Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood (Gutenberg-e)

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Introduction Discovering Crossfire: Texts and Contexts This project grew out of my lifelong passion for novels and movies (especially

1

crime fiction and film noir), a commitment to progressive politics past and present, and a critical moment of archival serendipity. As I was beginning my dissertation research, I took a trip to the State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin. At that point, I had a rather vague notion that I would write on the process of adapting novels to film. Though I had decided already, as a way of narrowing the field, to focus on crime fiction that became film noir, my list of prospects was still impossibly long, and I hoped that archival research might help me narrow the topic further. So I went to Madison on a fishing expedition, and in the papers of filmmaker Dore Schary, I reeled in a whopper. Schary was a liberal Jew with a history of progressive activism and a reputation

2

for making "message pictures." Upon taking over as RKO's vice president in charge of production in early 1947, one of the first movies Schary greenlighted was Crossfire—a film noir about the murder of a Jew by a bigoted ex-GI. It was adapted from one of the more obscure novels on my list: The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks, in which the murder victim was a gay man. That seemed promising for a study of the adaptation process, and I was intrigued by the cultural politics. I began to madly photocopy material from the Dore Schary archive: correspondence between Schary and the film's producer, Adrian Scott; budgets and minutes from production meetings; a copy of the shooting script by screenwriter John Paxton; results of sneak previews for theater audiences as well as special screenings for Jewish defense organizations; critical reviews and fan letters from friends in the industry as well as the general public; a blistering exchange of letters and articles between Schary and Elliot Cohen, editor of Commentary; a mountain of press clips, correspondence, and legal documents concerning the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings on subversion in Hollywood, which resulted in contempt citations for the now infamous Hollywood Ten—a group that included producer Adrian Scott as well as Edward Dmytryk, Crossfire's director; Schary's deposition in Scott's lawsuit against RKO for wrongful termination; and more. As literally hundreds of pages rolled out of the copier, I realized I could throw away my list. I had found my story. I rushed home to take another look at the film on video. Set in Washington, D.C., just after the end of the Second World War, Crossfire is a classic Hollywood manhunt thriller in which an innocent and troubled soldier is implicated in a disturbing murder—the ubiquitous frame-up that forms the existential backdrop to

3

so many archetypal film noirs. Crossfire has all the visual hallmarks of the best of 1940s noir: innovative camera angles, high-contrast lighting, a series of disorienting flashbacks. It has a stellar cast: Robert Young as the world-weary police detective who realizes that intolerance was the cause of the murder that seemed without motive; Gloria Grahame as the tough-but-tender B-girl who provides the critical alibi for the innocent (but potentially adulterous) soldier; Robert Mitchum as the street-smart soldier who rallies the band of brothers to vindicate their fellow GI; Sam Levene as the kindly Jewish murder victim; and Robert Ryan

in

a chilling

tour-de-force

as

the

insinuating

and

bullying

anti-Semite. Crossfire has moments of pedantry, but overall it is a compelling, exciting film. It came as no surprise to me to learn that Crossfire was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress for Ryan and Grahame, respectively. Next, I plunged into Richard Brooks's The Brick Foxhole—a disjointed, chaotic,

4

even sordid novel, horrifically overwritten in places, stunningly insightful in others. Several critical stream-of-consciousness passages read like something from John Dos Passos's proletarian-modernist epic, the U.S.A. trilogy; the hypermasculinity, latent homosexuality, and disturbing gender relations reek of Hemingway; one chillingly banal conversation between a pair of drunken businessmen might have been plagiarized from Sinclair Lewis's antifascist expose It Can't Happen Here. Though the novel's murder victim is a homosexual rather than a Jew, the theme of anti-Semitism runs throughout the text and is a central element in Brooks's unflinching indictment of intolerance and racism of all kinds. I immediately understood what producer Adrian Scott saw in The Brick Foxhole and why he had chosen it as the literary source for his long-contemplated cinematic exposé of anti-Semitism and the American potential for fascism. As I forged delightedly ahead, I found that Crossfire occupies an interesting

5

position within the canon of classic Hollywood films. While rating a mention and sometimes an extended discussion in nearly every major analysis of film noir, Crossfire has faded in the popular memory, surpassed by such quintessential noir works as Double Indemnity, The Killers, Out of the Past, Touch of Evil, or even Murder, My Sweet, the first film by the creative trio that made Crossfire. Similarly, as a social problem film about anti-Semitism, Crossfire has been largely overshadowed by Gentleman's Agreement.1 Released only months after Crossfire, Gentleman's Agreement won many of the Oscars for which Crossfire had been nominated, including Best Director for Elia Kazan and Best Picture of 1947.2 Nevertheless, Crossfire has enjoyed an unusually wide circulation in the world of academic film criticism. Because it straddles the genres of film noir and the social problem film, Crossfire is frequently analyzed in terms of film genre and narrative

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conventions, or within the context of changing cinematic representations of ethnicity and Jewishness. In some ways, the film's reputation may have suffered from the difficulties critics have had in categorizing it. For example, several critics have suggested that Crossfire's status as a film noir is compromised by the unfortunate and awkward insertion of the social message. Other critics question its effectiveness as a social problem film, suggesting that its focus on the "radical fringe" of anti-Semitism is less socially significant than the mainstream representation

of

"genteel"

anti-Semitism

in

Gentleman's

Agreement.

In

comparison to the cheerful, liberal faith of Gentleman's Agreement that education will solve the problem of anti-Semitism, Crossfire's representation of explosive violence and latent homosexuality combined with its link between anti-Semitism and native fascism seems too dark and complicated. Ironically, perhaps, Crossfire's representation of the deadly consequences of anti-Semitism—as important as its visual style to its inclusion in the film noir canon—becomes the grounds for its dismissal as a flawed social problem film.3 The political issues surrounding the production and reception of Crossfire have

7

also served to bring the film to the attention of critics. In this interpretive mode, analyses of Crossfire have focused on the struggle to bring the subject of anti-Semitism

to

the

screen

within

the

confines

of

the

studio

system.

Alternatively, several studies emphasize the acrimonious debate among Jewish organizations over the political uses of Crossfire.4 Revisionist interpretations of the Old Left in general and Hollywood radicalism in particular have helped to recuperate Crossfire as a "film made by radicals." This has shifted the interpretive focus away from strict considerations of genre and narrative toward greater consideration of the film's historical and political context. In these more nuanced works, Crossfire is read against the political commitments and activities of Hollywood progressives as well as the impact of the Cold War, the HUAC hearings, and other major shifts in political, social, and economic history. In this context, Crossfire is seen as a key example of the negotiation between creative workers, the studio system, and the censorship apparatus, and as part of the ongoing struggle by Hollywood radicals to inject progressive content into mainstream Hollywood films.5 Numerous scholars have noted that working within the studio system, with its hierarchical power structure and tendency to prioritize profits and entertainment over art or social content, presented significant challenges for Hollywood radicals. While the film radicals recognized the political and creative limitations of Hollywood's mass production system, they still struggled to shift the balance of power, however slightly. From the campaign to unionize the film industry to the daily "shop floor" attempts to shape the aesthetic and political content of movies, they resisted the strictures and indignities of the studio system. Thus, as film

8

historian Thomas Schatz notes, "[S]tudio filmmaking was less a process of collaboration than of negotiation and struggle—occasionally approaching armed conflict."6 This story of negotiation and struggle is at the heart of my analysis of the

9

Hollywood career of Adrian Scott. A key figure in the circle of young progressive filmmakers working at RKO during the 1940s, Scott worked as a screenwriter before being promoted to contract producer in 1943. As a "salaried underpaid producer," Scott occupied a rather different niche in the Hollywood hierarchy than such independent producers as David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger or powerful studio production heads as Twentieth Century–Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck.7 I argue, however, that Scott's status in the studio system is less significant than the synergy between his creative work and his progressive political commitments. A member of the Screen Writer's Guild, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and other progressive groups, as well as the Communist Party, Scott was in many ways the quintessential Popular Front Communist: committed to the tripartite agenda of antifascism, antiracism, and progressive unionism, but inspired less by Marxism than by the American tradition of radical democracy.8 Screenwriter John Paxton, his friend and longtime collaborator, saw the wellspring of Scott's radicalism as his "compassion and great intolerance for any injustice or evil that transcended any kind of ideology."9 Scott's creative work and commitment to the Popular Front agenda were inextricably intertwined; like many in this younger generation of filmmakers, Scott believed movies were both an art form and a powerful ideological tool.10 With his muckraking faith in the power of film to raise public consciousness, Scott understood filmmaking as not only his job, but his primary mode of political activism.11 Early in his Hollywood career, Scott had realized that in order to translate his political and artistic vision into film he would need greater autonomy and control over the filmmaking process than was ordinarily granted to screenwriters. Though many of his writing peers sought greater creative control as directors, Scott understood that it was the producer, with a foot in both the creative and the business sides of the industry, who held the ultimate power over film product. As a producer, Scott had significant input into the key elements of the production process, including the budget, the script, and the choice of writers, directors, and cast. Scott's production unit at RKO soon established a reputation for low-budget melodramas that combined noir stylistics and social justice themes to produce box-office magic. Screenwriter John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk formed the backbone of Scott's unit, working with him on four extremely successful films—Murder,

My

Sweet;

Cornered;

So

Well

Remembered;

and

Crossfire—between 1944 and 1947. The breakaway success of Murder, My Sweet made Scott the hottest producer on the RKO lot, and one friend remembered that,

10

by the war's end, he was hailed as "the new boy wonder, 'the new Thalberg.'"12 This comparison with MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg is intriguing. At first

11

glance Scott, a middle-class Irish Catholic who followed his literary aspirations from Amherst College to Broadway to Hollywood, seems to have had little in common with Thalberg, a German Jew who chose business over college and climbed the ranks, from secretary to general manager at Universal, to vice president at MGM, by his early twenties. Nonetheless, though Scott never achieved the power or mystique of Thalberg, he too was seen as something of a young genius during his tenure at RKO, a man of great talent and taste, with a knack for selecting just the right literary property, cast, and crew to produce films that appealed to both critics and audiences. And, though Scott was certainly ambitious, he, like Thalberg, stood out for his quiet integrity and lack of affectation in an industry notorious for overblown egos, self-aggrandizement, and pretension.13 In producing Scott found his métier, but he also quickly learned that, in many ways, producing simply raised the stakes in the complex process of negotiation within the studio system. In focusing on the Hollywood career of Adrian Scott, and particularly on the

12

controversial production and reception of Crossfire, I address a number of issues and questions in film history. First, challenging the auteurist tendency to privilege the role of the director in film production, I reassess the role of the producer in the Hollywood studio system and argue that Adrian Scott, not Edward Dmtyryk, was the creative and political visionary behind Murder, My Sweet; Cornered; and Crossfire.14 John Paxton, the third member of the creative trio behind these films, supports this thesis, noting that after Scott was blacklisted, "neither Dmytryk nor I were ever again involved in films of this particular sort."15 Significantly, Scott himself would have disdained the elitist assumptions embedded in the notion of an auteur. For Scott, film was a collaborative art, and he worked hard to make his production unit a creative team that valued the contributions of all. Paxton thought Scott was a brilliant producer with an unerring gift for "concepts and constructions," and he credited him with many of the key plot points and stylistic innovations in his screenplays, from the flashback sequence in Murder, My Sweet to

the

"right-house-but-the-wrong-address"

ploy

in

the

denouement

of

Crossfire.16 Though Scott did not take screen credit for his script contributions, he worked closely with his screenwriters and saw his role as inspiring rather than harassing, frustrating, or intimidating them. For Scott, this collaborative approach was part of his larger political commitment to challenging hierarchies, whether within the studio system or within American society as a whole. Second, I use Scott's Hollywood career to examine the political and creative challenges faced by radicals working in the studio system. In this context, I argue

13

that the political and cultural significance of Crossfire—and perhaps of any Hollywood film—cannot be fully understood without close attention to the adaptation and production process itself. Indeed, film historians Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund specifically call for studies that document this process, noting that the "finished film alone cannot provide evidence of how much the producers changed, or how much they did not have to change as a result of the success of the studio conditioning process on left-wing screenwriters."17 Reconstructing the backstory of Scott's work in the 1940s, his interactions with studio heads and the Breen Office as he maneuvered his films through the production process, offers a much more nuanced picture of the strategies of accommodation and resistance employed by radicals working within the studio system. This was particularly relevant during the 1940s, when the wartime demands for greater realism from Hollywood films pushed the limits of the Production Code and created new opportunities for political filmmaking in the postwar period. Scott's work during this period suggests his growing political engagement and ever-bolder attempts to subvert the studio system, beginning with the critique of class and corruption in Murder, My Sweet, through the internationalist antifascism of Cornered, to Crossfire, the final point on the trajectory of Scott's attempts to meld his creative and political visions. Third, I use these three films to explore the relationship between antifascist politics and film noir. Certainly it is important to recognize that "film noir" is a term applied after the fact: nobody in 1940s Hollywood consciously set out to make a "film noir"; instead, they saw themselves as making melodramas or thrillers, and the distinct visual style so associated with noir was often a creative response to the wartime blackouts, shortages of film stock and matériel for sets, and the like.18 Nevertheless, I argue that the narrative strategies and visual style of film noir represented the cutting edge of radicals' resistance to the representational boundaries of mainstream Hollywood films. Early noirs like Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet, with their exploration of such adult themes as adultery, murder, and the dark side of human nature, seemed to transfer the realism of wartime films from the foxholes to the home front. Film noir's roots in pulp fiction, its exploration of existential themes, of the seamy underbelly of American society, and of the corruption of the monied classes not only pushed the envelope of the Production Code, but also reflected the political ethos of the Popular Front generation. It is no accident that many of the pioneers of film noir were also closely associated with progressive politics. Between the end of the war and the onset of the blacklist, a handful of progressive Hollywood filmmakers tried to meld the emerging noir style with overt political content, especially concerning fascism and antifascism. Adrian Scott was on the cutting edge of this trend and, I would argue, led the way in integrating his antifascist politics with his creative work. Read against his earlier films—both the pioneering

14

noir Murder, My Sweet and the antifascist thriller Cornered—Crossfire emerges, not simply as a "political" film noir or an anti–anti-Semitism message film, but as a specifically antifascist film. Finally, I contend that Crossfire's stormy public reception—by audiences, film

15

critics, Jewish defense organizations, and ultimately the House Un-American Activities Committee—reveals the widespread recognition in the postwar period that Hollywood films, far from being mere entertainment as the studio moguls insisted, were a powerful tool in shaping public consciousness. Indeed, Hollywood films played a critical role in mediating the cultural tensions exacerbated by the Depression, the Second World War, and the emerging Cold War. During the 1930s and 1940s, moviegoing was the national pastime, and movies were the wellspring of the national imagination. As Lary May argues, "The movies were perhaps the most powerful national institution which offered private [cultural] solutions to public [political] issues."19 By mid-century, then, few cultural institutions could challenge the power and hegemony of Hollywood in the invention of "imagined communities."20 Thus, I believe that Crossfire demands a wider interpretive net than has been cast

16

by film historians and cultural critics, and that the career of Adrian Scott and his films of the 1940s raise questions and issues of significance for the larger field of modern American history. I argue that Crossfire must be seen as an intervention in the complex and often contradictory construction of an imagined community of Americans that dominated much of the twentieth century, a discourse of belonging and exclusion, of identity and difference, of "us" and "them." As a Popular Front Communist, Scott's political vision was indelibly shaped by the American encounter with European fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. For him, anti-Semitism or any form of racism was decidedly un-American, a repudiation of the liberal promise that "all men are created equal." Moreover, in the wake of the Nazi campaign against the Jews and the revelation of the Holocaust, the rising evidence of anti-Semitism in the United States seemed particularly menacing. Dramatizing Scott's belief that anti-Semitism was a symptom of fascism, Crossfire represents both a powerful warning of the potentially violent consequences of racism and an alternative Americanism that calls upon the United States to live up to its democratic promise, particularly on issues of race. Ultimately, then, my analysis of Crossfire and the career of Adrian Scott suggests that the mid-century discourse on Americanism cannot be fully understood without reference to antifascism and anti-Communism, both as ideologies and as political movements. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, the discourse on Americanism underwent profound changes, from the scientific racism that informed the early eugenic and nativist movements to an embrace of cultural pluralism and universalist tolerance

17

during

the

war

years.

Many

factors—social,

political,

economic,

and

cultural—fueled this transformation, but one of the most critical was the rise of European fascism.21 Though certainly some saw fascism as an admirable social experiment and even a bulwark against Communism,22 for most Americans by the late 1930s, fascism represented the ideological Other against which they understood and self-consciously constructed their own political culture and imagined community, "their" Americanism. The Popular Front, an antifascist alliance of radicals and liberals, was particularly strong in Hollywood; indeed, the war, in encouraging "political" filmmaking, offered Hollywood progressives new opportunities to integrate their artistic vision with their antifascist, antiracist politics, significantly shaping wartime constructions of Americanism. The popular nationalism elaborated during the 1940s represented the Second World War as a struggle between the "free world" and the "slave world," juxtaposing the democratic idealism and tolerance of the Allies against the barbarism and racism of the Axis enemy.23 By the 1940s, the Nazi ideology of Aryan superiority and its campaign against the

18

Jews had led to a troubled reappraisal of the very basis of scientific racism and fueled a reorientation of American attitudes toward the place of race in a liberal democracy. One key strategy in this reorientation (with particular significance for Crossfire) was to bring Jews and other "provisional" whites into the Caucasian fold under the new rubric of ethnicity. This is not to say that race ceased to be an issue in the United States. On the contrary, the new taxonomy merely shifted the terms of the debate, producing a bifurcated system that defined race largely in terms of black versus white.24 Nonetheless, by the end of World War Two, an amorphous cultural pluralism had become the primary paradigm through which Americans

reconciled

the

powerful

homogenizing

tendencies

of

industrial

capitalism and mass society with the desire to preserve heterogeneity and individuality. Most importantly, cultural pluralism during the 1940s was linked very specifically to nationalism as a key means of articulating the differences between Americanism and fascism. Thus, by the end of World War Two, "Americans All" replaced "America for the Americans" as the rallying cry of popular nationalism.25 Though Americans eagerly embraced the postwar "return to normalcy," the experience of the war itself had provoked a profound existential crisis. The vast carnage alone—sixty million people dead, including six million Jewish victims of the Nazis' Final Solution and hundreds of thousands of Japanese victims of the atomic devastation unleashed by the Americans themselves—radically challenged the modernist faith in such fundamental concepts as "progress," "civilization," and, indeed, "normalcy," and paved the way for postmodernism. Historian William S. Graebner suggests that the pervading ironies and contingencies of the 1940s

19

fueled a profound crisis in American national identity in the postwar period: Was the United States a bastion of isolationism, as it had been in 1940, or a committed imperial power, as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan seemed to demonstrate? Was the nation committed to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal welfare state—with its implied goal of economic security for all citizens—or was it, as the popularity of Ayn Rand's novels suggested, a stronghold of free-enterprise capitalism and individual responsibility, given to entrepreneurship and risk taking? Were Americans the stable, rooted beings that appeared in Norman Rockwell's paintings, or were they, as Oscar Handlin's study of immigration claimed, "the uprooted"?26

In many ways, the year 1947 marks a unique cultural moment in American

20

history, a pivotal point at which the trajectory and shape of the postwar world were in transition, and competing visions of Americanism vied for hegemony.27 Two wartime articulations—Henry Luce's "American Century" and Henry Wallace's "Century of the Common Man"—set the terms of the debate. In 1941, publishing magnate Luce argued that the United States must reject isolationism and enter the war in order to position the nation for postwar dominance—political, economic, and ideological. For Luce, the exportation of the American values of free enterprise and democracy would produce material abundance and security for the entire world. In 1942, then–Vice President Wallace offered his alternative to Luce's rather imperialist vision, calling for the worldwide extension of the New Deal and the redistribution of economic resources to "humanize" capitalism. Though Wallace's vision became a rallying point for the postwar left-liberal Popular Front, his "common man" was less a proletarian hero than a version of the "average American" constructed by advertisers and social scientists, and Wallace certainly shared Luce's faith in the relationship between abundance and freedom. Nonetheless, Wallace's call for international cooperation—particularly with the Soviet Union—set him fundamentally at odds with Luce, who even in 1941 predicted that the divisions between the "free world" and the "slave world" would continue into the postwar period.28 In this context, the lingering specter of fascism was critically important. In the postwar period, fascism was equated with Communism under the rubric of "totalitarianism." Despite their very different ideological roots, the parallels between the political repression and militarist aggression of Nazism and Stalinism seemed unmistakable and ominous, and throughout the Cold War, fascism provided for many thinkers a template for understanding and even predicting the behavior of the Soviet Union. The American horror of Communism, submerged during the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, reemerged even before the war's end; as denazification brought "good Germans" back into the democratic fold, American fears of fascism were projected onto Communism. Joseph Stalin,

21

viewed as the friendly "Uncle Joe" during the war years, quickly reverted to an iron-willed dictator, Hitler's evil twin, and the freedom-loving Russian people who had been glorified in wartime propaganda were again seen as either duped automatons or wild-eyed revolutionaries. For most Americans, Communism, like fascism, was perceived as a profound threat to the American Way of Life, and the wartime

antifascist

impulse

translated

only

too

easily

into

the

postwar

anti-Communist crusade.29 For American radicals, the fascist model also had great explanatory power in the

22

postwar period. However, rejecting the explanatory lens of totalitarianism, with its tendency to blur distinctions between facism and Communism, they continued to see fascism as the primary ideological threat to democracy. For them, the danger was that the United States would fall prey to fascism, rather than Communism. Recalling the fascist use of anti-Communist rhetoric to crush labor and the left and to consolidate reactionary political power in Italy and Germany, they interpreted the postwar anti-Communist crusade as a harbinger of fascism in America. In 1947, ominous portents, mirroring the dislocations that had fueled European fascism after the First World War, were everywhere: fears of rising inflation and a return of economic depression, concerns about the reintegration of war veterans, rising anti-Semitism and racism, and a flurry of antilabor legislation. All were signs suggesting, to the radicals, that America was on the road to fascism. These fears were confirmed by the attack on Hollywood by the House

23

Un-American Activities Committee in the fall of 1947. In a nation only too aware of the uses the Nazis had made of mass culture to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Germans, the charges of Communist influence in Hollywood provoked alarm and dismay on both the right and left, though for very different reasons. During the war years, "freedom of the screen" was touted as one of the fundamental differences between democracy and fascism; thus, in the contest between HUAC and Hollywood, each side proclaimed the other un-American. For the conservatives, the evidence of Marxist propaganda in Hollywood films proved that an international conspiracy of Hollywood Jews and Communists was undermining American cultural values and democratic traditions. For the Hollywood radicals, the HUAC investigation was a harbinger of fascism in America, the opening salvo in a far-reaching reactionary plan to undermine fundamental American freedoms. Indeed, to a certain extent, both sides were right. Hollywood radicals did try, within the confines of the profoundly conservative studio system, to produce antifascist, antiracist, internationalist, progressive films. And the HUAC members, recognizing the power of film to shape public consciousness and to reflect the

24

nation to the world, did want to ensure that Hollywood films reflected their own conservative version of Americanism. In this context, it is not surprising that Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk were among the nineteen "unfriendlies" subpoenaed by HUAC in 1947. Scott and, at least at the time, Dmytryk advocated an alternative Americanism that called upon the nation—both its leaders and "the people"—to live up to the radical democratic ideals embodied by Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and even Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Though Scott and his radical cohort eagerly participated in the construction of the wartime popular nationalism, they also recognized the slippage between rhetoric and reality and condemned liberalism's collaboration with class and racial oppression in the United States. For Scott, socialism represented the fulfillment of those particularly American ideals; for him, Communism was, indeed, "Twentieth Century Americanism," as the Popular Front slogan proclaimed. He believed that socialism would—and must—come to America, not through armed, bloody revolution but through popular participation in representational government and the constant expansion of the state. For Scott the idealist, the state represented the will of the people, or at least it should; and for him, Roosevelt's New Deal was proof that, in fact, it could. Scott may have been a Communist, but he had great faith in the power of the liberal state to transform the lives of ordinary citizens. In the postwar period, as a member of Progressive Citizens of America and a supporter of Henry Wallace, Scott advocated an expansion of the New Deal at home and internationalist cooperation abroad. As a filmmaker, he attempted to infuse his work with this antiracist, antifascist, internationalist vision. Thus, Crossfire, the pinnacle of his political and creative achievement, was a very dangerous film in the eyes of HUAC, and Scott and Dmytryk were caught in the crossfire of the postwar struggle to identify and contain Americanism and un-Americanism. In the struggle between HUAC and Hollywood, the older, xenophobic, antiradical,

25

antimodernist tradition of Americanism was pitted against a new Americanism, the more cosmopolitan, modernist, and pluralist popular nationalism of the war years that was broadly shared—and indeed, largely articulated—by the studio moguls, the liberal activists, and the radical dissidents in Hollywood. The debate over the Hollywood Ten, however, quickly revealed the fissures within this new Americanism, as the Popular Front vision of the increasingly isolated leftists was overwhelmed

by

the

increasingly

hegemonic

"American

Century"

anti-Communism of Hollywood liberals. Though this conflict often played itself out as an internal industry struggle, in many ways it reflected a larger struggle over the meanings and uses of Americanism within the culture as a whole. Weaving together industrial practices, cultural texts, and changing historical contexts, this study attempts to locate and understand the significance of

26

Crossfire to the construction of Americanism at this critical cultural moment. Chapter 1, "Reel Reds, Real Americans: Politics and Culture in the Studio System," paints a sweeping portrait of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, examining the political and cultural negotiations between Hollywood progressives and the studio executives, the culture of the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA) and the Popular Front in Hollywood, and the early careers of Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk. Chapter 2, "Raising the Cry of Alarm: Popular Nationalism, World War Two, and the New Political Filmmaking," explores the popular discourse on fascism and antifascism, nationalism, nativism, and anti-Semitism from the 1930s through the end of World War Two, emphasizing Hollywood's role in the construction of a wartime popular nationalism. Chapter 3, "The Progressive Producer in the Studio System: Film Noir and the Production of Murder, My Sweet," examines Scott's promotion from screenwriter to producer and his first collaboration with Paxton and Dmytryk on the film noir classic Murder, My Sweet. Chapter 4, "They Must Not Escape: Cornered and the Specter of Postwar Fascism," examines significant transformations in the immediate postwar period; it focuses on national and international political developments, particularly ongoing concerns about fascism, as well as heightened expectations of the possibilities for postwar political filmmaking, through an analysis of the 1945 Scott-Paxton-Dmytryk film Cornered. Chapter 5, "You Can't Do That: From The Brick Foxhole to Crossfire," reads Richard Brooks's novel The Brick Foxhole as an antifascist counternarrative that challenged key tenets of wartime popular nationalism, paying particular attention to representations of masculinity and Jewishness; this chapter also examines Scott's early efforts to shepherd The Brick Foxhole through the studio system. Chapter 6, "It Can Happen Here: Noir Style and the Politics of Antifascism in Crossfire," examines the adaptation and production of Crossfire as a case study of political filmmaking within the studio system, reading the screenplay in the context of the novel, exploring the significance of changes within the various versions of the screenplay, and finally reading the film itself as a distinct cultural product. Chapter 7, "Is It Good for the Jews? The Jewish Response to Crossfire," examines the heated debate between the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee over the social uses and political meanings of Crossfire for American Jews. Chapter 8, "Hate Is Like a Loaded Gun: Shaping the Public Response to Crossfire," examines the popular and critical response to Crossfire, as well as the studio's attempts to shape the public reception of the film first through a complex program of previews and audience testing, and then through specific publicity and advertising strategies. Chapter 9, "Americanism on Trial: HUAC, the Hollywood Ten, and the Politics of Anti-Communism," examines the postwar negotiation of Americanism engendered by the 1947 HUAC investigation of subversion in the film industry and the

subsequent

blacklisting

of

the

Hollywood

Ten.

This

chapter

focuses

particularly on the political uses of "radical" and "Jew" and the juxtaposition of

fascism and Communism within the Cold War discourse on Americanism and un-Americanism. Chapter 10, "The Triumph of Anti-Communist Americanism: The Blacklist and Beyond," focuses on the post-HUAC fortunes of Adrian Scott, Edward Dmytryk, and Dore Schary in order to examine the impact of the blacklist on Hollywood films and filmmakers and on the Popular Front in the postwar period. The conclusion, "Freedom of the Screen? The Politics of Postwar Cultural Production," comments briefly on the impact of the blacklist on film content and Cold War American culture.

Notes Note 1: A recent example of the historical overshadowing of Crossfire is the March 1999 National Public Radio story on the controversy over Elia Kazan's Lifetime Achievement Oscar, which identified Gentleman's Agreement as the first Hollywood film to deal with anti-Semitism. Note 2: It is not all that surprising that Crossfire lost out at the Academy Awards, since Scott and Dmytryk had just refused to testify for HUAC, been fired from RKO, and blacklisted in the film industry. How could Crossfire possibly have been recognized by the Academy under these circumstances? Recognizing Gentleman's Agreement, the "safe" anti–anti-Semitism film, however, might have assuaged those in the film industry who wanted to encourage and reward social problem filmmaking and show the world that Hollywood had not been cowed by HUAC. Note 3: The literature on film noir is extensive, and the term itself, in fact, continues to be hotly debated. Though all agree that the term was coined by French critics after World War Two, the consensus ends there. The history and terrain of the debate are examined in more detail in James Naremore's delightful book More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Other key works that offer more than a cursory mention of Crossfire include Foster Hirsch, Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen (New York: Da Capo Press, 1981), and Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1991). Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1981) discusses Crossfire primarily as a failed message movie. Judith E. Doneson, The Holocaust in American Film (Philadelphia: The Jewish

Publication

Society,

1987);

Patricia

Erens,

The

Jew

in

American

Cinema

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); and Lester Friedman, Hollywood's Image of the Jew (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982) focus broadly on representations of Jewishness in Hollywood films and tend to emphasize Crossfire's inadequacies in comparison to Gentleman's Agreement. See also Leonard Leff and Jerrold Simmons, "Film into Story: The Narrative Schema of Crossfire," Literature/Film Quarterly 12:3 (1984): 171–179. Note 4: Eric Goldman, "The Fight to Bring the Subject of Anti-Semitism to the Screen: The Story of the Production of Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement," Davka 5:3 (Fall 1975): 24; Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1988); and Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) explore the debate among Jewish organizations. In contrast, Thomas Cripps, in Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), makes insightful connections between the anti–anti-Semitism films of 1947 and the important postwar cycle of "message films" that significantly altered Hollywood representations of African Americans. Note 5: See, for example, Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood:

Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980); Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1992); Bernard F. Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989); Keith Kelly and Clay Steinman, "Crossfire: A Dialectical Attack," Film Reader 3 (February 1978): 106–127; and Darryl Fox, "Crossfire and HUAC: Surviving the Slings and Arrows of the Committee," Film History 3 (1989): 29–37. Several of the works discussed earlier—particularly those by Cripps, Gabler, and Naremore—are also particularly well historicized. Note 6: Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 12. Note 7: Recent studies reevaluating the critical role of the producer in the studio system include George F. Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood (New York: Basic Books, 1997) and Matthew Bernstein, Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Note 8: Scott never wrote publicly about when or why he joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), though there is little doubt that he was a member. Norma Barzman, screenwriter and one of Scott's closest friends, remembers that he was in the Party at the same time as her husband Ben, who joined in 1939. The FBI file on Scott, however, dates the beginning of his Party involvement to the early 1940s. Norma Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Barzman, interview with Larry Ceplair, in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin's, 1997), 5. See also Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 116, and Dick, Radical Innocence, 122–123. Note 9: John Paxton to Keith Kelly and Clay Steinman, July 1977, in Paxton Biographical File, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [AMPAS], Los Angeles, California. Note 10: Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Neve, Film and Politics in America, 87. Note 11: In addition to his work on progressive feature films, Scott was a founding member of the Motion Picture Guild, an independent group dedicated to making socially relevant documentaries and shorts. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 116; Dick, Radical Innocence, 122–123. Note 12: Marsha Hunt, interview with Glenn Lovell, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 318. Note 13: On Thalberg the man and the myth, see Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 218–236. Note 14: I was surprised to find how completely Adrian Scott has dropped off the historical radar. Though the blacklist explains much, Scott's work has not benefited particularly from the revisionist project to reclaim the work and reputations of the blacklistees. In a fairly representative example, Andrew Dickos, in his otherwise very informative recent history of noir, lists some of the producers who "distinguished themselves in noir production," including Hal Wallis, Mark Hellinger, Joan Harrison, Edward Small, and Bob Roberts—but not Adrian Scott. Dickos even commends Dore Schary, "who, as production head at RKO, allowed from 1947 to 1949, the biggest concentration of noir filmmaking to be done"—but fails to mention RKO's leading producer of noir, Adrian Scott. Andrew Dickos, Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2002), 173. Note 15: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, June 20, 1977, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 16: Paxton to Keith Kelly and Clay Steinman, n.d. [July 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 17: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 323.

Note 18: On film noir and Hollywood's wartime shortages, Sheri Chinen Biesen, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), especially chapter 2. Note 19: Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 238. Note 20: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1983, 1991). Note 21: The American response to Japanese fascism was markedly different. Indeed, the subtle and overt racism of American representations of the Japanese enemy during World War Two illustrates the limitations of inclusion in wartime popular nationalism. See John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986). Note 22: On the appeal of fascism, see John P. Diggins, "Flirtation with Fascism: American Pragmatic Liberals and Mussolini's Italy," American Historical Review 71 (January 1966), and Benjamin L. Alpers, Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s–1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Note 23: For general discussions of wartime rhetoric and ideology, see Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: Norton, 1998), especially chapter 10; William S. Graebner, The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991); and Philip Gleason, "Americans All: World War II and the Shaping of American Identity," The Review of Politics 43 (1981): 483–518. On Hollywood during the war, see Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987); Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); and Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), especially chapter 4. For a concise summary of the Popular Front, see Mark Naison, "Remaking America: Communists and Liberals in the Popular Front," in New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism, ed. Michael Brown et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 45–74. Note 24: See Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); Karen Brodkin, How the Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998); and Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Note 25: Gleason, "Americans All," especially 497–512. Note 26: Graebner, The Age of Doubt, 54–55, 146. Note 27: A number of key events in 1947 signaled the rollback of the New Deal agenda and a definitive shift to the policies and mentality of the Cold War and anti-Communist Americanism, including passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, and the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency. Note 28: Henry R. Luce, The American Century (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1941); Henry A. Wallace, Century of the Common Man: Two Speeches by Henry A. Wallace (New York: International Workers Order, Inc., 1943), in Wallace File, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles; Foner, The Story of American Freedom, 232–233; Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), xi–xii, 101. Note 29: The literature on Cold War anti-Communism is exhaustive. The general texts I have found particularly useful include David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978); Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1990); Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis, eds., The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976); Norman N. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (New York: Free Press, 1973); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Mary Sperling McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947–1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978); Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Harper and Row, 1985); and Stephen Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). On the rhetoric of totalitarianism, see Les K. Adler and Thomas K. Patterson, "Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s–1950s," American Historical Review 75:4 (April 1970): 1046–1064; Abbot Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); and of course, Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951; New York: Harvest Books, 1973).

