Neither does Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, writing in Reason. In fact, he found just the opposite to be the case, though in a version far more watered down than Moscow would have liked:
The studio system, in which projects were closely supervised, made the insertion of [Communist] propaganda difficult if not impossible. Hollywood did not become a bastion of Stalinist propaganda, except as part of the war effort, when Russia was celebrated as an ally. Ayn Rand, then a Hollywood screenwriter and one of the few in the movie community who had actually lived under communism, was to point out that, in their zeal to provide artistic lend-lease, American Communist screenwriters went to extraordinary and absurd lengths. 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.
But if Comintern fantasies of a Soviet Hollywood were never realized, party functionaries nevertheless played a significant role: They were sometimes able to prevent the production of movies they opposed. The party had not only helped organize the Screen Writers Guild, it had organized the Story Analysts Guild as well. Story analysts judge scripts and film treatments early in the decision making process. A dismissive report often means that a studio will pass on a proposed production. The party was thus well positioned to quash scripts and treatments with anti-Soviet content, along with stories that portrayed business and religion in a favorable light. 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.”
Even talent agents sometimes answered to Moscow. Party organizer Robert Weber landed with the William Morris agency, where he represented Communist writers and directors such as Ring Lardner Jr. and Bernard Gordon. Weber carried considerable clout regarding who worked and who didn’t. So did George Willner, a Communist agent representing screenwriters, who sold out his noncommunist clients by deliberately neglecting to shop their stories. On a wider scale, the party launched smear campaigns and blacklists against noncommunists, targeting such figures as Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, and Bette Davis.
Yeah. But, well, JOSEPH McCARTHY!
Fascinating read. As Billingsley points out:
Though of global dimension, the [fight against communism] encompasses millions of dramatic personal stories played out on a grand tapestry of history: courageous Solidarity unionists against a Communist military junta; teenagers facing down tanks in the streets of Budapest and Prague; Cuban gays oppressed by a macho-Marxist dictatorship; writers and artists resisting the kitsch of obscurantist materialism; families fleeing brutal persecution, risking their lives to find freedom.
Furthermore, great villains make for great drama, and communism’s central casting department is crowded: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hönecker, Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Col. Mengistu–all of cosmic megalomania–along with their squads of hacks, sycophants, and stooges, foreign and domestic.
And yet, with very few exceptions, Hollywood has avoided tackling these stories, in large part because of its historical ties to the Communist party.
Even today, Hollywood remains cognizant of its complicity with the Communists; so while they have no trouble churning out extra helpings of stories involving the “McCarthy witchunts,” or that cartoon J. Edgar Hoover, when the subject turns to communism, we get Reds or silence.
Too bad, too. Because to this day, the allure of socialism—with its bogus promises of equality—is still with us, rhapsodized in Utopian fantasies about “universal health care” and manifest in a nostalgic ode to 60’s communes played out in a Crawford ditch.
(h/t dicentra)
It’s important to remember that we weren’t all on the same side in the Cold War – particularly since those who were on the wrong side have gone to such lengths to revise history (cough Madeleine Albrightcough.
The fact that the U.S. and its allies managed to continue the containment fight in spite of the overt hostility of a significant portion of the country’s organs of opinion should hearten us, but it shouldn’t make us complacent. Islamism still awaits its Reagan.
BTW – if it’s any comfort, THIS right-wing Christofascist has once again successfully reproduced: so there must be something to that theory that only stupid people are breeding. Six lbs, 10 oz, and we’re one little girl closer to a majority. Take THAT, Matthew Yglesias!
Are you telling me that The Mask was NOT a biography of Joseph Stalin????
Well, I never.
I know, how about a movie that shows how a pulitzer prize winning journalist helps cover up the crimes of one of histories worst monsters. Wally and Joe, coming to theaters near you.
BTW congratu;ations Nanonymous!
I read this yesterday, definitely worth checking out. As are any of Ron Radosh’s books on CPUSA influence in Hollywood during the 30’s – 50’s.
Nanonymous:
Congrats on the behbeh. My brother just got a boy on May 1 (7 lbs 15 oz), and he’ll probably grow up to be a winger, too.
