Free Republic

Oscar Honors a Nazi March 1, 2004 Hitler’s favorite propagandist has finally been rehabilitated. At Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, Hollywood gave Leni Riefenstahl its kosher seal of approval. As it does every year, the Oscars ceremony paid homage and tribute to all of the great actors, directors, composers, and other showbiz types who passed on in the previous year. But along with recently deceased legends like Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Donald O’Connor, Robert Stack, Buddy Hackett -- and even John Ritter, Ms. Riefenstahl was so honored. Incredibly, the Hollywood audience in attendance gave loud applause in response to the televised...

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)....

When Elia Kazan was presented a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999, he closed his speech - and the door to his confounding life - with the words "I think I can just slip away." And now he has. Kazan died Sunday in his Manhattan home at the age of 94. Besides his indelible work as a theater director, Kazan leaves behind conflicting legacies as one of postwar Hollywood's most important filmmakers and one of its biggest finks. A former member of the Communist Party USA, Kazan wilted before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 and named names. Afterward, he...

A Conflict of Loyalties David C. Stolinsky, M.D. Tuesday, June 10, 2003 What do Linda Tripp, Elia Kazan and G. Gordon Liddy have in common? At first glance, one would say “nothing.” Tripp “betrayed” her friend Monica Lewinsky by taping their phone conversations. Kazan “named names” to a congressional committee investigating Communists in Hollywood. Liddy “hung tough” and refused to talk about his associates in the Watergate burglary and, as a result, served five years in federal prison. The tape-recording friend, the anti-Communist film director and the conservative talk show host seem an unlikely trio. But they have something important...