Go rent Pickup on South Street. Tonight. Trust me. You’ll love it. Then watch every Sam Fuller film you can get your hands on.

It’s been a while since I typed it, so I’m not sure what I was driving at, but I certainly didn’t mean there was no blacklist.

Thanks. I tend to agree with you on the ineeffectiveness or lack of real propaganda in films. I have more problem with later non propaganda films that romanticized communist individuals – like Reds and The Way We Were (would they have made films about idealistic young Nazis). But thats another topic.

Dugger

Probably the closest thing you can get in Morros’ filmpgraphy to Communist sympathizing is Blockade (1938) about the Spanish Civil War starring Henry Ford and written by future Hollywood Ten member John Howard Lawson. I’ve seen Blockade and its a pretty heart-wringing plea for American involvement in Europe. Ford says at the end: Where’s the conscience of the world?”

What’s odd about the film though is that at no time does anyone ever name the sides at war or why they are fighting. The war just sort of starts — an invasion is vaguely implied, instead of a civil war — and Fonda gets caught up in it. You know why there’s no mention of Communists or Franco or any other information that might give a your average American audience a clue about what was happening in Spain? The MPAA (Hollywood’s voluntary censorship board) stripped it all out of LAwson’s original script. Now the MPAA monitored the political, social, cultural and sexual content of American films from 1932 to the mid-1960s. And Will Hays and Jospeh Breen, the guys who ran it, were no dummies. They knew what innuendo was, they knew what propaganda was. All this crap about Communist propaganda in Hollywood movies always forgets about the MPAA which simply would not have allowed any kind of anti-American sentiment in a Hollywood film. During WWIi, when films like Song of Russia were made, the MPAA was cooperating directly with the United States government and the war effort. Oh and again, what did known Communist-spy Morros contribute to Blockade? He supervised the music. And yet no one in it ever sings, The International.

The Knights of Columbus went nuts anyways and organized boycotts of the film. They wrote in their newsletter: “the director has ambition to glorify Karl Marx.” You know what John Ford, whose patriotism is beyod reproach, said about Blockade at the time?: “I am not going to speak as a Catholic, nor as a member of the Knights of Columbus for twenty years, nor in the name of Francis Ford, my nephew in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain, nor as a member of the Screen Directors Guild, but as a private citizen…Great entertainment…great human document.”

You should rent it sometime.

One of the bitter ironies of the blacklist was that many writers who did join the CPUSA in the 1930s ended up leaving it precisley because of the rigid ideological demands made on them. And yet it didn’t keep them from being caught up in the blacklist. Elia Kazan is a fairly prominent example of a writer who left the party for just those reasons but ended up blacklisted just the same — until he named names. Have you ever heard Billy Wilder’s comment about the Hollywood Ten?, to paraphrase: “One is talented, the rest are just unfriendly.” There’s no question John Howard Lawson could handled the situation better but I wouldn’t go so far as to say he or any of the others were rigid Stalanists. They wanted, as a writer is liable to do, make a statement about political persecution. Rigid Stalanist or not, the government does not have a right to intimidate or persecute American citizens because of their political beliefs.

And Frank, you clearly did assert that Hollywood didn’t blacklist anyone. That’s not true and you have yet to be honest and just say, “Yes, I got it wrong.” And I never said the nation as a whole gave one fuck about the Hollywood Ten or anyone else who got caught up in the blacklist. But it was indeed a personal nightmare for alot of people and if you knew anything about it you wouldn’t have been so cavalier in your dismissal. Which is what really pissed me off in the first place.

Any more than the Cold War was the McCarthy Era.

“I have read dozens accounts of the blacklist period,’

This is anot an argument but have you also read about Boris Morros? And how the rigid (Hollywood) Party hierarchy stifled creativity and subjected artists to “self criticism “sessions if they deviated from the party line. One description of the Ten was that they were persecuted , but themselves were also rigid Stalinists disciplinarians perfectly capable of and in fact having done the same type of things that was done to them. Martyrs but not innocent martyrs.

Dugger

Now, where does McCarthy fit into all of this?

Was it his fault that movie makers were afraid to make certain movies or employ certain people?

