As Walloon pointed out, Kazan’s testimony to the HUAC didn’t directly affect many who were still working in Hollywood (or who ever had). I think the reason that he has been anathema to so many in the film community even recently is that he testified at all. Americans now are more aware than ever of how important their individual rights are, as we are seeing them eroded once again by congressional response to an external threat. Kazan is hardly the only one who was shunned by Hollywood after the McCarthy hearings. Larry Parks comes to mind. If his erstwhile communist activities hadn’t blacklisted him his testimony to the HUAC certainly lost him most of his friends and any future work he might have hoped for.
It is one thing to confess oneself, but to implicate others, even in real criminal behavior (and remember, membership in the Communist Party in the 1930’s was not criminal behavior) is considered by many to be craven and despicable. So whether Kazan actually affected that many others or not, I regard his testimony as contemptible.
May I remind the thread once more that Joe McCarthy was in the Senate, not the House, and he was not involved with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). McCarthy was probing for Communists in the U.S. government, not in Hollywood.
OK, so there were communists working in Holly wood in the 40s and 50s. Can anyone cite any films made during that period which any of these communists worked on which promote communist ideology?
You are correct, of course. The association with McCarthy is that of “McCarthyism.” Senator McCarthy had instituted the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1947 to root out what he said were communist influences in the U.S. military. The HUAC hearings on communists in hollywood were an outgrowth of the hysteria encouraged by “Tail-Gunner Joe.”
The question isn’t how it affected others he didn’t name, but how his testimony affected those he did name. And that we don’t know. The fact that someone had no Hollywood credits prior to Kazan’s testimony does not foreclose the possibility that they would have had such credits in the future, but for his testimony.
The general understanding was that to be named as a Communist would mean that you would be blacklisted and you would never work in the business again. That certainly appears to have been the case for most of the people Kazan named. Whether that’s cause and effect is of course unknown, but doesn’t seem unlikely.
Wrong again. The Army-McCarthy hearings were in 1954. The House Un-American Activities Committee was formed in 1947, and the infamous Hollywood Ten were blacklisted in November of that year for refusing to cooperate with the committee. McCarthy didn’t even enter Congress until 1947.
Most??? Read that list of eight again. One person allowed Kazan to name him, and appeared before the committee too. One person was dead. One person had already been blacklisted two years before Kazan’s appearance. One person hadn’t acted since 1939. One person had retired from acting years earlier to be an acting coach and run the prestigious Actors Studio. Another hadn’t had a Broadway credit since 1935 or a screen credit since 1947.
It is simply amazing that people reflexively talk about Kazan’s testimony “destroying” people’s careers, without even knowing who those people were (admit it, you didn’t know), much less anything about their careers.
Yes, WALLOON, most. One dead, one previously blacklisted – though certainly being named again by Kazan couldn’t have helped hiim or his carreer – and six who didn’t work again as actors after being named.
It’s simply amazing that you would think six out of eight does not equal “most.” Now, I’m not saying being named by Kazan was the reason their careers went nowhere – maybe other factors were the reasons, maybe it was even by choice. But YOU don’t know that Kazan’s actions did not seriously adversely affect their careers and their choices, which appears to be what you are implying – as if being named as a Communist before the Senate at the height of the Red Scare was just No Big Deal for these people, and no harm no foul for Mr. Kazan.
“Six who didn’t work again as actors after being named”? Jodi, count those other six from the Group Theatre again.
Cliff Odets wasn’t an actor.
Paula Miller Strasberg wasn’t an actor, and like Kazan, had become anti-Communist by the 1950s.
Tony Kraber, a New York stage actor, continued to act through the 1950s, appearing in two Broadway plays within months after Kazan’s testimony.
Phoebe Brand last acted on Broadway in 1939, married in 1941, and had no screen career before or after Kazan’s testimony in 1952.
Lewis Leverett last acted on Broadway in 1935, and the only screen career he had was two bit parts (one unbilled) given to him by Elia Kazan in 1947.
The only actor whose career may have been affected by Kazan’s testimony was Art Smith. But Smith had been open, prominent and unapologetic in his defense of Stalinism in the 1930s, and his name was no surprise to the committee.
Look, you’re the one asserting that Kazan only gave the names of Odets and “several actors by then long forgotten.” My point is that we do not know how those people’s careers might have turned out if Kazan had not informed on them. So are you seriously arguing that Kazan’s informing on his friends was okay because IYO no one’s career was actually “ruined”? Are you saying none of these people’s careers were hurt by being named? Are you arguing that this is a case of “no harm, no foul”? What precisely are you arguing here?
You do not know this – cannot know this. Tony Kraber’s career might have been much greater but for being named. Phoebe Brand, Lewis Leverett, and Art Smith might also have careers that would have been very different without the stigma of having been publicly associated with communism. So, for that matter, might Odets’ and Strasberg’s. You act like this was just noooo problem for them – a point of view I find ridiculous, not to mince words.
I’m arguing that evidence is lacking that Kazan’s testimony hurt any of his fellow Communists from the Group Theatre, with the possible exception of Art Smith, who was a prominent defender of Stalinism.
And I’m also arguing that 9 in 10 people who talk about Kazan’s appearance “destroying people’s careers” haven’t a clue what names Kazan named, much less would bother to research for evidence that would confirm or disprove their beliefs.
