FACES AND PLACES: Hollywood Reds (04/18/99)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Hollywood Reds

When actress Jane Fonda received an Academy Award for her role in "Coming Home" in 1978, she received a standing ovation from the Hollywood establishment.

When the academy presented Elia Kazan, who directed such classic films as "Gentlemen's Agreement" and "On the Waterfront," a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, most of the audience refused to stand as the 90-year-old artist walked on stage.

Why the discriminatory treatment? Simple: Jane Fonda can be forgiven by the Hollywood elite for traveling to Hanoi during the Vietnam War and sitting on an anti-aircraft gun while Americans were bombing because she is of the anointed left. Elia Kazan can never be forgiven because he betrayed the left. He identified Stalinists during the 1952 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood. For those on the anointed left, this is a cardinal sin. "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend," wrote leftist writer E.M. Forster in 1951, "I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."

Some of the Communists identified during the hearings came to be called "The Hollywood Ten." Blacklisted by themajor studios, few were able to find work.

Thanks to unrelenting leftist disinformation, the entire HUAC investigation is now viewed as a sleazy witch hunt. "To name names was to give legitimacy to unconstitutional demagoguery," wrote film critic Roger Ebert on March 10. "Kazan cooperated with an illegal and immoral investigation. These were show trials, just like under Stalin." Given Mr. Kazan's behavior, Mr. Ebert urged those planning to attend the Oscar ceremonies "not to applaud, but simply to observe." And so they did.

For the Bolsheviks, of course, penetrating America's film-making establishment was a significant achievement. According to Communist dogma, "art is a weapon in the class struggle" and, in the words of Vladimir Lenin, "of all the arts, for us, the cinema is the most important."

According to Kenneth Lloyd Billingley, author of "Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s," the Stalinists working in Hollywood were part of a network of actors, technicians, producers and directors. Few were privy to the names of the entire membership because they came together in small cells.

Nonetheless, only three films can be truly identified as Stalinist propaganda. The first was "Mission to Moscow," the film version of a book penned by Joseph Davies, ambassador to Moscow, who praised Stalin as a great democrat. According to Mr. Billingsley, the film was produced at the urging of Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House. Starring Walter Huston as the American ambassador, it "supported Stalin's charge that Zinoviev, Kamenev and all the old Bolsheviks he executed were fascist agents, it ignored the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and justified Stalin's invasion of Finland."

Other films produced with a Stalinist slant were "Song of Russia" and "North Star." The latter portrayed Ukraine on the eve of the German invasion. Currently available on video cassette, the film shows happy, smiling village people who own their own land, surrounded by a bountiful supply of farm animals and produce, and blessed with the presence of a world-famous medical doctor who has opted to live with the common people. The Nazis destroy this idyllic Stalinist existence.

"While the party was limited in how it might include its propaganda in Hollywood films," continues Mr. Billingsley, "it enjoyed greater success in blocking anti-Communist and anti-Soviet sentiments." Strategically positioned to reject anti-Communist material, Communists were able to kill or stall scripts and blacklist anti-Communist actors as being sympathetic to Hitler - "an effective smear with Jewish producers," according to Mr. Billingsley. The party was also highly successful in recruiting prominent Hollywood personalities to serve as members of various Communist-front organizations.

Another Hollywood personality who decided, eventually, to expose the Stalinist conspiracy was Edward Dmytryk, a Canadian-born Ukrainian whose parents slipped into the United States to avoid being interned by the Canadian government during World War I for having immigrated from Austro-Hungary. Committed to improving the social order, Mr. Dmytryk was initially impressed with the stated goals of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUS) which in the preamble to its Constitution claimed, among other things, to be "a working class party carrying forward today the traditions of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson and Lincoln and of the Declaration of Independence. Using the name Michael Edwards, Mr. Dmytryk joined the party on May 6, 1944, at a time when Stalin was being heralded as America's greatest ally. When the party changed its name to the Communist Political Association, he joined again - this time under his own name. When he realized that the loyalty of American Communists was to Russia first, he quit.

Although he was no longer a CPUS member, Mr. Dmytryk was subpoenaed by the HUAC. Believing that the committee was unconstitutional, he refused to name names during his initial HUAC testimony. He was fired from RKO and spent three years in England before returning to the U.S. to serve a six-month jail term for contempt of Congress. After much soul-searching, he opted to cooperate with the HUAC.

In his fascinating book "Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten," he describes how he came to his agonizing decision. "You know they preach freedom of speech but censor unorthodox opinion," he told himself; "you know they talk democracy but prepare the way for the most inhuman autocracy in human history ... why are you still protecting them? Could you still be searching for utopia? Or could you still believe there is a possibility of a decent world through Stalinism?"

He also examines the hypocrisy of the leftist elite who enjoyed all the benefits of capitalism. "Some may have suffered occasional twinges of conscience, but few were eager to rush the day of their triumph - they were in no hurry to sacrifice their Beverly Hills lifestyles for an egalitarian existence. They wanted it both ways."

Mr. Dmytryk has directed such notable films as "Crossfire," "The Caine Mutiny," "Raintree County," "The Young Lions" and "The Carpetbaggers." Like Elia Kazan, he's been demonized by the left and he is up in years. It's time Hollywood made amends and recognized him for his artistic achievement, and the courage of his convictions.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com

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