I’m sure you’re aware of Melvin van Peebles’ recent documentary on Black film — it was on HBO or Showtime or whatever. He blames Hollywood for being racist, when in fact they probably (I repeat, probably — no tirades, please – my screen isn’t big enough unless I turn it vertically, which I don’t really like to do) were simply skittish about investing in films that they were afraid the public wasn’t going to fill the seats for. They may have been wrong. But maybe that’s what they were thinking. Quaker pointed out above that John Henry Faulk ended up on the “Hee Haw”, the ‘Laugh In’ of red state country. How did that happen?

Nothing is as simple as it seems — McCarthy didn’t frighten the nation. The nation was frightened. McCarthy didn’t have the media looking over their shoulders. Their sponsors did. What’s the first thing that happens when a show is truly controversial, or threatened with a boycott? Is the show cancelled? No, the sponsors start running away.

That’s all I’ve got. Good luck on your Ph D. I’m going for my Masters’, so I can sympathize. Now I know what “frameone” represents.

As to your other juvenile prank: let me give you a short Google lesson.

“is” and “an” are not searched by Google as being too common. “Frank” and “idiot” were entered by you as separate terms, so every hit that contained both those words shows up. So, not only does Frank Zappa’s Idiot Bastard’s Son show up dozens of times, but conceivably. things like Frank is not an idiot could show up a bunch times, too.

Even things like “Everyone knows that Frank is not an idiot, but frameone is an idiot” could show up lots of times, too.

To do the search properly, you should have typed “Frank is an idiot”, keeping the quotation marks. Then you get 159 hits, and, guess what? None of them are about me. Pobrecito

However, when you put in “frameone +asshole”, without the quotes, you get 53 hits, and, you know what? They’re all about you.

Looks like Google hasn’t been very good to you.

That’ll teach you to Google around with a pro.

May I anticipate your response: Fuck you, Frank!

To finally put the issue to rest using your own rhetorical strategy against you, I Googled the phrase “Frank is an idiot” and got back 2,170,000 hits. Case closed. See how easy it is?

“The Cold War hit the movies in 1947 when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) descended on Hollywood armed with the names of leading film folk suspected of being communists or left-wing sympathizers. Their supposed treachery included such pro-Soviet movies as Warner Brothers’ “Mission to Moscow” (1943) and MGM’s “Song of Russia” (1944), which the White House had persuaded the studio bosses to produce as part of the war effort. HUAC’s hearings resulted in 10 filmmakers going to jail for contempt of Congress and hundreds of actors, writers and directors being put on an unofficial industry blacklist. The effect on Hollywood’s morale was profound and enduring.”

Exactly my point. Every film offered up to HUAC as evidence of Communist propaganda was made during WWII when the Soviets were our allies and they films themselves were requested by the Office of War Information. Do you know why Carmen Miranda became such a sudden Hollywood attraction beginning in 1941? The Good Neighbor Policy. FDR wanted to shore up relations with Latin America and he turned to Hollywood to get the public behind it with fnacy free musicals set in South America. So you can see that Hollywood was already plotting to destroy America as early as 1941 when it released Weekend In Havana. Oh wait …

But getting back to the article you linked to it’s hard to know what in the rest of it supports your statement:

“TV for example that feared being tainted, did, indeed,  blacklist or attempt to blacklist people. Hollywood actually didn t.

You should read the rest of the article Frank Because the author makes an argument I didn’t even of which is that Hollywood made tons of anti-Communist films in the 1950s: “I Married a Communist” (1950), “My Son John” (1952), “Pickup on South Street” (1953), “The Red Danube” (1950) and “Big Jim McLain” (1952), with “John Wayne playing a two-fisted HUAC investigator pursuing communists in Hawaii.” I’ve seen several of these films. I highly recommend Pickup on South Street. I also highly recommend that the next time you want to re-write history you do a little better job. Idiot.

” …. that portion of the media, TV for example that feared being tainted, did, indeed,  blacklist or attempt to blacklist people. Hollywood actually didn t.”

The idea that Hollywood did not institute a blacklist is entirely contrary to the historical facts. But you then went on to assert this:

“Working under a pseudonym still gets you a paycheck. If Hollywood had been serious about blacklisting, they wouldn t have let them work at all.”