All else:
Make sure you click over to the article and read the first part. It starts out describing a really cool movie called Total Eclipse. I was all, “man, I’d pay to see that,” but, well…
It’s too bad Hollywood won’t touch Soviet atrocities. There’s such rich fodder for stories  intensely good ones  that they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
But no matter: they like the pain. It gives them a chance to claim coveted victim status. McCarthy and all.
As any lefty would tell you, by constantly invoking the names of Stalin and those like him you minimize the horrific crimes of millions of unassuming Americans who have attended worship services, held jobs and raised law abiding responsible citizens willing to sacrifice for their country and the well being of their fellow men… and how, Mr. Smartypants are we supposed to run a totalitarian, intrusive state with those sorts of bastards knocking about? Sure, Mao and the rest broke some eggs but they had their eye on the ball.
Well hell, if we can’t see the true evil of Stalin on the big screen, we will always have the History Channel. And last time I checked, they are known not to pull any punches…..
While not 100% congruent, appropriate nonetheless:
Nothing illustrates his better than the reverance these limelight addled idiots have for Lillian Hellman.
Garrison Keillor said that!?
What medication was he on at the time, and why did he stop taking it?
No joke – not exactly a sentiment I’d expect to hear on Minnesota Public Radio. Nor this:
http://www.aiipowmia.com/usg/jcsd2001_gulag.html
These stories are poignant – but “The First Circle” and “One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich” have been waiting for years for a producer.
She says “hi,” btw. And she can’t WAIT to read Protein Wisdom.
Cultural Marxism prevents investigation of communism’s sins, since anyone critical of communism/leftism/socialism is by definition objectively evil and perfectly eligible for condemnation without hearing or trial.
The dialectic is inevitable; any who resist it interfere with the inevitable and are unworthy of life.
Lenin received daily reports of how many priests and reactionary bourgeois had been murdered in the previous twenty-four hours. Higher totals, Lenin himself wrote, gave him joy.
It is a despicable philosophy.
With all due respect, I disagree. The average Hollywood celeb is so vapid, I don’t think he or she can keep from confusing FDR and Teddy Roosevelt, much less having knowledge of recent revelations from, say, the Verona Project. These are people who, for the most part, barely made it through high school, if that.
Their leftism is a mile wide and an inch deep, and about as sophisticated as the average high school anarchist. Think “Rosie O’Donnell” as the archetype.
They’ve heard about Joseph McCarthy, and have been told that socialism is better for the poor, and geez, everyone knows that capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system, and gosh, Canada’s health care is free… from such profound wellsprings of knowledge, a thousand “socially-conscious” celebs spring forth.
Although the film has a lot of problems (lack of a dramatic conclusion, and others), Alfred Hitchcock’s “Topaz” (a big-budget studio movie from 1969) consistently shows the Cuban regime as a brutish totalitarian state. The opening of the movie shows hordes of goose-stepping Red Army troops and Soviet missiles in a May Day parade in Red Square – clearly and visually making the connection with the Nazi armies of Germany. There is also an interesting scene at a rally in Havana that shows the movie characters well blended into a real Castro rally. In the movie, Cuban resistance fighters are brutally murdered by the regime’s thugs. I suppose Hitchcock, no right-winger from what I’ve read, was old enough at the time to be no Red romanticist.
What Percy said.
My only quibble would be with the description, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” More like several hundred acres and a millimeter thick.
Like a slick of oil.
Suharto!
Nano. “The Master and Magarita” by Bulgakov(?) would a graety mass appeal flick.
Babies are cool. Congradulations.
It goes MUCH deeper than Hollywood.
Tailgunner Joe, for all his alcoholism, was right.
I long for the day of a Twelve Step Teetotalling Tailgunner, leading a new HUAC. We need it, badly.
Congrats, Nanonymous!
Alger Hiss was not the victim of a witch hunt; he was a witch.
What a great line.
“Congrats, Nanonymous!”
Ditto, Congrats!
Congrats, Nanonymous!
I’ve always thought Anna Akhmatova’s story would be compelling—and there’s a perfect actress available to play her, too: Lisa Zane.
IN SO MANY WAYS, people still don’t get it. They think Communism is dead, but listen to ‘progressives’ as if they had invented something new. Read the Dems, agenda, it’s very similar to our Canadian NDP (Socialist) party agenda. The NDP even call themselves ‘Progressives’. They just got an idea—increase taxes. Russians still do not get it. They are furious that Estonia, a former Soviet vassal-state, has torn up a Soviet WWII memorial in the Estonain capital. I logged on to Kommersant, a Russian English-language daily:
Why Don’t They Want Our Monument?
