Kazan Leaves Bitter Legacy (liberal hen in the FOX house)

FOX ^ | Monday , September 29, 2003 | By Roger Friedman

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Not everyone is mourning director Elia Kazan, who died yesterday at age 94.

Revered by some as a great artist, Kazan is also remembered for his self-motivated testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s. Kazan named names, sold out his friends and in the process destroyed lives.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

A complete hatchet job. Absolutely no serious mention of the threat the communism (or "progressivism") posed and laudatory comments about anti-Americans like Sarandon and others.

This isn't the first time that Fox's gossip columnist has let his liberal views creep through. It's time to contact the powers that be at Fox and tell them enough is enough.

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We want 'fair and balanced' news, not distorted gossip.

[laconic]

The Hollywood admirers of the communists were just as bad as Lord Haw-Haw and the other traitors who supported the Nazis in World War 2. They never gave a damn about the ten million Ukrainians Stalin starved to death, the twenty million killed by the KGB under Lenin's and Trotsky's blueprint or the upwards of 100 million murdered by Mao. Nor did they give a damn about this country where they were sheltered, protected and often became wealthy. I'm glad the people Friedman names lost their jobs; thats the least that they could suffer. And I'm very glad a man of the courage and decency of Elia Kazan emigrated to the USA.

[niteowl77]

Agreed. And Hellman suffering doesn't strike me as being equivalent to Solzhenitsyn suffering.

[JennysCool]

Morris Carnovsky and his wife Phoebe Brand. They were blacklisted, and their careers ruined, when Kazan named them in 1951. Carnovsky, who went on to become America's leading Shakespearean actor, died in 1992 at age 95.

Er...Becoming "America's leading Shakespearean actor" is having your career ruined?

[Rome2000]

The blacklist at one time comprised 324 names and destroyed the film community for two decades.

Those were the good old days.

The time is fast approaching when leftist vermin in all areas of the media will get whats coming to them.

The constant attempt by leftist media types to SAP AMERICAS WILL TO WIN IN IRAQ is not going unnoticed by the masses.

There will be a price paid.

[KC_Conspirator]

On local ABC radio some ignorant reporterette repeated the lie/myth that Kazan was a part of McCarty's HUAC" hearings, when in fact McCarthy was a senator and not in the House.

I remember some Hollywood lefties like Nick Nolte and Ed Harris sitting on their hands and sneering years ago when Kazan got his lfetime achievement award.

[WOSG]

A REWRITE FOR BALANCE:


Not everyone is mourning director Elia Kazan, who died yesterday at age 94. Old-time Communists are dancing on the grave of a man who bravely named names and was scorned for it for the rest of his life.

Revered by some as a great artist, Kazan is also remembered for his PATRIOTIC testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s. Kazan named Communists who were a part of hollywood, and in the process destroyed his own career. He was in effect blacklisted for his patriotic acts.

Two of the Communists he named was Morris Carnovsky and his wife Phoebe Brand. They were blacklisted when Kazan named them in 1951. Carnovsky wasnt unduly harmed by the blacklist as he remained America's leading Shakespearean stage actor.

Kazan also named Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Clifford Odets, Pamela Miller, Tony Kraber and J. Edward Brandberg as Communists. In this 'witchhunt', those accused were indeed guilty as charged. They were Communists.

Carnovsky, who had made more than two dozen movies since 1937 and was a member with Brand, Kazan, and Odets of the Group Theatre, knew immediately his career was over. I interviewed Brand, who is now 96, four years ago about what happened when Kazan identified her and her husband in front of Congress as communists in order to save himself.

"What we felt was terror," she recalled.

Kazan, of course, survived the HUAC testimony and went on to direct many brilliant movies such as "On the Waterfront." a defense of naming others. He never apologized for his act of patriotism.

With the exception of Hellman, who went on to write a trilogy of successful memoirs, the others named by Kazan were more or less finished. For the Carnovskys, it wasn't a question of never eating lunch in this town again. They had to leave town. In a hurry.

"That's when we came back to New York from Hollywood," The Communist Brand said. "We didn't know what was going to happen. We were taking no chances."

The blacklist was devastating to Carnovsky's career. He is generally regarded as this country's Olivier, one of the greatest American actors of all time. But because of Kazan, little of his work is captured on film, only in memory.

Carnovsky can still be seen in 1950's "Cyrano de Bergerac" with Jose Ferrer and in "Rhapsody in Blue" as George Gershwin's father, as well as in "Dead Reckoning" and "Cornered."

"We preferred to work on the stage," said Brand, which is likely true.

