Posted on 01/22/2015 1:38:23 PM PST by statestreet
The motion picture is often not only a lively art, but a political art, whether in the controversies surrounding "American Sniper" and "Selma" or stretching back to an 1898 recreation of the sinking of the battleship Maine — with prominent stops in between including, but hardly limited to, "The Birth of a Nation," "Gabriel Over the White House," Dr. Strangelove, "All The President’s Men," and "Frost/Nixon."
The most defined and most spectacular incident regarding the film industry politics, however, involved Hollywood’s New-Deal-era infiltration by the Communist Party USA, a subsequent House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) probe, and the industry-wide blacklist of unrepentant Stalinists that followed.
Conveying that story to modern readers is Human Events Editor-at Large Allan H. Ryskind’s Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters – Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler (Regnery History, $29.99), a powerful indictment of such Communist Party loyalists as the "Hollywood Ten," individuals that popular history (and such films as Woody Allen's "The Front," Jim Carrey's "The Majestic," and the documentary "Trumbo") now paint as heroes.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
That is a patently a racist headline.
Please revise it to read:
“Ryskind Book Reveals Background of Hollywood ‘African-American’ List”
Ronald Reagan worked hard to head off a takeover of the actor’s union by the commies. IIRC, William Holden worked closely with him on that.
Yep, and no matter how many whining and bitching commies cry about it, McCarthy was right!
Liberals live in a fantasy world (latest exhibit - the SOTU), but no serious person can deny the U.S. government was thoroughly penetrated by Soviet intelligence during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations after the Venona intercepts were made public.
Blacklisted by their pals in the industry.
Which is why the left hates him so virulently. While there he succeeded.
Incidentally, the friendly witnesses also underwent a blacklist by the Communists. Ayn Rand complained that Morrie Ryskind (the author's father) had more [screen writing work] than he could handle, but after he was a friendly witness to the committee, Morrie Ryskind never worked again. Friendly witness, actor Adolph Menjou, was smeared as an antisemite. The only reason Ayn Rand was not blacklisted was because she was still under contract with Hall Wallis (Ayn Rand wrote the screen play "Love Letters" for Wallis at the time.
Billy Wilder quipped that the 10 weren’t “unfriendly” just “untalented.”
He was joking of course; sadly, most of those writers were supremely talented and wrote fine scripts. Strange.
I wonder how many careers over the last 40 years have been ruined over the last 40 years because of the left not allowing low level employs to voice conservative values
One small error.
“...the rehabilitation of repentant communists...”
Not plural, singular. Edward Dmytryk was the only one who renounced communism. The rest remained bitter communists for the rest of their nasty, anti-American lives.
While it was Hollywood, not the government, that blacklisted them, it was also Hollywood that lifted that blacklist.
It should be always noted that the HUAC hearings were separate and apart from Senator McCarthy’s hearings. And while neither deserve condemnation, the HUAC hearings were far larger and more professional. And nailed a LOT more sworn communists.
It also should be noticed that, by now, the worst of Stalin’s purges, slave labor camps, gulags, etc., had become known in the West. This caused many members to drop out of the American communist party. But those who remained were the hardcore fanatics. As fanatical and determined in their way as the worst of the Islamists today.
Fortunately for America, we had an ace up our sleeve. His name was Morris Childs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Childs
“Hollywood” is a conspiracy of a much greater scope than most conservatives realize.
It’s ALL rotten.
Most people IN Hollwood have no clue about the thing that they are involved in.
They only think they know.
Communism is merely a front for the financial elites.
Virtually everything on TV or in the movies is mind control promoting immorality and communism, while masking the role of the financial elites in the world, making the public think that the financial elites are “capitalists”, thus we are to believe that they are opposed to communism.
Virtually everyone in Hollywood is grossly immoral and Christ-hating - because that’s what communism, as well as the financial elites, look for, develop in and require of their minions. Wanna be a rock star ? Movie star ? Better get in tune with what the elites want. Immorality, or, at best, bigtime false Christian doctrine.
This is why Hollywood stars appear to be “hypocrites” in saying they support the “green” movement but live in huge mansions and fly in private jets. The “stars” that are wealthy have their money managed under the elites’ capital management system (typical Wall Street wealth management) and thus they also make a big point of taking advantage of the tax loopholes left for the wealthy - and they “repay” the elites’ for their investment gains and tax breaks by promoting the elites’ programs to a gullible public. All the Hollywood types that aren’t that bright, can’t “handle” their drugs, etc., and don’t get that rich - they simply go along in order to get their next paying gig.
It’s not entertainment, it’s ALL propaganda/mind control.
I’m trying to remember any subtleties in “The Best Years of Our Lives” that were leftist in intent. Can you enlighten me? I really liked that move :-0
What all the (mostly) liberal defenders of the Hollyweird Ten conveniently omit is that the ten were not just people with far left beliefs...many or most of them did indeed take their orders from the CPUSA who took their orders from Moscow. They weren’t innocent artists just trying to make a living in cruel, heartless, capitalist America. I have no sympathy for them.
I am recalling from memory, Barbara Branden's "The Passion of Ayn Rand" biography and in Barbara Branden's book some bank officer made an impassioned speech about the little people and then announced that all bank loans will be made without collateral. That was the example that Ayn Rand was thinking of. I no longer have the book so I'm not sure specifically what the speech was, but I do remember the anti collateral declaration. Ayn Rand used that as an example of Commies trying to sneak Communist messages into allegedly non Communist films.
The Commies in Hollywood kept anticommunism from being a message in films. Was there an anti Communist film during that time? Maybe "We the Living," but that was made in fascist Italy not Hollywood.
That is correct...for instance Dalton Trumbo. But after initially having sympathy for Trumbo and the others, I became quite disenchanted after getting the full story...which took some effort in those days before the internet.
I remember Dick Cavett interviewing Trumbo on his talk show as if Trumbo was some sort of hero who had been wrongly punished for his beliefs. A typical liberal soft ball interview. (Cavett did that with other commies like I.F. Stone. Cavett presented them as fearless fighters for the truth neglecting to mention their commie associations.)
But if you read several books about the red era of Hollywood, Trumbo was one of the biggest commies. However, he was gifted as a screenwriter.
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In Sherwood’s script for The Best years, as Rand remarks, “a returning war hero is denied a seat on a plane, to make room for an offensive businessman who is obviously rich.” Later, the same hero “takes a job in a drugstore owned by a national chain, where he is treated unfairly, offensively and antagonistically.” Finally, “the picture denounces a banker for being unwilling to give a veteran a loan without collateral, a refusal which is treated as though it were an act of greedy selfishness.” Rand characterizes the last as “the all-time low in irresponsible demagoguery on the screen.”
Thank you. I remember all of that now - I think I was more focused on the serviceman’s awful wife and let the other stuff go over my head.
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