Again, this statement is entirely contrary to the historical facts. Screenwriters were the only ones who could work under pseudonyms because it’s tough to direct a film with a bag over your head. The producers hiring blacklisted writers were largely not studio producers, they were independent producers looking to get studio talent for cut write prices. Which is to say, blacklisted writers working under pseudonyms were largely being exploited because they were desperate for work to feed their families. The studios were indeed serious about the blacklist because they were very serious about breaking the back of the Writers Guild and various other unions in Hollywood. So, for the record, all I want to know is if you stand by the above quoted statements or are you willing to admit that you know nothing about the Hollywood Blacklist.

The reason why I take this so seriously is because for the last 12 years I have made a living writing about, teaching and researching the American motion picture industry. Indeed, I am currently pursuing a PhD in film studies. I have read dozens accounts of the blacklist period, many of them memoirs and oral histories from the filmmakers at every level of the industry who lived through it and experience it first hand. I would be happy to recommend a few to you if you care to speak more intelligently about the subject in the future. But for you to suggest that the blacklist didn’t happen or was no big deal is to spit in the face of hundreds of people whose careers and lives were ruined by the kind of fear mongering that you seem to thrive on.

Rather than admit that you don’t know what you’re taling about you start arguing with something I never wrote and would never write. I never said that Hollywood movies weren’t influential. Indeed, they were, until television, the most influential medium of the 20th century, but have always exerted a profound influence on our natiional cultural identity. What I actually said was that no one screenwriter could ever exert enough influence over a Hollywood film during the 30s, 40s and 50s to propagandize for anything, let alone Communist world domination. You ask me if I know how people responded to the movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s. I know a lot about how they responded. But let me ask you this Frank, have you ever seen any of the movies that were brought before HUAC as evidence of Communist propaganda? I have.

But then you go on to suggest that insidious Hollywood propaganda was responsible for the poor image of Joseph McCarthy. Can you name me the Hollywood film that most directly references McCarthy? Can you tell me what year it was released? Let me give you a hint: The Manchurian Candidate. 1962. That’s a full eight years after the Army-McCarthy hearings. Yessiree, it was Hollywood that brought McCarthy down.

So here we are. Either you stand by what you wrote or you don’t. Simple as that. Yes or no, Frank?

I mentioned the Hollywood blacklist, alright, for a very good reason, and you reiterated it: McCarthy had nothing to do with it, you goddam wild – eyed fanatic. With everybody and their brothers going to movies in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s — the decades of their greatest attendance — you’re going to tell me they weren’t very influential? How old are you? Do you personally remember those days? Then how do you know how people responded to those movies?

Why do you suppose that in the middle of the Cold War when the Soviet Union had already stolen the bomb from us, attempted a take over in Greece, and fomented dissent in America against the Korean War, and our development of nuclear defenses (all proven facts, by the way) that McCarthy became the villain of the piece? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?

We practically donated Africa to the Soviets in the ’60’s, but, to you, anti – communism was just silly paranoia.

If anybody doesn’t know what they’re talking about, it’s you, halfwit.

Is that an answer for you, dickhead?

Leo: [Note to self: With Leo, a little criticism goes a long, long way] I answered you. I wasn’t using an argument of moral relativism; I was saying that Sharpton riled up a mob, but the guy who actually committed arson and murder was found guilty, not Sharpton.

As to your Alliterative Asininity? Pray proceed!

Frameone: Do you really think I was going to “Fisk” your virtually interminable tirade? It wasn’t warranted… A few examples of your own spin, and some quick Googling and anybody can generate thousands of words about anything.

Example: 844 hits, on one book alone.

Cross – section of opinion on Hollywood and pro – Soviet propaganda = 12,800 hits

See how easy it is?

So, you can take my purported “silence” (which it was not — I did advice you to relax and reduce your consumption of NPR and PBS, didn’t I?) anyway you choose, as if there might be anything I might say that wouldn’t have you cybernetically “foaming at the mouth.”

Me again. Can we take your silence to my last post as admission that yes you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about re: the Hollywood Blacklist? Or would you still like to assert that it was no big deal, that the studios never blacklisted anyone? I’d like to clear this up so I can update my list of other things you know nothing about. Thanks for your help.