Carnovsky's troubles did not begin with his testimony in 1951, but in the 1930s when he and Brand engaged in radical leftwing politics.

"We were progressives," Brand observed. "In those days it was a time of great unionization. The Wobblies were a very radical unionizing group who were killed," she said, referring to the International Workers of the World, the famous union that took on Arizona copper-mining companies in 1917.

"We thought you had to have unions. We started Equity and the CIO," Brand the Communist continues. "There were sit-in strikes. Gangsters owned New York City. So you had to do something. You had to see a way out. So many people were radical, especially people in the theater. It was the only way at that time that we could see a future, whether it's the right one or wrong one."

But Kazan seemed to forget what had been his own interest in that world when he'd been a young member of the Group Theatre with the couple. Kazan cast aside self-interest and considered what was best for his country. He realized that the nation was indeed in peril to the influence of Communists and hoped to rectify it.

The blacklist at one time comprised 324 names. Yet it didnt stop many Communists from continuing to work, nor did it harm the film industry. Indeed, it saved it from a pernicious influence.

[WOSG]

Kazan suffered FAR MORE FROM THE LEFT WING BLACKLIST than the communists he named, who were inconvenienced for a while in the 1950s but went to do whatever their talents took them. Kazan after the 1950s was not given any decent budget movies, he was sidelined, despite being one of the best directors America ever had.

Many of those Kazan named were 'finished' career-wise because their talent was not that great.

And Lillian Hellman was a commie b***h who made the leftist Sarandon seem sane, saintly and moderate! She was that bad!

[pasquale]

"Almost everyone who named names died shortly after it, they were so guilty. But not Kazan. He felt he did the right thing. But what kind of person is that? He was an opportunist."

He didn't feel guilty because he did do the right thing. He was an American, that's the kind of person he was.

To deny that the communists had infiltrated Hollywood is to have your head somewhere dark.

That being said, I saw Carnovsky do King Lear at the Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, CT, in the early sixties. To this day, the most powerful performance I've ever seen.

[WOSG]

You also need to address the letters to: foxlife@foxnews.com

Editor,

What a disgraceful hateful screed you let Roger Friedman write, slandering the great
director Elia Kazan at the moment of his passing. That is truly kicking a man when he
is down and cant answer back.

Elia Kazan bravely and patriotically truthfully answered questions put to him by the HUAC
in 1953. He admitted he was a Communist and named other Communists that were party
members with him in Hollywood. That is all he did! This was no crime, it was honest patriotism.

Recent Venona transcripts released in 1995 make clear that it was an active project of Soviet
intelligence to influence hollywood to create products favorable to communist ideology and the USSR.
This work was carried out through the CPUSA and their influence on Hollywood unions.
The leftists and Communists who treat this as wholly benign and the McCarthy era as wholly evil
are wholly in the wrong.

Kazan, it should be noted, blacklisted no-one; he merely told the truth when called upon under oath by
Congress.

Kazan shouldnt be chastised by leftists, Communists or Roger Friedman at the hour of his death for
his honest patriotism. I am grateful that this man was not just one of our greatest directors but was a
great American as well.

Rgds

[visualops]

I've written to Friedman/Fox411/Fox Online a few times regarding his slant and distortion of facts. This is perhaps the most one-sided, with the possible exception of the number he did on Mel Gibson & The Passion. In that case it was so obvious he was livid because he hadn't been invited to see the preview.

[Bernard Marx]

The entire "Red Baiting" era is one of the most propagandized and distorted periods in American history. Friedman is simply repeating pro-Communist lies created by CPUSA apparatchiks in the 1940s and 50s, often on instructions from Moscow. These lies have become the templates used by most of the establishment media to frame their "reporting" on these issues, and the ideological cornerstones of organizations like People for the American Way, the ACLU and many others.

While HUAC was guilty of some excesses, the actual blacklisting was done by Hollywood studio heads who didn't want to become associated with the Communist label. Even so, most of the people Friedman considers heros could have avoided all their problems simply by testifying honestly before the committee instead of taking the Fifth. Most of the people Kazan named were or had been Communists, as he himself had been.

I worked as a publicist in professional theater for five years and knew many people who had been employed in Hollywood or on Broadway during the HUAC period. No matter how they tried to put lipstick on the Bolshevik pig, they were Commies through and through. They were simply shrill and arrogant enough and had a large enough megaphone to leave the impression that they, not the American people, were the victims of their own treachery. They were actors and professionals at duplicity after all. They loved being able to spit in the eyes of loyal Americans while living off their largess. After all, they were smarter and better and more privileged than the lowly bourgeoisie, weren't they? Sarandon, Fonda, Farrell, Asner, ad nauseum come from a long line of show business liars.

