Posted on 09/29/2003 11:51:29 PM PDT by kattracks
WHEN ELIA KAZAN, one of history?s greatest film and theater directors, received his Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1999, more than a few Hollywood glitterati refused to applaud this small man of gigantic artistic accomplishments. The reason: He named names.He had been a member of the Communist Party for two years in the 1930s. He quit when the party ordered a takeover of his theater group and ordered him to follow the party line. Years later when asked to name other party members, he did.
The eight names he divulged to the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee already were known. But most of Hollywood viewed Kazan as a traitor after he named names. The opposite was true. We now know that, as was suspected at the time, Josef Stalin had infiltrated Hollywood and attempted to turn the American movie industry into a Soviet propaganda mill. In the middle of the 20th century, Hollywood was crawling with paid Soviet spies ? and their collaborators.
?I?d had every good reason to believe the party should be driven out of its many hiding places and into the light of scrutiny,? Kazan later wrote. Rather than let the enemy work unchecked, he chose to expose it. His act, over which he agonized terribly, was one of patriotism.
As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said of Kazan?s lifetime achievement award, ?If the Academy?s occasion calls for apologies, let Mr. Kazan?s denouncers apologize for the aid and comfort they gave to Stalinism.?
Had it not been for men like Kazan, screenwriter Budd Schulberg, and then-Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan, Stalin may have had even greater success than the considerable amount he achieved on account of Hollywood?s mindless infatuation with socialism.
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