of that has come from immigration, without a doubt.
It's all about priorities.
For whatever reason, McCarthy was the wrong guy for the job. He should have acted as a surgeon cutting out a cancer, rather, he acted as a showman because of the TV cameras. A television camera cannot exist without changing the environment around it. It's the fun house mirror that not only casts a reflection, but also changes whoever it's pointed at...
His other mistake was getting involved in Hollywood -- a lesson that pols still have not learned. No good can ever come from pols mixing it up with flakes and other "creative types."
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