Yes, it certainly is a puzzle. We Canadians cannot figure out what is wrong with the Estonians.
You see, the Soviets were doing Estonia a favor, because they rescued the country from the NAZIS, who were brutal, monstrous dictators. If the NAZIS controlled Estonia, they would have held it hostage for decades. They would have brutally subjugated the people, murdered many dissidents, and sent many more off to work/death camps. They would have permitted no significant political freedoms, indoctrinated the children with trashy lies, and brought Germans in to ‘settle’ the place.
Thankfully that didn’t happen. Instead, the Soviet Communists controlled Estonia, and held it hostage for decades. They brutally subjugated the people, murdered many dissidents, and sent many more off to work/death camps. They permitted no significant political freedoms, indoctrinated the children with trashy lies, and brought Russians in to ‘settle’ the place.
Do you see the difference? It’s huge! And for some reason the Estonians are not grateful – why not?
Anyway, why would anyone dislike the Russians? It is true that uncounted tens of millions died from Soviet Communism, and millions more are still dying from it. The Soviets brutally subjugated their people, destroyed democracy, starved millions of Ukranians to death, ran death camps for their German POW’s, victimized and murdered dissenters by the trainload, and bankrupted the country with useless hyper-militarism.
The Soviet Union was floundering long before it collapsed. Once it did collapse, they also left huge poverty in their wake, from which it will take many more years for the victim countries to recover. The Russian suicide rate is now the second highest in the world, and life expectancy (M=60, F=74) has fallen to one of the lowest among the industrialized countries. Almost all of this is attributable to the horrible brutality of the Soviet Union, leaving much of Russia’s population desperate, destitute, and it will take decades before Russians can have normal lives.
But anyway, WWII is a long time ago. THAT WAS THEN, this is now… why would those Estonians still be mad at Russia… Vladimir… any ideas? Nope, I’m sorry, the ONLY THING I can think of is that those people are ungrateful.
I have an IDEA! Russia should cut off Estonia’s energy supplies…that will FORCE them to like Russia!
I just checked IMDB to see if anyone had ever made a movie of The Gulag Archipelago and found one BBC documentary (2000; based on several gulag stories) and a fictional US made-for-TV movie (1985) about some jock who was accused of spying and sent to the gulags.
I’m stunned. You’d think someone would have jumped on a story like that.
With all due respect, I disagree. The average Hollywood celeb is so vapid,
Yes, the actors are clueless, but the studio execs have been around long enough to have been messed up in blacklists and stuff. That’s why they keep pushing the McCarthy-era romance of Poor Persecuted Artists at the hands of Evil Capitalist Fanatics.
And the execs are the ones holding the purse strings. Nuff sed.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a movie about the dangers of Islamic fascism either.
Here’s the sad thing: There are lots of stories written about the Soviet system that would end up making powerful movies. Just one example: the stories by Ivan Solonevich tell of how he and his son escaped from the Siberian gulags by sheer guts and incredible resourcefulness. It’s got Hollywood written all over it.
On the downside, making such a flick would force a pile of So. Cal. Leftists to confront the murderous reality of Communism, calling into question their beloved collectivist weltanschaung, and thereby harshing their sociopolitical buzz.
Dude, you can’t have that…
The Peter Fechter Story might make a compelling flick. That probably won’t ever get made, either, though.
On the other hand, there really aren’t many true stories of people fleeing into communist countries from the West that will be made into feature films, so I guess that sort of evens things out a little.
Unless you, say, died trying to get over the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.” Or if you were Elian Gonzalez’s mom. Or thousands of others who escaped various “Workers’ Paradises.” Sucks to be any of them, huh?
The article in Reason spaeaks to a film depicting the 1939 treaty between the Nazis and the Soviets. I have tried search after search, but cannot find it.
Was this film ever made? Was it released under a different name?
Or have I fallen down the rabbir hole?
cas,
Climb out of the hole. He states in the article that the film was never produced, written, or filmed; it’s something he made up to make a point. It’s easy to miss, and yes, I fell for it too. Sounds like it would be a good movie, though, doesn’t it?