Chapter 1 Reel Reds, Real Americans: Politics and Culture in the Studio System I liked the old studio world. I miss it sometimes. It was comfortable. You knew who your friends and enemies were. Your enemies were up there in the front office, making inter-studio deals, playing gin-rummy in Palm Springs, or off somewhere consorting with exhibitors. Your friends were all the other writers, the salaried underpaid producers, directors, editors and analysts you had coffee with in the commissary. The Communists, that's who they were to be perfectly honest. The Reds. You could tell them

because

they

were

always

talking

story—theme,

plot,

and

motivation. Always hitting you up (in the men's room usually) for a contribution to something like milk for rickety babies in rural Georgia, or some such subversive cause. . . . They were gentle patriots . . . , a friendly if often pedantic group, incessantly interested in ideas and humanity. —John Paxton

Screenwriter John Paxton captures some of the Hollywood "studio world" in the

1

1930s and 1940s, as well as the appeal and aura of the progressive film community during the period of the Popular Front. Paxton chose to remain aloof from organized politics, but Adrian Scott, one of his closest friends and his collaborator on the films that launched Paxton's screenwriting career, was a Communist. So—for a time, at least—was Edward Dmytryk, the third man in the creative triumvirate responsible for Murder, My Sweet; Cornered; So Well Remembered; and Crossfire. Paxton's statement suggests several of the major themes of this work: the power of the studio system and its near-monolithic control of filmmaking; the conflicts engendered by the hierarchical power relations within the studio system; the presence and relative influence of a radical minority in the film community; the relationship between sociability and political engagement that inspired the creative community, and the confluence of politics and culture during the 1930s and 1940s. This quote also points clearly to the conflicted nature of the studio system, a conflict readily evident in Paxton's description of the studio system as a nexus of "friends and enemies." His is the language of struggle, of a battle in which the lines were clearly drawn. The "enemies" were the men in the front office, the money men, the deal makers—a very different group from the film workers. Paxton's description of "friends" also reflects the profound gulf between studio management and the studio workforce—a gulf that was simultaneously economic, cultural, and political.

2

And yet, Paxton's nostalgia for the old days is clear. His description of the studio

3

system as "comfortable" reveals the ways in which the predictability of conflict between the front office men and the film workers created friends as well as enemies, and details the construction of imagined communities within the film industry.1 The industrial structure that produced the phenomenal success and international hegemony of American movies also stringently divided film workers by craft and class, and separated them from the studio heads. The hierarchies of the studio system thus created an "us and them" mentality that ultimately enabled a broad-based solidarity among film workers, an imagined community of cultural workers. Defined in contrast to the perceived cultural crassness and political conservatism of the studio moguls, the cultural workers made their imagined community "real" by their own creative engagement and progressive political commitment. Despite the constraints of working within the studio system, the amalgam of

4

sociability, politics, and creativity made Hollywood an exciting, challenging place to work during this period. As Hollywood movies became a cultural front line in the war against fascism for this class of Left intellectuals, the reality of fascism dissolved the boundaries between high culture and low culture, at least momentarily. Significantly, the writers who came to Hollywood in the late 1930s and 1940s—Scott and Paxton among them—did not have the same conflicts as those of an earlier generation, who often considered themselves "serious artists" and felt that they had sold out to Hollywood. The younger generation, though they struggled mightily against the indignities of mass production within the studio system, did not have the same fear and loathing of "mass culture" that marked the "literary" film workers. Rather, as Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund note, they "regarded the film form as a high art. Raised on 'fine' films, they understood the potential of the medium in a way that their 'greenhorn' forebears did not. Much less torn by the desire to be recognized as novelists or playwrights, they devoted themselves to movie writing."2 This commitment to the craft of moviemaking—Paxton's

"theme,

plot,

and

motivation"—created

a

common

creative ground that helped to bridge the ideological and artistic differences within the film community.

Adrian Scott: Starting Out in the Thirties Born on February 6, 1911, Robert Adrian Scott grew up in Arlington, New Jersey, one of the centers of the American textile industry, a key site in the history of industrial capitalism and a hotbed of radical labor agitation. Arlington was only twelve miles to the south of Paterson, where the 1913 strike of 25,000 silk workers brought together socialists, Wobblies, and Greenwich Village intellectuals and inspired a massive fundraising pageant performed at Madison Square Garden.

5

In 1926, when Scott was fifteen years old, 20,000 textile workers in nearby Passaic, New Jersey, closed down the mills. One of the first mass walkouts led by the Communist Party, the strike remained in the national headlines for more than a year;3 surely it entered the consciousness of the young man at some level. Though the Irish Catholic Scott family was relatively affluent—Adrian's father worked in middle management for the New York Telephone Company—certainly the dark, gray, and dirty mills, factories, and working-class neighborhoods of Adrian's childhood left a lasting impression on him and helped to shape his later political commitments.4 Another significant influence on the young Adrian Scott lay across the Hudson

6

River from Arlington: the lights of Manhattan, America's cultural mecca, home to Broadway, the "Great White Way"; to the bohemian communities of Greenwich Village; to Tin Pan Alley and Harlem, sources for ragtime and hot jazz, the soundtrack of American modernism. The theater was an early passion of Adrian's, encouraged perhaps by his older brother Allan, a playwright (and later screenwriter) whose comedy Goodbye Again ran on Broadway for most of 1933. Perhaps hoping to follow in his older brother's footsteps, Adrian Scott was particularly active in theater productions at Amherst College, where he majored in English and history. His drama professor F. Curtis Canfield remembered, "No student was more popular and respected than Adrian. He was quiet, serious and extremely capable in his college work."5 The Olio, the Amherst yearbook, offered a charming and quite telling portrait of the artist as a young man: Hat cocked back at a rakish angle, cigar in the corner of his mouth, his fingers playing nimbly over the typewriter keys, the inimitable R.A.L. Scott is again displaying his versatility by creating a Lee Tracy atmosphere while pounding out a thesis for his Genetics course. Among his other weaknesses are: an uncontrollable passion for high pressure music (Black Jazz, Tiger Rag and Maniac's Ball being among the most offensive). . . . An irresistible personality, tolerant and understanding, he is one whose friendship is well worth acquiring. A mild Epicurean, he lends conviviality and constructive thought to any party. . . . Smooth, always the gentleman, this curly haired young man merrily and unconcernedly goes his way, unenvious of fame or fortune, but content. To predict his future is an impossibility. Nevertheless, it seems certain, despite his dislike of publicity, that he will be heard from. His talents are too many to go unnoticed.6

After graduating from Amherst in 1934, at the lowest point of the Depression, Scott went west to seek his fortune in Hollywood. His brother Allan had moved from Broadway to Hollywood in 1934, working at RKO on several major Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers musicals including Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). Allan's presence at the studio probably was a factor in Adrian's being hired at RKO in 1934 as a $25-a-week technical consultant on

7

Gridiron Flash, a college football drama for the studio’s low-budget B-unit, though he did not receive screen credit for his contributions. For a young writer with a burgeoning social consciousness and dreams of becoming a serious dramatist, his relegation to such low-budget B-unit films as Gridiron Flash must have been difficult to swallow. And without screen credits, he had no hope of being assigned to more challenging projects. After three frustrating years, Scott left Hollywood for New York to try his luck writing for the theater.7 In 1937 he was hired as assistant editor for film at Stage Magazine, and another

8

desk was squeezed into the office—a "dungeon" behind the filing cabinets—that he would share with another aspiring playwright and Stage's assistant editor for drama, John Paxton. Scott and Paxton had much in common. Like Scott, John Paxton came from a fairly affluent Anglo family, though he was raised Protestant rather than Catholic. Paxton was born (a mere two months after Scott) in Kansas City, Missouri. Horrified at the idea of going into business and sitting at a desk all day, Paxton studied journalism at the University of Missouri. However, he was equally drawn to the theater, which he felt was more social than writing and had the added attraction of "pretty girls and excitement." Like Scott, he graduated from college in the depths of the Depression. When he was unable to find newspaper work, he spent several months traveling around the country with an acting troupe. Eventually settling in New York, intending to pursue a career as a writer rather than as an actor, Paxton worked in industrial publicity and managed a playwriting contest for the Theater Guild before moving to Stage Magazine in 1937.8 The two young men quickly became friends and often ate lunch together, talking endlessly about drama. At this point, Scott was writing plays on the side, and "had a great ambition to be a playwright." Paxton recalled that he and Scott had an "immediate rapport on an artistic level, and it never ended. We went on from there."9 The 1930s was a decade of enormous excitement and innovation in the New York theater world. The Federal Theater Project (FTP), created under the auspices of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration to provide work for unemployed stage artists and to bring theater to a broad cross-section of Americans, had revitalized theater throughout the country. From the FTP's 1936 production of a stage version of Sinclair Lewis's antifascist novel It Can't Happen Here, to the appropriation by its Living Newspaper troupe of the strikes and radical upsurges that dominated headlines, the FTP created a new model of socially conscious and federally subsidized theater. The Mercury Theater burst onto the New York scene from 1937 to 1939;

through their productions of

Julius Caesar

and

a

groundbreaking Macbeth with an all-black cast, collaborators Orson Welles and John Houseman hoped to "democratize elite culture, expropriating the cultural wealth of the past for the working classes." Perhaps the pinnacle of experimental,

9

left-wing theater, however, was the Group Theater, whose 1936 production of Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty had brought the audience spontaneously to its feet, not in applause, but as participants in the drama, blurring the line between performers and spectators.10 Though there is no evidence that either Paxton or Scott was associated with the FTP, the Group, or the Mercury Theater during their time in New York, it is simply impossible that these two young aspiring writers, who shared a love of and commitment to "serious" drama, could work in the New York theater world in the mid-1930s and be unaware of these significant new cultural formations. Stage Magazine, however, was far removed from the radical ferment in 1930s

10

theater. A slick magazine whose pages featured as many glossy ads for liquor, restaurants, and tony department stores as serious articles and reviews, Stage was "a country cousin of the New Yorker," in the words of John Paxton, who noted that the magazine was constantly in financial crisis. Nevertheless, Stage was an incredible opportunity for the fledgling writers, who routinely served as ghostwriters for articles published under the bylines of American and European notables from a broad range of political persuasions and cultural fields. Through their work on Stage, Scott and Paxton were immersed in a heady world of ideas and culture, as they interviewed or corresponded with such intellectuals as John Strachey and Max Eastman; theater luminaries from Kurt Weill and Max Reinhardt to Eve La Gallienne and Robert Sherwood; literary figures from John Steinbeck to James Thurber; and Hollywood heavyweights from Alfred Hitchcock to Frank Capra and Charles Laughton. Paxton remembered, "There was a point where Allen Churchill, Sidney Carroll, Adrian and I were writing the whole magazine." By 1938, however, financial difficulties finally forced Stage to cut back its staff, and Scott was one of the casualties. After seven months in New York, he left to take another shot at Hollywood. Paxton stayed in New York, working at Stage until it finally folded in 1939, and then as a play analyst and publicist at the Theater Guild, before he, too, headed west to Los Angeles.11 Stage provided an invaluable apprenticeship for Scott and Paxton, cementing their friendship as well as their sense of themselves as belonging to the world of theater, writing, and "Culture." It is also significant that much of their work at Stage was a sort of literary performance, training them to write not only for others, but as others. Thus, instead of finding their "authentic voices," Scott and Paxton learned to mimic and reproduce the voices of well-known and easily identifiable others—a chameleon exercise that prepared them well to work in Hollywood. Indeed, despite his notable success as a screenwriter, John Paxton always described himself as a "script doctor," a writer who fixed or "cured" the sick and ailing words of others, rather than as an "original" artist: "I was never that kind of writer," he insisted. Thus, though both men had left the theatrical

11

world for the film industry by the end of the decade, their brief years in New York had a lasting impact on their work. Both valued "exaltation and ennoblement" in drama and wanted to "transfer the seriousness and integrity of Broadway to Hollywood."12

Friends and Enemies: Working in the Studio System Hollywood during the studio era was a quintessential site of insiders and

12

outsiders, a company town in which filmmaking dominated all aspects of life, personal as well as professional. Many, especially those who had earned success and reputation in the world of theater or literature, found Hollywood appalling and déclassé, filled with rubes and poseurs. In some ways, this was not untrue. The image of Hollywood glamour, decadent nightlife, and rampant promiscuity was generally overrated. Certainly the divorce rate was no higher in Hollywood than in other major cities, and many contemporary observers remarked on the relative parochialism and banality of the film colony. Transplanted New Yorkers—drawn by the possibility of big money, if not the opportunity to create great art—particularly scorned the lack of sophistication and intellectual stimulation; songwriter Harry Warren even described living and working in Hollywood as "like being in Iowa."13 Indeed, despite—or perhaps because of—the worldwide dissemination and circulation of Hollywood films and lives, the film community in the 1930s and 1940s was remarkably insular. The very phrase "film colony," which had broad currency during this period, evokes not only Hollywood's cultural imperialism, but also suggests a small band of settlers circling the wagons to protect themselves from incursion by unknown, outside Others. The strict division of labor within the studio system shaped the very patterns of sociability, as seen in the "writers' table" or the "ingenues' table" in the studio commissaries. Similarly, though gala openings or large affairs drew "mixed" audiences, off the lot, screenwriters tended to socialize with other screenwriters, actors with other actors, studio heads with other studio heads.14 At the pinnacle of Hollywood's hierarchy of communities, imagined and real, were the studio heads. Though competition within the film industry could be ruthless, the ties that bound the studio moguls together were far stronger than the power struggles or personalities that divided them. The moguls consistently presented a united front that enabled control of the industry, stabilization of markets and profits, and protection from external threats and internal "subversion." In short, the Hollywood studios were, in the words of Ceplair and Englund, "one large family financed by the same banks, taking the same risks, making the same product with the same conventions, interchanging a stable corps of artists, battling common enemies, and adopting standardized policies in a whole range of areas, from foreign and domestic public relations and marketing to labor contracts

13

and trade union policies."15 Power relations within the studio system, as well as the unmistakable style and

14

ideological thrust of the film genres associated with classical Hollywood, grew out of the fact that by the 1930s, the film industry was dominated by a handful of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who came of age on the fringes of American culture, poor and hungry to succeed. Though the earliest filmmakers had been largely native-born, bourgeois Protestants, the Hollywood Jews entered the business and exhibition end of the industry in the 1910s, and they presided over its transition to the centralized studio system through the 1920s, applying entrepreneurial skills learned in the garment industry and other retail trades to the marketing of films and theaters in a way that helped transform moviegoing into the great American pastime.16 Of the major players who dominated the film industry into the 1950s—Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, Carl Laemmle, Cecil B. DeMille, William Fox, Louis B. Mayer, Marcus Loew, Samuel Goldwyn, Harry Cohn, Joseph and Nicholas Schenk, David O. Selznick, Irving Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Sam, Harry, Albert, and Jack Warner—only DeMille and Zanuck were not immigrant Jews.17 These men, along with a handful of American-born Jews (often sons, nephews, or

15

sons-in-law) and a few Gentiles who shared their imperial vision, were Paxton's "front-office men"—a phrase that points to the rigid hierarchies that defined the relations

of

power

in

Hollywood.

Within

the

studio

system,

the

studio

executives—whether in New York or Hollywood—operated as a bloc, wielding an almost autocratic power over the process of filmmaking. Though ultimate authority rested with the "money men" in the New York offices, the studios in Hollywood were dominated by powerful production heads who wielded enormous authority over the daily running of the studio, as film historian Thomas Schatz has described: These men—and they were always men—translated an annual budget handed down by the New York office into a program of specific pictures. They coordinated the operations of the entire plant, conducted contract negotiations, developed stories and scripts, screened "dailies" as pictures were being shot, and supervised editing until a picture was ready for shipment to New York for release.18

If the studio heads were remarkable in their homogeneity and cohesion, Hollywood's creative workers—who often defined themselves in contradistinction to the moguls, as seen in Paxton's juxtaposition of "friends and enemies"—stand out for their diversity: Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; native-born, ethnics, and émigrés (though almost universally white); radicals, liberals, and conservatives; men and women (though far more men than women); the famous and the

16

unknown. At times it seemed the only unifying thread was their common struggle to produce meaningful creative work within the studio system. Nevertheless, that very sense of solidarity in opposition was the foundation of the other significant imagined community in the film industry: the "cultural workers," a broad-based constellation of leftists and liberals that coalesced around the art and politics of the Popular Front. Hollywood's cultural workers were part of a larger political and cultural

17

transformation during the 1930s and 1940s. Though historians have vigorously debated the relative radicalism or conservatism of this era, all agree that this was a period of significant transformation.19 Among political and labor historians, the realignment that took place during these decades is often conceptualized as the age of FDR, the New Deal era, or the age of the CIO. Among cultural historians, this period is being reconceptualized as a "second American Renaissance" that transformed the relationship between modernism, mass culture, and progressive politics and profoundly shaped the generation of artists and intellectuals who came of age during these decades. Michael Denning makes reference to "the cultural front." Saverio Giovacchini speaks of "Hollywood modernism." Lary May describes what he calls the politics of "the American Way." All agree, however, that Hollywood played a key role in this political and cultural realignment, challenging Manhattan as the center of American modernism and, indeed, often siphoning off major New York talents, such as Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as attracting a cadre of European émigré artists and intellectuals.20 For this cosmopolitan Popular Front generation, movies—like jazz, cartoons, radio, and the other "lively arts"—were both quintessentially modern and quintessentially American. Though Hollywood had often been disdained by the "high modernists" of the 1920s as a site of Fordism, frivolousness, and false consciousness, for the Popular Front generation Hollywood "promised the construction of a democratic modernism, a common language, able to promote modernity while maintaining a commitment to democracy as well as the political and intellectual engagement of the masses."21 Indeed, political engagement was at the heart of this realignment, and the cultural

workers

in

Hollywood,

both

liberals

and

radicals,

embraced

a

wide-ranging and interconnected political agenda that included industrial unionism and

social

democracy,

antifascism

and

antiracism,

cosmopolitanism

and

internationalism. To this end the European émigrés (often refugees from fascism) and New Yorkers (often from working-class or ethnic backgrounds) who converged on the film industry in the 1930s and 1940s called for a greater realism in filmmaking, urging Hollywood to bridge the gap between the popular and the political, between entertainment and art, and to make films that both spoke to and enlightened "the people." Though painful, incomplete, and highly

18

contested, the emergence of this "culture of the masses" created a surge of excitement among Hollywood progressives such as Adrian Scott and John Paxton, who hoped to integrate their political commitments into their creative work. Though Paxton remained somewhat aloof from the political activism that animated many of his peers, he felt he was "able to contribute because of this thing [he] had inherited from Anderson and the theater. . . . And this meant dealing with real material. [They] all did feel that we were the beginning of a new age."22 Certainly, the desire to make good movies was universal in Hollywood; however,

19

the cultural workers and the front-office men often defined that goal quite differently, and conflict between the two groups—sometimes friendly, sometimes not—was a constant feature of work in the studio system.

At stake in this

struggle between the film workers and the studio heads were two interrelated issues: 1) the relative autonomy of the creative workers within the studio system; and 2) the relative power of each group to influence film content. In this, the studio moguls clearly had the upper hand, but the conflict was exacerbated by the autocratic manner in which the studio heads managed their employees. The situation of the screenwriters—who resisted the control of the studios most intensely and consistently—illustrates the nature of the conflict. Though the film industry was irrevocably dependent upon writers, the moguls steadfastly refused to abdicate their authority and control. In their minds, writers were less artists than hired hands. Ceplair and Englund note that "the producers willingly paid gargantuan salaries to the best actors, directors and screenwriters, but steadfastly resisted any encroachment on creative decision-making. In fact, the high salaries were partially intended to secure the producers' autocracy, that is, to sooth the itch for artistic autonomy with the balm of wealth."23 Indeed, Neal Gabler suggests that serious writers such as Fitzgerald or Faulkner were not hired for their literary skills as much as for "the distinction they brought to the men who hired them." To the Hollywood Jews, the screenwriter was "simply another affectation along with the racehorses, the mansions, the limousines, the tailored suits. He was a reproof against accusations of vulgarity . . . , a scapegoat for the indignities they felt they had to suffer for their lack of education and refinement."24 Having escaped the shtetls of Eastern Europe, having pulled themselves out of the immigrant ghettos to become some of the wealthiest men in the country, the Hollywood moguls saw themselves as quintessentially American Horatio Algers. The American Dream had become their personal reality, and that reality in turn shaped the often romanticized vision of America they projected through their films. At the same time, however, the studio heads shared a sense of being on the outside looking in during an era of raging xenophobia and anti-Semitism. The

20

Hollywood moguls, producer Milton Sperling explained, "felt that they were on the outside of the real power source of the country. They were not members of the power elite . . . that New England–Wall Street–Middle West money."25 This sense of alienation and desire for respectability spurred in the Hollywood Jews a "ferocious, even pathological" drive to repudiate their "foreignness" and be accepted

as

"real"

Americans.26

Significantly,

once

the

Hollywood

Jews

consolidated their control of the film industry, Jewish characters and themes virtually disappeared from the screen. Jewish characters—and indeed, Jewish actors—were de-ethnicized, and even the rare films about anti-Semitism, such as The Life of Emile Zola, were vague and indirect. Both assimilationist desires and fears of the charge of "Jewish domination" of the film industry fed into this trend.27 Still, the very fact of their success convinced the Hollywood Jews that they knew

21

better than anyone, including the writers, what the public wanted to see. And they were in a position to make sure the public got what it wanted. For example, left-wing screenwriter John Wexley remembered watching with Louis B. Mayer the rushes for MGM's Song of Russia—a film that had deep political significance for Wexley. Mayer was outraged to see that one of the actresses had dirt on her face: "The heroine! In all the pictures we have ever made the heroines never have dirt on their face! I won't have my lead actress shown with dirt on her face, and by the way, her hair should be dressed properly!" Wexley objected, saying, "Your heroine is running through bombs. How can she look like she just came from the hairdresser?" Mayer took him outside and told him, "Look, I built this studio on this policy. So don't tell me what to do. You're only a writer."28

Countless incidents such as this fueled the resentment and frustrations of the cultural workers and confirmed their perception of the studio heads as philistines. Indeed, Paxton's rather contemptuous description of the "work" performed by these studio heads reveals his sense that the executives were superfluous, if not deliberately counterproductive, to the creative process of making movies. Paxton's reference to their "consorting with exhibitors" is a reminder that Hollywood films were ultimately products to be purchased and consumed, thereby generating profits for the studios. It was the exhibitors and the audiences who needed to be wooed, not the studio employees. His image of the moguls "playing gin-rummy in Palm Springs" suggests the incredible wealth and leisure the studio heads claimed for themselves, a constant source of resentment for many in the film industry. His pointed sarcasm clearly reflects his resentment of the top-down structure of power in Hollywood, and perhaps more importantly, reveals his sense that the studio moguls were a kind of cabal whose loyalty lay with one another rather than with the people who worked for them—giving lie to the "family"

22

rhetoric employed by studio heads like Louis B. Mayer. Thus, in the nexus of "friends and enemies," Paxton aligns himself with the

23

middle strata of film workers: "the other writers, salaried underpaid producers, directors, editors and analysts." There is a crucial distinction here between the "salaried underpaid producers"—like Paxton's friend Adrian Scott—who were dependent upon the largess of the studio, and an independent producer such as David O. Selznick, whose financial resources and creative autonomy—and Jewishness—put him far closer in status and power to the studio heads, or writer-producer-actor-director Orson Welles, whose wunderkind reputation and personal charisma gave him astonishingly free rein at RKO during the early 1940s. Paxton's emphasis on the "inter-studio deals" of the studio executives further suggests the relative powerlessness of film workers, who were generally hired on long-term, ironclad contracts that left them little room to maneuver or control the conditions of their work, and who were subject to loan-outs on the whims of management or assignment to stories or projects not of their own choosing. Thomas Schatz notes that "because of the different stakes involved for each of these key players, studio filmmaking was less a process of collaboration than of negotiation and struggle—occasionally approaching armed conflict."29 Indeed, for every literary star such as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Dorothy Parker, there

24

were dozens of lesser-paid contract writers and hundreds more unemployed aspirants or freelancers bouncing from studio to studio. Anthropologist Leo Rosten described the vulnerability of most Hollywood writers: For two decades [1921–1941] the movie writers in the low salary brackets (of whom there are plenty) were not given the protection of minimum wages or minimum periods of employment. They were discharged with no advance notice; their employment was sporadic and their tenure short-lived. They were laid off for short-term periods, under contract but without pay. They worked on stories on which other writers were employed, without knowing who their collaborators (or competitors) were. Their right to screen credits was mistreated by certain producers who allotted credit to their friends or relatives or—under pseudonyms—to themselves. They were frequently offered the bait of speculative writing without either guarantees or protection in the outcome.30

The lack of autonomy and creative control—experienced by all creative workers under the studio system, despite the relatively high salaries of some—spawned intense and convoluted struggles throughout the 1930s to unionize key sectors of the film industry. In 1927 the studio executives had banded together to form the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as a company union embracing producers, directors, actors, writers, and technicians. The Academy succeeded in forestalling labor unrest for five years, but when the studio

25

executives used the occasion of Roosevelt's bank holiday in 1933 to cut screenwriters' salaries (though not their own), the writers rebelled. The Screen Writers Guild (SWG) was founded in April 1933; the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was formed three months later. The studio executives fought unionization with belligerence and divisiveness. Though the 1935 National Labor Relations Act authorized collective bargaining, it was ignored by the studios. The threat of an actors' strike two years later finally forced the studios to recognize SAG in 1937, but the bread-and-butter concessions they made to the actors did not threaten the executives' authority in any fundamental way. The screenwriters' demands, on the other hand, struck deep into the heart of power relations within the studio system. The SWG's left wing drew up a platform with three goals: "1) a union strong enough to back its demands by shutting off the supply of screenplays; 2) alliances with the Dramatists Guild and other writers' organizations so as to be able to stop the flow of all story material at the source; and 3) remuneration on a royalty basis that would give authors greater control over the content of their work by making them part owners of the movies based on their scripts." The platform caused bitter splits within the SWG, not only between progressives and conservatives, but also between liberals and radicals.

In 1936, the right-wing

screenwriters formed the Screen Playwrights, a company union to which the studios immediately awarded a five-year contract. The SWG responded by filing a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In August 1938, the NLRB certified the SWG as the sole bargaining agent for Hollywood screenwriters; however, it took the writers and executives three years, until May 1941, to agree on a contract. This bitter and protracted battle with the studios reinforced the participants' sense of themselves as cultural workers and gave birth to a highly politicized, progressive cadre in Hollywood. Indeed, one screenwriter joked that Louis B. Mayer had "created more Communists than Karl Marx."31 The left wing of this movement, particularly, had a profound impact on the film community through the end of the 1940s.

Red Hollywood: Politics and Culture of the Popular Front Adrian Scott's return to Hollywood in 1938 coincided with a period of intense political activity in the film colony. During this period Scott worked to define himself as an artist and to integrate his emerging political vision into his art. The political commitments he formed during this period, the friends that he made, and his experiences as a struggling screenwriter profoundly shaped his approach to filmmaking, the kind of producer he became, and the kinds of films he made. This was a transformative period for him, and his ongoing struggle to succeed as a screenwriter was interspersed with work on other creative projects outside the studios, as well as a burgeoning interest in the political issues that shaped Hollywood in the late 1930s, from the struggles to unionize the film industry, to

26

the fight against European fascism, to the campaigns against racism and discrimination. The Communist Party of the United States of America (the CPUSA or simply CP) was on the front lines on all these issues and, for many, seemed to be the only organization that was consistently fighting for fundamental social and political change. Though there is no doubt that Scott's interest in progressive politics led him to join the Party at some point during this period, he never spoke or wrote publicly about being a Communist. But according to Joan Scott, Adrian's third wife, he was deeply affected by the terrible suffering of the Depression: "The CP was the only place he could find that addressed it all. He was in his late twenties and was very impressed by the Communists. Adrian was like anyone else who came to good politics at that time: he was a good decent person, who cared about other people's welfare and couldn't just walk away."32 The 1930s and 1940s were the heyday of American Communism, with interest in

27

the Party catalyzed initially by the Great Depression and the growing sense that neither capitalism nor liberalism offered solutions to—and indeed, might be the root cause of—the economic and political dislocations that wracked much of the world.33 It was the rise of fascism in Europe, however, that truly transformed the Left during this period, both internationally and in the United States. As fascist regimes

in

Germany

and

Italy

cracked

down

on

labor

and

Communist

movements, the Soviet Union was one of the first nations to feel threatened; and in 1935, the Comintern stepped back from its agenda of worldwide revolution and embraced the ideology of a Popular Front, an alliance of radicals and liberals against the forces of reaction and fascism. This was a sea change in international Communist Party policy, with political and cultural implications that reverberated throughout the world. During this early period, the Soviets led the charge against international fascism, particularly in their support for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that many on the Left saw as a dress rehearsal for another world war.34 The shift in policy toward support of a Popular Front against fascism electrified the American Communist Party and particularly captured the imagination of the younger generation of radicals. As Party activist George Charney described it: Everything seemed right—the emphasis on the struggle against fascism, the overriding urge for unity. Overnight we adjusted our evaluation of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Where we had been prone to damn all things American, we were now reassured that patriotism was not necessarily reactionary or the "last refuge of scoundrels," that there was a difference between bourgeois democracy and fascism, that we had to cherish democratic traditions, and, above all, that transcending the class struggle, a basis existed for common action between the Soviet Union and the bourgeois democratic nations of the West.

28

Charney also notes that while American Communists had been prepared to work, however "sluggishly," within the framework of the old policies, they were thrilled by the prospect of "a policy that was natural, that heeded reality, and that could unleash our creative talents and energies."35 The Popular Front in America operated as a loose coalition of organizations

29

committed to four primary goals: pressing the Roosevelt administration toward a worldwide antifascist alliance; supporting defenders of democracy and victims of fascist militarism, particularly the Spanish Loyalists in their struggle against Franco; countering domestic fascism; and defeating the attempts of big business to thwart the labor movement and social-reform legislation. Particularly significant for the Hollywood progressives, the Popular Front also shifted the Party's priorities away from notions of "art as a weapon" and the proletarian fiction of working-class and African American writers, toward "a strategy aimed at aligning bourgeois literary and screen luminaries into the anti-fascist mobilization." For many members of the Hollywood film community, including Adrian Scott, the Popular Front's commitment to solidarity and a united stand against fascism was enormously appealing and helped sustain the collaboration between liberals and radicals in their struggles to unionize the film industry and their campaigns against racial discrimination.36 A number of historians, including Michael Denning and David Roediger, have

30

argued that the emphasis on the CPUSA (or, indeed, the Comintern) in analyses of the Popular Front is misleading. They suggest that the historical "fixation" with the model of a Party "core" and a "periphery" of liberals and sympathizers ultimately reduces the Popular Front to a cynical formulation of the Party line or a fleeting political coalition of leftists, liberals, and "fellow travellers." Denning, in particular, argues that, within the cultural front (though not necessarily in the labor movement, for example), the non-Communist socialists and independent leftists—such

as

Orson

Welles,

Richard

Wright,

Carey

McWilliams,

Louis

Adamic—were the Popular Front and worked to create a "culture that was neither a Party nor a liberal New Deal culture." In Denning's formulation, the Popular Front is more productively viewed in Gramscian terms, as a "historical bloc uniting industrial unionists, Communists, independent socialists, community activists, and émigré

anti-fascists

around

laborist

social

democracy,

anti-fascism

and

anti-lynching." Denning also offers a corrective to interpretations that suggest that the Popular Front represented an unfortunate retreat from earlier "real" radicalism (particularly on race and gender) that ultimately compromised the influence of the Left and undermined the revolutionary impulse and cultural legitimacy of proletarian art and literature.37 While I agree with the sentiment behind Denning's call for a shift away from

31

Communist Party–centered interpretations—many of which are motivated by a not-so-subtle antiradicalism38—the exceptional influence of Party members within the Hollywood progressive community, as well as the issue of Party membership in postwar attacks on Hollywood and on Adrian Scott, Edward Dmytryk, and Crossfire, in particular, mandate an extended analysis of the role of the Party in the film industry. Though Scott himself remained silent about his CP membership, some of his friends and comrades in the industry have written powerfully of their experiences, and their memories offer a window onto that world—the urgency of the times and the issues that "made them feel it was important to be a Communist. In that way, and in that way only, could people overcome what they felt was the major political action in the world, which was becoming Fascist."39 The strength and appeal of the Party—the romance of American Communism, as

32

Vivian Gornick has called it40—in the 1930s and 1940s was such that every progressive in America had to grapple at some point with the question: "Should I join?" Many chose not to. Some were put off by the hierarchical structure of the Party, others by the rigidity of some of the Communists themselves. Some joined and then left, disturbed by reports of purges and atrocities in the Soviet Union or abrupt shifts in the ideological line. Many, both inside and outside the Party, were deeply disturbed by the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, and were alternately amused and outraged by the overnight transformation of the Party position on the war, from intervention to isolationism in 1939, and then back to interventionism again in 1941, after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. These sudden ideological shifts gave credence to charges that American Communists blindly followed orders from Moscow and created suspicions that undermined the left-liberal solidarity of the Popular Front period.41 Nevertheless, the Party's appeal to social idealism gave it a strong toehold among Hollywood progressives, and in fact, many Hollywood Communists have insisted that their experiences within the Party were markedly different from those of Communists in other industries or locales. From the beginning, the Party's desire to attract Hollywood luminaries translated into a relaxation of both discipline and dogma. Founded in 1934, the Hollywood branch of the CPUSA was answerable only to the Party leaders in New York, giving the Hollywood Communists an unusual degree of autonomy. From an initial membership of four screenwriters, the section grew to over one hundred members within a year and nearly three hundred within three years. The section was advised intermittently by the Party's cultural commissar, V. J. Jerome, while John Howard Lawson ran the section on the local level.42 According to Abe Polonsky, Party member and writer-director of several important films noir, including Body and Soul and Force of Evil, The Party style of Marxism didn't have a chance here, or in New York

33

either, among intellectuals. The leadership's behavior violated the whole intellectual life of Marxism, and the Party itself also did that constantly. . . . [V. J. Jerome] would raise hell with about eleven people. We didn't give a shit. The cultural leadership obviously didn't know what they were talking about. We ignored them out here, and we did a lot of wonderful things despite them.43

The Party leadership in New York also chose to overlook the divergences between

34

many of the Party's avowedly revolutionary goals and the more mainstream social passions of the film community—the defeat of the Axis powers, the success of the labor movement, and the eradication of racism in America. Ceplair and Englund note that "these interests were not mutually exclusive; in fact, there was considerable tactical and strategic overlap. Nevertheless, these divergences created a basis for confusion." Screenwriter Guy Endore's statement is particularly telling in this context: I wasn't really a Communist. I didn't agree with [all the Party's doctrines]. [What] united me with it was simply the fact that they represented the most extreme protest to what I saw going on in the world. . . . I was a Communist only in the sense that I felt it would stop war and it would stop rac[ist] feelings, that it would help Jews, Negroes, and so on. I wasn't a Communist in wanting the Communist Party to run the world or in wanting the ideas of Karl Marx to govern everything.44

Such divergences between Party dogma and the political consciousness of most Hollywood Communists help to explain Paxton's characterization of the "Reds" with such rare sympathy. He scoffs at the idea of the Communists as dangerous revolutionaries through the example he gives of their political activity—dunning him for money in the men's room to buy milk for rickety children in Georgia. Instead, he describes them as "gentle patriots."