Assuming it was nobody’s business that these were stalwart defenders of Stalinism and the Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s, and that nobody should be called to task or lose their career because of their political activities, should we be as willing to defend Leni Riefenstahl from her attackers? She glorified Nazism in the 1930s, and then couldn’t find work after the war, and didn’t direct another film for fifty years until shortly before her death. In effect, one of the most talented directors ever was blacklisted because of her former political activities.
Should we be for, or against, publicly condemning a person’s former political activities? Should we be for, or against, a person’s career being affected because of the person’s former political activities? Should we be for, or against, making a person’s grovel for forgiveness for their former political activities?
For the record, I am against people being compelled by governments to testify about their political beliefs, or about the political beliefs of others. That is my legal opinion.
My moral opinion about the defenders of the bloody tides of Stalinism and Nazism comes from The Encyclopedia of Genocide: Germany, 21 million deaths, 1933-1945; USSR, 62 million deaths, 1917-1987.
So I will ask again: Do YOU have any evidence to confirm or disprove your belief that Kazan’s tesimony did no harm to these people or their careers? Is that in fact your belief? If so, what is it based on? Because IMO given the atmosphere of the entire Red Scare and the context of being named in a government investigation, the burden of proof ought to be on the one asserting that it’s just no problem and no harm to those named, investigated, and blacklisted – because the potential for damage is so extensive and so obvious.
I don’t say that Kazan’s actions were not understandable, and some might find them justified. I do say, however, that at the end of the day he betrayed his former friends to save himself. That action may be defensible on the grounds that it was the right thing to do, or the only thing he could do, practically speaking. But to imply that it is defensible because it did no harm to the people named is laughable.
Here’s a good link on both sides of Kazan’s decision: Link.
And another thing: The very reason the Blacklist and the Red Scare of the '40s and '50s is deplored is because so many people who were innocent ended up on it because of the pressure put on people to name names – any names, 17 year old names, in Kazan’s case. Those people’s careers and in some cases lives were ruined because of it, and in many cases they had done nothing more nefarious than maybe going to a meeting or two, a decade or two before.
To compare their situation to Leni Reifenstahl is ridiculous, because her moral culpability – and her extensive political involvement – was established through verifiable facts, not through hysteria and innuendo. But so far as that is concerned, had her well-deserved shunning been the direct result of being informed upon, I would not admire that informer either.
Damn! Maybe third time will be a charm. The year 1947 stuck in my mind (the wrong cubby-hole apparently) because, as you pointed out, that’s the year McCarthy entered the senate and his evil tenure began. You may think I’m wrong about the “evil” part, too, but it’s just my opinion. It’s not necessary that you or anyone else should share it.
As to the argument about Kazan: IMO the fact (if it’s a fact) that his testimony did no damage to at least nine of the ten he named in no way lessens my contempt for him for naming them in the first place. As I pointed out before, he is not the only person to name names, and the ten you list are not the only ones harmed (or not, if your belief is correct). Nevertheless, none of the individuals named by the respondents in those hearings was guilty of any crime unless they actively plotted the overthrow of the United States by force. Belief in and support for communism as a political/economic/cultural philosophy is not a crime, and believers are not morally culpable unless conservatives are criminal when liberals are in power and vice versa.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities should have been named the House Committee OF Un-American Activities. The First Amendment protects political speech, however odious to the majority, and those who cooperate with a congressional committee that seeks to limit or punish free speech are as guilty as that committee of breaking with the Constitution.
Kazan, Larry Parks and every other person who named names was deserving of the contempt of their peers. I’d say YMMV, but it’s already clear that it does. At least you are willing to follow the law. That’s more that HUAC was.
…than HUAC was. Dammit! I re-read that post several times before submitting, but had to go and come back because the hamsters were tired, so I didn’t preview.
The link provided by Umbriel on page 1 gives examples of pro-Soviet Hollywood films from that era:
“In such wartime movies as North Star and Song of Russia (both 1943), they portrayed the USSR as a land of joyous, well-fed workers who loved their masters. Mission to Moscow (also 1943), starring Walter Huston, went so far as to whitewash Stalin’s murderous show trials of the 1930s.”
and argues that anti-Soviet films were surpressed by Hollywood Communists:
“In The Worker, Dalton Trumbo openly bragged that the following works had not reached the screen: Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar; Victor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom; and Bernard Clare by James T. Farrell, also author of Studs Lonigan and vilified by party enforcer Mike Gold as ‘a vicious, voluble Trotskyite.’”
I don’t think those films were so much pro-communist as they were pro Allies. It suited America’s purpose at that time to stress the positive aspects of Soviet peoples, since Americans were expected to fight side by side with them against the Axis. Those films were as much American as Soviet propaganda at the time.
So the American right was worried that thanks to the evil communists in Hollywood there wouldn’t be so many Trotskyite films made? Which is a fair worry for the Trotskyites at least, seeing as I’m sure the communist party was far more interested in in-fighting than overthrowing the government.
Does anybody seriously believe the American communists were planning to violently overthrow the US government? Or to be more precise, that they had a hope in hell of doing it: because I’m sure there’s a ton of people planning to overthrow the government and take over the world, but that doesn’t mean they need to be vilified, ostracised and have their lives ruined, they just need jobs writing for Pinky and the Brain.
