[PEN-L:5114] Socialist Scholars Conferences sketches, #1, "The Hollywood Blacklist Today"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

MADELINE LEE GILFORD gave a rambling, but utterly charming, account of
trying to raise a family during the witch-hunt. As a radio actress, she had
a knack for imitating children's voices, including a baby's cry that she
performed on the spot to stormy applause from the Marxist audience. She was
married to another, better-known, Communist actor named JACK GILFORD, who
moved in the same circles as Zero Mostel, Howard Da Silva and other Jewish
stage actors whose roots are in both in Yiddish theatre and the
Brecht-influenced Group Theatre. Jack Gilford's other claim to fame is that
he was a rival to CLR James for the affections of Constance Webb, an
actress who moved in Trotskyist circles.

She told of the stubborn attempt of a government lawyer to serve a subpoena
to appear at a HUAC session where she was expected to name names. She knew
that the subpoena would not be valid unless the server physically placed it
in her hands or touched her. In a standoff on the front stoop of her house,
she kept instructing the server, "Madam, you are trespassing," while
holding her six-month old son in her arms, the youngest of her four
children. Finally, as the lawyer moved in for the kill, she smacked the
lawyer with her child. She added, in the offhanded spirit of old-time
musical comedy, that the kid was always a bit odd from that moment on.

WALTER BERNSTEIN is one of the few surviving Hollywood screenwriters still
active today. He is in appearance and speech inflection a wiser and more
likable version of WOODY ALLEN, who starred in the comedy "The Front",
which Bernstein wrote. This movie was about the subterfuge used by
blacklisted writers, who used a front-man to supply scripts to the film
industry for a fee. Bernstein's original intention was to write a sober,
political attack on McCarthyism but found that nobody was interested. Only
by sugar-coating it with jokes, did it pass muster.

Bernstein was especially contemptuous of Elia Kazan, who named names and
then tried to justify his actions by making "On the Waterfront." This 1950s
film glorified informing on gangsters in the longshoreman's union and
implicitly defended snitching on reds as well. Bernstein had worked closely
with Kazan , who once asked him to take him to a meeting of Communist
longshoreman, which Bernstein dutifully did. Immediately afterwards, Kazan
waxed rhapsodically about these "salt of the earth" workers, but would
shortly announce to the world that he was ready to name names.

Bernstein thinks that the idea that Communist screenwriters could have used
film to "subvert" America was ludicrous. Their only hope was to project a
more humane message through film. Furthermore, they always made an effort
to block out racist or reactionary messages in the spirit of the
Hyppocritic oath: "first do no harm". For example, in "Body and Soul,"
written by the leftist Abe Polonsky, there is a scene with Canada Lee, one
of Hollywood's first black actors, and a group of white men. Lee keeps his
hat on, while the rest are bareheaded. The producers said that this might
give the impression that Lee was "uppity" and asked that the scene be
reshot with a bareheaded Lee. The leftwing director used a clever maneuver:
all wore hats.

Sometimes a "subversive" message did get thrown in. Lionel Stander, a
leftwing actor, was told to whistle something in a scene where he was
riding in an elevator. He was allowed to improvise. He went ahead and
whistled the Internationale, a tune that apparently nobody was familiar
with, and it remained in the picture.

Bernstein has very little respect for the film industry today, which is run
by corporations who make films dictated by market research. In the old
days, the movie industry was run by obnoxious, money-grubbing, bullies
(many who were Jews but not at all radical), who still believed that a
movie should be a product that they could be proud of, since their names
appeared in the credits, whether it was the Warner Brothers, who made many
films written by left-wingers, or Sam Meyer of MGM. As a judge of the
Sundance Festival, Bernstein sees a thousand films a year, but finds fewer
than four or five interesting. Most are about personal problems and refuse
to even consider the social or political problems the country faces.

DAN GEORGAKAS has interviewed Walter Bernstein and many other leftwing
Hollywood figures in his capacity as co-editor of Cineaste, America's most
important radical film magazine. He believes that the blacklist was a
terrible tragedy both in terms of the people whose careers were destroyed,
but also in the way our popular culture became dumbed down. Even when
leftwing screenwriters were turning out patriotic potboilers during WWII,
they often made efforts to transcend the limits of the medium. John Henry
Lawson, who was the "commissar" of the Hollywood red screenwriters, wrote
"Sahara," about the victory of a beleaguered allied tank troop against a
Nazi force that vastly outnumbered them. The allies win because they reject
the hierarchical approach to military tactics followed by the Nazis and
improvise in a democratic fashion, after everybody has had a chance to
offer their viewpoint. It is in fact just the opposite of the "follow
orders--don't ask questions" message of Stephen Spielberg's "Saving Private
Ryan."

He told the story of the various survival techniques of the blacklisted
writers and actors. Many, including Bernstein, went into the television
industry which was somewhat less vulnerable to the redbaiters. Bernstein
took a job with "You are There," a CBS weekly show devoted to recreating
important historical events, which often focused on victims of repression,
like Galileo. Ring Lardner Jr. wrote for a weekly children's show based on
Robin Hood, that I remember vividly. The theme song included the words,
"Robin Hood, Robin Hood, stole from the rich and gave to the poor." Many
leftwing writers, who no longer could work in Hollywood, concentrated on
writing popular novels, including science-fiction. It is important to note
that many of the greatest science-fiction writers of the 1950s were
socialists and participated in leftwing study circles, including Isaac
Asimov, author of 2001.

PAUL BUHLE, who chaired the meeting, is the author of "Tender Comrades," a
brilliant series of interviews of blacklistees. He has a new book that will
appear soon that will consist of capsule reviews of over a thousand movies
written or directed by these martyrs, including one that had a big impact
on him when he saw it at the age of 12: "Superman Meets the Mole-People."
It seems that an oil derrick has accidentally drilled a hole into the
underworld empire of the mole people, who ascend to the surface where earth
people make war on them. In the ensuing chaos, one of their wounded leaders
is taken to a hospital for examination. An angry crowd of earthlings
surrounds the hospital to seize and kill the mole-man. Superman then lands
in front of them and orders them to turn around. He reminds them that they
are acting like a "bunch of Nazi stormtroopers". Lois Lane then gives an
impassioned speech about why you should not make war on people who look or
think differently than you. It is an unmistakable appeal for peaceful
coexistence.


Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)