Indeed, the "Americanized"

rhetoric of the Popular Front period not only helped to make the Party more palatable to liberals in the film community, but also transformed the radicals' perception of themselves, as George Charney describes: It was as though a new day had dawned for the American movement. We were not only Communists, we were Americans again. . . . [W]e were readily convinced that [Marxism and Americanism] were not only compatible but inseparable. . . . We became Jeffersonians, students of American history, and as we rediscovered our revolutionary origins, we reinterpreted them in Marxist terms. . . . We even projected a flamboyant slogan, 'Communism Is Twentieth-Century Americanism,' to dramatize our new outlook as well as to suggest a historical link between democracy and communism.45

Though some have suggested that the Party's newfound patriotism was merely cynical posturing, Ceplair and Englund argue that the Hollywood Communists were "courageous American radicals in the Jeffersonian, or abolitionist traditions,

35

who joined [the CPUSA] not as a response to class exploitation, but because they regarded it as the most effective means to live out their principles in the twentieth century."46 Indeed, John Bright, one of the founders of the Hollywood branch of the Party,

36

proudly defined himself as an "indigenous" radical, and credited his family's history of antiracist work as the inspiration for his avid support for the Scottsboro Boys. He described the Party as: "the only organization in the country that cared and did something about what I believe is the great cancer in this country—racial prejudice. The Socialists didn't do anything about it, and certainly the Democrats and Republicans didn't do anything about it. But the Communist Party did. That attracted me originally, and I went all out."47 Bright's sentiments were echoed by many others in the film community who were politicized during this period. In the words of screenwriter Anne Froelick, "You couldn't see what happened during the Spanish Civil War any other way: it was the Communists against the Fascists. For a writer in Hollywood, the Communists in the Screen Writers Guild were the ones raising our professional standard, winning our rights in various ways. And they were way, way out in front of everyone else on Negro rights." Howard Koch, a lifelong progressive, though not a member of the Party, recalled the early 1940s as "a high point in his life, a time when, with Roosevelt in the White House and 'the Depression in back of us,' everything seemed possible." Koch characterized the political commitment of Hollywood progressives—liberals and leftists—in simple terms: they were "involved in the struggle against fascism, in whatever form it appeared, and in working for a more democratic society, economically and racially."48 This was certainly the case for Adrian Scott, and this alternative Americanism is evident throughout his creative work as a filmmaker. Another fundamental appeal of the Hollywood Left was its sociability. Paxton's remembrance tells us a great deal about the appeal of the studio system for its creative personnel, emphasizing the seamlessness between work and life that was so compelling and seemed so absent, ordinarily, in the modern world. Paxton's warm memory of drinking coffee in the commissary with the comrades, "always talking story" with idealistic, socially conscious friends, is an apt metaphor for the desire for belonging and meaning that was extremely powerful for Hollywood progressives. Actress Betsy Blair Reisz frequently attended Marxist discussion groups when she lived in New York, but found that in Hollywood talk of politics was as much a part of the social scene as of organized political activity: "All of my theoretical discussions were at Schwab's [Drugstore] or at the delicatessen across the street from the Actors Lab, where, believe me, with people like Arnie Manoff and Jack Berry screaming and yelling, we had big political discussions about everything."49 Abe Polonsky, a more theoretically sophisticated Marxist than most of his radical peers, tellingly described the Party in Hollywood as a "kind of social

37

club."50 Activist Ella Winter, who was married to screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart, wrote in The New Republic in early 1938: "There is hardly a tea party today, or a cocktail gathering, a studio lunch table or dinner even at a producer's house at which you do not hear agitated discussion, talk of 'freedom' and 'suppression,' talk of tyranny and the Constitution, of war, of world economy and political theory." Indeed, liberal screenwriter Mary McCall complained at the time, "We're up to our necks in politics and morality. . . . There are no gatherings now except for a Good Cause. We have almost no time to be actors and writers these days. We're committee members and collectors and organizers and audiences for orators."51 Hollywood cultural workers were impressed by movies with progressive themes,

38

particularly biopics such as Juarez, The Story of Louis Pasteur, and The Life of Emile Zola, or stories of "little men" or "the people" such I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and The Grapes of Wrath. These were the kinds of films that they tried to write as well. The Party held workshops to help writers engage politically in their cultural work. The Writers Clinic was an informal board of successful left-wing screenwriters, including George Sklar, Albert Maltz, and John Howard Lawson, who read and commented on screenplays submitted by writers. Though the Party was interested in helping writers develop politically and meld their politics and their creative work, the leadership did not attempt to formally censor screenplays. Ceplair and Englund assert that while the criticisms from the Writers Clinic might be "plentiful, stinging and (sometimes politically) dogmatic," the writers were free to embrace or ignore them without repercussions.52 Norma Barzman found Sklar's critiques of her work in a Party-run clinic very helpful and "a wonderful example of how writers could work together. The atmosphere among Communist writers in Hollywood was like no other. People cared about each other, about ideas, about doing good things. It sounds Pollyannaish, but they enjoyed working together." Anne Froelick agreed, though she thought the Party discussions about screenwriting "sounded like harangues, and the books about theory were just terrible. . . . But the Party made you feel that your favorite friends were all working together and that you were helping the world to be a better place in small ways."53 Significantly, it was on the terrain of creativity that Hollywood radicals tried to win over liberals in the film colony. As Ceplair and Englund report, "Scarcely a liberal or sympathizer in Hollywood missed getting an invitation, between 1936 and 1946, 'to come talk films with us.' Those who accepted found themselves, to their amusement or consternation, at a weekly get-together of a [M]arxist study group. . . . [N]ew people in Hollywood, or old-line liberals, were considered fair game."54 One question of intense interest to Hollywood progressives was the degree to which they were able to influence the content of the films on which they worked.

39

Alvah Bessie remembers receiving conflicting advice when he arrived in Hollywood after writing cultural criticism for the New Masses. John Howard Lawson told him, "You can do good work here, if you understand the limitations of this medium in this particular system." Daniel Fuchs, on the other hand, warned him: "Everything you are given here will be shit. And you cannot make anything out of it except shit. That is all you can do with it. But . . . if you play your cards right, you can be on the top of the heap in a year, making big money." Even Communist Party leader William Z. Foster had an opinion. Speaking at a meeting of the Hollywood section, he told the writers, "You can't really do very good work in this industry because they won't let you. But you can prevent them, if you know how to do it, from

making

really

anti-black,

anti-woman,

anti-foreign-born,

anti-foreign-country pictures. You can prevent them from making anti-human pictures, and that is a very worthy thing to be doing."55 Comedy writer Allen Boretz believed, "Content could be made an integral part of the structure of a film, if it lived up to its dramatic purpose and was not inserted willy-nilly. Otherwise it would stand out like a sore thumb. Everything depended on the effect it was supposed to have. It could be too strong, but it could also be too subtle, in which case it was useless."56 Betsy Blair Reisz insisted, Of course, there was a Communist conspiracy in Hollywood. There was a conspiracy to get a black character into a movie or to express a liberal idea in a movie. It's a joke that it was a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the country. It was a conspiracy to do good work and establish the movie unions. People sneer at the 'champagne socialists.' . . . But it is false to think that you couldn't take those people seriously and that they were doing it for show. . . . Everybody I knew was doing it idealistically.57

Film historian Brian Neve concludes that "the radical writers may not have had a radical aesthetic about film, or any significant power base within the studio system, but the interest of the Community Party in the craft of the screenwriter, and the discussions in their writers' clinics, had some effect in a period when the new Hollywood interest in politics and messages increased the prestige and bargaining power of the writer."58 The interplay of politics and culture was a heady mix for Hollywood progressives during this period, and despite the constraints of working within the studio system, the amalgam of sociability, politics, and creativity made Hollywood an exciting, challenging place to work during this period. Ceplair and Englund note that "virtually all screenwriters were held fast by the large salaries and by the unique, peculiar, and undefinable sense of challenge and accomplishment presented by their craft."59 This was certainly the case for Scott and Paxton, who were drawn together initially by a shared love of the theater and a desire to translate the seriousness and integrity of theater to film. By the end of the

40

decade, their commitment to realism in art was inseparable from their progressive political commitment, and for Scott, membership in the Communist Party. Paxton remembered that the artists he worked with, whether or not they were Communists, shared an "enormous social conscience. . . . Today they'd say 'Tell it like it is.' The town at that time was feeling a surge of excitement, and film was the most exciting medium there was."60

Adrian Scott in Hollywood Like many young screenwriters during this period, Scott hoped to integrate his

41

burgeoning radical politics into his creative work. At this point in his career, however, Scott was still struggling to make a name for himself within the studio system, working as a freelancer and under short-term contracts with no tangible success for more than a year. His frustrations with screenwriting, and his emerging political vision, soon led him outside the studio system to documentary filmmaking. Richard Pells suggests that the documentary impulse of the 1930s grew out of the sense that fiction and drama were inadequate to explain the "intolerable confusion and disorder" and loss "of control over their institutions, their environment, and their lives" felt by many Americans, conditions created by the Depression at home and fascism abroad. As writer Elizabeth Noble argued in the New Masses in 1937, "With real events looming larger than any imagined happenings, documentary films and still photographs, reportage and the like have taken the place once held by the grand invention." In his desire to reflect the "truth" of his times, Scott joined many literary luminaries including James Agee, John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, and Louis Adamic. Pells also suggests that the documentary impulse allowed writers to address their own internal discord as well as that of the society. He argues that "by portraying what he saw as truthfully and completely as possible, the artist could feel that he was engaged in a purposeful enterprise, that he had regained control over some portion of his life, that he had recovered his competence and self-respect. To this extent, the documentary became for many writers a natural response to social chaos and inner turmoil."61 This analysis seems particularly applicable to Adrian Scott during this transitional period in his life, as he struggled on a number of levels to define himself and to integrate his aesthetic and political visions. Abe Polonsky offers another perspective on the appeal of documentaries, suggesting that the constraints and frustration of working within the studio system itself forced Hollywood artists to question their career choices: According to Marxist theory, no decent picture could be made in Hollywood. In the meetings of the Hollywood clubs—a word we preferred to cells—one of the great discussions that used to go on all the time was: Should I be in Hollywood, and should I be writing movies? Or should I,

42

say, do documentaries? Or should I try to make films apart from Hollywood that would in some way deal with the theoretical basis of why we are in fact in the Communist Party? . . . But when you want to get into making movies, and if you're fascinated with movies and care about movies, then there's only one thing to do: you try to make feature films for studios. It may not be the best solution to an artistic problem. It may end in the total defeat of every impulse that the writer, the director, and the actor has. But the fact of the matter is, that's the only choice, and that is why so many people who became Communists in Hollywood didn't rush to go elsewhere.62

Nevertheless, in April 1939, in an attempt to make an end run around the studio

43

system, a handful of left and liberal filmworkers, including Adrian Scott, as well as Nathanael West, John Wexley, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Lillian Hellman, Budd Schulberg, and John Garfield formed the Motion Picture Guild (MPG). This progressive film group planned to make a series of socially relevant films and short documentaries on key topics close to the heart of the progressive film community, from union campaigns to the New Deal to the evils of fascism. In 1939, the MPG purchased the rights to School for Barbarians by Erika Mann, who had barely escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 with her father, the novelist Thomas Mann. Scott was particularly interested in working on a film version of this exposé of the propaganda techniques aimed at the Hitler Youth.63 The project never materialized, but Scott's interest in Mann's book and his involvement with the MPG reveal that by 1939 he was running in the more radical circles of the Hollywood progressive community. In all likelihood, Scott had joined the Communist Party at this point.64 During this period Scott also hoped to adapt Paul de Kruif's 1938 book, Fight for Life, as a series of short films on diseases like pellagra, tuberculosis, and polio that had reached epidemic proportions in the 1930s. Film historian Bernard F. Dick argues that Scott saw his own political vision reflected in de Kruif's premise that "humankind has a right to life and that whatever endangers that right (such as poverty and disease) must be eradicated . . . and that the fight for life was a people's fight that could be won only through a national health program." Scott took his idea for a documentary series to RKO, an ideal choice since the studio owned the distribution rights for both Pathé News and The March of Time. However, filmmaker Pare Lorentz—best known for the documentary The Plow that Broke the Plains, a vivid exposé on the plight of the Okies—was also interested in de Kruif's book, and he beat Scott to the punch. Lorentz's documentary on the squalid conditions in maternity wards for the poor was released in 1939 as The Fight for Life. Though Scott wrote a script based on de Kruif's chapter on tuberculosis and pitched it to RKO, it was rejected by Pathé's Frederick Ullman Jr. as being too expensive to film.65

44

Even

as

he

was

exploring

the

possibilities

of

writing

and

producing

45

documentaries, Scott also worked as a freelance screenwriter, though he did not receive on-screen credit. For example, in late 1939, Scott wrote a screenplay at Columbia with Bernard Feins entitled March of Crime that was deemed "unacceptable" by the Breen Office for its violence and depiction of the corruption and lawlessness of American society.66 During this period, Scott also may have worked on any number of other projects that did not materialize, as had been the case with his work on documentaries. Indeed, the memoirs of Hollywood screenwriters are filled with stories of ideas pitched to no avail, scripts started or finished and shelved, or turned over to another writer and revised into something unrecognizable to the original writer. Finally, at MGM in 1940, Scott received his first screen credit, for Keeping Company, which he described as "one of the horrors of all time." The following year, he made credited contributions on two more screenplays: We Go Fast at Twentieth Century–Fox and The Parson of Panamint at Paramount, which he scornfully remembered as "one of those things starring Wallace Beery."67 Nevertheless, The Parson of Panamint, the story of a thriving mining town that

46

has fallen on hard times, offers some insights into Scott's early attempts to invest his writing with a social message. In Scott's revision of Harold Schumate's original script, the townspeople of Panamint hire a minister who wins over the gamblers and prostitutes, helping to revitalize and bring respectability to the town. However, the parson also challenges the complacency of the townspeople, warning about the danger that flooded mines pose to the safety of the town, and preaching sermons in defense of the poor and hungry. According to Bernard F. Dick, "For all his idealism, [Scott] was not blind to the darkness of the heart; it is that darkness, in the form of venality and hypocrisy, the destroys the town of Panamint and leads to the persecution of its parson, whose gospel of brotherly love falls on deaf ears."68 In the summer of 1941, as The Parson of Panamint was being readied for release, John Paxton arrived in Hollywood, on an extended vacation following the close of the New York theater season. In Hollywood, Albert McCreery, who had covered the Little Theater circuit for Stage, had turned to screenwriting and needed help with a script. Paxton was amused, having heard this story before. McCreery was an idea man, not a writer (though he eventually became a successful director); in the late 1930s, he was about to be fired from Stage when Paxton stepped in as McCreery's ghostwriter, earning $15 a month (which translated for him into three good dates at a steakhouse, with wine). Now, McCreery had successfully pitched a story to director Mitchell Leisen, but wasn't able to follow through on paper and was about to be fired again. Paxton was on vacation and wasn't interested, but he relented after McCreery "cried and carried on." Though he had never even seen a

47

screenplay before, he jumped in with both feet, writing "two lines ahead of the camera." The film was released by Columbia in 1942 as The Lady is Willing, with Albert McCreery as the credited screenwriter. Scott, after reading the script, told Paxton he had a "knack." At that point, Paxton was still planning to return in the fall to his job as a publicist for the Theater Guild, but Scott convinced him to stay in Hollywood, promising him, "We'll work together, we'll make it together."69 Paxton wrote several more scripts for McCreery, as well as several on his own (all

48

uncredited). In the interim, in July of 1942, Scott was put under contract again at RKO, earning $300 a week—12 times his salary in 1934. Soon afterward, Scott and Paxton finally collaborated—with disastrous results—on a screenplay for The Great Gildersleeve series, produced by the RKO B-unit. Producer Herman Schlom insisted that they write a treatment before proceeding on to a full-length script. After turning in the treatment for Great Gildersleeves on Patrol, they discovered that Schlom believed that if a story was good, he could tell it without having to refer to the written word. Scott and Paxton endured daily sessions during which Schlom would begin narrating the story, only to stumble at a certain (and always the same) point and announce that the script was in trouble. Scott and Paxton repeatedly referred him to the treatment on his desk, but Schlom insisted that he must tell the story without prompting. As Paxton remembered, Adrian endured this for about a week. He'd always come in every day and stretch out on the sofa and take off his shoes, usually cover his face while Herman would laboriously go from the opening to the door of the library with the man with the knife in his back and then get stuck. [Eventually] Adrian got the most typical case of hysterics I've ever seen. Laughing, crying, he got up, couldn't find his shoes, walked out of the studio barefoot and never came back. That was the end of that project.70

During this period, discussions of such frustrations were common among Scott's close friends, who included John Paxton and Ben Barzman, a writer who was also under contract at RKO, and Ben's fiancée, Norma, also a screenwriter as well as a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald. Norma remembers these men as "the three Musketeers—they were so close and really loved each other." By the early 1940s, Scott was almost certainly a member of the Party, as were Norma and Ben. Though Paxton was not a "joiner," he "agreed with all the left positions straight down the line;" Norma describes him as a "progressive who stayed out of the Party, as opposed to an active liberal like Eddie North," one of Scott's friends from Amherst.71 For this intimate circle of politically committed artists, experiences like The Great Gildersleeve debacle were too frequent and too far from the hopes and expectations they had, not only for their own work but for the great social potential they saw in Hollywood movies. Adrian, Ben, and Norma had all attended the Party's writers' clinics (Paxton was not impressed with the claims that the

49

clinics would make him a better writer) and were deeply committed to the principle of political filmmaking. Nevertheless, the yawning chasm between their political vision and the realities of working within the studio system sometimes seemed unbridgeable. This was also a difficult time for Scott personally. In January 1943, his wife of two

50

years, model Dorothy Shipley, sued him for divorce, and he went to live with Ben and Norma Barzman, who had been married only days earlier.72 Clearly, Scott and the Barzmans were exceptionally close, and Norma was particularly fond of Scott: "Adrian was a very sweet person, an extraordinarily lovely person." Nevertheless, Norma felt that unintentionally, the men, who were "so close and already had a history together," shut her out. While Norma cooked their meals and did the dishes, they talked about movies.73 As Norma remembers, "Adrian and Ben used to talk away about making good, cheap pictures . . . pictures about something. Their dream was to do it all: write, produce, direct. They were intensely interested in this, and they were always looking for ideas for projects."74 As Brian Neve points out, for the younger generation of filmmakers like Adrian Scott, "the aspiration to make better films was linked to the desire to make more progressive films."75 Many screenwriters—including Robert Rossen, Abe Polonsky, and Nicholas Ray—turned to directing in search of artistic autonomy within studio filmmaking. However, Scott believed strongly that as a producer, with the ability to pick and choose projects, to assign writers and directors, to make casting decisions, and to influence the film's budget, he would have the autonomy necessary to fulfill his artistic and political agenda.76 At this point, fascism and the war in Europe dominated Scott's political vision, but he was not yet in a position to truly express that vision artistically. Scott finally got his chance in the 1940s, particularly after the American intervention in World War Two, as the Hollywood studios rallied to the antifascist cause, producing hundreds of feature films and documentaries that raised the cry of alarm and explained to the American public "why we fight." This wartime elaboration of an antifascist popular nationalism inaugurated a new era of political filmmaking in Hollywood and helped to legitimize the vision of radical filmmakers like Scott.

Notes Note 1: In some ways, Hollywood itself can be seen productively as an imagined community. Just as the star system was built on the imagined personas of individual actors, carefully cultivated for public consumption via advertising, publicity, and fan magazines, as well as the movies themselves, so the image of Hollywood was self-reflexively constructed and disseminated to the American public, with the help of a constellation of "outside" publicists, from journalists and film critics to the advertising industry and merchandisers, and even to intellectuals, such as anthropologist Leo Rosten, whose 1941 ethnography, Hollywood: The Film Colony, the Movie Makers, lent the weight of academic analysis to the

51

imagined community. On the one hand, Hollywood presented itself as "Tinseltown" or the "Glamour Capitol of the World," a construction that emphasized the wealth, beauty, style, and youth of the stars and filmmakers and paraded their opulent and exciting lifestyles for vicarious consumption by voyeuristic fans. On the other hand, the film colony presented itself as "Hollywood, U.S.A.," a construction that worked both to combat images of decadence and depravity by insisting on the "normality" of life in the land of sunshine, oranges, and eternal youth, and to suggest that Hollywood was simply a microcosm of the rest of the nation, sharing similar values and mores, and that its film products fully and naturally reflected that nation back to itself. For a fascinating discussion of this process, see Ronald L. Davis, The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System (Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993), particularly chapter 16 on social life in Hollywood. Note 2: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 4–5. Note 3: George W. Carey, "Paterson Strike of 1913," and David J. Goldberg, "Passaic Textile Strike of 1926," both in Mari Jo Buhle et al., eds., Encyclopedia of the American Left (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 558–560, 562–563. Note 4: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999, Los Angeles. Note 5: Canfield's comments were made in support of Scott's request for parole in 1951; quoted in Robert Kenny to Scott, typewritten letter, January 5, 1951, in Robert W. Kenny and Robert S. Morris Papers (hereafter, Kenny-Morris Papers), B10-F5. Note 6: Scott bio from the Olio (1934), the Amherst College yearbook. I am grateful to Jonathan Kauffman for sharing this with me. Note 7: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999, Los Angeles; Bernard Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 121-122. Note 8: John Paxton, interview with Larry Ceplair, June 29, 1977, Los Angeles. I am grateful to Larry Ceplair for sharing his notes with me. Note 9: Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, April 16, 1946, in Paxton Papers, folder 5, AMPAS; Dick, Radical Innocence, 121; Sarah Jane Paxton, interview with author, April 1999, Los Angeles; John Paxton, taped interview [n.a.], 1977, Los Angeles. Sarah Jane Paxton graciously loaned me her copy of this tape. Note 10: Jane DeHart Mathews, The Federal Theatre, 1935–1939: Plays, Relief, and Politics (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1967); Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996), 362–371; Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990). The Group Theater's historical reputation is often based on its pioneering approach to acting—emotional realism or The Method, as it is popularly called. Inspired by the example of the Moscow Art Theater, which had toured the United States in the 1920s, the Group also envisioned a radically different working relationship, based on the priority of the collective over the individual. The members experienced a personal transformation through their commitment to the Group. Their experience taught them about the interconnections between culture and politics, the personal and the political—that art is, or should be, for the people. The primary goal of the Group was to break down artificial barriers: between actors, between playwrights and production companies, and most importantly, between the players and the audience. In the fall of 1937, while Paxton and Scott were both working at Stage, the Group produced Golden Boy, the second major play by Clifford Odets to receive stellar reviews and enhance the reputation of the theater troupe. Included in the cast were a number of Group actors who would later move to Hollywood: Jules (later John) Garfield, Luther Adler, Frances Farmer, and Elia

Kazan. See Smith, Real Life Drama, especially 432. Note 11: Sarah Jane Paxton, interview with author, April 1999. Bernard Dick says that Scott's writing was never published in Stage and that John Paxton wrote only a handful of articles (Dick, Radical Innocence, 121). However, John Paxton makes clear in the 1977 taped interview that he and Scott, with several other staff members, were responsible for many of the articles that appeared under the names of others. Note 12: Paxton, interview with Ceplair, June 29, 1977; Paxton, taped interview, 1977. Paxton believed that his work as a critic undermined his originality as a writer: "I know what critics hate. I start originals, see all the pitfalls, and I usually stop. . . . I have to have something to go on, a novel, a short story, however slight, before I can write." J. D. Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word for It, Meaning—Exaltation—John Paxton" [interview with Paxton], in J. D. Marshall, Blueprint in Babylon (Tempe, Ariz.: Phoenix House, 1978), 258. Note 13: Davis, The Glamour Factory, 324–325. Note 14: Distinct circles of sociability—the "Irish Mafia" group of former New York actors such as James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and Spencer Tracy; the expatriated New York writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, and Lillian Hellman who gathered at the Garden of Allah Hotel; the Holmby Hills group that formed around power couples like Joan Bennet and Walter Wanger and Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart; or the group of men drawn together through their interest in sports shooting (Clark Gable, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, and Fred McMurray)—reflected the hierarchies of craft and status that were endemic to the studio system. Actress Betsy Blair Reisz, who was married to dancer Gene Kelly during this period, remembers that their social set was composed almost exclusively of old friends from the New York stage and new ones from the MGM production unit that worked on Kelly's musicals. Their sense of identification with the MGM group was such, she remembers, that "we didn't socialize with people from the other studios. The people in musicals at Fox, for instance, were people we scoffed at—Betty Grable and Cesar Romero." Davis, The Glamour Factory, 333–335; Betsy Blair Reisz, interview with Patrick McGilligan, in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 546. Note 15: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 1–2. Note 16: By the 1920s, the storefront nickelodeons had given way to opulent pleasure palaces, a definitive sign that the movies had become respectable entertainment. However, these theaters also represented the democratizing power of the movies, as filmgoers of all classes (though not necessarily all races) sat together in the dark, mesmerized by the images on the silvery screen. Particularly after the arrival of "talkies" in the late 1920s, the public appetite for movies appeared insatiable. The weekly film audience was between 20 and 30 million in the 1920s, and the majority of American recreation dollars was spent on movies. By 1946, the weekly film audience had skyrocketed to 90 million. Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 163–166, 202; Davis, The Glamour Factory, 368; Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 1–4; Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987), 4; Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 5–6. Note 17: Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 78. Note 18: Schatz, Genius of the System, 6–7. Note 19: Historians have hotly debated the relative radicalism and long-term impact of

these political, social and cultural transformations of the 1930s. Many argue that the New Deal, rather than being a sharp break with the past, should be viewed not only as the logical culmination of the trend toward government bureaucratization and centralization, but also as a fundamentally conservative attempt to preserve capitalism and the status quo. These historians, noting the continuities between the New Deal and the old deal of the Progressive era, emphasize the ways in which the outwardly innovative and inclusionary reform policies actually worked to buttress the traditional socioeconomic order and reinforce existing class and race relations. See, for example, Barton Bernstein, "The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform," in Towards a New Past, ed. Barton Bernstein (New York: Pantheon, 1968); Thomas Ferguson, "Industrial Conflict and the Coming of the New Deal: The Triumph of Multinational Liberalism in America," in Rise and Fall of the New Deal, 1930–1980, ed. Gary Gerstle and Steve Fraser (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989); Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966); and Gabriel Kolko, Main Currents in Modern American History (New York: Pantheon, 1975). Similarly, in the cultural arena, Warren Susman has argued that the new Americanism was profoundly conservative and conservatizing, and that the "Red Decade" was an aberration, a brief fling with cultural radicalism and labor insurgency that evaporated, with few long-term effects, with the defeat of fascism and the return to normalcy and prosperity after World War Two. See Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984). For a similar argument from the perspective of labor history, see Melvyn Dubofsky, "Not So 'Turbulent Years': A New Look at the 1930s," in Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-Class History, ed. Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). Note 20: In the past decade or so there has been a flurry of innovative work on the intersections of politics and culture, particularly in Hollywood, during the Popular Front era. The books that I have found particularly helpful include Michael Denning, The Cultural Front; Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); and Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Note 21: Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 5. Note 22: Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [interview with Paxton], 264–265. Note 23: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 18. Note 24: Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 325. Note 25: Quoted in Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 5. Note 26: For example, in the late 1940s, screenwriter Ben Hecht was soliciting money and support for Palestine and met with a wall of refusal from the Hollywood Jews. Hecht approached David O. Selznick, who told him he didn't want to have anything to do with supporting a Jewish homeland or a Jewish political cause. "I'm an American and not a Jew," Selznick informed Hecht. "It would be silly of me to pretend suddenly that I'm a Jew, with some sort of full-blown Jewish psychology." Hecht, amused and more than a little annoyed, made a bet with Selznick: Hecht would call any three people Selznick chose and ask them whether they thought of Selznick as an American or a Jew. If even one agreed with Selznick, Hecht would stop pestering him. Selznick took the bet and had Hecht call Martin Quigley, publisher of the Motion Picture Exhibitors' Herald; Nunnally Johnson, prominent—and liberal—screenwriter, perhaps best known for adapting Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; and powerhouse agent Leland Hayward. All agreed that—forced to choose—they would identify Selznick as a Jew. Leland Hayward snapped, "For God's sake, what's the matter with David? He's a Jew and he knows it." Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 359–360. Note 27: Lester Friedman, Hollywood's Image of the Jew (New York: Frederick Ungar,

1982), 57–64. For an exhaustive discussion of this issue see Steven Carr, Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Note 28: John Wexley, interview with McGilligan and Ken Mate, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 715–716. Note 29: Schatz, Genius of the System, 12. Note 30: Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940), 136, quoted in Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 21. Note 31: Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976; 2d rev. ed. 1985), 271–275; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 16–46; Albert Hackett quoted in Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 322. Note 32: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999. Note 33: There is a vast literature on the Communist movement in the United States. While the older works on the CPUSA tend to be painfully anti-Communist, some of the more useful general works include: Michael Brown et al., eds., New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993); Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party during the Second World War (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982); and Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, 1984). There are also many excellent biographies and autobiographies of individual Communists. I found Dorothy Ray Healy and Maurice Isserman, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), particularly useful in placing the Hollywood Communist Party in a larger regional context. For general works on radical cultural production, see Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years (New York: Harper and Row, 1973; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); and Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). Note 34: The major European powers, as well as the United States, meanwhile, held to a policy of nonintervention, offering limited humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered Republicans but no military aid. In 1938, nonintervention was replaced by outright appeasement, as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, reneging on Britain's treaty agreement with Czechoslovakia, agreed not to challenge Germany's takeover of the Sudetenland. Note 35: George Charney, A Long Journey (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 59. Note 36: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 55–57. Note 37: Denning, The Cultural Front, especially 4–6. One very persuasive example of the argument that the Popular Front marked a step away from radicalism, particularly on gender and feminist issues, is Paula Rabinowitz's Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). On proletarian literature, see also Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism (1961; rpt. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Walter Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900–1954 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956); and Alan Wald, "Culture and Commitment: U.S. Communist Writers Reconsidered," in New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism, ed. Michael Brown et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 281–306. Note 38: See, for example, the relentlessly anti-Communist screed by Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005).

Note 39: Polonsky, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 492. The italics are mine. Note 40: As Vivian Gornick describes it, "At the indisputable center of the progressive world stood the Communist Party. . . . It was the Party whose moral authority gave shape and substance to an abstraction, thereby making of it a powerful human experience. It was the Party that brought to astonishing life the kind of comradeship that makes swell in men and women the deepest sense of their own humanness, allowing them to love themselves through the act of loving each other. For, of this party it could be rightly said, as Richard Wright in his bitterest moment did, nonetheless, say: 'There was no agency in the world so capable of making men feel the earth and the people upon it as the Communist Party.'" Gornick, The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 9. Note 41: American Communists were often terribly, painfully naïve in their support of the Soviet Union and its policies. In many cases, they claimed not to have known about or not to have believed reports in the "capitalist" press about such atrocities as the show trials, purges, and executions of the 1930s, a blindness that in hindsight seems indefensible. Certainly, many American Communists struggled with the very issues that provoked external criticism,

from

the

U.S.

Party's

ties

to

Moscow

to

its

top-down

structure

and

authoritarianism. From their perspective, however, the failings of the Soviet Union were more than matched by those of the capitalist countries that had led them to join the Party in the first place. Thus, in defending the Hitler-Stalin Pact, American Communists pointed out that only the Soviets and the international Communist movement had stepped in to defend democracy in Spain against Franco and the Nazis, while the major European powers, as well as the United States, held to a policy of nonintervention. They pointed to the silence of the American press on the persecution of European Jews and the failure of the United States to relax immigration restriction to help refugees from fascism. They pointed to the collusion of western capitalism with fascism, citing the American corporations that continued to do business with fascist nations, selling war matériel to belligerent nations. They argued that the western democracies' failure to support the Soviets in the Popular Front against fascism had forced Stalin to make a deal with the devil; or they argued that the war itself was an imperialist war, pursued to further the common interests of the fascist aggressors and the western democracies, in which case opposition to the war represented the moral high ground—a position that most Communists happily discarded after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Note 42: John Bright, interview with Pat McGilligan and Ken Mate, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 145. The autonomy of the Hollywood Communists is corroborated by many of the other interviews in Tender Comrades. Note 43: Polonsky, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 494. Note 44: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 70, 76. Note 45: Charney, Long Journey, 60–61. Note 46: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 75. Note 47: Bright, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 145–147. Note 48: Anne Froelick, interview with Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 257; Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1992), 62–63. Note 49: Reisz, who was married to dancer Gene Kelly during this period, applied for Party membership but was rejected for fear that knowledge of her membership might taint Kelly's reputation as an "independent" and limit his ability to take radical positions in Popular Front organizations without being considered a dupe. Betsy Blair Reisz, interview with Pat McGilligan, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 547. Note 50: Polonsky, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 493 [italics are

mine]. Note 51: Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 328; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 55. Note 52: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 58–59, 76. Note 53: Norma Barzman, interview with Larry Ceplair, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 4–5; Froelick, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 258. Note 54: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 4–5, 13–14, 68–69. Note 55: Alvah Bessie, interview with Pat McGilligan and Ken Mate, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 103. Note 56: Allen Boretz, interview with Pat McGilligan and Ken Mate, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 121. Note 57: Reisz, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 550–551. Note 58: Neve, Film and Politics in America, 78. Note 59: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 13. Note 60: Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [interview with Paxton], 264–265. Note 61: Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams, 194–197. Note 62: Polonsky, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 493. Note 63: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 116; Dick, Radical Innocence, 122–123. Note 64: Adrian Scott never wrote publicly about when or why he joined the Communist Party, though there is no doubt that he was a member. Norma Barzman, one of Adrian's closest friends, remembers that he was in the Party at the same time as her husband Ben, who became a member in 1939. Norma Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. See also Barzman, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 5. Note 65: Dick, Radical Innocence, 122. Note 66: Joseph Breen, PCA, to Harry Cohn, Columbia, typed letter, February 6, 1940, in Scott Papers, American Heritage Center (AHC), University of Wyoming-Laramie. [Note: Scott's papers were not yet catalogued when I did my research at the American Heritage Center; therefore, I am unable to provide detailed information on the location of specific documents in this collection.] Note 67: Article by David Hanna, [no source listed] July 19, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 68: Dick, Radical Innocence, 123. Dick notes that it is unclear whether Scott wrote this portion of the screenplay. Note 69: Paxton, of course, did not receive screen credit for his work with McCreery, though he did attend the preview screening of The Lady is Willing, giving McCreery "conniptions" by lurking in the lobby to eavesdrop. Paxton, taped interview, 1977; see also Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [interview with Paxton], 260–261. Note 70: Paxton, taped interview, 1977; Dick, Radical Innocence, 124. Norma Barzman remembers that Adrian had a habit of removing his shoes as soon as he sat down—anywhere. "There wasn't anything strange about it. It was just something he did and it seemed very right and natural. And he always wore such lovely, fuzzy, clean argyle socks." Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. Note 71: Barzman, interviews by author, April 1999 and June 2004. In the 1977 taped interview, Paxton remembers being invited to attend Marxist meetings (though he loathed meetings) and approached to join the Party in the late 1930s: "I was asked by Dan James way back in New York, but the first thing he wanted me to do was get up at 5:00 one morning and go pass out handbills. I said, 'Don't be ridiculous.' It was cold and raining and I

saw myself on Sheridan Square at 5:30, 6:00 on a Sunday morning in the rain passing out handbills and I said this is nonsense. I wasn't about to do anything like that." Note 72: Scott and Dorothy Shipley were married in Kingman, Arizona, on March 4, 1941, and were formally separated on June 27, 1943. Their divorce was finalized on February 7, 1945, on the grounds of "grievous mental suffering and extreme cruelty." Adrian kept the bonds, the bank account, and his 1940 Oldsmobile, while Dorothy kept the house and received 25 percent of Adrian's net income for one year. Unsigned typescript of divorce agreement, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 73: Norma's frustrations with "progressive men who talked a good game on gender" were experienced by many, many women on the Left. Though the Party had an official, theoretical position against "male chauvinism," it was applied more often in theory than in practice. See Rosalyn Baxandall, "The Question Seldom Asked: Women and the CPUSA," in Brown et al., eds, New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism, 153–157. Note 74: Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. Note 75: Neve, Film and Politics, 87. Note 76: Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999.

