Posted on 03/04/2022 3:53:55 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Thursday, February 25, 1999
It has been nearly 47 years since Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and denounced eight colleagues as onetime Communists.
An age ago in a different world, perhaps, but not long enough for those stung by his betrayal to forgive or forget.
So, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences prepares to honor the 89-year-old director of "On the Waterfront," "Gentleman's Agreement" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" with a special Oscar for his body of work, a quiet protest is slowly gathering force in Hollywood against the planned accolade.
Some former leftists who were blacklisted during that period have vowed to picket the ceremony. Others are urging academy members to register their protest on Oscar night, March 21, by refusing to applaud when Kazan rises to the stage.
"He's being honored as if he were a hero when in fact he was a heel," said an angry Norma Barzman, a blacklisted writer who lived in France for 30 years. She is raising money for an anti-Kazan ad in Daily Variety. "It's no joke. He destroyed many, many lives."
…Kazan, who is ailing, has issued a statement that expresses thanks for the Oscar and gratitude to those who helped him, but has not addressed the controversy surrounding his Oscar. His lawyer, Floria Lasky, said those criticizing Kazan have not accounted for the high-stakes atmosphere of the time.
"It's a big subject," she said. "Why one person would decide to do it that way, and somebody else not . . . " she paused. "They show no respect for another person's point of view." She suggested that Kazan's former communist associates should answer for their own support of a discredited totalitarian system.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Blacklisting/cancelling is OK when they do it.
Meanwhile, our side is told to MoveOn-dot-com.
Elia Kazan was a great American.
Good things that liberals (ptui-ptui) have eliminated the practice of blacklisting.
Bad thing that liberals still exist.
That blacklisting was minimal compared to Hollyweird’s blacklisting of anything pro Christian, pro conservative or pro American.
Don’t know what they’re griping about. The so-called “entertainment” industry today is plump with neo-Bolsheviks.
There WERE Communists and many hundreds of Communist sympathizers in the State Department, in the White House, in Hollywood and the press in the 50’s.
There ARE NOW Communists and many tens of thousands of Communist sympathizers in the State Department, in the White House, in the FBI, in the CIA, in EVERY staff in Congress and in EVERY government program in Hollywood and the press in the 2020’s.
The problem is, McCarthy was right. The system was indeed infiltrated by commies and we are seeing the end results today.
When leftists accuse, it’s a lie. The great deceiver...
not as many as you would destroy wi your commie propaganda...
What are the Hollywood Marxists gonna do, send Alec Baldwin to wield the trophy?
McCarthy was %100 correct in accusing Hollywood of communist influence. It’s now spread to nearly all media institutions in the USA including nearly all the universities.
The filthy scum communist now call themselves democrats. /spit
Barzman was a Communist Party member from 1943 to 1949 and was a supporter of Stalin, a fact she was still boasting about in 2014 when she told the Los Angeles Times, "one should be proud to have been a member of the American Communist Party during those years. Hitler was invading the Soviet Union, so there was no reason to be anti-Russian, they were our allies." Edward Dmytryk of the Hollywood Ten, who had been in the CP from 1944 to 1945, testified about her husband Ben Barzman during his second appearance before HUAC, after the Alger Hiss case persuaded him he had been duped by the Communists. She had previously been married to Claude Shannon, a mathematician prominent in Allied cryptography.
Yes he was.
He was. He was a director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Love his movies.
“That blacklisting was minimal compared to Hollyweird’s blacklisting of anything pro Christian, pro conservative or pro American.”
Commies blacklisting Christians is Okay, Pro-Americans and Christians black listing Commies is bad, got it. People should not be surprised at the ungodly stuff coming from Hollyweird.
If you find yourself in the mood to read a 848 page book that was written by a Greek, not a Russian, you may consider Elia’s autobiography called “A Life”
I was in the mood for reading during this Covid season.
I wanted something to take my mind off of the regular news.
Once you get used to Elia’s narration and pacing, sometimes fast, sometimes jumping back and forward in time, he is a very good storyteller. It took me a few weeks to slowly mow through the book, but I enjoyed it. So much to learn about film direction, how he dealt with difficult actors, how his insecurities affected his private life. In many aspects, Elia is not a ‘nice or fully honorable’ man.
He is selfish, extraordinarily self centered and not terribly interested in changing it. Perhaps it takes such haughty pride disguised as self confidence to succeed in Hollywood, where everything is but a gamble.
Try it, you’ll like it.
Twenty years ago. Everybody is dead now.
As much as I hate to quote Wikipedia, this is from their article on Sen. McCarthy: "McCarthy's hearings are often incorrectly conflated with the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). HUAC is best known for its investigations of Alger Hiss and the Hollywood film industry, which led to the blacklisting of hundreds of actors, writers, and directors. HUAC was a House committee, and as such it had no formal connection to McCarthy, who served in the Senate, although the existence of the House Un-American Activities Committee thrived in part as a result of McCarthy's activities. HUAC was active for 37 years (1938–1975)."
Of course, the article is from the WaComPost so what can you expect???
Kazan initially refused to provide names, but eventually named eight former Group Theatre members who he said had been Communists: Clifford Odets, J. Edward Bromberg, Lewis Leverett, Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand, Tony Kraber, Ted Wellman, and Paula Miller, who later married Lee Strasb
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