Posted on 10/01/2003 4:09:01 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Elia Kazan is dead. The brilliant director and story teller who incurred the hatred of the Hollywood left has passed on to what I hope is a far better place. But for many of us he will not only be remembered for his art but also as a courageous man who fearlessly stood his ground against La-La Land's undercurrent of Stalinism and its mindless support of anti-American causes.
Even in death his critics cannot leave well alone. Writing in Murdoch's Australian Rosalie Higson accused him of "extreme measures to avoid being black-listed in the '50s" (Master of the Method 30/9). This is a vicious and mean-spirited lie.
Kazan acted out of conviction. As a man who became disillusioned with communism and then disgusted by its methods, he decided to use his genius to plead his case against a murderous doctrine. There was nothing venal about it.
Higson repeats the canard that Kazan testified in front of "Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee".
At the time of the HUAC hearings McCarthy was running his own investigation into communist infiltration of the State Department and the military. He had nothing at all to do with any hearings on communism in the entertainment industry, which were conducted in the House of Representatives while McCarthy conducted his from the Senate's Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations. Moreover, HUAC's investigations started in the 1940s and were requested by actors and studio executives, mainly as a reaction to the Communist Party's own blacklist. McCarthy never had anything to do with them.
The left's blacklist is one we never hear about. And just in case you think it's dead, several years ago two young left-wing writers on the Sony Studio Lot got Robert Montgomery's name taken off a building because he had been a "friendly witness" to HUAC. Funny thing, though, Richard Dreyfus and his fellow liberals didn't complain about this act of leftwing bastardry.
It was Dreyfus who maligned Kazan by falsely claiming that his anti-communism "lasted barely as long as it took to testify in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee." That is a lie, as we shall soon see. Mr Nice Guy Dreyfus also claimed that Arthur Schlesinger Jnr had written in the New York Times that the only people "against Kazan, were communists themselves." Not true. Schlesinger actually wrote: "Mr. Kazan's critics are those — or latter-day admirers of those — who continued to defend Stalin after the Moscow trials..." (emphasis added). Mr Dreyfus and his fellow celluloid intellectuals appear to fall into the category of "latter-day admirers".
These are the same leftwing hypocrites, led by the likes of Polonsky, who successfully worked for years to block Kazan's nomination for the lifetime achievement award given each year by the American Film Institute and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Yet in 1998 when these august organisations once again blocked Kazan's nomination they gave their annual achievement award to Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi Germany's favourite and most famous movie maker.
In his autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, he wrote: "After seventeen years of watching the Soviet Union turn into an imperialist power, was that truly what I wanted here in the [US?] Wasn't what I'd been defending up until now by my silence a conspiracy working for another country?"
Kazan made it abundantly clear in his book why he acted as he did: ". . .If you expect an apology now because I would later name names to the House Committee, you've misjudged my character. The 'horrible, immoral thing' I would do, I did out of my true self. Everything before was seventeen years of posturing. The people who owe you an explanation (no apology expected) are those who, year after year, held the Soviets blameless for all their crimes." Perhaps he should have added lying journalists to his list.
Higson not only misrepresented Kazan she even suggested that those Kazan testified against were not communists. In fact, every single one of them, little Miss Higson, was a dedicated Stalinist. I doubt if she would have tried to cast doubt on their totalitarian affiliations if they had been proven Nazis.
Higson quoted Abraham Polonsky, one of the Hollywood Ten, as calling Kazan "a creep". The real creep was Polonsky. This wretched creature was an unrepentant Stalinist until the day he died. His support for every murderous twist and turn of Stalinist policies was so mind-boggling that even his fellow Stalinists came to view him as particularly "orthodox". Meta Reis Rosenberg, another Hollywood Stalinist, described the situation during the '30s among the Hollywood left as one where there "was no really independent thinking among the rank and file", among whom she counted Polonsky. It's a great pity that Higson made no mention of these facts.
The behaviour of the Hollywood Ten (nine after Edward Dmtrytyk renounced communism) in front of HUAC was so repulsive that their Hollywood supporters abandoned them out of disgust. As Lauren Bacall later said, "We were so naïve it was ridiculous." Yet Richard Dreyfus still defends these fanatical Stalinists as "principled" people. So much for Hollywood patriotism.
Missing from Higson's piece was mention of the fact that Dmytryk gave his support to the Ad Hoc Committee for Naming Facts and its defense of Elia Kazan. As director of such Hollywood classics as The Caine Mutiny and The Young Lions one should have thought his support would have warranted a reference by Higson.
(Like Kazan, Dmytryk still suffers at the hands of our bigoted and cowardly left. David Stratton, one of The Australian's film reviewers, viciously accused him of betraying his colleagues in a squalid "attempt to salvage his career" [Longeur route to a small town 18/5/02]).
Fortunately the brilliant works of Kazan and Dmytryk will be remembered so long as people value art and genius, and long after their leftwing critics have disappeared into well deserved oblivion.
They are all latte-and-ludes lame-brains who couldn't survive 20 minutes outside Brentwood.
Just because they're moving their lips doesn't mean they have anything to say.
Now it's yours. 8~)
So I guess that disillusionment must have come between the time he first refused to name names in front of HUAC, or the second time, only months later, after being warned by the studios, who were under pressure from Hoover, that he better name names or else. Talk about revisionism. Thank God Fox News got it fair and balanced and right on.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.