Chapter 2 Raising the Cry of Alarm: Popular Nationalism, World War Two, and the New Political Filmmaking In Bloomington, Ind., Mary Weaver, 11, playing hide-and-seek, counted to a hundred by fives, then shouted "Hitler!" This, she explained, meant "Ready or not, here I come!" —Time, October 2, 1939

The encounter with European fascism marked a critical transition in American society

and culture,

and

between

the

1920s

and

the

1940s,

1

American

consciousness underwent a profound shift from fervent isolationism to equally fervent interventionism. The growing threat of fascism—at home as well as abroad—powerfully reinforced the 1930s elaboration of an American Way of Life and of an imagined community grounded in ethnic tolerance, national unity, and democratic traditions. Hollywood films played a key role in articulating this antifascist popular nationalism, beginning in the late 1930s with a cycle of films that raised the cry of alarm to the American people about the dangers of fascism and ushered in a new era of "political" filmmaking. The propaganda needs of the Second World War had a wide-ranging impact on Hollywood, fostering a new relationship between the film industry and the state, but also heightening public concerns about film as an ideological tool. Many Americans

were

suspicious

of

propaganda

in

general,

remembering

the

sensationalism of George Creel's Committee on Public Information during the First World War and aware of the more recent manipulation of mass media by the Nazis in their rise to power. Nonetheless, the need to counter fascist propaganda spurred an acceptance, however uneasy, of propaganda in the service of democracy. Throughout the 1940s, many in Hollywood pointed to "freedom of the screen" as one of the primary distinctions between American democracy and fascist repression—though the postwar period proved that this phrase had multiple meanings and interpretations. During the war years, the film industry cooperated fully with the Office of War Information (OWI) and its guidelines for explaining to the American public "why we fight." Ironically, perhaps, Hollywood's avid response to the OWI's wartime call for greater realism in movies ultimately worked to undermine the Production Code, the industry's internal censorship body, a change that had significant implications for the postwar period. Finally, the wartime urgency to place film in service to the state also helped to legitimize radical filmmakers, whose political "expertise" became an asset rather than a liability. In many ways, however, the imagined community constructed during the

2

war years simply papered over fundamental tensions and divisions that became apparent after the war, and the popular nationalism articulated in World War Two Hollywood merely set the stage for the bitter struggle over the meaning of Americanism that dominated the postwar period.

Popular Nationalism between the Wars One of the hallmarks of the interwar years was the rise of popular nationalisms

3

across the political spectrum, as diverse peoples and countries struggled to address the complex and often devastating fallout of the First World War and the worldwide depression. Casting the history of twentieth-century Europe as a struggle

between

competing

ideologies—fascism,

Communism,

liberalism—historian Mark Mazower argues that the ascendancy of the Right in the 1920s and 1930s was not particularly surprising, given liberalism's shallow roots in much of Europe and the inability of most liberal governments to impose order in a period of radical political and economic dislocation. To many in Europe, and indeed, in the United States, liberalism seemed impotent in the face of widespread economic depression and staggering inflation, violent labor unrest, ethnic and regional tensions, and a growing sense of a world out of control. Fascism, on the other hand, appealed directly to these anxieties and fears, and its antidemocratic authoritarianism seemed a small price to pay for an end to this chaos and a return to order and prosperity.1 The rise of European fascism had little negative impact on the political

4

consciousness of most Americans until well into the 1930s. Though the Italian Fascist Party was founded in 1919 and came to power in 1922 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, during the 1920s few Americans found the regime particularly threatening, and Il Duce himself—with his elaborate uniforms and pompous posturing—was more a source of bemusement than concern or fear. In fact, for some Americans, Italian fascism seemed to be a compelling social and political experiment, and they were drawn to its taming of unruly political unrest, its modernist aesthetic, and its efficiency. Though the Nazi regime, with its virulent anti-Semitism and expansionist drive, presented a different kind of challenge to democracy, some Americans also found much to admire in the German variant of fascism, particularly its aggressive anti-Communism.2 Americans, too, were not always fully informed of the situation in Europe. Foreign correspondents, many of whom had lived in Europe throughout the 1920s and were only too aware of the profound impact of the fascist regimes on everyday life, were among the first to raise the cry of alarm about the dangers of German fascism. From their front-row seat, American journalists watched and reported with growing apprehension Germany's transition from the economic dislocation

5

and political despair of the Weimar Republic to the political repression and violence of National Socialism. The foreign correspondents walked a dangerous tightrope in their reportage: though they went to great lengths to uncover and tell the truth about the menace of fascism, and to counteract the Nazis' deliberate misinformation campaign, they also worked under an immense burden of censorship imposed by the state propaganda apparatus.3 Despite the constraints imposed by the Nazi regime, foreign correspondents used

6

their unique position as eyewitnesses to provide American readers with daily reports of the growing fascist menace. As Deborah Lipstadt points out, "There was practically no aspect of the Nazi horrors which was not publicly known in some detail long before the camps were opened in 1945." However, Lipstadt also forcefully demonstrates that the way that critical information was presented in the national press shaped American perceptions of Germany and Nazism. Many newspaper editors—either unable to believe the dispatches from abroad, unwilling to discount the official reports issued by the Nazi government, or perhaps remembering the backlash against the reports of German atrocities in Belgium during the First World War—strove to present a "balanced" view of international events, or even buried the more controversial stories in the back pages of their newspapers. These journalistic strategies tended to cast doubt on the accuracy and reliability of reports of Nazi barbarism and repression and ultimately reinforced the isolationist sentiments of the American people.4 Well into the 1930s, then, it was possible for many Americans to see fascism as a specifically European problem, with little relevance for the United States. Nonetheless, during the Depression years, the United States, like Germany,

7

explicitly sought to build a national culture that could provide unity to a diverse people in crisis. The resulting articulation of an American Way of Life represented class (and, to a certain extent, race and gender) as secondary to "our" common identity as Americans. This shift was reinforced by key demographic and social changes during the 1920s and 1930s, as declining immigration and centralizing tendencies within industry, communications, and culture—from radio and movies to chain stores and standardized national brands—worked to nationalize and homogenize the public and private experiences of most Americans, blurring divisions of class and taste and weakening traditional ethnic loyalties.5 By the 1930s, the idea of an "average American" was widely disseminated by the advertising industry and a wide array of experts, from pollsters such as George Gallup to social scientists such as Robert and Helen Lynd, famous for their ethnography Middletown (1937), a study of a "typical" American city.6 At the same time, the new Americanism also embraced a subtly assimilationist cultural pluralism, based on the belief that "diversity was a good thing and always to be

8

prized—unless, of course, it was 'divisive,' for divisiveness was somehow bad, even though pluralism was good." During the 1930s, this amorphous cultural pluralism became a powerful paradigm through which Americans reconciled the homogenizing tendencies of industrial capitalism and "mass society" and the desire to preserve heterogeneity and individuality.7 The more populist and democratizing potential of the new Americanism of the

9

1930s can be seen in the synergy between the Popular Front, with its inclusionary cultural politics, and the New Deal, with its wide-ranging economic reforms, support for the labor movement, and inclusion of working-class Catholics and Jews and, to some extent, African Americans in the New Deal political coalition. Roosevelt's famous Fireside Chats, too, were part of an explicit nationalizing project, as the president opened each of his broadcasts with the words "My fellow Americans," and invoked tradition, history, and a pantheon of American heroes—Jefferson, Paine, and especially Lincoln—to legitimize the innovations of the New Deal.8 The "rediscovery" of America drew in a wide array of artists and intellectuals

and

produced

such

varied

articulations

as

Martha

Graham's

choreography for Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," Carl Sandburg's "The People, Yes!" and Paul Robeson's "Ballad for Americans."9 Though this new, inclusive Americanism represented a fundamental reorientation in national consciousness, the process was highly contested and necessarily incomplete. Indeed, for some in the United States, as in Germany, the political and economic dislocation of the Depression fueled a search for panaceas and scapegoats. Many of the Americans who sought solace for their frustration and fear in reactionary political movements were drawn from the old lower-middle classes, "men and women clinging precariously to hard-won middle-class lifestyles; people with valued but imperiled stakes in their local communities."10 The reactionary ideology of the 1930s drew on an older American tradition of xenophobic nativism. By the 1920s, four decades of massive immigration had created a significant "foreign" presence in the United States, particularly in urban areas, that seemed a profound challenge to the social order and the hegemony of native-born Americans—white Anglo-Saxon Protestants caught up in their own fears of "race suicide." The newer immigrants, often Jewish or Catholic and seemingly attracted to such supposedly imported ideologies as socialism or militant trade unionism, appeared to be profoundly "unmeltable," resistant to the myriad attempts at Americanization. This antimodernist nativism pervaded the 1920s, but it was particularly visible in the scientific racism of the eugenics movement, the xenophobia of the "100 percent American" movement, the sharp resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan, the post–World War One Red Scare (directed primarily at immigrant radicals), and in a series of draconian immigration restriction acts.11

10

Not surprisingly, Jews were particularly disturbing to American nativists, who in

11

the 1930s echoed Nazi arguments that Jewish manipulation of international finance had fueled both the Depression and American entry into the First World War. Thus, the phrase "international bankers" served as a code for the alleged control of world finance by Jews—though Jews were just as often condemned as leaders of a worldwide Communist conspiracy. The Jewish-Communist conspiracy charge was frequently leveled at the film industry, and throughout the 1930s, right-wing groups called for boycotts of Hollywood's corrupting and "un-American" products.12 At the heart of this obsession with Jewish "internationalism" was the very question of their Americanness; and "internationalist," a term with a whole constellation of implications—foreignness, inability to assimilate, refusal to repudiate the heritage of Judaism, lack of nationalist feeling or patriotic commitment—became one of the primary perjoratives hurled at Jews. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Jews were condemned for clinging too closely to their identity and heritage as Jews, for being "clannish," at the same time that they were denounced as overly aggressive, as social climbers who pushed their way into a society that did not welcome them.13 The New Deal, with a reform agenda that some Americans viewed as socialistic,

12

was a particular target of the nativists. Beginning with Roosevelt's inauguration as president in 1933, American anti-Semites denounced him as a "Jew-lover" and attacked the New Deal as the "Jew Deal." Certainly, Jewish intellectuals and activists formed an important part of the new Democratic coalition responsible for the election of Roosevelt. In addition, Jews held a greater number of key positions under FDR than in any previous administration, and labor leaders such as Sidney Hillman and Rose Schneiderman, and Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis, were prominent among Roosevelt's most trusted advisors and friends.14 All of these factors, in the hands of anti-Semites, served as proof of Jewish domination of the federal government. In May 1934, for example, Pennsylvania Congressman Louis McFadden delivered a blatantly anti-Semitic speech on the floor of Congress, linking Roosevelt with a Jewish plan for world domination. In his magazine Defender, notorious anti-Semite Gerald Winrod offered a genetic explanation for Roosevelt's supposed participation in the Jewish conspiracy: Roosevelt himself was secretly a Jew. Winrod warned that this alleged Jewishness "proves unmistakably, that the Roosevelt administration offers a biological as well as a political problem. . . . It is therefore, as natural to him to be radical as it is for others to be true Americans. . . . He is not one of us!"15 By the summer of 1935, the American political situation seemed an eerie reflection of events in Europe. Contemporary observers saw an ominous potential for fascism in the significant popular support for an astonishing array of populist demagogues, Christian fundamentalist preachers, Nazi sympathizers, and other

13

self-appointed messiahs. Journalist Raymond Gram Swing, in his 1935 book Forerunners of American Fascism, insisted that Father Charles Coughlin, the infamous "Radio Priest," and Louisiana governor Huey Long were American versions of Hitler and Mussolini.16 That same year, Sinclair Lewis drew on the shenanigans of Long and Coughlin to depict the rise of a fictional American fascist regime in his satiric novel It Can't Happen Here.17 Though not overtly anti-Semitic, Huey Long's Share Our Wealth program, and to

14

a certain extent the pension plans advocated by Dr. Francis E. Townsend and others, were particularly threatening. Mirroring European fascism's simultaneous appeal to the Right and Left, the pension plans combined a quasi-socialistic, anticapitalist appeal to the disaffected classes with an embrace of traditional values and a plea for social stability to assuage the bourgeoisie and capitalists. Though frequently derided as economically unsound, these quick-fix schemes proved to have enormous appeal for ordinary Americans alarmed by the upsurge in union and radical militancy and frustrated by the uneven and sometimes unsettling impact of New Deal reforms. In 1935, after only a year of organizing, 27,000 Share Our Wealth clubs were in operation, and Long claimed to have nearly eight million supporters from the midwestern farm belt and northern industrial centers as well as Louisiana and the South. Concerned that such wide-ranging support represented a significant threat to Roosevelt's plans for a second presidential term, in the summer of 1935 the Democratic National Committee conducted a secret poll that revealed that between three and four million Americans supported Long's wealth-sharing scheme and might vote for him as a third-party presidential candidate.18 Father Charles Coughlin commanded an equally impressive following, particularly among middle- and lower-class Catholics,19 and millions listened to his weekly radio show. Though at first Coughlin was not overtly anti-Semitic, by the late 1930s the political, cultural, and economic machinations perpetuated by world Jewry and the international conspiracy to undermine Christian civilization had become key themes in his broadcasts, as well as in his magazine, Social Justice. In the summer of 1938, as the situation in Europe became increasingly volatile, Coughlin reprinted a version of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the alleged blueprint for Jewish world domination.20 In embracing the Protocols, Coughlin "crossed the Rubicon of political anti-Semitism," as Donald Warren describes it. After 1938, Coughlin's pronouncements were not only overtly anti-Semitic, but also increasingly profascist. For example, after Kristallnacht, his broadcast explained that German anti-Semitism was a natural response to the Jewish-Communist conspiracy. Thus, according to Coughlin, the Nazi campaign against the Jews was a necessary defense against Communism.21

15

Long and Coughlin, however, were only the best-known of the myriad spokesmen

16

for the disaffected. The German-American Bund, founded in 1933 and led by Fritz Kuhn, a German veteran of the First World War, represented the Nazi Party in America, complete with uniforms, swastika armbands, goose-stepping, drill camps, and youth indoctrination. Boasting nearly 25,000 members, the Bund, along with Coughlin, represented the far-Right fringe of American anti-Semitism: "'We do not consider the Jew as a man,' said Bund leader Kuhn, while one of his lieutenants spoke of the eventual need 'to wipe out the Jew pigs.'"22 Though not officially connected to the Nazis, William Dudley Pelley founded the Silver Shirt Legion the day after Hitler took power in Germany in March 1933, and he often spoke and wrote of his dream of becoming an "American Hitler." Kansas-based Reverend Gerald B. Winrod organized fundamentalist Protestants into the Defenders of the Christian Faith; his mouthpiece, Defender Magazine, had a circulation topping 100,000. The Black Legion, a secret society founded by a Ku Klux Klan member, flourished in the Midwest and was a powerful force within the auto industry in Detroit. The flamboyant Gerald L. K. Smith, once described as "the most persistently successful of America's anti-Jewish propagandists" and "the most infamous American fascist," was a former fundamentalist preacher who worked with Huey Long's political machine, the Townsend movement, Coughlin's Social Justice movement, and Pelley's Silver Shirts, before forming his own Committee of One Million.23 The year 1938 marked a critical turning point in the campaign against Jews, both at home and abroad. In Germany, the Nazis stepped up their crusade to rid the Fatherland of the Jews. In the spring came the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria. In the fall, Polish Jews were deported en masse from Germany. In November, after a Jewish youth murdered a minor Nazi functionary in Paris, the Nazis retaliated with Kristallnacht, a highly organized campaign of anti-Semitic terror in which Jewish businesses were burned and looted and Jews were beaten on the streets, dragged from their homes, arrested, and herded into jails and camps. As events in Europe began to take on a terrible urgency, anti-Semitism in the United States also became increasingly virulent, dominating the political rhetoric and activism of reactionary spokesmen and exerting a powerful influence on public policy, particularly in the debate over European refugees from fascism. In early 1939, in response to Kristallnacht, Senator Robert Wagner and Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers cosponsored a bill to allow 20,000 refugee children (above the immigration quota) into the United States over a two-year period. Despite support from a wide range of organizations, from the YMCA to the AFL and CIO, the bill met violent opposition from "patriotic" groups such as the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Rallying around the 1920s slogan "America for the Americans," opponents rekindled the nativist arguments of previous decades. Pointing to the many American children who were

17

hungry and homeless to argue that charity should begin at home, critics claimed that the 20,000 would simply be an opening wedge for thousands more. And as the wife of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration commented: "20,000 children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults."24 Polls indicated that such sentiments were widely shared, and President Roosevelt, notoriously sensitive to public opinion, chose to keep his distance. The sponsors of the bill, cowed by the overt anti-Semitism of the opposition and unwilling to press the issue, ultimately decided not to bring it to a vote.25 The rising tide of domestic anti-Semitism was particularly alarming to leaders of

18

American Jewish defense organizations such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); they feared that American Jews, like their German counterparts, might be "lolling in a false sense of security" that could have similarly disastrous results. Thus, in 1937, as a "practical safety measure," the AJC embarked on a wide-ranging effort to measure the level and degree of anti-Jewish sentiment and support for fascist ideologies among the American people. Drawing on the polling techniques developed by Elmo Roper and others to analyze political campaigns, the AJC initiated a series of nationwide surveys focusing on the public image of the Jew and beliefs concerning the position and treatment of Jews in American society.26 Fourteen polls between March 1938 and February 1946 revealed that between one-third and one-half of the population believed that Jews had too much power in the United States. In 1938, between 12 and 25 percent of Americans advocated measures to reduce the power of the Jews, including restricting access to business and government, and even driving Jews out of the country altogether. Concerns about Jewish power tended to focus primarily on the economic sphere. Between 1938 and 1946, between 30 and 50 percent of those polled regularly indicated that Jews had too much power in the fields of finance, business, and commerce, while smaller numbers were concerned with Jewish power in politics. Interestingly, the number of those polled who believed that Jews held too much power in the entertainment industry declined significantly, from 21 percent in 1938 to a mere 9 percent in 1946.27 At the same time, however, as fears of the Germans and Japanese receded toward the end of the war, the perceived threat posed by Jews remained stable, hovering between 15 and 24 percent as late as February 1946. The AJC researchers concluded from their poll data that anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in American culture.28 As one AJC leader later wrote: In light of events in Germany, these movements appeared a good deal more threatening than they might have during calmer times. If a preposterous paperhanger could unleash terror and persecution on the Jewish citizens of one of the world's most advanced countries, then

19

anti-Semitic

movements

everywhere—even

in

America—had

to

be

reckoned with as an authentic menace, no matter how fantastic their aims or how slim their chances of success.29

Antifascist Filmmaking in Hollywood By the late 1930s, antifascism dominated progressive politics in the film industry,

20

as European refugees flooded into the film community and helped awaken Hollywood to the true scope of the Nazi threat. Many highly regarded artists (often leftists, or Jewish, or both) had fled Nazism and settled in Hollywood, bringing a refreshing cosmopolitanism to the film community and infusing Hollywood politics with a new internationalism. Their firsthand accounts of the dangers of fascism confirmed the stories told by Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, and other Americans who had witnessed the Spanish Civil War or Hitler's rise to power while living or travelling abroad. As actor Melvyn Douglas remembered: "I had only a dinner table interest in politics. My political involvement rose specifically out of the appearance of Nazism. Helen [Gahagan Douglas] and I went to Germany in 1936 where we were terrified, traumatized, and profoundly shocked by what we saw and heard. On our return we looked around for a group who knew what was going on—and found the Anti-Nazi League."30 The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, founded in 1936, was a model of Popular Front

21

collaboration, drawing support not only from liberals and leftists, including Adrian Scott, but also from a few studio executives such as Harry and Jack Warner. In addition to star-studded benefits, panels, and mass meetings, the League produced a biweekly newspaper, Hollywood Now, and two weekly radio shows that exposed the activities of both domestic and international fascists. The scope and energy of the Anti-Nazi League were enormous. In January 1937 alone, the League sponsored an interracial demonstration against Nazism featuring W. E. B. Du Bois, a forum on the Spanish Civil War featuring André Malraux, and a radio show that satirically reviewed "Four Years of Hitler."31 Though the Hollywood progressive community was staunchly antifascist, most studio moguls were slow to rally to the cause. The rise of European fascism posed a quandary for American Jews, in Hollywood and across the nation. On the one hand, the overt anti-Semitism of Hitler's regime pushed Jewish liberals farther to the left. Screenwriter Samuel Raphaelson remembered, "There were a lot of liberals like me in Hollywood then who weren't communist. . . . But most Jews, because of their fear of anti-Semitism, contributed to all the antifascist causes. I felt that if the world were going to go communist or fascist, I'd rather see it go communist." The Jewish studio executives, on the other hand, found such a position unthinkable, and most of them steadfastly refused to work with or make

22

contributions to the antifascist efforts in Hollywood. For the Hollywood moguls, political affiliation served as a significant touchstone of Americanness. As politically conservative as they were idealistically patriotic, the moguls were rock-ribbed Republicans almost to a man (with the notable exceptions of the brothers Warner and Samuel Goldwyn), and they deliberately sought political alliances with rabid conservatives like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph P. Kennedy. Indeed, Mayer's political naïveté was such that he was honestly relieved when his good friend Hearst assured him that "Hitler's motives were pure."32 The assimilationist drive that led the film moguls to repudiate their foreignness

23

(and often their Jewishness in the process) by embracing a politically conservative Americanism made it difficult for them to respond as Jews to the threat of fascism. In fact, some in Hollywood argued that the executives refused to take a stand against fascism as a way of proving to themselves as well as to the public that they were more American than Jewish. Certainly, the executives were extremely sensitive to the public perception of filmmaking as a Jewish industry. Many felt that it would be counterproductive to draw attention to themselves and to the industry by either working publicly against fascism or by making antifascist films. Harry Warner often reminded the other Hollywood moguls, "We've got to be aware that we are Jews . . . and that we will be looked upon by the community, not just Hollywood, of saying certain things because of being Jewish."33 Throughout the 1930s, the Hollywood moguls sought to distance themselves from the political situation in Europe and insisted that politics had no place in the business of making movies. In 1939, Paramount head Adolph Zukor summarized this position: "I don't think that Hollywood should deal with anything but entertainment. The newsreels take care of current events. To make films of political significance is a mistake. When [people] go to a theatre they want to forget. If it's entertainment, it's all right—but not propaganda."34 Many Hollywood progressives noted that a significant percentage of the studios' profits lay in foreign distribution of American films and believed that financial self-interest lay behind the studio executives' refusal to take a stand against Hitler. As late as 1941, Louis B. Mayer took director William Wyler to task for the anti-German bias he detected in the early rushes of Mrs. Miniver: "We're not at war with anybody," Mayer explained. "This picture just shows these [English] people having a hard time, and it's very sympathetic to them, but it's not directed against the Germans." "Mr. Mayer, you know what's going on, don't you?" Wyler protested. "This is a big corporation," Mayer said. "I'm responsible to my stockholders. We have theaters all over the world, including a couple in Berlin. We don't make hate pictures. We don't hate anybody. We're not at

24

war."35

The Warner brothers were the exception to this general rule. Unlike most of the

25

other Jewish executives, Harry Warner, seeing that the nation was in crisis and fearing a revolution, had embraced the Roosevelt coalition. He brought his brother Jack into the Democratic Party along with him, despite the younger man's misgivings. Harry Warner stood virtually alone among the Hollywood moguls in taking an early and vociferous stand against Nazism. Motivated by his deep faith in Judaism and his alarm over the rabid anti-Semitism of German fascism, Harry was one of the few film executives to publicly denounce Hitler's regime and to actively participate in organizations like the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. Under Harry's leadership, Warner Bros. became the first studio to close its foreign offices and withdraw its films from distribution in fascist countries, sacrificing significant profits to take the moral high road. And though the younger and more flamboyant Jack Warner oversaw film production in Hollywood, it was Harry who controlled the purse strings from the studio's corporate offices in New York and who committed the studio to a broad program of antifascist films that included newsreels and cartoons as well as features.36 In many ways Warner Bros. was the logical studio to take the lead in antifascist

26

filmmaking. From the early 1930s, Warner Bros. had made its reputation as Hollywood's scrappiest and most political studio with gritty, realistic films inspired by banner headlines and controversial social problems—films such as Public Enemy (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). By the late 1930s, both the looming specter of fascism in Europe and the resurgence of violently nativist and anti-Semitic organizations in the United States provided ample grist for the Warner Bros. movie mill. Black Legion (1936), They Won't Forget (1937), and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)—all based on true stories—raised the cry of alarm about Nazism and the American potential for fascism.37 The controversial Confessions of a Nazi Spy illustrated the problems faced by overtly political films in Hollywood during this period. Screenwriter John Wexley, together with the European émigrés involved in the project, "saw the idea in terms of educating the public about the threat of pro-Nazi organizations in America." Based on intelligence gathered by an undercover FBI agent, the film was produced despite opposition from the Hays Office and the Production Code Administration (PCA), though allegedly it had the support of J. Edgar Hoover.38 Nazi sympathizers were also outraged by the film: the German-American Bund filed a suit for $500,000 in damages, while the Nazi government lodged a complaint with the State Department. Jack Warner recalled that the Hollywood moguls

feared

an

anti-Semitic

backlash.

self-dramatization—responded indignantly:

Warner—who

had

a

flair

for

27

"Hurt what? Their pocketbooks? Listen, these murdering bastards killed our own man in Germany because he wouldn't heil Hitler. The Silver Shirts and the Bundists and all the rest of these hoods are marching in Los Angeles right now. There are high school kids with swastikas on their sleeves a few blocks from our studio. Is that what you want in exchange for some crummy film royalties out of Germany?"39

Beginning in 1940, as foreign markets became closed to Hollywood, the studio executives became more interested in making antifascist films. Despite all the controversy, Confessions had proved successful at the box office, and other antifascist films trickled out of the studios, including Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). The flow of pro-intervention movies like Sergeant York, A Yank in the RAF, and Man Hunt continued in 1941, despite objections from isolationist Congressmen that Hollywood was creating war hysteria. A two-pronged political backlash against Hollywood in 1940 and 1941 confirmed

28

the worst fears of the Hollywood Jews. In 1940, Texas Congressman Martin Dies—a

founding

father

of

the

House

Un-American

Activities

Committee—proclaimed Hollywood a "hotbed of communism."40 A former Communist had provided him with a list of forty-two names of suspected Communists, which included such major stars as Frederich March, James Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart, and throughout the summer of 1940, with the cooperation of the studio executives, Dies conducted interviews in Los Angeles and "cleared" everyone who had been named except actor Lionel Stander, who was summarily fired by Republic Studio. Though Hollywood progressives were outraged by the investigation and Dorothy Parker accused Dies of seeking to control the film industry in order to "bring fascism to this country," the Hollywood moguls felt that they had gotten off lightly.41 A year later, in the summer of 1941, Hollywood was targeted again for investigation, this time by rabidly isolationist senators in the America First movement. Charles Lindbergh, America First's most charismatic spokesman, warned a midwestern audience that Jewish control of the film industry, press, radio, and the government was the greatest danger facing America.42 Senator Burton Wheeler, an America Firster from Montana, claimed that Hollywood and the Roosevelt administration had conspired in a "violent propaganda campaign intending to incite the American people to the point where they will become involved in this war." Senator Gerald Nye of South Dakota reeled off the obviously Jewish names of the studio executives, leeringly suggesting that their Eastern European and Jewish heritage made them subject to dangerous "racial emotions" and compromised their patriotism and loyalty to the United States. Nye warned: "Unquestionably there are in Hollywood today, engaged by the motion picture

29

industry, those who are naturally far more interested in the fate of their homelands than they are in the fortunes of the United States. . . . I would myself call it the most potent and dangerous 'fifth column' in our country."43 In September, Nye and Wheeler embarked on a Senate investigation into

30

Hollywood war propaganda, targeting a number of films including Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Sergeant York, as well as ten March of Time newsreels. This time, confident that they had the support of the American public as well as the Roosevelt administration, the Hollywood Jews decided to take a stand, and they hired Wendell Willkie, one-time Republican presidential candidate and author of the internationalist manifesto One World, to defend them. Willkie argued that the investigation was a waste of time since the studio moguls were indeed opposed to fascism. Without apology, he stated, "'We make no pretense of friendliness to Nazi Germany nor to the objectives and goals of this ruthless dictatorship. We abhor everything which Hitler represents.'" Twentieth Century–Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck testified that Hollywood films represented the very heart of patriotic Americanism: I look back and I recall picture after picture, pictures so strong and powerful that they sold the American way of life not only to America but to the entire world. They sold it so strongly that when dictators took over Italy and Germany, what did Hitler and his flunky, Mussolini, do? The first thing they did was ban our pictures, throw us out. They wanted no part of the American way of life.44

By Willkie's calculation, only about 50 of the 1,100 Hollywood movies produced since 1939 had war-related themes, but he emphasized Hollywood's pride that those 50 films "do portray Nazism for what it is—a cruel, lustful, ruthless, and cynical force." Using the senators' blatant anti-Semitism against them, Willkie embarrassed Nye into revealing that he had seen only one of the targeted films, and the investigation went to committee after three weeks of testimony. Before the committee reconvened, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the issue became moot.45

Hollywood Goes to War The American entry into the Second World War temporarily silenced the critics of

31

the film industry and had a profound impact on Hollywood filmmaking. Almost overnight any residual ambivalence toward "political" filmmaking disappeared, and the studios committed themselves to the war effort, producing both feature films and documentaries in the service of the state.46 The key challenge facing Hollywood (and Washington) was to create propaganda films that could not be accused of being propaganda—a term that was anathema

32

to many Americans, conjuring the legacy of the Creel Committee's manipulation of the public during the First World War, on the one hand, and the blatant "mind-control" techniques used by the enemy, on the other. Army General George C. Marshall recognized the importance of an informed military in the war against fascism, arguing: Young Americans, and young men of all free countries, are used to doing and thinking for themselves. They will prove not only equal, but superior to totalitarian soldiers, if—and this is a large if, indeed—they are given the answers as to why they are in uniform, and if the answers they get are worth fighting and dying for. . . . To win this war we must win the battle for men's minds. . . . I think films are the answer.47

To produce a series of propaganda films explaining "why we fight" to the

33

American military, General Marshall tapped Frank Capra, director of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and other films depicting the essential goodness of the common man and the inevitable triumph of decency and justice over greed and corruption. Between 1942 and 1945, Capra and a top-notch cadre of writers and directors produced seven one-hour films for the Why We Fight series. Prelude to War (1942) presented critical background to the conflict; The Nazis Strike (1942) and Divide and Conquer (1943) offered chilling insights into the tactics and ideology of the fascist juggernaut; Battle of Britain, Battle of Russia, and Battle of China (all 1943) valorized the antifascist struggles in specific Allied countries; and War Comes to America (1944) glorified the American national character. Though the series was intended primarily for American military audiences, Capra's most eloquent contributions—Prelude to War and War Comes to America—were screened in commercial theaters throughout the United States, while others were used to lift the morale of the Allies abroad.48 Taken together, the Why We Fight series represents the most overt and sustained articulation of the major themes of wartime popular nationalism: 1) the war as a struggle between freedom and slavery; 2) the barbarism and intolerance of the enemy versus the civility and tolerance of the democracies; and 3) the strength of America as stemming from both its history of cultural diversity and its commitment to shared democratic ideals.49 "Freedom!" was the rallying cry of the Second World War, as Eric Foner has amply documented. In 1941, President Roosevelt explained "why we fight" in terms of the Four Freedoms—freedom from want, freedom of worship, freedom from fear, and freedom of speech. In June 1942, the Roosevelt administration created the Office of War Information (OWI) to oversee domestic propaganda efforts, using radio, film, the press, and other media to elaborate on the Four Freedoms as the embodiment of the principles of the New Deal and as essential American ideals worthy of international dissemination. Roosevelt himself compared the Four

34

Freedoms to the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Indeed, history was frequently invoked during the war to buttress the rhetoric of freedom. For example, one OWI poster depicted an American family and their minister huddling together under the shadowy lash of fascism, under the title "This World Cannot Exist Half Slave and Half Free," adapting to the war against fascism Lincoln's Civil War calls for unity and moral purpose. Another poster drew an analogy between the Revolutionary War and the Second World War, linking the citizen-soldiers of 1778 to the GIs of 1943 through the headline, "Americans always fight for liberty."50 This wartime imagery of the citizen-soldier drew on the mythology of the founding of the United States, in which ordinary citizens, responding voluntarily to the cry of alarm, took up arms against British and Hessian "invaders." During the Second World War, the mobilization of civilians was unprecedented in scope. Despite the fact that many of the men were there through involuntary conscription, the multiethnic composition of the armed forces reinforced the sense of the military as a site of democracy and bolstered the image of citizen-soldiers as ordinary men who fought and willingly gave their lives to defeat fascism and make the world free.51 Hollywood feature films echoed the democratic, pluralist popular nationalism articulated by Capra's documentary film series. The film industry's primary ally, as well as watchdog, in this work was the Office of War Information. White House aide Lewis Mellett, former editor of the Washington Daily News, was in charge of coordinating government films as well as establishing a liaison with the Hollywood studios. Roosevelt, anxious to enlist the power of movies for the war effort but remembering the public backlash against sensationalistic World War One propaganda, was also determined that neither the government nor the film industry could be charged with blatantly manipulating public opinion. In the spring of 1942, Roosevelt explained to Fortune magazine: "The American motion picture is one of our most effective mediums in informing and entertaining our citizens. The motion picture must remain free insofar as national security will permit. I want no censorship of the motion picture." Mellett, too, assured the Hollywood executives that the government would not encroach in any way on the studios' autonomy and suggested instead that the studios submit screenplays to the OWI for review and suggestions. Nelson Poynter, head of the OWI's office in Los Angeles, remembered having difficulties convincing the studios that the OWI had no censorship authority and that he simply wanted to help the studios incorporate the government message into their films.52 Ironically, the OWI's emphasis on realism in wartime films ultimately worked to undermine the authority of the Production Code and opened the door, however slightly, in the postwar

period

to

issues—from

adultery

to

discrimination—that previously had been off-limits.

political

corruption

to

racial

35

To ensure that Hollywood films would deal fully and correctly with the issues at

36

hand, the OWI provided a set of guidelines for the studios, including seven questions for filmmakers to consider, such as "Will this picture help win the war?" and "Does the picture tell the truth or will the young people of today have reason to say they were misled by propaganda?" The OWI manual also addressed specific issues that they hoped Hollywood films would dramatize. The section "Why We Fight," for example, urged Hollywood to show that this was a "people's war," a continuation of the revolutionary struggle begun in 1776, and that all Americans, regardless of class, race, or ethnicity, had a stake in the Allied victory. The section titled "The Enemy" emphasized that the foes of democracy were not simply the Axis countries, but anyone with antidemocratic tendencies, from fifth-columnists and saboteurs to the uncommitted and pessimistic. The goal articulated in "The Home Front" section was to show Americans working together and sacrificing equally, whether buying war bonds or bringing their own sugar when dining with friends. Women were to be depicted carrying on heroically in the absence of their men, shouldering their share in war industries and volunteer work, and happily placing their children in day care. The OWI manual functioned, in effect, as a second production code, rivaling that of the Breen Office, though many in Hollywood, particularly progressives, found in the OWI code an ideological vision that matched their own.53 Hollywood's commitment to the war effort and the OWI guidelines was impressive. As Neil Gabler put it, "Draped in the flag, the Hollywood Jews were deliriously patriotic, turning out film after film about the Nazis' cruelty, the sedition of Nazi sympathizers here, the bravery of our soldiers, the steadfastness of our people, and the rightness of our mission."54 During the war itself, persecution of minorities was a major theme of anti-Nazi propaganda. Wartime combat films that called for national unity against a common foe emphasized America's own tolerance of racial and cultural diversity and reinforced the multiethnic

imagined

community

constructed

by

the

Why

We

Fight

documentaries. Thus, the fictional combat units routinely included an array of representative types: a New York Jew or a Chicago Irishman, generally a working-class

"city

boy;"

a

Midwestern

Scandinavian

or

Slav,

usually

a

wholesome corn-fed farm boy; an upper-crust New England WASP; a Southerner, almost always white, though an occasional black soldier cropped up despite the general segregation of combat units. These multiethnic representations worked on two levels to combat public concerns that participation in the war would undermine American democracy and that the United States would come to resemble the militaristic enemy. First, they reassured audiences that even a regimented and authoritarian institution like the military could be democratic when composed of ethnically diverse and freedom-loving Americans. Second, by invoking ethnic and regional differences, they suggested the inherent individuality

37

of the American soldiers, in contrast to the automaton-like interchangeability of the "racially pure" Axis soldiers. Significantly, Jewish characters were shown as important members of the battalions in films such as Air Force, A Walk in the Sun, and Objective Burma. In Action in the North Atlantic, a Jewish Merchant Marine (played by Sam Levene) even serves as the heroic spokesman for American democracy, explaining for audiences "why we fight": "You've got a right to say what you want. That's what we're fighting this war for. The Czechs and Poles, they didn't have a chance to say or do what they wanted."55 During World War Two, progressive screenwriters gained a new legitimacy as the

38

studio executives relied on their political sophistication and knowledge of international events. As Brian Neve explains, "Political knowledge and analysis was in demand, and radical writers, along with some liberals, were best prepared to respond by writing, in particular, about resistance and the enemy." Thus, Hollywood progressives played a critical role in the development of wartime genres—from domestic melodramas like Tender Comrade and Since You Went Away to battlefield epics like Guadalcanal Diary and The Story of GI Joe—and contributed to the "shift of emphasis that such films exhibited, from the individual hero toward the collective effort and teamwork needed for victory."56

Mr. RKO: Edward Dmytryk and the New Political Filmmaking Unlike many Hollywood progressives, Edward Dmytryk did not romanticize the American working class or the desire for a proletarian revolution: "I felt no great pity for the afflicted; I had grown up in the same world, and if I could get out, so could they." Born in 1908, Dmytryk was the son of Catholic immigrants from the Ukraine who settled first in British Columbia before moving south to Los Angeles. After running away from his abusive home at the age of fourteen, he put himself through high school doing odd jobs at the Famous Players–Lasky (later Paramount) Studio. A promising student of mathematics, he attended California Institute of Technology for a year on a $1,000 stipend provided by Hector Turnbull,

Jesse

Lasky's

brother-in-law.