[Malcolm]

I don't trust the left, even the leftist media of the 1950's. McCarthy may have went overboard, but he and the FBI's Hoover kept the commies on the run. Contrast that with the 60's, when the present "anything goes" mentality came into being, and thx to Kennedy, Clinton, etc, is still in vogue today. Sorry, but people like KE are NOT evil people to me. Leftist icons like Timotry Leary are heros while this person is evil? I can't accept that.....

[mwfsu84]

Two misconceptions about HUAC.

First,the House UnAmerican Activities Committee didn't just spring up during the Red Scare. Its origins, as an investigative arm of the House of Representatives, goes back to the 1930's, when it investigated the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, which was at the height of its power. The committee wasn't persecuting individuals brought before it because of their beliefs; such individuals could have been racists for all the commmittee cared. The committee wanted to know if the individuals brought before it were members of the KKK - a dangerous organization which demanded that its members use coercion against African Americans and Catholics.

Likewise, during the Red Scare, HUAC didn't care whether the people brought before it sympathized with Communists. They wanted to identify individuals who were members of the Communist Party. The Party, at least under Stalin, was dedicated to the violent overthrow of the US Government.

Most informed folks know HUAC didn't create the blacklist - that was done by private employers. Liberals, however have no problem denying others their livelihood when the individual in question espouses beliefs they find offensive. Jimmy The Greek lost his job and so did Michael Savage. Both uttered some pretty distasteful comments, and I don't remember liberals rushing to help them regain their livelihood.

[Conservative til I die]

Where's the "Scumbag Commie Bastard Barf Alert?"

[Intolerant in NJ]

Its origins, as an investigative arm of the House of Representatives, goes back to the 1930's, when it investigated the activities of the Ku Klux Klan...from Weinstein/Vassiliev's The Haunted Wood:
Samuel Dickstein was a Democrat representative to the US House from NY..."...Dickstein's congressional focus throughout his career concerned immigaration issues, since he represented a largely foreign-born constituency. During the mid-1930's, however, Dickstein's major interest turned to investigating the network of pro-Nazi and facist groups in the United States...In 1934 Dickstein drafted and gained House support for a resolution supporting a special committee to probe Nazi and other subversive activities in the United States. He was appointed its vice chairman...The liberal Dickstein introduced several subsequent resolutions to create a continuing committee to investigate so-called un-American activities...If any man deserves the title of Father of the Committee, it is Representative Dickstein..."
It's ironic that the HUAC, so hated by the leftwing in this country, was initiated by a liberal looking to out Nazis, a cause the left would surely applaud. It's also ironic that at about the same time he was working on his committee, Dickstein was being recruited by the NKVD and eventually became a Soviet agent, codenamed "Crook"......

[jazzo]

So long to a great American artist and patriot. Hollywood could use more men like Kazan. How about "A Face in the Crowd" also written by Budd Schulberg, definitly Andy Griffith finest moment on the "Silver Screen".

[Brian Allen]

<< .... McCarthy may have went [Sic] overboard .... >>

But he did not.

And nor did Senator McCarthy have anything to do with the essentially delusionally-fantasized Hollywood "persecutions" and "black lists"

Judge McCarthy's investigations confined themselves to examining the United States Government and exposed scores and rooted out many active Soviet agents in and from every department at every level of the feral gummint of the time, including many loathsome and fearsome un-and-anti-Americans with Cabinet-level access and influence within the abjectly-infiltrated and corrupted Roosefelt and Truman administrations.

Traitors like Soviet Agent Alger Hiss who presided over the terminally-ill traitor, Roosefelt's, treacherous and depraved delivery of two million Russian POWs into the hands of Stalin's slaughterhouse operators -- and their certain deaths -- and of all of Eastern Europe into fifty years of enslavement, raping, looting, pillaging, gulags and mass-murder.

Traitors, that is, like those who to this day comprise State's insidiously evil, self-annointing, self-cloning, self-perpetuating, fascistic and un-and-anti-American Communist-International/Cominform/Comintern-descended Brahmanas.

[wardaddy]

he told the truth.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Two of those lives belonged to Morris Carnovsky and his wife Phoebe Brand. They were blacklisted, and their careers ruined, when Kazan named them in 1951. Carnovsky, who went on to become America's leading Shakespearean actor, died in 1992 at age 95.

How can your career be ruined in 1951 when you're a "leading Shakespearean actor" in 1992?

Another journalist from publik skool.