Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Honouring betrayal

Last year at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los 
Angeles, they held a special function to commemorate the 50th anniversary 
of the courageous stand of the Hollywood Ten and the imposition of the 
Blacklist in Hollywood (and in television).

Although there were plenty of stars present, media coverage of the event 
tended to be muted: it was written up solemnly but briefly in the press and 
largely ignored on television.

It certainly did not receive the high-profile glitsy treatment accorded the 
recent Academy Awards, even though it reflected directly on the integrity 
of those Awards.

The Blacklist was not only the work of the employers, the studio bosses. It 
was also the work of the entertainment unions, which should have been 
leading the fight to protect their members' right to work. But at a time 
when people like Ronald Reagan had gained control of major entertainment 
unions, anti-Communism made the union leaderships willing collaborators of 
the film moguls.

At the 1998 Academy function, the present-day leaders of the entertainment 
unions lined up to take the stage and apologise for the role of their 
predecessors in the Blacklist. More importantly, perhaps, they pledged 
never to let it happen again.

This is why the Academy's presentation of a special honorary Oscar to Elia 
Kazan at this year's Academy Awards has so outraged democratic opinion in 
the USA and elsewhere. The Award totally contradicts the line of last 
year's 50-year commemoration. It is in truth a significant right-wing 
counter to the democratic tenor of last year's event.

Elia Kazan, a Greek immigrant from Turkey, who would become the most 
notorious informer of the Hollywood McCarthy era, had flirted with the Left 
in New York theatre and in Hollywood.

He joined the progressive Group Theatre in 1932 and by the '40s was one of 
Broadway's most acclaimed directors.

His productions included All My Sons and A Streetcar Named 
Desire (both 1947) and Arthur Miller's anti-capitalism allegory 
Death Of A Salesman (1949).

In 1937 he made a documentary about Tennessee miners, People Of The 
Cumberland, but his feature film career did not start until 1945 with 
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

His next few films included the expos<130> of anti-semitism Gentlemen's 
Agreement (1947) and the "racial drama" Pinky (1949).

Despite their well intentioned themes, these "social problem" dramas of 
Kazan's were weak and soft-centred. They fail to stand up today. 
Pinky, for example, about a black girl who passes for white (played, 
incidentally, by a white actress), cannot compare with the tough-minded, 
blunt, unsentimental drama of the other race-based film of 1949, 
Clarence Brown's adaptation of Faulkner's Intruder In The Dust.

In others, like Viva Zapata!, which he made in 1952 with Marlon 
Brando, his political weaknesses were all too apparent.

When called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Kazan 
was initially a "hostile witness", but before long he turned his coat and 
provided the McCarthyite "investigators" with the names they sought, 
identifying people he worked with as Reds.

In a leaflet distributed at the demonstration outside the Academy Awards 
presentation on March 21, Evelina Alarcon, a National Secretary of the 
Communist Party USA and Chair of its Southern California District 
scornfully wrote that Kazan's "fingering of his Hollywood coworkers to HUAC 
was total treachery to his friends, fellow artists and the spirit with 
which the entertainment unions were founded. He collaborated with 
government inquisitors who, under the banner of anti-Communism, sought to 
destroy democracy in the USA.

"Blatantly unrepentant, director Kazan was a cowardly fink who sacrificed 
his fellow artists' careers to boost his own. He was nothing but the lowest 
scab who sided with the Hollywood moguls against principled members in the 
entertainment community. The results of that treachery destroyed the lives 
of thousands of artists and their families."

Two years after he testified, Kazan made On The Waterfront, which 
was honoured with multiple Academy Awards.

In speaking of the film, Kazan actually drew comparisons between the 
conflicting loyalties of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) — torn between his 
mobster family connections and his convictions — and himself, supposedly 
torn between his former friends (the "Reds") and his belief in American 
democracy.

Alarcon wrote of "the ravages his testimony caused: What about the squashed 
multi-talents of the victims of Kazan's squealing?  ... If history were 
just, it would be those who stood by their democratic principles who would 
be honoured — not a man who for 47 years has refused to apologise for his 
actions."

And she drew attention to a phenomenon no doubt linked to the very reason 
for giving Kazan this special Oscar in the first place: re-awakened red-
baiting in the US entertainment industry.

"This pro-Kazan revival by certain forces in the industry should set off 
warning bells."

Many artists at the Oscar ceremony resolved to protest against the Kazan 
award by remaining in their seats and "sitting on their hands" when he was 
introduced. Among them were Oscar-nominated actors Nick Nolte and Ed 
Harris.

Previous Oscar-winner, actor Richard Dreyfuss, wrote in the March 17 Los 
Angeles Times, "I will not be in Los Angeles next week [but] I don't 
want to be found wanting when I am asked in later years where did you stand 
about the Kazan award? ... I am sitting on my hands on this one."

In Arthur Laurent's play, Jolson Sings Again, about four young 
artists whose lives are affected by HUAC's witchhunt, there is a line 
addressed to an Elia Kazan-type character: "You're not evil because you 
informed; you informed because you're evil."