However,

like

many

working-class

students at elite universities, Dmytryk felt uneasy and out of his element: "Though I enjoyed the year at Cal Tech as something completely out of my world, now and then small second thoughts nickered at the back of my brain." In 1927, after a year at college, he decided that he did not belong in the ivory tower and returned to work in the film industry. In true Horatio Alger fashion, Dmytryk worked his way up the craft ladder at Paramount, from projectionist to film editor to director. By the late 1930s, he was directing B-pictures such as Sweetheart of the Campus and The Blonde from Singapore, first at Paramount and later at Columbia. By the time he moved to RKO in 1942, Dmytryk had earned a reputation as an intense young director who worked quickly and well.57

39

Three of the films directed by Dmytryk during the war years are stellar examples

40

of the new political filmmaking encouraged by the Office of War Information and suggest the overlap, both political and creative, between liberal and radical perspectives within the antifascist Popular Front. Behind the Rising Sun and Hitler's Children—both scripted by liberal Emmett Lavery and released in 1943—followed the OWI injunction to examine the nature of the enemy. Most cinematic representations of the war in the Pacific were overtly racist, depicting the Japanese as akin to subhuman apes or other vicious and uncivilized beasts.58 In contrast, Behind the Rising Sun suggests that the rise of militarism in Japan during the 1930s had corrupted the essential humanity of the Japanese people. Dmytryk had long conversations with OWI's Nelson Poynter about the film, which convinced him that "films which painted all members of a race as barbarians did little to explain the Japanese." Instead, Dmytryk wanted to use the film to show that the Japanese cult of militarism, rather than any racial imperative, "hardened" young men and drove them "to the point where there was no longer room in their minds for liberalism, consideration of the people, or any of the ideas which make possible a free government of the people." Interestingly, the OWI was disappointed with the initial script because it did not make clear that Japan was a specifically fascist state. The OWI was also concerned that there was no explanation of the main character's transition from an enlightened, westernized Japanese to a racist killer. Dmytryk, however, felt that the transformation had been explained visually and refused to make changes in the film's dialogue. The OWI, in turn, refused to grant an export license on the grounds that the film was "too openly propagandistic." Film critics largely agreed; Time magazine, for example, dismissed the film as "an 88 minute jag of ferocious anti-Japanese propaganda."59 Similarly, Hitler's Children examines the political indoctrination of German youth, with a sensationalistic plot device revolving around the Nazi program of forced procreation and sterilization to preserve racial purity. The OWI, remembering the backlash against World War One atrocity stories, was concerned that moviegoers would feel "defrauded and bamboozled" by Hitler's Children. When Mellett read an early version of the script he feared that "it would probably arouse more skepticism on the part of the average audience than acceptance." Poynter conferred regularly with screenwriter Emmet Lavery as the project developed, and ultimately,

the

OWI

reviewers

decided

that

Hitler's

Children

exposed

a

little-understood aspect of the Third Reich and that Lavery had succeeded in balancing the evil Nazis with good Germans who appreciated freedom and democracy. The Breen Office had been similarly apprehensive about the film, but in the end decided that it "contained enough circumlocutions" to earn the PCA seal of approval.60

41

Dmytryk next shifted his lens from the foreign enemy to the home front in Tender

42

Comrade, a Ginger Rogers star-vehicle centered on four working women who pool their resources to rent a house together while their men are away for the duration. Written by prominent left-winger Dalton Trumbo, Tender Comrade is a virtual exegesis of the OWI recommendations for depicting the home front. The film takes on hoarders and black marketeers, war-industry slackers and women who date while their husbands are serving overseas, characterizing all those who aren't 100 percent for the war effort as "the kind of people Hitler counted on when he started this war." The film closes with Ginger Rogers explaining to her infant son that his father died to give him a "better break" in life—the "best world a boy could ever grow up in." Ironically, Tender Comrade came under attack in the postwar period when Lela Rogers, Ginger Rogers's mother, decried the film as Communist propaganda, pointing to the line delivered by her daughter: "Share and share alike, that's democracy." At the height of the war, however, the Hollywood office of the OWI was thrilled with Tender Comrade. Nevertheless, most critics panned the film, and James Agee, the film critic for the Nation, called it "one of the most nauseating things I ever sat through." Preview audiences agreed that the heavy dose of propaganda was "sickening" and dismissed the film as boring and heavy-handed. Indeed, the OWI's Overseas Branch in New York felt that the film made a mockery of the real deprivation experienced by the British and others, and decided that the film was unsuitable for international release.61 Nonetheless, RKO executives were impressed by Dmytryk's work on these films,

43

and by the end of the war he had become known as "Mr. RKO." He had also become a member of the Communist Party. According to Dmytryk, as late as 1944 he "held no strong political views" and was antifascist on "humanitarian rather than political grounds." Having come of age during the Depression, Dmytryk believed that it was possible to be concerned about social issues without making a commitment to either the Right or the Left. Nevertheless, he was deeply influenced by the arrival in Hollywood of both New York radicals and the European refugees from fascism: To us natives, they were definitely a political breed, activists of a type we had rarely seen. They seemed to live much closer to reality, and whatever their political affiliations, their dramatic theories were based on marxist philosophy. Their ideas flooded our arid community, and some of us began to realize how unsophisticated we really were. In the main, the old guard ignored them, but many of the town's younger filmmakers, who were at odds with Louis B. Mayer's vision of the world, embraced the new ideas and eagerly explored the avenues that had opened up in the development of story, background, and especially character and social concerns. It was a new frontier, and what curious mind could ignore it?62

During the war years Dmytryk began a "leftward lean." He was probably first

44

drawn into the Popular Front through the People's Educational Center (PEC), where he taught classes on editing and directing. Dmytryk remembers that he had no idea that the PEC was a "front" organization, but he was very impressed with its work and considered it irreplaceable since it was the only school in the state that offered courses in filmmaking. Dmytryk was equally impressed by the work of the Hollywood Writers' Mobilization, which produced pamphlets, radio scripts, and other written material to educate the nation about "why we fight." He also served on the board of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, later HICCASP (Hollywood

Independent

Citizens

Committee

of

the

Arts,

Sciences,

and

Professions), the film industry's leading Popular Front organization during the war. Dmytryk remembers, in his autobiography: While I was involved in these movements, I had looked around, wanting to do more. As usual, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans were taking any organized action to mobilize American youth. It suddenly seemed quite clear that only the communists cared. And though I had previously given no thought to becoming a party member, when I was approached, sometime in 1944, I was ready to be had.63

Ironically, Dmytryk joined the Communist Party just months before Party head

45

Earl Browder dissolved the CPUSA, replacing it with the Communist Political Association (CPA). The creation of the CPA, perhaps the high point of the Popular Front in America, represented more than just a change in name. The CPA also reflected the changing structure, culture and demographics of the Communist movement in the United States, in response to the massive growth in Party membership during war years. In 1943, 15,000 new members joined the Party, many of them female, middle class, or African American. As Party branches composed of "a small handful of loyal comrades" gave way to a much more diverse membership working through neighborhood "clubs," the CPA became "a looser, more popular, less Leninist organization" than the original CPUSA. With their eyes on the postwar period, Browder and his supporters hoped the change to the CPA would enable Communists to move into the mainstream of American politics and would revise the view of Communism as a fringe movement that took its marching orders from Stalin and Moscow.64 Not coincidentally, the CPA period overlapped with a period of friendly relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, when the two nations were joined with Britain in the Great Alliance against fascism. Particularly after the 1943 Soviet victory at Stalingrad, after nearly six months of siege and battle during the bitter Russian winter, American propaganda shifted gears in its depiction of the Soviet Union to emphasize the antifascist struggle of the valiant Russians (now rarely called Soviets or Communists). Time Magazine, for example, devoted its March 1943 issue to the Battle of Stalingrad, and hailed Stalin—soon

46

dubbed "Uncle Joe"—as a nationalist hero.65 At the urging of the OWI, Hollywood produced a flurry of films, including Mission to Moscow and Song of Russia, that celebrated the fighting spirit of the Russian people, while Capra's documentary, The Battle of Russia, depicted the resistance to the German incursion as part of a long history of Russian defense against invasion from the West. The honeymoon wouldn't last long, but while it did, the union of patriotism and progressivism seemed to be a marriage with a future. Indeed, in an interview with the FBI in the early 1950s, Dmytryk made very clear

47

that he had joined the CPA "shortly after Stalingrad when the relationship between this country and Russia was apparently very friendly." (Among his myriad organizational ties during this period, Dmytryk served on the advisory council for the Russian-American Club of Los Angeles.) Dmytryk was also careful to point out that he was drawn to the Communist Party by "intellectual curiosity." The FBI report of the interview continues, "He stated that he was somewhat familiar with Marxism although he found Marx impossible to read, personally." He particularly recalled a meeting that focused on "the Negro Question," which was "the type of discussion that really interested him for he has seen a great deal of oppression, misery and the plight of various minorities, and the study of such problems and their ultimate solution vitally interested him."66 It was not abstract Marxist theory or revolutionary zeal, then, that drew Dmytryk to the Party, but the issues of the day, and his sense that the Communists were at the forefront of both domestic and internationalist engagement.

Mr. Lucky: Adrian Scott and the New Political Filmmaking The wartime overlap between patriotism and internationalism is also evident in the creative and political work of Adrian Scott. Like many in Hollywood, Adrian Scott had offered his services to the military as soon as the call for volunteers was made. Though rejected for active duty due to chronic sinusitis, Scott hoped to join the Army Signal Corps, which produced most of the military training films. In the meantime, in March of 1942, he joined the California State Guard, and in July, his application to join the Civil Service to write motion picture shorts for Air Corps training had been accepted. However, by this point, Scott's situation had changed: on July 20, 1942, he had been put under contract at RKO as a screenwriter. On August 11, after being ordered to report for induction, he wrote to the draft board, asking for an extension of one month to allow him to complete a war picture starring Cary Grant called Bundles for Freedom. He explained to the draft board that the film represented his break into "A films" and that he didn't want to jeopardize his advancement in the film industry after the war. In addition, RKO producer David Hempstead wrote a letter supporting Scott's request for a deferment, saying, "This movie is important to Mr. Scott personally. He has been

48

what is known as a writer of B pictures in the industry. It is a stage a writer goes through against that day he gets that opportunity [to advance to the A-list.] Bundles for Freedom is his opportunity. If he is permitted to finish his script and receives the writing credit, his career is secure when he returns from the war." Though he did receive a cable on November 3, 1942, offering him a position with the Signal Corps Training Film Production Lab in Ohio (for a salary of $3,839.00 a year!), he declined. RKO apparently didn't want to lose Scott and used the studio's status as a war industry to keep him. Scott's request for a deferment was obviously granted and he stayed in Hollywood for the duration.67 Bundles for Freedom (released as Mr. Lucky) was indeed an important film for Scott. The original story was inspired by the work of an actual organization called Bundles for Britain, founded by a New York society matron to raise funds and supplies for the embattled British during the Blitz. Milton Holmes, a former manager of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, wrote a short story, "Bundles of Freedom," which was published by Cosmopolitan in June 1941. RKO had purchased Holmes's story as a serious vehicle for Cary Grant and had assigned veteran screenwriter Charles Brackett to help Holmes with the adaptation. In the original story, gambler Joe Boscopolous runs a con on a group of wealthy socialites who are planning a charity ball to raise funds for war relief, but he has a change of heart upon learning that his brothers have been killed in the Nazi invasion of Greece. The tragedy transforms him into a patriot, and he turns his gambling boat into a relief ship, which sails toward Europe, possibly never to return. When Scott was assigned to the story in the summer of 1942, he was unaware that the treatments from which he was working had been written by Brackett and Holmes, or that Dudley Nichols had also been assigned to write a screenplay from the same material. The situation reflected a standard studio policy that not only pitted writers against each other, but also helped insure that writers—if they wanted to have their version of a story produced—would acquiesce to whatever changes the studio might demand. Ultimately, RKO gave Scott the Nichols script to work from as well, and it was Scott's version of the screenplay that was filmed. He did, however, share a screenwriting credit with Milton Holmes, whose treatments, written with Brackett, had sketched out the plot and added an assumed-identity twist and a framing device to the original short story. In the Holmes-Brackett version, the gambler narrates the film from a life raft (in actuality the top of a crap table), which is all that survives after the gambling boat–cum–relief ship has been torpedoed. In his version, however, Scott shifted the framing device to a New York pier, where a ship's captain explains to a night watchman why a beautiful woman keeps vigil for the gambler. Scott also retained the assumed-identity angle from the Holmes-Brackett version, in which the gambler Joe Adams (Cary Grant) not only takes the name Joe Boscopolous from a dying member of his crew, but also appropriates his 4-F draft

49

status. From the Nichols screenplay, Scott retained only a few details: the radical heritage of the wealthy heroine, whose family fortune was made by a former slaveholder who "caught fire" from abolitionist John Brown and was shot defending him at Harper's Ferry; and the rhyming slang used by the gamblers, which gives the film a witty charm.68 Though intended as a dramatic wartime vehicle for Grant, the film often plays like

50

the screwball comedies of the 1930s. Indeed, the rapid-fire, witty contest of will and words between Joe, the incorrigible con man, and Miss Bryant, the socialite turned patriotic fundraiser, is more reminiscent of His Girl Friday than Casablanca. As a "city boy" of the international working class, Grant is simultaneously polished and rough around the edges, charming and more than a little dangerous. Of course, the bourgeois heroine cannot resist him (nor he her, though he tries), and in the final scene, their love ultimately transcends their class differences. Before the happy ending, however, Scott uses the tale of cross-class romance to get in a few digs at the American class structure. When the heroine blackmails her elitist grandfather into calling off the cops by threatening to marry a common gambler, Joe erupts: You think the worst thing that could happen to you is to marry me. To people like you, folks like me are animals. We're so bad. And you're so very good. What do you expect—credit for it? How else did you expect to turn out? You had so much going for you—you ought to be horsewhipped if you didn't turn out right. What are you so high and mighty about? What did you ever do?69

Amid the romantic punning and maneuvering, Scott narrates a commitment to the antifascist cause. Though Joe begins the film as a devil-may-care gambler concerned only with staying out of the war and fleecing the women of War Relief, Inc., he is ultimately converted to patriotic action, first through the example of the women themselves—for whom no sacrifice is too great for the cause, whether giving blood or allowing a gambling concession at their heretofore respectable charity ball. In a wildly funny, gender-bending scene, Miss Bryant convinces Joe to undertake a "propaganda" project: learn how to knit, in order to set an example for other men. Joe is aghast, uncomprehending. Joe:

Knit?

Miss Bryant:

In England incapacitated men knit without hesitation.

Joe:

I don't knit.

Miss Bryant:

That's exactly the attitude we're trying to combat. We want a group of obviously masculine men to take up knitting, do it perfectly casually in public places.

51

Joe:

Do you think I'm strong enough?

Miss Bryant:

I'm perfectly serious. Half the women knitting last year are now being trained to drive ambulances and buses . . .

Joe:

Do I get to trim a hat?

Ultimately, Joe does learn to knit and, through his example, so does his burly sidekick Krunk, who then teaches the feminine craft to the rest of the men on the gambling ship. Joe's penultimate conversion experience, however, is utterly serious and occurs,

52

appropriately, in a Greek Orthodox church, where he has taken a letter from the mother of the real Joe Boscopolous to be translated into English by the priest. The mother writes to tell her son that his brothers have died defending their humble village from the invading Nazis and that she now expects him to carry on the struggle, to ensure that his brothers did not die in vain. She concludes, "I believe God will open your eyes and cleanse your heart," and the priest offers a prayer, "Bless Joseph, brother of all men." Joe is converted, not to the church, but to the international brotherhood and solidarity of the antifascist cause. Released in 1943 as Mr. Lucky, the film deserves greater recognition as one of the classic wartime conversion narratives.70

The Conservative Backlash: Hoover versus Hollywood Hollywood's wartime propagandizing did not escape the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Given Hoover's long history as a Red hunter and Hollywood's reputation as a hotbed of Jews and Communists, it is not surprising that Hoover would commit significant federal resources to investigating the film industry. The FBI had begun monitoring Communist activity in Hollywood in the 1930s, focusing initially on unionization campaigns and strikes, and later on left-wing control of "front"

organizations

such

as

the

Hollywood

Democratic

Committee,

the

Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and the Civic Unity Council. By the summer of 1942, the agency had shifted its attention to radical influence on film content. At Hoover's request the Los Angeles FBI office prepared two comprehensive reports on subversive influences in the film industry; the report of July 1943 named seven films that contained Communist propaganda—Mission to Moscow, Action in the North Atlantic, Hangmen Also Die, Keeper of the Flame, Edge of Darkness, Our Russian Front, and This Land Is Mine—as well as nine others then in production, including North Star, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Song of Russia.71 Though at this point the Soviet Union had joined the Allies and Hollywood was working closely with the federal propagandists at the Office of War Information to produce films that valorized the Russian people in their fight against fascism,

53

titles like Mission to Moscow and Song of Russia could only have made a diehard anti-Communist like Hoover apoplectic. Despite a great deal of work by agents in the Los Angeles office, the investigation

54

had revealed little more than a list of Red-sounding films. In a search for "hard" evidence of ideological crimes, they turned to black-bag tactics. In July 1943 FBI agents broke into offices of the Hollywood section of the CPUSA—the first of multiple break-ins over the next two years—and copied membership files. The files, which included first names and last initials, addresses of homes where meetings were held, and dates of these meetings, enabled the FBI to piece together a fairly comprehensive list of Communists in the film industry and to link those names with film credits. By October 1947, FBI agents had identified "47 actors, 45 actresses, 127 writers, 8 producers, and 15 directors as former or current Communists."72 The FBI file on Adrian Scott offers fascinating insights into the investigative techniques and ideological assumptions of the FBI, but also into Scott's political activities during the war years. The first entry in Scott's file is dated March 1944, suggesting that he was among the Communists identified through the break-ins at Party headquarters. In compiling information on Scott, agents relied on a number of traditional (and legal) investigative strategies as well, running criminal and credit checks (both negative), consulting local draft and election boards, and reviewing marriage and divorce records. This initial report identifies Scott as a U.S. citizen and a registered Democrat, as well as a member of the Writers Branch of the NW Section of the Los Angeles County Communist Party, an alternate member of the Board of Directors of the Screen Writers Guild, and a delegate to the Los Angeles County Communist Party Convention in October 1943. The FBI's investigation also revealed that in 1943, the year of breakthrough victories by the Red Army on the eastern front and the height of pro-Soviet sentiment in the United States, Scott participated in several pro-Russian activities. Though it is not clear whether this information was gleaned from a reading of publicly circulated documents (event programs, for example), from documents obtained during break-ins, or from confidential sources, FBI agents noted that Scott's name, along with the names of "several other known Communists," had appeared on the program committee for a "Salute to Our Russian Allies," presented at the Shrine Auditorium on November 8, 1942, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Republic, and that "a mimeographed copy of contributors to the Russian War Relief Association of Southern California" revealed that Scott had donated $25. The report further noted, "The above organization was one of several instigated by Herbert Biberman and no doubt was Communist dominated."73

55

Surveillance by special agents was also a key source of information on the

56

activities of Scott and others. Agents observed Scott, for example, at the Shrine Auditorium working on a script titled "Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead," which was presented at "the Communist Rally held July 18, 1942 . . . honoring William Z. Foster, National Secretary of the Communist Party in the United States." A survey of automobiles parked outside a June 12, 1943, meeting revealed that Scott was "among approximately fifty persons present identified by the agents through car license. Practically all of those present are known to have Communist Party affiliations." Scott's car also was seen at Communist meetings in August and October of 1943. According to a confidential informant, Party meetings were also held at Scott's own apartment at 9034 ½ Barratt Street in Hollywood.74 Confidential informants were perhaps the greatest source of information.

57

Apparently once an informant offered up "reliable" information, any further information he or she supplied was also assumed to be reliable. Significantly, once a piece of "evidence" was entered into a report, it appeared in every subsequent report, and the bulkiness of Scott's file is due, to a great extent, to the serial repetition of previously gathered information. Information gleaned from informants was often rather opaque, sometimes little more than hearsay, but it was recorded diligently nonetheless; for example: "[Redacted] advised that [redacted] advised AS on August 5, 1942, that he, Adrian, was not to discuss the 'program' with anyone except the CIO." FBI agents admitted, "The purpose of this is not known but indicates his contact with Northwest Section leaders in an active capacity."75 A confidential informant had also furnished the local FBI office with a list of the

58

delegates, including Scott, to the 1943 Los Angeles County Communist Party Convention. Even more intriguing, thanks to "Source B"—another confidential informant? a mole in CP headquarters? an agent undercover within the Party?—the agents also gained access to a photostatic copy of the credential form Scott filled out as a delegate to the convention. According to the report, "Scott's application blank indicated that he was 31 years of age, Scotch, English, Irish American descent; that he has spent four years in the party and is a writer by occupation. His main activity in the branch is that of Legislative Director. His war activity is writing. He is a member of the Independent Union Screen Writers Guild, a member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, subscriber to the People's World and a regular reader of the Communist." The report also noted that "Scott's car was observed at the Communist Party convention on October 30, 1943, by agents of this office."76 Another frequent source of information for the FBI was the press, and Los Angeles

59

agents clearly devoted a great deal of time to reading the Hollywood trade papers. Entries in a report on Scott from March 1947 reported on developments in his career, films he was working on, and plans for upcoming projects, all gleaned from articles in Daily Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and drama critic Virginia Wright's column in the Los Angeles Daily News. The FBI used such sources to comment upon possible radical content in Scott's films. Mr. Lucky was described as carrying a "war theme embracing the issues of how an anti-social draft dodger, among other things, is convinced that even though society does not recognize him, he nevertheless has a place in this world." Scott's plans to address problems of fascism and race prejudice in Cornered and Crossfire were also duly noted by the FBI agents.77 As Scott's FBI file suggests, little of the information gathered by the FBI in their

60

investigation into Hollywood subversion was particularly damning. Nevertheless, the "complete memo" of Communist influence in Hollywood reported with great assurance that Communists were engaged in a variety of nefarious activities that threatened internal security, whether using the "present apparent patriotic position of the party" to win recruits to the Soviet cause or organizing demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns and "slander campaigns . . . to browbeat and terrorize public officials." Most worrying, according to this report, the Hollywood Communists were influencing film content, forcing the studios to produce agitprop films that glorified the Soviet Union and depicted "the Negro race in most favorable terms."78 However, the FBI investigations never "uncovered evidence that Hollywood Communists engaged in espionage or violated any other federal law." Interestingly, a follow-up report from the Los Angeles office to Hoover in August 1944 concluded that although Hollywood Communists did "inject small portions of propaganda" into films, they had "almost completely abandoned the idea of putting over any pictures filled with propaganda and are just as active to see to it that propaganda pictures favorable to America are kept to a minimum." Despite this conclusion, the Los Angeles office never reassessed its earlier contentions about the Communist threat. Athan Theoharis notes that "FBI reports soon stopped examining the propaganda nature of specific films and instead merely compiled and regularly updated a 'ready reference' of all Hollywood employees" who were Communists.79 In October 1944, J. Edgar Hoover brought his concerns about Communist influence in Hollywood to the attention of Attorney General Francis Biddle. Though he was careful to say that the FBI had not undertaken a "direct investigation" (since some of its tactics had indeed been indirect—as well as illegal), Hoover reminded Biddle of the power of Hollywood—as entertainment, education, and propaganda—to sway the hearts and minds of Americans. Though Biddle did not respond to Hoover's briefing report, the FBI director was not dissuaded from his

61

campaign.

Stymied

by

the

fact

that

none

of

this

Red

activity

was

illegal—Hollywood Communists had not engaged in espionage or conspiracies to overthrow the U.S. by force, and as yet it was not illegal to be a member of the Communist Party or to employ a Communist in the film industry—no avenue to criminal prosecution was available, and Hoover was forced to bide his time.80

Notes Note 1: Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 2000). Note 2: Historical studies of fascism are simply innumerable. The works I have found most helpful include: Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 1995); Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Alice Yeager Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1, Women, Floods, Bodies, Histories, trans. Stephen Conway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985); Linda Mizejewski, Divine Decadence: Fascism, Female Spectacle, and the Makings of Sally Bowles (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992); Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Renate Bridenthal et al., eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984); Atina Grossman, "The New Woman and the Rationalization of Sexuality in Weimar Germany," in The Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, Ann Snitow et al., eds. (New York: Virago, 1983); and Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt, 1986). On the American encounter with fascism, see John P. Diggins, "Flirtation with Fascism: American Pragmatic Liberals and Mussolini's Italy," American Historical Review 71 (January 1966), and especially Benjamin L. Alpers, Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s–1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Note 3: Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 13–39. One of the most fiercely antifascist of the American journalists, William L. Shirer, served as the Berlin correspondent for Hearst's International News Servicebefore he was recruited by Edward R. Murrow to join CBS as a radio correspondent. In his memoir Berlin Diary, Shirer relates countless occasions on which his radio scripts were censored or his broadcasts summarily cancelled by the Nazi authorities. Others were even less successful in playing the system. H. R. Knickerbocker, the Berlin correspondent for the New York Evening Post, was ousted from Germany for his outspoken reports on the regime's atrocities, particularly against Jews, while Edgar Ansel Mowrer, correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, was recalled from his post in late August 1933 after Frank Knox, the paper's publisher, caved in to pressure from the Nazi government. Dorothy Thompson, correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the first woman to head a major foreign news bureau, was also one of the first American journalists to interview Hitler. Deported from Germany twice, in 1932 and 1934, for her mocking book I Met Hitler, Thompson became one of the most outspoken antifascists, as well as one of the most widely read and influential journalists of her generation. Her weekly column, On the Record, was syndicated throughout America, and her pointed commentary evoked heated debate. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941); Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990),

84–85, 91. See also Marion K. Sanders, Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). Note 4: Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, 2, 13–39. Note 5: Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1999); Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially chapters 2 and 3. Note 6: Zunz, Why the American Century?, especially 48–65. This is not to say that divisions of class, race, or gender ceased to exist or matter, simply that the 1930s nationalizing project worked to paper over those differences. On the persistence and negotiation of these divisions, see especially Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (New York: Penguin, 1980). Note 7: Philip Gleason, "Americans All: World War II and the Shaping of American Identity," The Review of Politics 43 (1981): 483–518; see especially 504. Note 8: Eric Foner, in The Story of American Freedom (New York: Norton, 1998), argues that the Popular Front, rather than the Democratic Party, was the primary mover in this new Americanism (212–213). For an interpretation that gives more weight to the cultural politics of the New Deal, see Giuliana Muscio, Hollywood's New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). Note 9: Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996). Note 10: Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941 (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1984), 237. Note 11: The literature on American nativism in the 1920s is extensive. See, for example, David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1995); Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1982); John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1965); Dale Knobel, "America for the Americans": The Nativist Movement in the United States (New York: Twayne, 1966); and Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, the Father of Hate Radio (New York: The Free Press, 1996). On the Klan in the 1920s, see Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). For an excellent discussion of the ways in which racism, particularly anti-Semitism, shaped national ideology and permeated American high modernism in the 1920s, particularly in the work of such canonical writers as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cather, and others, see Walter Benn Michaels, Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995). On the eugenics movement and scientific racism, see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), and Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Note 12: Steven Carr, Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Note 13: Charles Herbert Stember, et al., Jews in the Mind of America (New York: Basic Books, 1966). See below for details from Stember's poll data suggesting that these attitudes were widely shared by the American public. Note 14: Polenberg, One Nation Divisible, 42; Leonard Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home: Anti-Semitism and the American Jewish Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 61–62.

