Tinseltown’s traitors
From the website Useful Stooges (https://usefulstooges.com)
We’ve devoted a good deal of
attention on this website to Dalton Trumbo (1905-76), the blacklisted Communist
screenwriter who was celebrated in a 2015 movie, Trumbo, in which he was played
by Bryan Cranston. But it occurs to us that some of the other leading figures
on the Blacklist – the members of the Hollywood Ten, as they were known –
deserve equal time. Or at least a mention.
Let’s begin with the cardinal
issue: they were all Communists. They were all unswerving admirers of Josef
Stalin – and this at a time when his record as a bloodthirsty dictator and mass
murderer of his own people had already been well established. And yet in later
years – from the 1970s onward – they were hailed as heroes of free speech and
the individual conscience (two things that Stalin himself was determined to
crush). And, as illustrated by Trumbo, the idealization of these champions of
totalitarianism continues into our own time. Witness a November 2015 article in
the Hollywood Reporter entitled “The Hollywood Ten: The Men Who Refused to Name
Names.”
Written by David L. Dunbar, the
article bore the subhead: “When the House Un-American Activities Committee
subpoenaed filmmakers to testify about communism in the industry, a few held
their ground – and for a time, lost their livelihood.” Of course, if they’d
been stubborn supporters of democratic capitalism living in Stalin’s Russia,
they’d have lost not only their livelihoods but their lives – but that’s a
detail that the fans of the Hollywood Ten prefer not to think about.
As Dunbar observed, the
committee, known as HUAC, subpoenaed 41 screenwriters, directors, and producers
to testify at a 1947 hearing to probe “subversive activities in the
entertainment industry.” Most of those summoned proved to be “friendly”
witnesses – meaning that they agreed to say whether or not they were or ever had
been members of the Communist Party. Those who answered yes were invited to
name fellow Communists – and, if they did, were sent back to work with their
reputations intact.
But then there were the Ten. They
refused to answer the committee’s questions. In return, the committee held them
in contempt, fined them $1000 apiece, and ordered them sent to prison for up to
a year. Back in Hollywood, their studios fired them.
The logic behind HUAC’s
decisions, of course, was that these were unrepentant servants of a foreign
power that, while having been a wartime ally, was quickly metamorphosing into
an enemy. Under the Constitution, to be sure, they had a right to their
opinions, a right to express them, and a right to gather freely and discuss
them. Then again, they didn’t have the right to be traitors. Whether they
crossed the line into treason is a question that has been discussed ever since.
As for their being fired – well,
that’s another issue. The studios were private employers. They had a right to
hire or fire whomever they wished. No one has a right to a lucrative job
writing movies. Whether it was morally defensible to fire them for their
Communist sympathies, is again, a matter for discussion and debate.
One point, however, is crystal
clear: these men who publicly took the moral high ground, condemning a system
in which they were punished for their political views, themselves were ardent
believers in a system that routinely executed dissident artists such as
themselves.