The Crossfire Myth.



The reason the 1947 film, Crossfire failed to win any Oscars was due to director Edward Dmytryk and producer Adrian Scott’s refusal to testify before the House Unamerican Activities Committee

Not true by a long shot. Crossfire was a B picture but it’s a very good film and it did receive awards. In fact, it received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor and for Best Supporting Actress. It was the first B movie to receive a best picture nomination. Edward Dmytryk was nominated for best director
The film received high praise from the critics. Very high praise. It won Cannes Film Festival: Award, Best Social Film 1947, the Edgar Allan Poe Awards: Edgar; Best Motion Picture, John Paxton (screenwriter), Richard Brooks (author), Dore Schary (producer), Adrian Scott (associate producer) and Edward Dmytryk (director); 1948 as well as the British Academy of Film and Television Arts: BAFTA Film Award, Best Film from Any Source, United States; 1949.
Dmytryk lost out to a better director, Elia Kazan, who made a better picture with Gentleman’s Agreement,(with the considerable backing of Darryl Zanuck and 20th Century Fox) Both films were centered on the touchy subject of anti-Semitic attitudes in the U.S.
Dmytryk had a long standing rant that the reason he was called before the HUAC was because he made Crossfire "In my last few years in Hollywood, I have devoted myself” he said “through pictures such as Crossfire, to a fight against these racial suppressions and prejudices. My work speaks for itself. I believe that it speaks clearly enough so that the people of the country and this Committee, which has no right to inquire into my politics or my thinking, can still judge my thoughts and my beliefs by my work, and by my work alone."  So basically, in his view, he, and he alone, was called before the Congress of the United States of America because he wanted to fight prejudice.
The film was released in August of 1947. By then, Dmytryk had been a secret member of the communist party in Hollywood for four years, having joined in 1944. He later claimed that the main reason he joined was that he wanted to end world poverty, a bizarre answer at best considering the Soviet blockade of Germany after the war was intended to starve the Germans. 
Almost four months after the film was released, Dmytryk appeared before the HUAC on  October 29, 1947 and refused to answer questions about his membership of the Screen Directors Guild or the American Communist Party.
At about that same time, the Russians had their eyes on Greece and Turkey, forcing President Truman to introduce the Truman Doctrine. The US gave $400 million of military aid to Greece and Turkey in an effort to contain communism in the Mediterranean, money that could have gone to US citizens or to combatting world hunger.
This was also when the Soviet Union formed the Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM) which dictated the actions of leaders and communist parties across its spheres of influence. A few months later, Communist forced Romanian King Michael I to abdicate allowing the Communist Party to begin its 42 year  iron rule of the country.
Dmytryk was, rightfully, found guilty of contempt of Congress and given the maximum sentence of a year in prison. The case went before the Supreme Court in April 1950, but with only Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas dissenting, the sentence was confirmed and Dmytryk spent twelve months in Mill Point Federal Prison, West Virginia.
1950 was the year that the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China signed a pact of mutual defense, North Korea invaded South Korea, beginning the Korean War, forcing the  United Nations to go to war against Communist North Korea while forces  from the People's Republic of China mobilized along the Yalu River and intervened by sending 300,000 soldiers to attack UN Forces. When UN forces approached the Yalu River, pushing the Chinese army back, China sent 500,000 troops and the UN troops withdrew to the Republican of South Korea
When Dmytryk was released, own his own accord, he left the United States for England. A year later, realizing  his recent divorce and legal costs had left him broke….the poor oppressed communist was forced to sell his private plan and one of his three homes…..he decided it was better for him to be a capitalist.  He had a ghostwriter knock out an article for him that was placed in the Saturday Evening Post that explained how he now completely rejected his communist past.
In 1951, he reappeared before the House of Un-American Activities Committee again, answered every question put to him and named twenty-six communist operating in Hollywood. He made it a point to tell the HUAC that John Howard Lawson, pressured him to make sure his films expressed the views of the American Communist Party.
At the same time, Chinese forces capture Seoul, South Korea and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were busy stealing and passing atomic secrets to the Soviets.