Note 15: Warren, Radio Priest, 138–139. Note 16: Raymond Gram Swing, Forerunners of American Fascism (New York: Messner, 1935), 40–45. Note 17: As Lewis biographer Mark Schorer points out, It Can't Happen Here might never have been written had Lewis not been married to journalist Dorothy Thompson, whose intimate knowledge of German fascism clearly informs his work. Nevertheless, the power of Lewis's novel lies in his interweaving of European fascism with the portrayal of a uniquely American political culture, drawn from Lewis's own unerring, satiric gift for Americana. It Can't Happen Here has much of Lewis's comic satire, though it is also deadly serious. The novel demonstrates the ways in which Americanism might be marshalled in the interests of reaction. The dictator Windrip is modelled less on Adolph Hitler than on Louisiana demagogue Huey Long (though the name "Windrip" is also a scatalogical spoof on protofascist Gerald B. Winrod), while the demagogic priest, Bishop Prang, is clearly taken from Father Coughlin. Windrip is a good old boy from Ohio, a common man, both in the sense of being an "ordinary" American, a man of the people, and being "common" in the snobbish eyes of the elite. Windrip's homespun storm troopers are called the Minute Men (MM), in a satiric nod to the citizen-soldiers of the American Revolution. Lewis presents the MM as lower-class thugs, as was often true of groups playing similar roles in fascist Italy and Germany. In invoking the pageantry of fascism—the uniforms, the rituals, the songs—Lewis draws on a uniquely American symbolism and history. For example, he transforms the populist religious hymn "Give Me That Old-Time Religion" into "Bring Back That Old-Time Musket." The MM uniform—dark blue tunics with a five-pointed star on the collar, light blue pants with a yellow stripe down the side tucked into black boots, and a slant-topped blue forage cap—is reminiscent of a Civil War cavalryman or the "Indian fighters under Custer." As Windrip boasts: "All these degenerate European uniforms of tyranny! No sir! The Minute Men are not Fascist or Communist or anything at all but plain Democratic—the knight-champions of the rights of the Forgotten Men—the shock troops of freedom!" Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here (New York: Signet, 1935), 92. See also Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961); Kurth, American Cassandra; and Sanders, Dorothy Thompson. Note 18: McElvaine, The Great Depression, 241–247. Note 19: Many Catholics, however, feared an anti-Catholic backlash and wrote to Church leaders asking them to curb Coughlin: "Unless you get Coughlin off the radio, you are going to be responsible for one of the greatest anti-Catholic movements this country has ever seen. . . . Coughlin has put the Catholic Church squarely into politics . . . , this will not go down the throats of the people in this country—the Catholic-hating population is too great." Another wrote: "But not until the recent broadcast in which he avowedly excused Hitler, and voiced anti-Semitism, did he loom as important on my horizon. I am constantly on the defensive. . . . We, as Catholics, should be ashamed of intolerance of any sort voiced by a minister of Christ." Quoted in Warren, Radio Priest, 216–217. Note 20: The Protocols purport to be the minutes of a clandestine meeting of Jewish leaders to seize control of the world. However, significant portions of the text were plagiarized from John Robinson's Proofs of a Conspiracy, an obscure French satire that popularized the role of Freemasons in the French Revolution. In the 1920s, Henry Ford had published a version of the Protocols in the Dearborn Independent as the centerpiece of his own anti-Semitic campaign. Warren, Radio Priest, 149. Note 21: Ibid., 150–156. Note 22: Polenberg, One Nation Divisible, 41. Note 23: David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 14–19; McElvaine, The Great Depression, 237; and Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 6 and

passim. Note 24: Wyman, Paper Walls, 75–98. Note 25: Polenberg, One Nation Divisible, 42; Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home, 61–62. Note 26: Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home, 32–36. The AJC surveys were part of a larger impulse during the 1930s to document the attitudes and behavior of "average Americans." Drawing on the pioneering work of social and behavioral psychologists in the 1920s, public-opinion polls were widely used in the 1930s by advertisers and social scientists to take the pulse of the American people, measuring consumer trends and desires, and political attitudes and behavior. Though polling gave a voice to ordinary Americans that was potentially democratizing, ultimately these public-opinion polls served to reify the notion of an "average American" in ways that ignored complexity and diversity and promoted adjustment to a "norm." Zunz, Why the American Century?, 48–69. Indeed, the AJC surveys of the 1930s assumed that anti-Semitism was a product of ignorance and could be combated and eventually eradicated by "adjusting" public attitudes. In the postwar period, social science would play an even larger role in Jewish defense work. This is discussed in greater detail in chapter 6. Note 27: Stember et al., Jews in the Mind of America, 120–124. Note 28: Ibid., 127–133. Note 29: Ibid., 110. Note 30: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 94–97, 139. Note 31: Other leading progressive organizations in Hollywood during this period included the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, created to monitor state and local elections, particularly after studio executives colluded in the defeat of Upton Sinclair's campaign for state governor in 1934, and the Motion Picture Artists' Committee (MPAC), created to aid Republican Spain's war against Franco. Under MPAC auspices, a stellar committee led by Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker, and Ernest Hemingway produced the documentary The Spanish Earth; four Hollywood screenings in 1936 raised $35,000 for the cause. In the postwar period, such activities were often used against suspected Communists as evidence of "premature" antifascism (i.e., antifascism expressed prior to formal American entry into World War Two). Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, especially 104–108, 115, 118. Note 32: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 331, 338. Note 33: Ibid., 338–343. Note 34: Ibid., 340. Note 35: Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 49. Note 36: Michael E. Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.'s Campaign against Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1999), especially 17–20; Muscio, Hollywood's New Deal, 42, 61–62. Note 37: Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 35–86. Note 38: Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1992), 57. Note 39: Jack Warner, quoted in Friedrich, City of Nets, 50. Jack Warner frequently claimed that the decision to close the studio office in Germany came after the studio's representative, Joe Kauffman, was murdered by Nazi thugs. However, historian Michael Birdwell has recently proven that the facts do not bear out Warner's apocryphal story. See

Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 17–18. Note 40: The HUAC was first proposed in the early 1930s by liberal Jewish Congressman Samuel Dickstein (D–New York), who hoped to use Congress's investigative function to contain the alarming rise of pro-Nazi activity. Ironically, his campaign was taken up by Texas Democrat Martin Dies, whose resolution calling for a Special Committee on Un-American Activities was passed in 1938 by a vote of 191 to 41. Under Dies's leadership, the Committee's investigations focused almost exclusively on the menace of Communism rather than fascism, and Dickstein, who was not invited to serve on the Dies Committee, came to regret deeply his role in its creation. John Rankin, an overt anti-Semite who had opposed Dies's resolution until assured that the committee would be led by the conservative Texan Dies rather than the Jewish New Yorker Dickstein, was largely responsible in early 1945 for resuscitating the Dies Committee, which had become disreputable and was nearly defunct; his motion to make HUAC a permanent committee passed with a vote of 207 to 186. Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 2–23; David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 88–91. Note 41: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition, 156–157; Friedrich, City of Nets, 52–53. Note 42: In the late 1930s, high-ranking German officials, particularly Reichsmarshal Herman Goering, assiduously cultivated Lindbergh, wining and dining him, escorting him on tours of Nazi airplane factories, and even awarding him the Service Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor given to non-Germans (Henry Ford was the only other American to have received the award). Lindbergh was impressed by the German rearmament, reporting to British and American military leaders that the Allies could not hope to compete with the Nazi war machine, particularly the Luftwaffe. However, Lindbergh was also impressed with Nazism as a social, political, and even racial ideology, and, certain that the Nazis would win the war anyway, he argued that it was in America's best interest to collaborate fully with the fascist regime. Lindbergh's involvement with America First in the early 1940s was a great boost to the isolationist movement, but it earned him the wrath of the Roosevelt administration. Ultimately, Lindbergh's outspoken admiration for the Nazi regime, the anti-Semitic slurs he voiced in Des Moines, and his renunciation of his Air Force commission discredited him in the eyes of most Americans. See Albert Fried, FDR and His Enemies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999) and Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh: A Biography (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1976), 208–302. Note 43: Friedrich, City of Nets, 51–52; Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 345–346. Note 44: Doherty, Projections of War, 41. Note 45: Ibid., 41; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 160–161; Friedrich, City of Nets, 51–52; Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 346–347. Note 46: Many in Hollywood—from famous actors and directors to studio executives—also volunteered for military service. Clark Gable, James Stewart, and Tyrone Power, for example, served with distinction in the European theater. However, most Hollywood enlistees spent their military service doing what they had always done—making movies. Darryl F. Zanuck, John Huston, and Frank Capra, among many others, worked within military film units, particularly the Army Signal Corps, producing documentaries and military training films. See Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 326–343; George F. Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 257–260; and Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987), 122. Note 47: Capra, The Name Above the Title, 361. Benjamin L. Alpers argues that military leaders placed great faith in the power of facts to galvanize American soldiers and to

illustrate the differences between fascism and democracy. Alpers, "Imagining a Democratic Military in World War II," Journal of American History (June 1998): 155–156. Note 48: Capra, The Name Above the Title, 373; Doherty, Projections of War, 79. Note 49: Creating a sense of national unity became increasingly important as the pressures of the war exacerbated ongoing tensions and fissures in American society, particularly over issues of race. As Richard Polenberg notes, "By introducing two powerful solvents—migration and manpower shortages—the war upset the delicate patterns of behavior governing race relations" (One Nation Divisible, 72). In some cases, the tensions turned violent: during the war race riots broke out in Detroit, Los Angeles, and other urban centers, as well as on eight military bases. Embittered by the slippage between the wartime rhetoric of democracy and tolerance and the realities of continuing discrimination, the African American press called for a "Double V" campaign to fight for victory over fascism abroad and racism at home. The internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast also raised powerful questions about the American commitment to tolerance, though few raised the issue at the time. Polenberg, One Nation Divisible, 69–85. Note 50: Foner, Story of American Freedom, 220–227. Historian George L. Mosse has noted the critical shift in both the composition and public representation of armies since the French Revolution, from mercenaries who fought for material gain and peasants who fought to fulfill their feudal debt, to "citizen-soldiers" who fight for national pride or "patriotism." The citizen-soldier is an integral component of the ideology of democracy, in which the need for a standing army of professional, career soldiers signals the weakness or even failure of voluntary, democratic institutions. George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3–20. Note 51: In his article "Imagining a Democratic Military," Benjamin Alpers demonstrates the ways this image was deliberately constructed to combat public fears that militarization would undermine American democracy and individuality. Note 52: Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976; 2d rev. ed. 1985), 283; Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 56–70. Note 53: Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 56–70. Note 54: Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 348. Note 55: Alpers, "Imagining a Democratic Military," 143–144; Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1981), 237. Note 56: Neve, Film and Politics in America, 78. Note 57: Edward Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, But Not a Bad Living (New York: Times Books, 1978), 3–44; quotations from p. 11. See also Bernard Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 135, 234. Note 58: See John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), for a fascinating survey of American representations of the Japanese (and Japanese representations of Americans). Note 59: Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 271–275. Note 60: Ibid., 298–99. Note 61: Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life. Note 62: Edward Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 5–6. Note 63: Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, 64; Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 6–9. Note 64: Joseph R. Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1975), 24, 42. Note 65: John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and in Peace, 1941–1960 (New York: Norton, 1988), 59. Note 66: Memo/report—Los Angeles SAC to Director, FBI, March 10, 1951, in Edward Dmytryk FBI File. Note 67: Dick, Radical Innocence, 124; see also miscellaneous correspondence, April 1941 to November 1942, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 68: Dick, Radical Innocence, 124–125; on Bundles for Britain, see Look Magazine 4:25 (December 3, 1940): 35. Note 69: All quotes from Mr. Lucky are taken from the American Movie Classics broadcast of the film. Note 70: After Mr. Lucky, RKO loaned Scott to Paramount, where he worked on an adaptation of Augusta Tucker's novel Miss Susie Slagle's. Though Miss Susie Slagle's was not a war picture, the project offers interesting insights into Scott's political vision as well as into the obstacles to realizing that vision within the studio system. Paramount had been interested in adapting the novel since 1939. Veteran screenwriter Frances Marion took the first stab at the novel, but her work on the project ended in early 1940, soon after she completed a 126-page script. The project lay dormant for nearly three years, until Paramount assigned Scott and Anne Froelick to revive it. In Scott and Froelick's treatment, dated December 14, 1943, the story of a group of medical students living at Miss Slagle's boarding house is infused with a progressive ethos. Working within the conventions of mainstream melodrama, Scott and Froelick gave great attention to the novel's class and race issues, emphasizing the diversity of the characters, "especially the working-class student who inveighs against privilege and condescension, and the self-effacing Jew whose confidence returns when he hears that Jews are natural doctors because of their history of persecution." Scott and Froelick included the obligatory hospital scenes, but also inserted a number of scenes of racial diversity and cooperation, including the delivery of a black child and the performance of a black gospel choir, which inspires the interns and a group of children to join the singing. A Jewish intern remarks, "It's good to be reminded that prejudice isn't congenital. What a great world this would be if we could all grow up to be children!" The romantic, humanistic radicalism of the Popular Front is also evident in Miss Susie Slagle's mantra: "It is the passionate people who make the world progress. Use your brains, my dears, but never stop thinking with your hearts." Dick, Radical Innocence, 126–127. I could not locate a copy of this film and have relied on Dick's description. Note 71: Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 153. Note 72: Ibid., 154–155. Note 73: Report from Los Angeles office, March 3, 1944, in Adrian Scott FBI File. Note 74: Ibid. Note 75: Ibid. Note 76: Ibid. Note 77: Ibid. Note 78: Theoharis, Chasing Spies, 154. Note 79: Ibid., 155. Note 80: Ibid., 155–156.

Chapter 3 Progressive Producer in the Studio System: Film Noir and the Production of Murder, My Sweet Scott and his aides, while not given a million dollar budget or patted on the back every day, had the kind of studio cooperation that enterprising film men like best. They were let alone in the making of Murder, My Sweet. It was their baby and they were free to do with it as they chose. —David Hanna, July 19, 1945

Following the box-office success of Mr. Lucky, Adrian Scott became one of the

1

studio's rising stars, and on December 14, 1943, RKO promoted him to the rank of producer, at a salary of $500 a week, with the stipulation that he could be asked to write any film he was assigned to produce.1 Scott was thrilled with his promotion. From his first days in Hollywood, he had chafed at the relative powerlessness of writers within the studio system and realized that in order to translate his political and artistic vision onto film he would need more autonomy and control over the filmmaking process. Though many of his left-wing friends turned to directing in search of greater creative control, Scott believed that the producer, who had a foot in both the business and creative sides of the film industry, held the real power in the studio system.2 As a producer, he would make the key decisions that shaped the final film, choosing the source materials, working closely with the screenwriters and directors, overseeing casting and locations, and so on. As a producer, Scott would also be in a far better position to protect the political integrity of his projects against incursions by the powerful studio gatekeepers who monitored markets, profits, and the business of filmmaking.3 Though the move from writing to producing was somewhat unorthodox within the studio system, the fact that Scott was under contract at RKO worked in his favor in several ways. First, the wartime labor shortage forced smaller studios like RKO to scramble to recruit new talent, creating more opportunities for quick promotion and enabling Scott to make an end run around the traditional hierarchies within the studio system. Second, RKO was one of the only major studios without an entrenched and supremely powerful production head such as Darryl F. Zanuck or Louis B. Mayer. Frequent turnovers in high-level personnel and constant tinkering with management structures and strategies kept the production system at RKO unusually fluid, preventing the emergence of a clear "house style" and giving studio workers somewhat more autonomy. In the early 1940s, Charles Koerner replaced the notorious micromanager George Schaefer as head of production. Recognizing that his background in exhibition gave him little expertise in the nuts and bolts of film production, Koerner took a hands-off approach to running the

2

studio, relying on small production units that worked fairly independently. Koerner also returned RKO to an earlier policy of renting space to independent producers such as Orson Welles and David O. Selznick—providing an example of more independent filmmaking.4 Thus, RKO was the ideal studio for someone like Scott, who hoped to translate his political vision onto film with minimum interference from the studio executives. Scott's personality also played an important role in his successful negotiation of

3

the studio system. Though Scott was certainly ambitious, he stood out for his quiet integrity and lack of affectation in an industry notorious for overblown egos, self-aggrandizement, and pretension. "Everyone loved Adrian," recalled Norma Barzman. He was an "extraordinarily lovely person. Very few people who are as good and sweet as Adrian are forceful and make an impression. Usually 'good' and 'sweet' mean 'weak.' But that wasn't so for Adrian." Actress Betsy Blair Reisz remembered Scott fondly as "such a well-spoken, polite, sweet man." Reisz and her then-husband, Gene Kelly, served on many of the same political committees as Scott and sometimes socialized with Adrian and his wife Anne. "He was the most charming man. He was like the doctor in a small town, a really gentle American fellow. Therefore, if you met Adrian at a dinner party or a meeting, you'd naturally invite him to your house." Even relative strangers shared the warm impressions of Scott's friends, including film historian Bruce Cook, who described Scott as "one of the most decent men I have ever met."5 Film critic David Hanna wrote that "mild mannered Adrian Scott" didn't seem to be the type to have produced a violent, disturbing movie like Murder, My Sweet. Hanna juxtaposed the "gentle, soft spoken and apparently unexcitable" Scott with the "cigar chewing, loud voiced movie impresario" of the old days and suggested that Scott epitomized a new kind of Hollywood producer, thoughtful men "with a more objective attitude toward the screen's function—and consequently a more detached view of their own importance."6 Indeed, Scott saw himself as a different kind of Hollywood producer, particularly in his relationship with screenwriters. For most writers, the producer was a nemesis, one of Paxton's front-office men. As Ceplair and Englund describe it, "It seemed that no matter where the writer wandered in the studio maze, the producer appeared to thwart his progress. He had to be dealt with and satisfied. So the writer had to learn early that it was the producer's idea of a good screenplay which mattered, not his own."7 Despite having "crossed the line" into management, however, Scott had begun his Hollywood career as a screenwriter, and he remained a "writer's producer." Paxton thought Scott was a brilliant producer, with an unerring gift for "concepts and constructions," and credited him with many of the key plot points and stylistic innovations in his screenplays. Though he did not take screen credit for his script contributions, Scott worked

4

closely with his screenwriters and saw his role as inspiring, rather than harassing, frustrating, or intimidating them. Alfred Lewis Leavitt, a screenwriter who worked with Scott at RKO after the war, remembers: Adrian Scott was the greatest producer who ever lived. He spoiled me for anyone else. Adrian would challenge every scene, challenge every line in every speech, every word in every line, and he managed to do it in such a way that you couldn't wait to get back to the typewriter to try it again. He was absolutely marvelous, a lovely person, a gentle man who was also capable of being very tough if he had to be, but never for very long. I thought all producers were going to be like him! I found out that I was wrong.8

As a writer-friendly producer, Scott brought Paxton into the collaboration in ways

5

that were not common within the highly segregated studio system. For example, he consistently invited Paxton onto the set, not only to have him on hand for possible rewrites, but simply to watch the filming. He also invited Paxton to watch the rushes and introduced him to the actors. Paxton recalled a minor stir when Scott introduced him to Dick Powell during the filming of Murder, My Sweet. "I will never forget the look of alarm and confusion on the face of the star when Adrian presented me as the Writer. He was a talented and friendly enough man, this actor, but I don't believe he had ever met a writer before." Paxton fondly recalled being invited along on trips to scout locations. "This was exhilarating, to be out with the fellows, crowded into the back seat of a stretch-out [limousine], suffocated by cigar smoke." Paxton's memories suggest a sort of boy's-school camaraderie, and he clearly felt honored to be included in these masculine rituals, which were exalted by their intermingling of work and play. However, Scott dragged Paxton along to view rushes and scout locations not simply because he and Paxton were old friends and enjoyed spending time together. There was plenty of time to socialize outside of work, to play cards at each other's homes or to have cocktails across the street at Lucey's Restaurant, a popular gathering place for studio workers from RKO and Paramount. Scott included Paxton because he was trying to create a collaborative creative process, to break down the barriers enforced by the studio and to build a working unit. This creative—and political—agenda, this quest for a seamlessness between work and politics, reflected Scott's larger political commitments and the spirit of the Popular Front. Paxton makes clear that Scott's inclusion of him was unusual: "We [writers] had our place and we were expected to keep it. I might never have met a motion picture star if my friend, sponsor, and producer had not been Adrian Scott—a quite remarkable, and in his quiet way, a very radical man."9

Pulp Fiction and Hollywood Realism In his new position as an RKO producer, in the spring and summer of 1944, Scott

6

worked on two films almost simultaneously: one a labor of love, the other a job of work. One of the perks of his new position was that he was able to arrange a screenwriting contract at RKO for his friend John Paxton and to use him as the writer on both projects. The job of work had been assigned to him by the studio: My Pal Wolf, a "kiddy flick" about a little girl and her dog, for RKO's B-unit. Though neither Scott nor Paxton was particularly attracted to My Pal Wolf, they put their heads together, and by tailoring it to the war effort, they "found a way to do it so it wouldn't be a children's film."10 Scott's labor of love was Murder, My Sweet. In combing through the RKO vault in

7

search of a project that would launch his producing career with a bang, he found Raymond Chandler's pulp novel, Farewell, My Lovely, which the studio had purchased in 1940. Scott loved hard-boiled thrillers, as did all his left-wing friends. Norma Barzman remembers that they "all read Chandler, Hammett, Ross McDonald, and adored them."11 For Scott and his progressive cohort who wanted to "tell it like it is," pulp fiction held enormous appeal: the frank sexuality, lust, and passion; the colliding worlds of the mean streets and the mansions of Los Angeles, a collision that exposed a gritty underbelly of greed, corruption, and class politics. A hard-boiled hero like Chandler's Philip Marlowe grappled with his desire to be a knight-protector for the innocent and downtrodden, while cynically recognizing the sordid realities of both human nature and capitalist power relations. Hard-boiled fiction combined realism and idealism in ways that resonated deeply with the political and moral vision of the Popular Front.12 However, the very themes and issues that appealed so powerfully to Hollywood progressives made pulp fiction difficult to reconcile with the Production Code. Though a handful of films were adapted from pulp fiction in the 1930s, they rarely did justice to the original literary source. The series of movies adapted from Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man (1934), for example, with their depiction of a very modern marriage and the sparkling, gin-soaked banter between Nick and Nora Charles (played by William Powell and Myrna Loy), are great fun, but certainly cannot be considered either hard-boiled or noir. Similarly, RKO's first adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely, entitled The Falcon Takes Over—it was one of a series of low-budget Falcon films starring George Brent—bore little resemblance to Chandler's novel. The realism encouraged by wartime filmmaking, however, opened the door for more faithful and "adult" film adaptations of hard-boiled fiction. The flurry of 1940s films adapted from the pulp masters—Hammett, Chandler, Cain—marks the beginning of what would be called "film noir" by French critics after the war, but during the war years was called the "red meat" film cycle by American critics. Early films foreshadowed a number of thematic elements that would come to define film noir: The Maltese Falcon (1940) introduced Humphrey Bogart as hard-boiled detective Sam Spade; This Gun for

8

Hire (1942) featured a hero who was also a psychologically disturbed hired killer. A noirish visual style can also be detected in such early films as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1940) and the sophisticated horror films, such as Cat People (1942), produced by Val Lewton at RKO.13 Nevertheless, the breakthrough film was, beyond a doubt, Double Indemnity

9

(1944). James M. Cain's novel of adulterous lust and murder was first published in 1935, but plans for a film adaptation were immediately and vigorously quashed by the Breen Office in 1936 and again in 1943 (apparently a knee-jerk response, since Breen's March 1943 rejection letter was a verbatim copy of the 1936 letter). By this time, however, Paramount believed the situation had changed and forged ahead with a screenplay; when a partial outline was submitted for review in the fall of 1943, Breen cautiously pronounced that "the basic story seems to meet the requirements of the Production Code." Approved by the Breen office after much maneuvering both on the page and behind the camera by writer-director Billy Wilder and his cowriter Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity set the bar for classic film noir. As Sheri Chinen Biesen argues, "Double Indemnity pushed the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 to its limit and paved the way for dark, controversial films to be produced in the future; when Joseph Breen approved, and condoned, this film, this initial Cain adaptation set the stage and the tone for how Hollywood film noir could successfully maneuver around the Code."14 Double Indemnity definitively kicked off the "red meat" film cycle and created an enormous buzz in Hollywood. Though Double Indemnity was not released to the public until August 1944, a

10

Hollywood insider like Adrian Scott would have been aware of the film and Paramount's successful negotiations with the Breen Office well before that, certainly by April 1944, when he proposed a remake of Farewell, My Lovely that was true to Chandler's novel. The example of Double Indemnity no doubt helped him to convince the executives at RKO that Farewell, My Lovely, too, could be filmed essentially as written. Paxton leapt at the chance to work with Scott, but after reading the novel, he was, he admitted years later, "scared to death." However, working together closely on the script, they "finally whipped it into some kind of form." Scott was insistent that they use Chandler's narrative techniques and some of his marvelous imagery. Though Paxton recalled that it "was a great struggle to put the thing into dramatic form," he and Scott—as well as Chandler—ultimately felt they had succeeded.15 Next, Scott approached Edward Dmytryk to direct the film. Given Dmytryk's high profile at RKO following the success of Behind the Rising Sun, Hitler's Children, and Tender Comrade, as well as his involvement in progressive politics and recent recruitment into the Party, it is not surprising that Scott sought him out to direct

11

Farewell, My Lovely, or, as it was finally titled, Murder, My Sweet. Dmytryk was certainly impressed with the screenplay that Scott and Paxton had written and knew he could make a good film on the $400,000 budget Scott had been allocated.16 However, the production almost ground to a halt when RKO insisted that Scott use aging crooner Dick Powell in the lead role. Though a star with considerable box-office appeal, Powell was known primarily as a pretty-boy singer and dancer in 1930s Warner Bros. musicals—Forty-Second Street, Footlight Parade, Dames, and many others. Scott was aghast. He had been thinking in much grittier terms: Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, for example. Scott knew he could not hope to sign Bogart for his film, but he thought he might be able to get John Garfield for the role of Phillip Marlowe. Garfield, who was then under contract at RKO, had recently made a big splash playing a Spanish Civil War veteran in the tough antifascist thriller The Fallen Sparrow, but Scott was probably equally drawn to Garfield's political reputation. After leaving New York and the Group Theater, Garfield became active in Hollywood politics, and his path undoubtedly crossed with Scott's both on and off the RKO lot (both men were founding members of the Motion Picture Guild and had mutual friends with ties to the Group Theater). Nevertheless, drawing on a Gallup poll to buttress its decision, the studio vetoed Scott's choice of Garfield and decreed that Powell would play Marlowe in his film. According to Paxton, "Adrian almost left the studio over the decision to use Powell. He was horrified. I think he went home 'ill' for two or three days."17 Paxton later remembered that Powell himself was reluctant to take on the role, but

that

Scott

and

Dmytryk—once

they

had

recovered

from

12

their

dismay—convinced him that he could handle the part if he would just be himself. Paxton remembers that he was troubled by Powell's performance: "He did things with the part that were very fortunate, but that at first were a shock to me. I didn't see it as comedy; I didn't know there were as many laughs as he managed to get into it. But he did it with a kind of casual, off-beat type of playing, which was his defense against trying to be Bogart. . . . He developed a flip detective, which I hadn't intended at all and I don't think Chandler had ever intended."18 According to Powell, however, he was eager to break out of his insipid song-and-dance-man image. While under contract at Paramount, he had asked for the lead in Double Indemnity, but the studio executives turned him down flat. At RKO he continued to push for dramatic roles; when Scott pitched Farewell, My Lovely to studio head Charles Koerner, Koerner saw an opportunity to give Powell a shot at playing a tough guy. Once Scott came to terms with the casting of Powell, he brought him fully into the collaborative process; Powell remembered that Scott and Dmytryk "treated me as though I were as important to the business setup as they were, consulting me in the casting, in polishing the script

13

and, later, cutting the picture."19 Powell's performance convinced Scott that his initial doubts about Powell had been misplaced, and in fact, Scott cast Powell again as the star in his next noir thriller, Cornered. He also offered a mea culpa to studio head Charles Koerner, who graciously replied: "This business of ours is more or less of a guessing game at best. If I happened to guess right on Dick Powell it is no sign that I cannot be wrong with my next brainstorm. However, it would have done your hearts good to see the manner in which Farewell, My Lovely was received at our Sales Convention, not only in connection with the work of Dick Powell but also with the all around excellent quality of direction, production and treatment."20

Hard-Boiled, from Page to Screen Much of the success of the movie that would be released as Murder, My Sweet lay

14

in the screenplay written by Scott and Paxton. In adapting Farewell, My Lovely, they stuck closely to the novel. Chandler was famous for his evocative language and imagery, and Farewell, My Lovely is studded with hard-boiled one-liners like, "He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."21 Seeing Chandler as a poet of urban modernism, Scott wanted to use as much of Chandler's writing as possible, telling Paxton, "If we can get some of the feeling and the atmosphere of this . . . then the hell with the whodunit aspect."22 Indeed, in the screenplay, as in the novel, the convoluted plot takes a back seat to language, mood, and characterization.23 The key narrative innovations in Paxton and Scott's screenplay are the use of

15

flashbacks and voice-over narration. These became hallmarks of film noir, but in 1944 they were still rather innovative. As a screenwriter, Scott had used a flashback frame before in Mr. Lucky, but the flashback in Murder, My Sweet does more than just set the stage (as in Mr. Lucky); it also works to cast doubt on the reliability of the narrator. Thus, Murder, My Sweet opens in a police station, as Marlowe, eyes bandaged, is being grilled by the cops. This raises numerous questions for the audience: Is this guy in trouble? Is he implicated in a crime? Can he be trusted? The bright overhead light that casts shadows over the interrogation room, the barked hostile questions, Marlowe's bandaged eyes—all raise the specter of unknown, unexplained violence and immediately create a tense, unsettling mood. Marlowe's world-weary voice-over bridges the shift from the interrogation room to his own seedy office, as he explains that he was hired to undertake two seemingly separate investigations. First, ex-jailbird Moose Malloy (played by Mike Mazurki) demands that Marlowe find his missing girlfriend, the "cute-as-lace-pants" showgirl Velma Valento. The trail leads from Florian's, the bar where Velma used

16

to work, to the run-down home of the widow Florian (played by Esther Howard). In this scene, Paxton and Scott demonstrate that they, too, can write "hard-boiled," when Marlowe describes Mrs. Florian as "a gal who'd take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle." Emerging from this encounter with a nearly empty bottle and a signed photograph of Velma Valento, Marlowe watches as a suddenly sober Mrs. Florian makes a mysterious phone call. In the second case, Lindsay Marriott, an effete con man, hires Marlowe to protect

17

him during the ransom exchange for a stolen jade necklace. The exchange goes bad, Marriott is killed, and Marlowe is blackjacked, but he comes back to consciousness in time to catch a brief but fuzzy glimpse of a woman. That woman (played by Anne Shirley) appears at Marlowe's office the next day, posing as a reporter investigating the Marriott killing, but the streetwise detective sees through her immediately. She admits that her name is Ann Grayle, that the stolen necklace belongs to her wicked stepmother, Helen, and that she herself got caught up in the web of deceit while trying to protect her cuckolded father. As the scene shifts from the grubby proletarian milieu of Marlowe's office to the manicured grounds of the Grayle mansion, Marlowe's ironic voice-over narrates the class chasm: "It was a nice little front yard. Cozy. Okay for the average family. Only you needed a compass to go to the mailbox. The house was alright too. But it wasn't as big as Buckingham Palace." Inside, the cavernous foyer echoes, and Marlowe kicks up his heels (an ironic reminder of the "old" Dick Powell, perhaps) on his way to meet the parents. Mr. Grayle (played by Miles Mander) is a foolish but very wealthy old man, oblivious to everything but his priceless collection of jade. Helen Grayle (deliciously played by Claire Trevor) is a classic noir spider woman, as treacherous as she is beautiful; she immediately tries to seduce Marlowe, and he plays along (though by the end of the film it is clear that the straight-talking stepdaughter Ann is the woman he's truly fallen for). Softening up Marlowe with cocktails and kisses, Helen convinces him to stay on the case. She also reveals that she and the murdered Marriott were both patients of "therapist" Jules Amthor (played by Otto Kruger). Believing that Marlowe has the jade necklace, the suavely vicious Amthor hires Moose Malloy to bring Marlowe to his posh penthouse, where Malloy tries to throttle the truth from him. When that fails, Marlowe is held hostage at Amthor's "sanitarium," a front for his blackmailing ring, and drugged with a truth serum to get him to talk. Eventually making his escape, Marlowe hooks up with Ann, and together they pursue the investigation to the Grayles' beach house, where they run into Helen, and a catfight between the two women sends Ann off in a huff. Here things begin to get messy, as Helen explains to Marlowe that she was being blackmailed by Amthor for adultery and was to have given him the necklace as hush money, but it was stolen. Admitting that she's been "very bad," she throws herself at

18

Marlowe, begging him to kill Amthor so that she can finally have some "peace." Again, Marlowe appears to go along, and we wonder if he has finally succumbed, either to her personal charms or to the lure of her money. Eventually the two investigations come together when Moose doesn't recognize the woman in the photo given to him by Mrs. Florian, and Marlowe finally figures out that Helen is the missing Velma Valento. The final showdown comes at the Grayles' beach house: while Moose waits

19

outside for Marlowe's signal, Helen presents Marlowe with the jade necklace, coyly admitting that she faked the robbery. When she realizes that Marlowe has not fallen for her charms after all, she pulls a gun on him, and now also reveals that Amthor and Mrs. Florian were blackmailing her, not just for adultery, but for a far more sordid criminal past. She confesses that the ransom exchange was a ruse to get rid of both Marlowe, who was asking too many questions about her past, and Marriott, who had served his purpose and now knew too much. At this point, Ann and Mr. Grayle arrive to find Helen holding Marlowe at gunpoint; Mr. Grayle at first seems to be going along with Helen and takes Marlowe's gun, but then shoots Helen in the gut. Moose, alerted by the gunshot, arrives and tries to throttle Mr. Grayle; Marlowe steps between them just as Grayle fires another shot, and the scene shifts back to the police interrogation room. Marlowe, blinded by the muzzle flash, says he heard three more shots, but doesn't know what happened; the police explain that both Moose and Mr. Grayle were killed as they fought over the gun. Only Marlowe and Ann are left alive, and they end the picture in a romantic clinch, after Marlowe thoughtfully removes his gun from his breast pocket so it won't leave a bruise.

Edward Dmytryk and Noir Style Under Dmytryk's direction, aided by Harry J. Wild's stunning camera work, the film's visual style powerfully reinforced these plot convolutions and moral ambiguities and helped to codify the "look" of film noir. Innovative work by others on the RKO lot during the early 1940s undoubtedly helped to shape Dmytryk's emerging noir style in Murder, My Sweet. Orson Welles had filmed Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) there, and Harry J. Wild, the cameraman on Murder, My Sweet, had worked with Welles on the second unit for both films. European émigrés also were a strong presence at RKO. Hitchcock filmed the noirish psychological thriller Suspicion at RKO in 1941; Fritz Lang, an antifascist émigré whose early work in Metropolis (1927), M (1931) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) virtually defined German expressionism, filmed Woman in the Window at RKO in 1944 (and went on to an illustrious career as a noir director). Another significant influence was the work of Val Lewton, producer of a series of brilliant, low-budget horror films at RKO throughout the 1940s,

20

beginning with Cat People (1942). Jacques Tourneur directed several films for Lewton before moving on to Out of the Past (1947), perhaps one of the best noirs ever made; Lewton's innovative B-unit also launched the directing careers of Mark Robson and Robert Wise, both of whom had strong ties to Popular Front politics and went on to direct both films noir and social problem films. Dmytryk drew on these examples in directing Murder, My Sweet, shooting from very low angles and relying on depth of field and lighting effects to distort the perspective and create dramatic shadows, producing a dark, disturbing mood.24 This is reinforced by the work of RKO art director Albert S. D'Agostino, in

21

collaboration with Carroll Clark, and Murder, My Sweet is a textbook example of the importance of setting in film noir. Marlowe's adventures take him on a tour of the lounge spaces of Los Angeles, from the seedy bar where Moose and Marlowe first look for Velma to the campy Polynesian cocktail lounge, with its exotic Asian dancers, where Marlowe first realizes he's being played by Helen. Marlowe's dingy office and one-room bachelor apartment reinforce the perception of the detective as a man on the make, willing to do anything for a buck. From the dark streets of the city, whether lit by a single streetlamp or brazenly flashing neon signs, to the desolate coastline, where Marlowe is first blackjacked by an unknown assailant, there is no safe haven from disorder and danger. The investigation also leads Marlowe into the sleek, shiny world of the monied class, brightly lit sites of wealth that are invariably linked to corruption: the Grayle mansion; Jules Amthor's ritzy apartment and his high-toned "clinic" that conceals a blackmail ring; and the Grayles' moderne beach house, the site of Helen's adulterous liaisons as well as the film's deadly denouement, which leaves three bodies bleeding onto the plush white carpet. RKO's

strong

technical

and

special

effects

departments

also

contributed

significantly to the visual innovation in Murder, My Sweet. Special effects wizard Vernon L. Walker had earlier worked on King Kong (1933) as well as Citizen Kane (1941) and the very early noir, Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), before collaborating with montage master Douglas Travers and Dmytryk on Murder, My Sweet. Special effects play a significant role in the film's innovative visual style, reinforcing the sinister settings and mood, but also making literal Marlowe's disorientation at key points in his investigation. In each of the scenes in which Marlowe is knocked out, he appears literally to be overtaken by unconsciousness as inky blackness oozes from the edges of the frame, closing in toward the center. "A black pool opened up," Marlowe narrates after being bludgeoned at the jewel exchange. "I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good. Like an amputated leg." As Marlowe regains consciousness, the camera slowly returns to focus.

