[SMARTY]

All that is true but I have always felt that the celebrities will do and say absolutely anything for attention and if Conservatism would ever become the 'chic' radicalism, you'd see them stumbling over their own feet to appear conservative. Face it, it takes a special kind of a jerk to need to stand up in front of total strangers and all but crawl on their stomachs for affirmation. We are talking about critically flawed persons... each one in his own way a ship with no ballast and no rudder.

[BonnieJ]

Well a LOT more of the movie, TV and music stars were openly conservative and Republican prior to the mid-60's, and esp. before the Clintons made them so "mainstream" in 1992 and beyond!

[rabidralph]

An interesting book detailing the rise of communism in Hollywood is "The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood" by Diana McLellan. It chronicles among other things, early Hollywood' and Broadway's love of communism; the Party meetings in famous people's homes; one particular communist, revered in Hollywood, who was probably the basis of the Resistance fighter character in Casablanca; Marlene Dietrich's efforts to fight communism in Europe; and that Joe McCarthy was right. There's tons of bisexual stuff in there about Dietrich, Garbo and many others, but its twin focus on the rise of communism makes it a worthwhile read.

[elbucko]

The article has its facts straight, but I think that the consistent phenomenon of H'wood being "Lefty's" - it did not start with HUAC in "47 - is deeper, or more superficial than the author implies. Hollywood, from the beginning, has always had a longer left leg than a right leg.