Posted on 05/05/2024 5:54:23 AM PDT by Twotone
John Ford made westerns. He made sure this was known, not least of all in his opening words to a famous 1950 meeting of the Screen Directors Guild where Ford faced down Cecil B. DeMille, who wanted to oust Joseph Mankiewicz as head of the Guild and enforce stricter creative censorship across the industry.
DeMille did this under the shadow of the "Red Scare" and the looming threat of television, while theatrically noting the number of foreign names at the meeting (he pronounced one famous director's name as "Villiam Vyler"). Ford's reputation was so unimpeachable creatively and politically that he was able to thwart DeMille, and this meeting is considered one of the first body blows against the Hays Code, which would die a death of a thousand cuts over the next decade and a half.
"My name is John Ford and I make westerns," is the famous line, and it would become the marquee under which his legend has been built. (It's the Hollywood version of lawyer – and actor – Joseph Welch scolding Joe McCarthy at the 1954 Army-Navy Hearings with the words "Have you no decency, sir?") What's less quoted are his next two sentences: "Cecil, your films make more money than any other films. I admire you, Cecil, but I don't love you!"
What I've never understood is how DeMille became such a crusader for probity and decency after making some of the most salacious films of the pre-Code era. Perhaps the conflict between Ford and DeMille was simply a matter of personalities: there's no doubt that there couldn't have been two more different men working in Hollywood in 1950, and posterity has certainly been kinder to Ford than DeMille.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Because the commies McCarthy warned us about took over not only Hollywood but also media and academia.
I lose a significant amount of respect for people who do this. I despise it, and it is done by people ranging from Dr. Victor Davis Hanson (who I admire greatly) to this author.
The term "Red Scare" is universally used where it is asserted that Communist infiltration was NOT a real problem, but was propagated and enhanced by people (such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy) for rank political gain.
Communism infiltration was a real issue in 1930-1953, and today, need I mention what kind of problem it is in the hands of the Sixties radicals and their ideological descendants who cut their hair and put on business suits, and have had their hands on the levers of power since 2008.
Yes. See my post above. I detest it when I see people I would tend to regard as allies use this asinine “Red Scare” trope.
As you accurately point out, we have reaped what was sowed. Joseph McCarthy should have been treated as an American hero, as he made Communism disreputable, and purchased us about 10-20 years, but we squandered that respite.
I find that annoying, too. I guess they do it as a simple reference to what was going on without any thought to the validity of it.
I’m ready for my close-up Mr DeMille...
"Red Scare" in quotes.
Um, Mark, wasn't McCarthy dead-on correct?
When you impugn DeMille and others for cracking on the Commies, you are just being Kim Philby's butt-boy.
You are just smirking and retelling the lie that McCarthy was a nut -- which he certainly was not.
Bad tendency in Brits. They are really chickens when it comes to abandoning groupthink. They are terrified of not being thought of as "brilliant" by their weak-minded quisling peers.
They condemn anyone who believes in the Christian God as a "religious nutter" while watching their young Yorkshire girls being carted off by the busload to service stinking, hairy moose-limbs.
Stuff it Steyn, you are too witty by half.
Of course, this isn’t a Steyn column, but written by one of his cohort, Rick McGinnis.
My understanding of what you wrote:
The term “Red Scare” is universally used where leftists assert that Communist infiltration was NOT a real problem. Leftists assert that a “Red Scare” was/is propagated and enhanced by people (such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy) for rank political gain.
Did I get that correct? Tx.
Film from the era: Blood Alley, starring John Wayne and Lauren Bacall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Alley
What a good article. I normally shy away from film critics (I’ll make up my own mind, thank you very much), as I consider critics just “Karen’s” with a complainer’s tongue and a nasty pen.
Also...I had no clue John Ford served as a Rear Admiral.
Yes. Leftists universally assert that McCarthy used it as a political cudgel for personal gain.
The truth is, our government was riddled with Soviet Agents, and and just to name two specific instances, the loss of China to Mao (by John Service, Solomon Adler, and Chi Chao-ting (all Soviet agents) and the betrayal of the Yugoslav fighters under Mihailovic in favor of the communist Tito (accomplished by Soviet Agents working for the British Government as the “experts” on site in Yugoslavia were BOTH minutely orchestrated by Communist agents.
They were Soviet agents in positions of supreme influence in both China and Yugoslavia as the recognized experts of what was going on, and they sent steady streams of correspondence to people high up in their respective governments who trusted them and those correspondences portrayed Chiang Kai-shek and his government as corrupt, and collaborators with the Japanese, and Mihailovic in EXACTLY the same way, and suggested we should dump them in favor of Mao and Tito.
Yes...I have as well for some time...
Agreed. I admire Victor Davis Hanson as the foremost conservative historian of our time, and even he does it once in a while, so I think you are spot in on that assessment.
John (or Jack or Sean) Feeney, who took the name John Ford, was born in Portland, Maine, so the lure of the sea was strong in him, though he did give a pretty good impression of a cowboy.
I think Steyn would agree that Communist infiltration of Hollywood was real, but along with Ford that censorship of the kind DeMille was apparently suggesting was not the cure. Anyway, that’s my take.
Thank you.
It was a different movie for Ford, a somber war film that showed the despair of a group of failed seamen who are trapped into a lifestyle on a tramp steamer.
From the rusty ship to the rusty captain to the rusty crewmen to the rusty shore people the crew meets up with, it shows a low life that's unglamorous and unappealing.
I won't give away the ending, but it leaves the viewer feeling the same way as the characters do throughout the film.
-PJ
My issue was not primarily with what was or was not being planned or executed with respect to censorship.
I take issue with the use of the phrase “Red Scare”, which is fraught with meaning, and intentionally so from the Leftists who coined it.
There are conservatives who use the phrase, and should know full well what is behind it. I can only conclude it is one of three things: They agree with it, they are ignorant of its underlying meaning, or they are intellectually lazy.
I think it is at least possible both Mr. Steyn and Dr. Hanson are ignorant of its underlying meaning. I certainly don’t think either them either agree with it or are intellectually lazy.
Yes you are right.
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