22

Even more dramatic is the fabulously weird and psychedelic sequence of Marlowe

23

on drugs. Injected with "truth serum" while being held at Amthor's sanitarium, Marlowe hallucinates falling into a spinning gyroscopic pit, the disembodied heads of Amthor and Moose looming over him; a series of shrinking doors that he scrambles through to escape the gigantic hypodermic needle that sends him deeper into oblivion; the "spiderwebs" that cover the camera lens and convey his disorientation as he struggles back to consciousness. It was this extended montage, in particular, in Murder, My Sweet's innovative visual style that prompted one film historian to call Dmytryk "perhaps the most underrated stylist of Hollywood's expressionist period."25

Negotiating the Production Code On April 13, 1944, Breen weighed in on the script for Murder, My Sweet, reporting

24

that the "basic story seems to meet the requirements of the Production Code," but offering numerous suggestions for changes, particularly on issues of excessive violence and sexuality. Breen warns, for example, "There must, of course, be nothing of the 'pansy' characterization about Marriott," and insists, "Inasmuch as Helen is a married woman, the physical contact between her and Marlowe should be kept to a minimum. We suggest that they only actually embrace once in this sequence, omitting the later embrace on page 60." Scott's notes in the margins of this document include check marks, question marks, and the scribbled phrase, "will argue," suggesting that, like the producers of Double Indemnity, Scott hoped to push the envelope of the Production Code. Among the issues he planned to argue were Breen's request that he delete Moose's description of Velma as "cute as lace pants" and that he rewrite Helen's line, "Maybe you were just making love to me." Both lines appear in the final filmed version. Similarly, Breen requested that they "cut down the embracing and kissing between Marlowe and Helen," but the filmed scenes contain plenty of steamy physical contact between the two characters.26 Breen also requested that the violence in Murder, My Sweet be toned down, particularly the scenes in which Amthor hits Marlowe with the gun butt and in which Marlowe uses a bedspring to knock out his jailor at the sanitarium. Though Scott scribbled "done" in the margins of Breen's memo, both actions appear in the final film and do not seem to be "masked" as Breen had wanted. Interestingly, rather than invoking violations of the Production Code, Breen suggested these changes to prevent the violent scenes from being deleted by local censor boards. Indeed, the Ohio censor board did cut precisely these scenes, as well as the steamier segments from the love scenes between Marlowe and Helen. In other cases, however, Breen did request changes based on regulations in the Code. For example, responding to implications in early screenplay drafts that Mr. Grayle kills

25

himself after shooting his wife and Moose, Breen noted, "It will not be permissible to suggest that Mr. Grayle escapes punishment by committing suicide." Scott complied with Breen's request, and in the filmed version, Grayle is killed in the struggle for the gun—though Breen did have to ask twice before Scott and Paxton made the change.27 Significantly, when interviewed by film columnist David Hanna a year later, Scott

26

recalled that he and his coworkers, in Hanna's words, "were left alone in the making of Murder, My Sweet. It was their baby and they were free to do with it as they chose."28 This is not, however, exactly true, and Murder, My Sweet offers an interesting example of Sheri Chinen Biesen's argument that the Production Code had become more malleable under the pressures of "realism" in wartime filmmaking. In 1944 the Code was still in place: Breen and his staff read Scott and Paxton's screenplay, prepared detailed memos listing changes necessary to bring the script into compliance with the Code, and reviewed the completed film before giving their approval, without which the film could not be screened anywhere in the United States. When the completed film was viewed by the Breen Office on August 29, 1944, it "created extremely enthusiastic comment. The direction, dialogue and performance all came in for extended compliments for everyone present."29 In his dealings with the censorship office, Scott walked a fine line between accommodation and resistance. In some cases, he acquiesced to requested changes, but in others he seems to have simply ignored Breen and the Code. So, upon screening the final version of Murder, My Sweet, were Breen and his subordinates not aware that Scott and RKO had defied their edicts? Did they not hear the characters speak lines they had asked to have deleted? Did they not flinch when the gun butt plunged toward Marlowe's head—after they had specifically requested that the violent action be masked? Were they content with Dmytryk's "pulling his punch"—showing the sharp downward trajectory, but not the actual impact of weapon on skull? Or did they decide that what had appeared troubling on paper, in their review of the screenplay, was acceptable on-screen, or at least seemed appropriate to the unfolding of the dark, noirish narrative of Murder, My Sweet? Certainly, following the release of Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet, the trickle of tough thrillers became a torrent, as noir thematics and visual style became a leading strategy for conveying the shifting politics and mood of the postwar period. Or perhaps, as James M. Cain suggested, the Breen Office and studio executives simply had gotten "hep to the fact that plenty of real crime takes place every day and that it makes a good movie. . . . The public is fed up with the old-fashioned melodramatic type of hokum."30

Audience and Critical Response

27

Certainly, American audiences seemed to agree that Murder, My Sweet was

28

excellent entertainment. RKO held preview screenings at its Hillstreet Theater in downtown Los Angeles in early October 1944 and later that month at the Alex Theater in Glendale. The Hillstreet audience had come to the theater expecting to see The Impatient Years, a comedy about a couple trying to rebuild their marriage after the war. Signalling their exhaustion with war films, many in this preview audience remarked on the "newness" of Murder, My Sweet: "It's a relief to go and see a picture as witty as this one and no war in it," remarked one viewer, while a vet commented, "It had no war scenes and is just the type of picture I like as I am in the Navy and I see enough of war as it is." Others, however, remarked on the film's "newness" in terms of its difference from other mysteries, both in its humor and visual style. According to one viewer, "It was different than most of the other murder pictures in that there was more meaning to it. The plot was definite and carried through. Also I liked the comedy bits." Another enthused, "The dialogue is terse, fresh and well-adapted to the plot. The action is well-paced, but spotty. Three cheers for the photography which adds punch and originality to the story." Several commented specifically on the power of Dmytryk's direction, and one particularly noted the noir elements of the film's lighting and the preponderance of night scenes, complaining, "Photographic lighting not too good, and what happened to the days?" The complex plot threw a number of viewers, but most took it in stride: "Hard to follow but it's that sort of picture," reasoned one viewer, while another commented, "A very unusual film. The plot may be a little complicated for Mr. Average Moviegoer; it forces him to think. But is that bad? The photography was marvelous, and Powell will surprise his fans with a really fine bit of acting. I enjoyed the film as it stands and I hope that it won't be cut too much to suit Mr. Average Moviegoer." Significantly, a number of viewers connected Murder, My Sweet specifically with other noir films: "I used to think The Maltese Falcon was the best whodunit made but this is definitely better in every way," while another enthused, "A splendid picture in every department, acting, tempo, photography, casting, etc!! In spite of being an identical twin to Double Indemnity it is strong enough to survive and surpass it."31 Though the vast majority of the preview audience applauded the film, a small segment of the preview audience disagreed; their issues with the films are disparate and fascinating. One viewer, for example, was unimpressed with the special effects, sniffing, "Plenty of suspense but why all the doors and such? It's kind of a silly name, too." Another found the violence in the film too disturbing: "To [sic] many murders and near murders. It left one weak, the tension was so great. It took me three hours to relax after seeing it." Interestingly, some who liked the film itself had concerns about its "adult" nature and the potential impact on different audiences. One, for example, recommended the movie highly, but

29

added, "I don't think it's one for children to see." Another commented, "Yes, I liked it but do not approve this type of movie. Narrative was a little different but the type which tears down moral [sic]." (One wonders here if this viewer intended to say "morale" or "morals.") There was almost universal praise for the "new" Dick Powell (as well as faint

30

praise for the "old" Dick Powell): "Usually don't like Dick Powell but he was swell in this show," one viewer commented, while another reported, "After theater remarks all in favor of Powell without singing." Another weighed in, "Powell was marvelous as the detective. I don't believe I have ever enjoyed a picture of his as much. He should play characters of this type from now on." Others weren't convinced, arguing that Powell was "too weak for the part," especially compared to Bogart, while the viewer who needed several hours to recover from the violence in Murder, My Sweet admitted to preferring the singing Powell. Nevertheless, the role of Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet transformed Powell's film persona from a cherubic crooner into a legitimate tough guy and became one of the key selling points of Murder, My Sweet for audiences in the 1940s. RKO's preview screenings for film exhibitors in late 1944 also pointed toward a positive public reception for Murder, My Sweet. Like the preview audiences, exhibitors loved the film, exclaiming, "Top honors must go to Edward Dmytryk for his superb and novel handling of an involved story which could have easily become a tangled chain of mysterious circumstances, but emerges instead as a directorial triumph in suspense utilizing the versatility of the motion picture camera to the utmost." Praising the film's "crisp and adult" dialogue, the reviewer from Film Bulletin noted, "Occasionally, the unusual photographic effects are given precedence over story continuity, but never to the extent of relinquishing interest, which is always held and often heightened to the point of breathless absorption."32 The reviewer from Showmen's Trade Review agreed, describing the film as a "vital, passionately violent detective story of rapid action and swift pace that will delight all audiences except for a few of the more squeamish about life." He continued: From start to finish it has an electric quality of tension and murderous directness. There is no waste[d] motion, not so much as a foot of film that could be cut out. As always, the delineation and presentation of men and women of evil who are strong in their craft and cunning, holds a fascination that is as hypnotic as the beady stare of the snake. Dick Powell, in the best role of his career, is strong, ruthless, bitter and yet on the side of the law. His counterpart is Claire Trevor, a lush and lustful woman who crushes anything that she can reach.33

Still, the film presented a number of challenges for exhibitors: "The film's chief handicaps, from the boxoffice standpoint, are the title, deceptive to all but the

31

comparatively few who have read the Raymond Chandler novel, and the minor marquee value of the cast." However, Film Bulletin predicted the film could be "a real 'sleeper' for the exhibitor" with strong marketing and word-of-mouth, while Showmen's Trade Review, praising the "earthy, hard glitter of reality about the picture," promised, "Unless your marquee requires more 'name' strength, figure this film to put over your show with a bang."34 When concerns about the film's "misleading" title emerged following the

32

screenings for preview audiences and exhibitors, RKO turned to the Gallup Organization. Based on a survey of the data, including the sales figures for Chandler's novel, Gallup recommended a title change. Scott resisted this, arguing that Gallup had based their decision on total sales of 190,000, while the publisher Knopf reported nearly 700,000 books sold to date. Scott believed that there was a significant audience of pulp-fiction readers and that the draw of Chandler's name and original title would bring them into the theaters.35 However, this was one battle Scott did not win. As he described the situation, The title Farewell, My Lovely was bad. Everyone thought it was a musical. It was a fine picture, but it would gross only a million and a half if the title Farewell, My Lovely remained. The title was changed. And they guaranteed a gross of two million four hundred thousand—perhaps even more. The picture grossed one million seven hundred and fifty thousand, about five hundred thousand less than they predicted. The answer they give: It was Dick Powell's fault. People didn't expect to see him in this kind of picture. If we had some other star, there would have been a different result. Also, I might add, they originally recommended Dick Powell on the basis of his star value: There was a large following that he had that no one knew about. In other words, he was good for the picture.36

This experience encapsulated many of the frustrations Scott had with working within the studio system, and he later commented to his brother Allan, "I have had contact with the Gallup bunch and I must say that I loathe them. It's pseudo-scientific nonsense, geared for the palates of the guys who own motion pictures. It can accomplish any number of things which the owners want accomplished. But it chiefly is a weapon against innovation, against new ideas, any ideas. It is a device subscribing to the status quo of pictures—what they want is more of the same; whatever has been done, must be done again."37 Murder, My Sweet—under any title—was not "more of the same," as the critics unanimously agreed. Like the postwar French critics, American critics recognized that they were seeing something new out of Hollywood. Violence was one of the primary connections between these films. "The screen's recent vogue for violence" was evident to the critic at Look Magazine in films such as Laura, Double Indemnity, and The Woman in the Window as well as Murder, My Sweet, while

33

New York Daily News critic Kate Cameron noted: "Since Paramount's Double Indemnity became one of Hollywood's box-office hits last year, all the studios have gone in for making pictures based on realistic murder stories. The tougher and gorier they make these thrillers, the better, it seems."38 "The vogue for hard-boiled melodrama reaches some kind of peak in the Palace's new movie, Murder, My Sweet," wrote Eileen Creelman of the New York Sun. Though noting that she was "still vague about who shot whom, and why," she felt the plot's confusion did not detract from the pleasurably "electric quality" of watching the film: "The picture captures the spirit of the Chandler thriller. You may not be at all sure what is going on; but you're excited about it, all the same."39 For Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times, "atmosphere" was Murder, My Sweet's leading virtue: "You get that mysterious, creepy feeling as soon as the production screening . . . starts, and it keeps right on permeating and permeating. Just as it begins in brooding shadows, so does the feature end practically that way in a lonely house on a cliff, where the identity of killers is revealed. One needs to pull the good old word 'eerie' out of the dictionary to describe much if not all that happens."40 The newness of these kinds of films is also suggested by the reviewer for the Hollywood Citizen–News, who put quotation marks around key words in his commentary, suggesting either ironic distance or that he was still trying to get comfortable with the hard-boiled slang: "As a private 'eye' [Marlowe] becomes involved with a couple of blackmailers, a convict just out of 'stir,' and a pair of beauties . . . He gets 'slapped,' gun-whipped, slugged, choked, and 'hypoed,' and through clever special effects you understand exactly what he's going through. And it's not pretty."41 Several critics drew attention to the murky morality of the pulp genre and the

34

complexities of a hard-boiled hero like Marlowe. Schallert remarked, "His position in this whole matter is so equivocal that when you first encounter him the police are investigating him rather than the rest of the culprits."42 New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, who recommended Murder, My Sweet as "a sure cure for low blood pressure," described Marlowe as "a private detective who would take a dollar from anyone, with no questions asked," adding that he is "just a shade above his clients, who might politely be called questionable characters. He is not a particularly shrewd operator as Dick Powell draws him, but he has persistence and capacity for taking a beating that is downright admirable."43 As might be expected, Dick Powell's performance received a great deal of attention and praise from the critics, who frequently drew comparisons with the ultimate tough guy, Humphrey Bogart. "It was evident that Dick's long and unsuppressed desire to play straight dramatic roles is to be abundantly satisfied. He has the stuff. He acts the part of a 'private eye' in this thriller with the skill and persuasion of a Cagney or Bogart,"44 argued reviewer Corbin Patrick, while

35

Kate Cameron felt Powell "surprises the audience by the slickness and assurance of his performance as the super-smooth dick. Humphrey Bogart, who is to represent Marlowe in Warner Bros. forthcoming production of Chandler's The Big Sleep,

will

have

to

stay

on

his

toes

in

order

to

better

the

Powell

characterization."45 Look featured a photo of Powell looking hard-boiled, holding a drink in one hand and a gun in the other, with the caption: "Dick Powell, crooner of 1933's 42nd Street, wins a future as a tough guy."46 Released in the summer of 1944, Murder, My Sweet earned a tidy profit for RKO

36

and was a turning point for Scott: "From the position of a new, untried producer he graduated to the busiest man in the studio."47 Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk soon came to be seen as something of a team at RKO, making four films together in three years. Although all three men also worked on separate projects during this period, the films that they made together stand apart from the rest.48 Scott was the driving force—both politically and creatively—behind this collaboration, and in producing Scott found his métier. Indeed, one friend remembered that, after the breakaway success of Murder, My Sweet, he was hailed as "the new boy wonder," and Norma Barzman remembers that "we all felt it was only a matter of time before Adrian was running the show at RKO."49 Murder, My Sweet also changed Adrian Scott's life on a very personal level. On the set, Scott met and fell in love with actress Anne Shirley. Born Dawn Evelyeen Paris, she worked in her first Hollywood film at age five as Dawn O'Day, but after starring in the title role of Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables in 1934, she adopted the character's name as her own. Anne made a successful transition from child actor to ingenue to leading lady, appearing in nearly fifty films between 1922 and 1944. Despite her success in Hollywood—she was nominated in 1937 for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in the role of Barbara Stanwyck's daughter in the tearjerker Stella Dallas—Anne hated acting and continued only under pressure from her dominating stage mother. Plagued by stage fright, she became so nervous at the prospect of appearing before the cameras that she vomited before each scene, and she retired from acting soon after marrying Scott in 1945. Though Adrian's close friend Norma Barzman thought Anne was "a very tortured woman," Norma also found her extremely bright, despite her lack of formal education: She had a quality of knowing about her, as if she had absorbed the language and style of the New Yorker (without having actually read the magazine). She had a very sharp wit, and she had three smart, with-it girlfriends that impressed other people: Bubbles Schinasi, who was married to MGM producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr.; singing star Deanna Durbin; and Phyllis Cerf, wife of publisher Bennett Cerf.

37

Scott remained very close to the Barzmans after his marriage to Anne. The two couples frequently socialized together and often formed a sixsome with screenwriter Bobby Lees and his wife Jeannie. Every Christmas the Lees hosted a tree-decorating party for all their friends. And every Monday night Jeannie Lees made soup, and after dinner the group watched a movie or played cards together. Adrian loved to play cards, and he and Anne were serious poker players, along with old friends Edmund North and Lew and Edie Wasserman. As Norma remembers, "Adrian liked living with Annie. He liked the way she decorated their house on Beverly Drive. [Their life together] was fun."50

Radical Visions for Postwar America Amid the work and play, politics remained a central focus of Adrian Scott's life.

38

Though filmmaking was in many ways his primary mode of political activism, he continued to work in several Popular Front organizations and to attend Party meetings. During this period Scott was part of a "special group" of Hollywood Communists that included director Francis Faragoh, John Howard Lawson, and Dmytryk. This was a small group of Communists, no more than eight or ten, with prestigious positions within the film industry, who met only occasionally to protect the anonymity of its members. First invited by Scott to attend a political discussion group at Faragoh's home in 1945, Dmytryk remembered that he "felt considerably out of place not being able to engage in the theoretical discussions which were under the leadership of John Howard Lawson." Dmytryk believed that "because of the fact that it was Scott who generally notified him of meetings together with the fact that Scott appeared to be a little better founded in Marxism then [sic] he was, he had always felt that Adrian Scott had preceded him in the movement and was more a student of it."51 Though Scott never developed the kind of friendship with Dmytryk that he had

39

with John Paxton or Ben Barzman, he respected Dmytryk's skill as director, and the two men spent a great deal of time together both on their shared creative projects at the studio and in their political work in the world. Scott gave several guest lectures for the film classes Dmytryk taught at the People's Educational Center, and they both belonged to several of the same Popular Front organizations, particularly the Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC). The Hollywood Democratic Committee, the leading Popular Front group of the war years, was the reincarnation of an earlier group, the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, which had lost its political credibility in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. The revitalized liberal-radical solidarity of the war years provided the impetus for the HDC, which was founded in January 1943; over two hundred industry progressives attended the inaugural meeting at the Hollywood Roosevelt

40

Hotel. In 1945, the HDC affiliated with the national Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, and changed its name to Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (HICCASP), which became the leading progressive organization in Southern California in the postwar years. By 1945, film industry membership stood at nearly 3,000, and monthly contributions averaged a phenomenal $13,000. Though the group's president, George Pepper, was a Communist, HICCASP was truly a Popular Front alliance of liberals and radicals, and many key leadership positions were held by liberals like Gene Kelly, Olivia De Havilland, Emmet Lavery, Edward G. Robinson, and Orson Welles.52 As the embodiment of the Popular Front in the war years, the HDC worked on a

41

wide range of issues, from championing the cause of labor and civil rights to voicing support for the United Nations and the development of responsible postwar policies on nuclear weapons. However, as early as the summer of 1943, the HDC focused its attention almost exclusively on the campaign to reelect FDR to a fourth term—a goal that created remarkable unity among American progressives. As Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund point out, "Roosevelt's power as a rallying point against all the domestic forces of darkness cannot be overestimated. Centrist liberals and Communists alike shared the feeling that Franklin Roosevelt alone could stem the tide of domestic reaction and preserve the Grand Alliance in Europe."53 Roosevelt's reelection in November 1944 coincided with dramatic military successes on the European front. Following the invasion of Normandy in August, the Allies drove the German Army steadily eastward toward the Rhine. Despite a last-ditch counteroffensive by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, it was clear in the fall of 1944 that the tide had turned in Europe and the Nazis were on the run.54 However, on April 12, 1945, five months after his reelection and two months before the surrender of Germany, President Roosevelt died in office. Progressives throughout the world mourned his passing and feared that their world had just been turned upside down. A week after FDR's untimely death, the HDC sent a telegram to his successor, Harry S. Truman: "In this hour, our country needs unity more than ever. We of motion picture, radio and music solemnly pledge to work for the unity of all Americans behind your leadership for the carrying out of the principles of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as so eloquently stated in your moving address to Congress." Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk, along with Scott's wife Anne Shirley and his close friend Ben Barzman, joined nearly four hundred other Hollywood luminaries in signing the telegram.55 The incredible response by Hollywood progressives signified not only their tremendous respect and even adoration for FDR, but also their recognition that his death would fundamentally transform the political landscape. As Bobby Lees, a Communist screenwriter and

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close friend of Scott's, remembered, after Roosevelt died "we played Earl Robinson's 'Lonesome Train' in our living room with a bunch of friends, all weeping. We sensed right then and there that this was the end."56 As it turned out, Lees's intuition was correct. The death of FDR truly marked the

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end of an era in American politics and society. Harry S. Truman was no Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Popular Front would prove no match for the forces of reaction. Though Hollywood progressives had high hopes for continuation of the wartime alliance between liberals and radicals, the political tide was already turning against the American Left. First, Truman's ascension to the presidency and the conflicts over the postwar division of power in Europe marked the beginning of the Cold War and a significant shift in the American attitude toward Stalin and the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Communist Party of America, responding to changes in the international political line, summarily dissolved the Communist Political Association and replaced Party head Earl Browder with hard-liner William Z. Foster, which effectively signaled the end of the Popular Front. In Hollywood, right-wing activists banded together to form the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a coalition dedicated to ridding the film industry of radicals and Hollywood movies of subversive ideas. And finally, the long-simmering tensions between the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), a conservative, mob-infiltrated craft guild, and the radical upstart Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) erupted in strike violence in the summer of 1945. Though the CSU was briefly successful, the strike proved extremely divisive, particularly within the Screen Writers Guild.57 Despite these ominous developments, Hollywood progressives greeted the end of the war with jubilation and foresaw a new era in filmmaking right around the corner.58 Those who had served overseas returned to Hollywood with a new vision and with new technical skills that helped change the look of postwar films. For example, director Abe Polonsky remembered that in filming Body and Soul, cameraman James Wong Howe used "cameramen with experience at the battlefront, who had learned how to use hand-held cameras, in order to get some really unusual shots. That made Body and Soul kind of special for the time."59 During the war a whole range of workers in Hollywood—writers, directors, actors, cameramen, cutters, and technicians—had experienced a "new exhilaration." They felt their skills were making a significant contribution to the war effort and that the medium of film was being put to its most important use ever. As left-wing director Irving Pichel argued, "Nobody laments that there are no more buzzbombs and V-2's and burning cities and gas chambers for us to dramatize, but we must grant that the universal tragedy, from Warsaw to Nagasaki, while it was being enacted, gave America a unified morality which in turn gave films a mandate for reality and purpose."60

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Certainly, the war had given a new legitimacy to political themes in Hollywood

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films. Radical writers had had a taste of melding their art and their politics, and they wanted more. The depiction of American social problems—particularly the symptoms of racial unrest and discrimination, such as the internment of Japanese Americans, a wave of lynchings in the South, race riots in Detroit, the Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles, an upsurge in anti-Semitism—long discouraged under the Production Code, was also taboo under the Office of War Information guidelines, for fear that a frank examination of domestic unrest during the war years would undercut the solidarity of the home front. With the defeat of fascism in sight, however, Hollywood progressives "assumed that the wartime moratorium on the social problem film . . . would come to an end. There was a belief that the wartime responsibilities of the industry, together with the realism of service documentaries, could be continued in post-war Hollywood filmmaking."61 The new openness of the Breen Office to hard-boiled "adult" thrillers like Murder,

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My Sweet suggested that the wartime realism had, indeed, had a fundamental impact on the film industry. Many in Hollywood believed that the war had also changed American moviegoers and their expectations of Hollywood films. Film historian Ronald Davis explains, "In the postwar period, with movie audiences becoming more sophisticated, Hollywood's approach began to look naïve and old-fashioned. Much of the mystery, adventure, and romance the big studios had provided was too simplistic for a more complex, less idealistic world to accept."62 Darryl F. Zanuck returned from the war confident that the postwar audience would be open to films with more mature, adult themes, and he was ready to commit his studio to making them. As early as 1943, at a conference sponsored by the Hollywood Writers' Mobilization, Zanuck shared his belief that Hollywood must "begin to deal realistically in film with the causes of wars and panics, with social upheavals and depression, with starvation and want and barbarism under whatever guise."63 Adrian Scott certainly shared these sentiments, and during this period, he began work on a new film, an internationalist antifascist thriller entitled Cornered. Though this marked Scott's first opportunity to truly integrate his political and artistic visions, the project was in many ways an agonizing experience for him, testing the limits of his ability to work within the studio system and challenging his commitment to the Communist Party.

Notes Note 1: Bernard Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 126. Note 2: Scott's perception was shared by John Houseman, who himself straddled the roles of producer and actor: "Beginning in the late twenties with talking pictures and ending with the dissolution of the major studios in the mid-sixties, the producer was, in fact, the key

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figure in the California filmmaking structure." John Houseman, Front and Center (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 117. Note 3: Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999. Note 4: Richard Jewell, interview with author, July 20, 2004; Richard Jewell, The RKO Story (London: Octopus Books, 1982), 140–142. Note 5: Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Betsy Blair Reisz, interview with Patrick McGilligan, in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 551; Bruce Cook, Dalton Trumbo (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977), 281. Note 6: Reisz, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 551; article by David Hanna, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 7: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 6. Note 8: John Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, typed letter, July 1977, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS; Alfred Lewis Leavitt, interview by Larry Ceplair, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 453. Note 9: Typescript funeral eulogy for John Paxton, n.d., in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 10: J. D. Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word for It, Meaning—Exaltation—John Paxton" [interview with Paxton], in J. D. Marshall, Blueprint in Babylon (Tempe, Ariz.: Phoenix House, 1978), 259. Paxton actually wrote Murder, My Sweet first. The RKO production and script files at UCLA indicate that on May 12, 1944, Paxton began his assignment to My Pal Wolf, while his final script of Murder, My Sweet is dated May 8. The shooting schedules of the two films overlapped, however: Murder, My Sweet was shot from May 8 through June 30, while My Pal Wolf began shooting on May 22 and wrapped on June 23. Note 11: Barzman, interview with author, 1999; Dick, Radical Innocence, 128. Note 12: The literature on pulp fiction is extensive, and much innovative work has been done in the past decade. Books I have found particularly useful include: Sean McCann, Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); Erin A. Smith, Hard-Boiled: Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), and Megan E. Abbot, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). A classic but still useful text is David Madden, Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968). Note 13: Sheri Chinen Biesen, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Note 14: Breen quoted in Biesen, Blackout, 101; Biesen, Blackout, 98–102. Note 15: Dick, Radical Innocence, 128; Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [Paxton interview], 259; Paxton, interview with Ceplair; Paxton, taped interview, 1977. Note 16: Edward Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, But Not a Bad Living (New York: Times Books, 1978), 58. Note 17: John Paxton, taped interview [n.a.], 1977, Los Angeles. For details on John Garfield, see Robert Sklar, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), and Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), on Garfield's work with the Group Theater. Note 18: Paxton, taped interview, 1977.

Note 19: Dick Powell, "The Role I Liked Best . . ." Saturday Evening Post (October 21, 1946), in Murder, My Sweet [hereafter, MMS] Production File, AMPAS. Note 20: C. W. Koerner to "Dear Boys," August 3, 1944, in Scott Papers, B21-F12, AHC. Note 21: Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (New York: Knopf, 1940; rpt. Random House/Vintage Books, 1976), 1. Note 22: Paxton, taped interview, 1977. Note 23: In writing Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler cannibalized his own work, piecing together three short stories published in Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1930s; as a result, the plot is sometimes very confusing. This seems to be a hallmark of Chandler's work, and he once allegedly admitted that he himself didn't know who had killed Sean Reagan in The Big Sleep. Note 24: Richard Jewell, interview with author, July 2004; Jewell, The RKO Story; Biesen, Blackout, 115. Note 25: Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 131. Note 26: Joseph Breen to William Gordon, April 13, 1944, in Scott Papers, B21-F12, AHC. Note 27: Joseph Breen to William Gordon, April 13, 1944; Breen to Gordon, May 1, 1944; Breen to RKO, February 6, 1945, all in Scott Papers, B21-F12, AHC. The Office of War Information also took issue with the violence in Murder, My Sweet, though reviewer Gene Kern was less concerned with potential conflicts with the Production Code than with making sure that the film was suitable for screening overseas. The chief issue for Kern was that the film might "project a picture of prevailing lawlessness in this country." Particularly questionable lines included "These are heist guys. They're tough—and smart. . . . These jobs are cased," and "The gang behind the holdup . . . a gang like that hates to hurt anybody—it isn't good for business." However, Kern believed that these problems could be solved by "toning down the references to gangsterism and avoiding casting gangster types." (Apparently, "personal" crime and violence was acceptable, but "organized" crime was out of bounds.) Kern thanked RKO for sharing "this script which I think is so unusual, despite the problematical subject matter, that it promises a film which may be excellent entertainment for audiences abroad." Gene Kern, Liaison Officer, Office of War Information, Los Angeles Overseas Bureau, to William Gordon, RKO, April 15, 1944, in Scott Papers, B21-F12, AHC. Note 28: Article by David Hanna, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 29: Quinn Martin to Sid Rogell [Adrian Scott cc'd on memo], August 29, 1944, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 30: James M. Cain quoted in Biesen, Blackout, 102. Note 31: Murder, My Sweet preview comment cards, October 5, 1944, in Scott Papers, B21-F12, AHC. Note 32: [BARN], "'Farewell My Lovely' Gripping Suspenseful Mystery is 'Sleeper,'" Film Bulletin, December 11, 1944, in Scott Papers, B21-F14, AHC. Note 33: "Farewell My Lovely" [review], Showmen's Trade Review, December 9, 1944, in Scott Papers, B21-F14, AHC. Note 34: [BARN], "'Farewell My Lovely,'" Film Bulletin; "Farewell My Lovely" [review], Showmen's Trade Review. Note 35: Scott to Charles Koerner, February 13, 1945, in Scott Papers, B21-F12, AHC. Note 36: Adrian Scott to Allan Scott, May 28, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 37: Ibid. Note 38: "Murder, My Sweet—An Adult Whodunit Does It for Dick Powell," Look Magazine,

April 7, 1945, in MMS production file, AMPAS; Kate Cameron, "Palace Again Offers a Thrilling Mystery," (New York) Daily News, March 9, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 39: Eileen Creelman, "A Hard-Boiled Thriller, 'Murder, My Sweet' . . . " New York Sun, March 9, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 40: Edwin Schallert, "'Murder, My Sweet,' Intriguing Thriller," Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1945, in MMS Production Files, AMPAS. Note 41: Lowell E. Redelings, "MMS a Topnotch Thriller," Hollywood Citizen–News, n.d., in Scott Papers, B21-F14, AHC. Note 42: Schallert, "'Murder, My Sweet.'" Note 43: Bosley Crowther, "Murder, My Sweet Arrives at the Palace," New York Times, March 9, 1945. Note 44: Corbin Patrick, "Powell in Thriller: Dick Shows Stuff as Private Eye," no publication information, n.d., in Scott Papers, B21-F14, AHC. Note 45: Cameron, "Palace Again Offers a Thrilling Mystery." Note 46: "Murder, My Sweet—An Adult Whodunit." Note 47: Article by David Hanna, in Scott Papers, AHC. Sid Rogell is credited as executive producer on a number of Scott's early films, including Murder, My Sweet and Deadline at Dawn, though not on My Pal Wolf, a "kiddie flick" that was Scott's first foray as a producer. Lower-budget films generally attracted less studio oversight, which may explain Scott's solo credit on My Pal Wolf. However, the extent of Rogell's contribution as executive producer is unclear, and by 1945, with the production of Cornered, Scott was producing on his own. One measure of the studio's faith in his abilities can be seen in the decision to send Scott and his production unit to England in 1946 to make So Well Remembered, the first postwar joint production between RKO and the Rank Studio. Note 48: Scott produced Deadline at Dawn, written by Clifford Odets and directed by Harold Clurman, both leading figures from the Group. Dmytryk directed Back to Bataan, written by Ben Barzman, while Paxton scripted another thriller, Crack-Up. Note 49: Marsha Hunt, interview with Glenn Lovell, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 318; Norma Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. Note 50: "Anne Shirley," in The Film Encyclopedia, ed. Ephraim Katz (New York: Perigee Books, 1979), 1054; Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. Note 51: Report from Los Angeles office, June 24, 1946, in Adrian Scott FBI File; memo/report—Los Angeles SAC to Director, FBI, March 10, 1951, in Edward Dmytryk FBI File. Note 52: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 225–227. Note 53: Ibid., 228. Note 54: John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941–1960 (New York: Norton, 1988), 41–44. For an extended study of the last phases of the war in the European theater, see Stephen Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944–May 7, 1945 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). Note 55: Typescript of telegram, HDC members to Harry S. Truman, April 18, 1945, in Hollywood Democratic Committee [HDC] Papers, B7-F18, Wisconsin Historical Society [WHS], Madison, Wisconsin. Note 56: Robert Lees, interview with Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 424. Note 57: Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (New York: Routledge,

1992), 86–89. See chapter 8 for a fuller discussion of these issues. Note 58: A particularly telling indicator of a new mood in Hollywood was the surge of independent filmmaking. By 1947 there were fifteen independent production companies for every one that had existed in 1940. Like Hollywood Davids taking on the studio-system Goliath, in Brian Neve's apt metaphor, a number of high-profile writers and directors, including Frank Capra, John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, Preston Sturges, Dudley Nichols, William Wyler, and even actor Humphrey Bogart, broke ranks with the studios to found their own production companies. Neve, Film and Politics, 87. Note 59: Polonsky, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 485. Note 60: Irving Pichel, "Areas of Silence," in Thought Control in the U.S.A.: The Collected Proceedings, ed. Harold J. Salemson (Hollywood, Calif.: Progressive Citizens of America, 1947), 313. Note 61: Neve, Film and Politics, 75, 85. Note 62: Ronald L. Davis, The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood's Big Studio System (Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993), 369. Note 63: Zanuck quoted in Neve, Film and Politics, 75. See also George F. Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

Chapter 4 They Must Not Escape: Cornered and the Specter of Postwar Fascism All Fascism did not die with Mussolini. Hitler is finished—but the seeds spread by his disordered mind have firm root in too many fanatical brains. . . . Victory on the battlefield was essential, but it was not enough. For a good peace, a lasting peace, the decent peoples of the earth must remain determined to strike down the evil spirit which has hung over the world for the last decade. . . . To divide and conquer was—and still is—their plan. —Harry S. Truman, June 26, 1945

President Truman's concern about the continuing influence of fascism, even after

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the military defeat of the Axis powers, struck a chord with Adrian Scott. Indeed, it was the theme of his next film project, an antifascist thriller titled Cornered. A few lines of Truman's speech are scribbled in Scott's handwriting on his copy of the screenplay of Cornered, suggesting that he hoped to include it onscreen, as a preface or concluding quote, to bolster his antifascist vision and imbue it with the authority of the president of the United States.1 Though Scott, like many of his comrades in the Hollywood Left, had high hopes

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for the postwar world, both politically and artistically, he remained obsessed with the problem of fascism, as his films of the postwar era affirm. Though Scott finally seemed to be in a position to integrate his political and artistic visions, he quickly learned that the essential conservatism of the RKO front office presented a significant obstacle to his plans. The story of Scott's negotiations with both the studio system and his own Communist Party colleagues over Cornered offers important insights into the difficulties of making political films in the postwar era.

The Production of Cornered Following the breakaway success of Murder, My Sweet, Scott was riding high and his prospects looked excellent. As one newspaper writer commented, Scott had graduated from a "new untried producer . . . to the busiest man in the studio."2 His next assignment came from William Dozier, the new head of the story department at RKO. Searching for a property that would help him quickly establish his presence at the studio, Dozier spent $50,000 on a twenty-page original treatment entitled Cornered, written by Ben Hecht, Herman Mankiewicz, and Czenzi Ormonde. The story was a thriller about an American merchant marine seeking revenge for the death of his brother after the war's end; the circuitous manhunt ultimately leads him to the Caribbean, where the murderer is

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killed before the American can get to him. Though the rambling story itself was not particularly impressive, Dozier saw in it an opportunity to capitalize on the success of Murder, My Sweet with another gritty low-budget thriller, and he assigned Scott and Dmytryk to the project.3 Interestingly, Scott did not hire John Paxton to write the screenplay; instead, he

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brought John Wexley onto the project. Perhaps Paxton was working on another project, or perhaps Scott had political reasons for wanting to work with Wexley. Though Dmytryk later dismissed Wexley's screenwriting as "not impressive," in fact, Wexley had impeccable antifascist credits for his work both on and off screen. Originally an actor and playwright, Wexley was recruited by Universal in the early 1930s to adapt The Last Mile, his Broadway play about an uprising of convicts on death row. Over the next decade, he worked at every major studio in Hollywood, with particular success at Warner Bros., where his work on such films as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties (1939) helped to establish the studio's reputation for hard-hitting gangster movies. Wexley was also responsible for two of the most powerful antifascist dramas produced in Hollywood: Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), directed by Anatole Litvak, and Hangmen Also Die (1943), written in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and directed by Fritz Lang, both European refugees from fascism. An ardent Communist, Wexley was very active in Left politics, working on the defense of the Scottsboro Boys (about whom he wrote another successful play, They Shall Not Die), Upton Sinclair's 1934 EPIC campaign, and the highly publicized and volatile strikes by the Conference of Studio Unions in 1945.4 In his memoir Odd Man Out, Dmytryk hints darkly that Scott might have been

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"ordered" to use Wexley.5 Though Dmytryk's desire to see a sinister Communist conspiracy in Hollywood is clearly self-serving, there is, nevertheless, a small kernel of truth, however distorted, in the allegation. Certainly, as a screenwriter, Scott had taken every possible opportunity to insert his political vision into his films, whether the critique of capitalist greed in The Parson of Panamint or of class and corruption in Mr. Lucky and Murder, My Sweet. Now, as a producer, Scott seized the chance to transform the muddled scenario foisted on him by Dozier into a hard-hitting antifascist drama, and he deliberately and knowingly hired a Communist writer, a man who shared his radical vision and his commitment to making films as political as possible within the studio system. And John Wexley certainly came through for him on Cornered. Wexley first proposed the key politicizing change—shifting the site of the manhunt from the Caribbean to South America—after reading a State Department White Paper by Cordell Hull that exposed Juan Perón's Nazi sympathies and his establishment of a protofascist police state in Argentina. As he recalled, "Argentina was harboring

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German U-boats which were sinking American ships and killing merchant marines by the hundreds. The U-boats were being fed information from Buenos Aires. I wanted to show the operations of the secret police, which Perón, a fan of Mussolini, had trained. Later Argentina became a haven for escaped Nazis, and they're still down there." Wexley's suggestion that the hero should chase his prey to South America in order to "reveal the guilt of Argentina—the criminal acts, the anti-U.S. acts" must have appealed enormously to Scott, and he gave Wexley the go-ahead. In late 1944 Wexley began researching the political situation in Argentina and outlining the story's new trajectory.6 From the very beginning, the studio executives had qualms about the project,

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particularly the decision to set the story in South America. Since the mid-1930s, the United States government, via the Good Neighbor policy, had worked feverishly both to protect American political and financial interests in Latin America and to expose German attempts to establish a fascist beachhead in the Western Hemisphere. In 1939, the Argentine newspaper Noticias Gráficas had exposed a Nazi plot to annex Patagonia; a year later, a Uruguayan congressional investigation uncovered a plot to form a "New Germany" embracing Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. In December 1940, Look Magazine reiterated the threatening situation to the south, reminding its readers of these recent examples of German imperial ambition. Citing the large number of German immigrants in South America, Look warned: "In the light of this totalitarian majority, Hitler's remark, 'If ever there was a place where democracy is senseless and suicidal, it is South America,' takes on menacing significance." Despite diplomatic and economic incursions by the Nazis, most Latin American countries remained technically neutral throughout the war, though fears of fifth column agitation to the south continued to haunt the American psyche. Even as the war drew to a close, the Hollywood studios, still fearful of jeopardizing their foreign markets, tried mightily to avoid antagonizing those South American nations that were neutral or even sympathetic to the Nazis.7 This sensitivity to relations with South America had a significant impact on the development of Cornered. On February 8, 1945, RKO executive William Gordon forwarded a telegram to William Dozier, along with a memo outlining the studio's position on using Argentina as the setting for Cornered. The telegram, from George Dorsey, reiterated the studio's concern for its financial interests in Argentina and suggested altering the film's locale to Spain, since Argentina had "severed relations with the Axis officially at least while Spain is still a neutral." Explaining to Dozier that there was a distinct possibility that the United States would "come to some understanding" with Argentina at the Inter-American Conference then underway in Mexico City, Gordon suggested that it might be "impractical and highly risky" to move forward with the project before they knew

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the outcome of the conference. At this point, however, Gordon felt that it would be premature to share these concerns with Scott, and Wexley continued work on Cornered as an exposé of pro-Nazi designs in Argentina.8 The first full draft of Wexley's screenplay, completed on March 26, 1945, opens

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with a chorus singing La Marseillaise, punctuated by machine-gun fire, as the French Resistance liberates a German POW camp near Marseilles in the final days of the war. One of the prisoners is a Canadian RAF lieutenant named Gerard, who searches through the littered corpses for his wife, Celeste (a member of the French Resistance), only to learn that she had been executed months earlier after enduring unspeakable torture. Gerard becomes obsessed with finding Vaudrec, the collaborationist who turned Celeste over to the Gestapo to be killed. Though the official record shows that Vaudrec is dead, Gerard discovers that this is a lie, but his informant is killed before Gerard can learn the details. Tracking Vaudrec through bank transfers to his "widow," Gerard follows the trail to Argentina, where he poses as an electrical engineer working on a government power plant (a project he learns is rife with corruption). In Buenos Aires, Gerard stalks the elusive Madeleine Vaudrec and confronts her with a phony dossier that "proves" Vaudrec is alive. Calling his bluff, Madeleine says she's glad her husband is dead, raising doubts in Gerard's mind about her commitment to Vaudrec and to fascism. Through his connection to the power plant project, Gerard infiltrates a nest of decadent collaborationists and escaped Nazis who have established themselves in the "best" circles of Argentine society: Señor Carmago, a wealthy industrialist; General Regules, a corrupt Argentine government official; Baron von Strahle, a "hero" of the London Blitzkrieg who now controls a cartel called the German Trust; Ounce, a sleazy informant for the Argentine secret police; and Mr. Perchon, a wealthy Belgian banker with major business interests in South America. Convinced that one of these villains is really Vaudrec, Gerard plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse and uncovers a vast fascist conspiracy to take over Argentine industry as a springboard to eventual world domination. However, Gerard also stumbles across the Argentine Resistance, which has planted an agent at Gerard's hotel to serve as his valet and monitor his activities. Though they know of Gerard's valorous work with the French Resistance, they fear that he has become deranged by his desire for revenge and that he will undermine their own careful work. One of their leaders, Santayana, is a prominent lawyer, who uses his social position to gather information on the fascist network in order to publish it in the underground press. Ultimately, both Gerard and Madeleine gain the trust of the Resistance, and Madeleine reveals that Mr. Perchon is really Vaudrec. Santayana and his lieutenants explain that they cannot turn to the authorities for help; they will only get "excuses and lies," because the government and the secret police are part of the conspiracy.

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However, they must convince Gerard that killing Vaudrec in revenge will not bring justice; the justice they seek will come when they reveal the fascist conspiracy to the people of Argentina. In the final scene, Madeleine offers herself as bait to trap her husband into

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revealing himself and opening the safe that holds the documents that prove the existence of the Nazi conspiracy. Gerard steps in at the critical moment, only to be outsmarted by Baron Von Strahl; in the ensuing melee, both Perchon/Vaudrec and Von Strahl are shot. The government and secret police concoct a story to cover up the deaths and deport both Gerard and Madeleine. Gerard joins her on the ship to France, bringing with him a copy of the underground newspaper Libertad, with a blazing headline: "We Accuse!" Wexley did an enormous amount of research on Argentina and created an

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elaborate and constantly evolving backstory, though little of it found its way into the final script in the form he originally imagined. Wexley's notes for the project, for example, reveal his myriad attempts to dramatize the vast scope of Nazi ideology and tactics, from fascist control of all radio and newspapers, to the indoctrination of soldiers by former Junker officers who taught in Argentine schools. At one point, to emphasize the essential goodness and antifascism of the French people, Wexley planned to show Gerard living in a French pension where everyone is friendly and patriotic. Another unused scene reveals Wexley's attempts to dramatize the role of the Popular Front in the defeat of fascism: Gerard takes on an American newspaper reporter who tells him "our forces" are having trouble with the FFI (French Resistance) and asks him if they are "starting this Popular Front stuff all over again." Gerard corrects the reporter, "The only trouble the FFI makes is for the Nazis. They have captured over 75,000 of them to date and have killed almost as many. . . . They're not starting the Popular Front again. The Popular Front never stopped. That's why France is free."9 Though Scott no doubt applauded the overt antifascism in Wexley's script, other elements presented problems for him. Scott's handwritten notes reveal his concerns with the repetition and lack of clarity in the earliest versions of the screenplay. In his personal copy of the first draft continuity, dated January 16, 1945, Scott crossed out huge sections—sometimes entire pages—of dialogue. Despite Scott's attempts to tighten the script, however, Wexley's final version remained overly complicated and repetitive. Part of the problem was that Wexley knew—and perhaps cared—too much about fascism, and he tried to put everything he knew into his screenplay. The following extended quote is just one example of Wexley's romantic over-dramatization of the antifascist struggle: Santayana:

This time they must not escape. This time there must be

13

retribution. Not revenge because revenge implies the doctrine of a life for a life and Vaudrec would need a thousand miserable lives to pay for all those good ones he

destroyed.

But

retribution!

Firm,

unrelenting,

merciless retribution. Gerard:

Look . . . when the people of Paris seized the city in July—they didn't try to drive the Nazis and quislings out. They barricaded every street to make sure they didn't escape alive.

Damonte:

But that is exactly what we want too. To hunt down every one of them—not merely Vaudrec. To prove that through a puppet like Vaudrec—the Nazis actually control large industries here, then we automatically expose the entire nest of rotten corruption that permits them to operate!

Madeleine:

It is true—don't you see? Vaudrec is not only an enemy of France but to all people. All over the world. Gerard wants to kill him—he doesn't care if he's called an assassin. In Vichy they called every patriot an assassin.

Gerard:

Maybe I've seen too much blood . . . maybe I've just gotten a little kill-crazy. . .

Vasquez:

When you are fighting for a big thing—you must grow big yourself. Like those you saw die. . . . Because all those who have died in all countries do not lie by themselves, lonely. They hold each other's hands, like a great chain linking up the whole world. And yet I say, amigo, not to kill Vaudrec now. We can wait a little longer.10

Given that Scott's initial problems with Wexley's work were less political than

14

artistic, Dmytryk's analysis of the screenplay is particularly revealing: "The trouble was that Wexley engaged in agitprop. At every opportunity, he wrote long speeches loaded with thinly disguised communist propaganda. Expressed in classical antifascist rhetoric, there were manifestos by the dozen, or so it seemed."11 Dmytryk's comment suggests the dilemma faced by radical writers dealing with overtly political subject matter. As a Communist writer presumably committed to injecting as much radicalism as possible into his work, Wexley was particularly vulnerable to charges of propagandizing. At the same time, Wexley's script is a shining example of the OWI guidelines for representing the nature of the antifascist struggle, suggesting the extent to which the "radical" and "mainstream" perceptions of fascism overlapped during this period. For example, Wexley dramatized the Allied forces engaged in a "people's war," showing a unified internationalist front of Canadians, French, and South Americans working together to defeat fascism. He also dramatized very clearly that the foes of democracy were not simply the Germans, Italians, or Japanese,

15

but included anyone with antidemocratic tendencies, from fifth-columnists and saboteurs to the uncommitted and pessimistic. If anything, Wexley's antifascists are overly romanticized, while his Nazis and collaborators are overly demonized. Some scenes, too, are rather sensationalistic. In an early scene in which Gerard learns of the torture of his wife at the hands of the Gestapo, for example, Wexley included gory details of burning flesh and repeated whippings—representations of fascist sadism that Dmytryk had used to great advantage in Hitler's Children and Behind the Rising Sun. As Wexley's screenplay made the rounds at RKO, it caused great consternation

16

among the studio executives. On April 3, 1945, William Dozier fired off a memo to Scott with a critique that cut to the heart of Wexley's indictment of the fascist nature of the Argentine government. The changes requested by Dozier included deleting all references to the network of secret police, official wiretapping, and the existence of an antifascist resistance movement or an underground newspaper. Several weeks later, in a six-page memo to Dozier, RKO executive James Francis Crow echoed this critique, reiterating the studio's sensitivity to South American relations, particularly given the current volatility of world affairs: Now of course all this is all right with me personally. I believe Argentina really has been guilty of such things as these. [Walter] Winchell has said as much and more. Recently in Collier's there was quite a candid exposé of such goings-on in Argentina. But does the company wish to do battle with

Argentina—just

now,

when

Argentina

has

made

a

technical

declaration of war against Germany, and has become, or is trying to become, a technical member of the United Nations? What will the OWI think of this? And the State Department—at a time when the State Department is trying to foster world unity?

Crow was clearly uncomfortable with the political angle that Scott and Wexley had grafted onto the original treatment by Hecht et al.: "In the previous version of Cornered, the man hunt was more of a personal, man-to-man business, with one lone inconspicuous guy on the prowl for another lone guy who was trying to be inconspicuous, and the international political considerations did not enter into it. Actually, I myself am partial toward the personal, man-to-man treatment of the earlier version."12 Nevertheless, Crow noted that it was "just dandy" with him if it was RKO's "intention to go boldly ahead anyway," and he offered a number of revisions to make the script more palatable to both the State Department and the South Americans. To assuage the Argentine government, Crow suggested that the script avoid naming a specific South American country by having Gerard cross many unnamed borders. He also emphasized that the script should show that the underground operates secretly so as not to tip their hand to the Nazis, not

17

because they cannot depend on the local authorities. Drawing a parallel with the emerging narrative conventions of film noir, Crow recommended that the filmmakers show that the "underground workers, once they have got the goods on a Nazi fugitive, are quite ready to cooperate with the local police—in much the same way that many movie detective heroes are represented as doing."13 At the heart of these negotiations between the filmmakers and the studio

18

executives is the very representation of the commitment to antifascism. Crow, on the one hand, recommended that the story show that the Nazi fugitives are trying to establish themselves not just in Argentina, but throughout the world, and that the underground is not peculiarly South American, but made up of transplanted Europeans, French, Dutch, Poles—"people like Gerard, with special, personal grievances against the fugitive Nazis—banded together, wherever they may meet, in the common cause of revenge upon the Nazi criminals, wherever they may seek refuge."14 Wexley and Scott, on the other hand, hoped to portray antifascism as a specifically political commitment. In their representation, an antifascist commitment might be reinforced by personal motives such as revenge, but true antifascism was altruistic and uncompromisingly ideological. In this sense, Dmytryk's criticism that Wexley's script was "too much of an attack

19

against fascism" is significant. On the antifascist continuum, apparently, one might be too antifascist—an overcommitment that would soon be condemned as "premature" antifascism. In later years, after his own repudiation of Communism, Dmytryk would explicitly denounce Wexley's script as "communist propaganda." Ceplair and Englund suggest that despite his membership in the Party and his presumed antifascism, Dmytryk was also "strongly career-oriented" and "wanted the films he directed to be commercial successes." To this end, he advocated major revisions in the screenplay, changes that Wexley feared would "whitewash" the Perónists. These fears were confirmed for Wexley when Dmytryk flew to Buenos Aires on April 11, ostensibly on a creative reconnaissance mission. Though the film would be shot on a Hollywood sound stage, Dmytryk "wanted to minimize the possibility of errors of ignorance by absorbing the feeling, the color, of this great city. The plot of [their] film was there [in the script], but not the smells, the tastes, the dark places [their] pilot would haunt during his search for the killer. What was even more important was my need to flesh out the characters he would encounter in this strange and distant environment."15 Wexley, however, believed that Dmytryk's motives were more cynical, that he had gone to Argentina to "get the government's approval of the script." Wexley was particularly outraged that news of Dmytryk's trip had appeared in the trade papers, which to him seemed a public confirmation that the film would be made with the approval of, if not in direct collaboration with, the Argentine

20

government.16 However, at least one article that appeared in the trade press reiterated the film's antifascist message: Unlike the Raymond Chandler yarn, Cornered is not designed as a mere melodrama. The story of a detective's pursuit of a Nazi agent to Argentina, Scott hopes the picture will accomplish the important purpose of reminding us that while the war is over and some Nazis and Fascists are dead, that there are others, fanatical and deadly serious, who will carry on their fight in the underground, not only in Europe but all over the world.17

Whatever Dmytryk's original motives, he returned from Argentina convinced that Cornered would lose money if filmed from Wexley's perspective and that RKO might face a full boycott in Argentina. This assessment hit a nerve with the studio executives, and Wexley was removed from the project. Wexley remembers that Scott was "very embarrassed about the whole affair. He was working under great pressure and ashamed of what was going on, with Dmytryk trying to take the content out before shooting his picture."18 By this point, however, it must have been abundantly clear to Scott that he could

21

not hope to overcome the myriad objections to Wexley's script. Though he was certainly committed to making political films, Scott, like Dmytryk, understood the importance of producing films that would be successful at the box office. His experiences as a screenwriter had taught him well that screen credits were everything in Hollywood. And he certainly recognized that even if a film's radical content survived the scrutiny of the executives and the censors in the Breen Office, the film still had to appeal to the taste and expectations of the moviegoing public. Acquiescing to the studio's demands for substantial revisions, Scott turned next to his friend John Paxton—in Dmytryk's words, "reliable, nonpolitical John Paxton."

Dmytryk's

equation

of

"nonpolitical"

with

"non-Communist"

is

particularly interesting in this context, since Paxton—though not a Party member—was far from nonpolitical. According to Norma Barzman, Paxton was a sympathetic liberal, even a "fellow traveller," and generally agreed with all of the key Communist positions "straight down the line."19 Nevertheless, Dmytryk was correct in describing Paxton as reliable. By May 3, 1945, Paxton had completed his first revision of Wexley's screenplay, addressing not only the political objections raised by Dozier and the other studio executives, but also the creative problems that had concerned Scott. Though he retained the general plot trajectory created by Wexley, Paxton excised all references to wire tapping and other illegal secret police tactics and any implications of direct collaboration between the Nazis and the Argentine government, as well as Wexley's painstaking delineation of the fascist infiltration of Argentine industry.

22

Many of Paxton's changes were in response to a number of plot points and

23

characterizations that Dozier and Crow felt would cause problems with the Production Code, particularly Gerard's cold-blooded murder of Von Strahl in the film's denouement, and Madeleine's unsuitability as a love interest for Gerard, given her collaborationist past. Crow was particularly uneasy about the "not satisfactorily regenerated" Madeleine, noting that "for two years this girl has been sleeping luxuriously with one of the foulest of Nazi murderers." Crow was not averse to love scenes between Gerard and Madeleine so long as the ending would show her as "a complete heavy, and that she has been playing him for a sucker all along." Crow wanted to see "sex in the scenes between Madeleine and Gerard—and the clean satisfying romance with someone else," suggesting Murder, My Sweet as a model, in which "Dick Powell has the sexy affair with Claire Trevor, but Anne Shirley is his true love."20 Scott and Paxton chose instead to regenerate Madeleine's character, and in their version she is a both a good girl and a pawn. "Sold" in marriage to Vaudrec (called Jarnac in the final version) by her scheming, collaborationist father, she goes along in order to protect her ailing sister. To contrast with Madeleine, Scott and Paxton developed a new "bad girl" character, Señora Carmago, who attempts first to seduce Gerard and later frame him for murder. Many of Paxton's changes improved the script in significant ways. For example, Paxton deleted the entire opening section of Wexley's script—the same section Scott had extensively edited and marked as repetitious and confusing—beginning instead with Gerard being mustered out of the RAF in London and then returning clandestinely to France to search for his wife's murderer. Though this change obliterated the stirring liberation of the POW camp by the Free French envisioned by Wexley, it also prevented the film from appearing too dated. By the late spring of 1945, as Allied troops marched on Berlin, the liberation of France was old news. Though the new opening, with Gerard being mustered out, is temporally vague, Paxton managed to keep the key political elements of Gerard's character—his impressive war record, his work with the French Resistance, and his imprisonment by the Germans—while simplifying the narrative and saving the big action scene for the end of the film. Paxton also rethought the scenes in which Gerard tracks Madame Jarnac to Buenos Aires, deleting the series of improbable coincidences in Wexley's version and making the trail to Argentina far more plausible. And if the studio's injunction against the showing the government in cahoots with the Nazis forced Paxton to cut a number of minor characters, such as General Regules and Baron Von Stahl, it also allowed him to expand the character of Ounce (Inza in his version), Gerard’s "guide" through the world of Argentine fascism. In Paxton’s version, Inza emerges as a man utterly without loyalty, playing one side off the other in a convoluted web of cross and double-cross.

24

Given these sorts of compromises, Paxton's version of Cornered is a more

25

conventional manhunt thriller than originally envisioned by Wexley. Nonetheless, Cornered remains an antifascist film at heart. "Today there is only the right side and the wrong side," says one of the film's minor characters, and this principle guides Paxton's dramatization of the politics of anti-fascism throughout the film. The right side, obviously, is the Resistance, depicted as an international movement of "ordinary" people driven by a hatred of fascism and a desire for justice. The model of the French Resistance is critically important here. In an early scene, Gerard visits the cave where his wife and fifty others were lined up against the wall and shot. His father-in-law points to the graves of those Gerard had known personally, ordinary villagers who had risked their own lives to help him after his plane was shot down. "Why were they shot?" Gerard asks, and his father-in-law replies bitterly, "They were French." Indeed, being "French" is invoked throughout the film as a key signifier of antifascist commitment and essential goodness. The true French despise and resist fascism, in marked contrast to the collaborationism of the "un-French" Vichyites. When Gerard asks if Jarnac, his wife's murderer, is French, his father-in-law barks, "Vichy," and spits disdainfully. Similarly, one of the signs of the righteousness of Santayana, the Argentine Resistance leader, is his profound shame that his nephew Señor Carmago is a fascist collaborator. The Argentine Resistance is also linked to the French by its respect for the rule of law, one of the key distinctions between fascism and liberalism. Santayana is a lawyer who repeatedly chides Gerard for seeking revenge rather than justice; he insists that the fascists will only be destroyed when the Resistance has sufficient evidence to convict them in the court of world opinion. In contrast, the wrong side is depicted as a viper's nest of Europeanized

26

decadence and corruption. Constrained by the studio executives from depicting the fascist infiltration of Argentine industry envisioned by Wexley, Paxton and Scott drew instead upon images of the moral bankruptcy of upper class society to suggest capitalism's collaboration with fascism. At a lavish party hosted by the Carmagos, Inza describes himself as an "epicure" whose blood is a "mixture of fine European wines." Though he refuses to answer when Gerard asks whether he is French or German, Inza the cosmopolitan longs for the days when his good friend Hermann Goering threw parties "like Roman festivals." Señora Carmago, first seen narcissistically inspecting the reflection of her flawless beauty and glittering jewels in a windowpane, complains that one cannot throw a good party in Argentina because the Latin Americans, unlike the Europeans, have no passion for intrigue—political, business, or romantic. Despite Señora Carmago's disclaimer, Cornered is rife with intrigue, and Scott and Paxton make clear that the political stakes are dangerously high. Raising the

27

specter of escaped Nazis infiltrating circles of power throughout the postwar world, Santayana insists to Gerard that their enemies are "more than war criminals fleeing a defeated nation. They do not consider themselves defeated. We must destroy not only the individuals but their friends, their very means of existence, wherever they start to entrench themselves. Not only here but everywhere. In the United States, in England, in France, in Alaska or East Africa." Though principal photography on Cornered was scheduled to begin on June 16,

28

RKO executives continued to scrutinize the script, demanding changes large and small. In July, RKO sent the Cornered script to the OWI for comments. Reviewer Gene Kern gave the screenplay the green light, noting, "This exciting melodrama strikes us as potentially valuable overseas fare." In striking contrast to the studio's objections to the depiction of an Argentine Resistance movement, the OWI was concerned that the antifascist forces were not represented as "strong, well-organized or capable." Kern hoped that even though the story concerned a "personal grudge, a one-man war," some minor revisions still might be made to show that "Gerard is aware that he is not alone in his fight against the Fascists, that there are others, organized and strong." In keeping with the OWI's prohibition on outright propaganda, Kern added, "I am not suggesting a propaganda speech which would be useless if recognized, but rather an implication of organization and power that might be encouraging of freedom loving foreign audiences."21 Despite the positive review by OWI, the RKO executives were still deeply concerned with the potential political repercussions of Cornered. In a memo to Scott, dated July 7, 1945, William Gordon reviewed the script point by point, emphasizing once again the studio's concern that the film must not be offensive to South American audiences. Reiterating the studio's desire to exonerate the Argentine government, he suggested that Paxton show that the Nazis, "during the period of neutrality, took advantage of the opportunity to betray Argentina," and that "the anti-democratic elements or Nazis have been so clever in their manipulations that even the Government, with its respect for law which is inviolable, has not been able to crack down on these elements, because of their apparently clean surface." In addition, the film's use of the word "fascist" continued to disturb him, and he felt it was "certain to give offense even possibly to the extent of causing the finished film to be banned in Argentina." To avoid this problem, Gordon ordered protection takes to be made for the Argentine print in which the word "fascist" would be replaced by the word "antidemocratic" or "some other equally acceptable synonym." Thus, in the scene in which Gerard first confronts Santayana, for example, Gordon ordered that the phrase "the worst kind of anti-democratic heel" was to be used (at least in the Argentine print) instead of "the worst kind of Fascist"—the phrase that remained in the American

29

print.22 As late as July 25, the film's ending was still only roughly sketched out, and

30

Paxton continued to make changes to the script well into August. Scott worked closely with him on the script revisions, even as he assembled the cast for Cornered and shooting began in mid-June. Dick Powell, of course, had signed on early, starring as Gerard in a reprise of the tough-guy persona he had established in Murder, My Sweet. For the role of the oily con man Inza, Scott cast character actor Walter Slezak. Though often typecast as a bumbling idiot or menacing heavy due to his excessive weight, Slezak was also an apt choice for this internationalist film. Viennese by birth, Slezak was discovered by Hungarian director Michael Curtiz and played romantic leads in German films before emigrating to the United States in 1930. After working exclusively on Broadway for more than a decade, Slezak went to Hollywood in 1942, where he made notable appearances in several antifascist films, including This Land Is Mine (1943), The Fallen Sparrow (1943), and Lifeboat (1944).23 Scott also cast two prominent actors from the Group Theater in major roles. Both

31

Morris Carnovsky and Luther Adler had come to Hollywood from New York in 1937, when the Group Theater began its slow disintegration. Carnovsky, cast as the antifascist leader Santayana, was well known for his leftist activism, as well as his work on progressive films including The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and The Master Race (1944). Luther Adler, along with his older sister Stella, had worked on the Yiddish stage since childhood. Adler was less successful in Hollywood than most of the other Group members and had acted in only one film—Lancer Spy (1937)—before Scott cast him as the fascist mastermind Jarnac.24 Though Adler only appears in the final reel of Cornered, his performance is stunning. Though Cornered could not match the visual innovation and relentless pacing of Murder, My Sweet, under the direction of Edward Dmytryk the film suggests the power of noir style to convey the politics of fascism and antifascism. Working with great economy, Dmytryk suggests the heroism and sacrifice of the Resistance through the wartime devastation of France, a stark landscape of firebombed buildings, ragged knots of villagers huddled against a whipping wind. The decadent world of the Argentine fascists, in contrast, is brightly lit and overflowing with abundance; in postwar Buenos Aires the trains still run on time, and there are no shortages or rationing. This shiny façade masks the much darker world of fascist intrigue, and here Dmytryk is at his best. Menacing footsteps in a shadowy park, the disruptive roar and flash of passing trains during a clandestine meeting in a subway station, the flare of a match illuminating for the first time the dark satanic face of Jarnac—all convey the sinister, conspiratorial world of the fascists. Gerard's growing paranoia and the emotional damage wrought by the

32

war are brilliantly depicted through a series of brief, disorienting close-ups punctuated by staccato gunfire. It is Scott and Paxton's ending, however, written under immense pressure as the

33

opening scenes were already being shot, that saves Cornered as an antifascist film. This ending suggests the importance of the German example in shaping the filmmakers' understanding of the postwar fascist threat: Jarnac is a brilliant and evil leader surrounded by a handful of flunkies who do his bidding, much like Hitler and his henchmen. However, the denouement also reveals the filmmakers' muckraking sensibilities, particularly their deep-seated faith in the power of truth, brought into the light, to rally good Americans—or in this case, Argentines—into action against the forces of evil. In the final scenes, Gerard tracks Jarnac to the waterfront bar that serves as his secret headquarters. Jarnac speaks from the shadows, his voice silky and insinuating as he rebukes Señor Carmago and Perchon for handling the situation so poorly. "Do not attempt brilliant decisions," he warns them, reiterating his role as the mastermind of the fascist plot. Carmago and Perchon are clearly meant to be understood as tools of an evil genius, as is the collaborator Inza, described by Jarnac as "that fat sycophant." However, the filmmakers take their critique a step further. "The next time you want to indulge your hot Spanish passions for dramatics put on a uniform with polished boots and stomp around your wife's bedchamber," Jarnac mocks his toadies, suggesting the sadomasochistic lure of fascism and linking the drive for political power with perverse sexual desire. Adler's Jarnac is most compelling and malevolent as he outlines the fascist strategy for postwar domination, suggesting that the very tolerance that distinguishes liberalism from fascism will lead inevitably to his triumph. "How many times must I tell you," he berates his henchmen, "that our chief aim for the next five years, the next twenty years if necessary, is complete and absolute obscurity?" As they wait for Inza to bring the fake dossier on Jarnac, he turns his attention to Gerard, noting that though he has been a nuisance to their plans, he is also "reassuring." As Jarnac muses, "You should be dangerous because you're a fanatic. But you're not dangerous because you're a fanatic without a purpose." Scorning Gerard's desire for revenge, Jarnac sneers, "But what sort of political program is that? No, Monsieur, I'm afraid the Anglo-Saxon is a poor fanatic. He takes action only when you disturb his visceral emotions." Gerard retorts sarcastically, "We're stinking poor fighters, too. We got lucky and plastered you off the map, by accident." Jarnac, still hidden in the darkness, replies ominously, invoking the failure of World War One and the Versailles treaty to contain German aggression: "Remember, you plastered us off the map once before. You held the fruits of victory in your hands, but you let them decay. We caught the soggy rot that dribbled through your fingers and used it." Suggesting the inadequacy of

34

liberalism to penetrate the fascist mind, he sneers, "You did not understand our methods. You do not understand now. You continue to attack the wrong things in the wrong way. You attack the evil in man. We accept it. We find it good and fertile." In a twisted, fascist rendition of Tom Joad's final "I'll be there" peroration in the film version of The Grapes of Wrath, Jarnac concludes: "Wherever you create misery and discontent, in whatever country, wherever men cannot earn the money to feed their children, there you will find us at work. If you look. I do not think you will look. Your political arteries will harden again. You will forget." Jarnac's warning is interrupted by the arrival of Inza. Unaware of Jarnac's

35

presence, Inza arrogantly informs Carmago that he will only turn over the dossier after he has proof that Jarnac is dead. As Gerard warns him, "You're covered, Tubby," Jarnac emerges from the shadows. He appears rather demonic, with a goatee, dark piercing eyes, one eyebrow arched contemptuously. Inza's attitude immediately changes and he grovels before Jarnac, trying to cover for his earlier slip, insisting, "All I ask is the privilege of serving you, whenever the moment calls for a clever man." "You are so clever. But you talk too much," Jarnac replies and shoots him repeatedly, obliterating the face so that he can pass Inza's body off as his own and return to the obscurity necessary to foment his fascist plan. Gerard, seeing an opening, pounces on Jarnac; the two men struggle, then Gerard gains the upper hand. From a sharp close-up of Gerard mercilessly beating his fascist enemy, the camera loses focus, leaving only a blur and the sound of a fist landing repeatedly on soft flesh. When the camera refocuses, Gerard is still punching, as Santayana and Dubois try to pull him away. Unaware that he has killed Jarnac, Gerard babbles, "That's a present for you. I hope you like it. . . . He likes to talk. He made a couple of big speeches. I was a little kill crazy, but he's all yours now." Cornered ends with the promise that the forces of democracy will continue to challenge the international fascist threat, by raising the cry of alarm and rallying the "decent peoples of the earth"—in President Truman's words—to the antifascist cause. Though Santayana is outraged that Jarnac is dead, Gerard presents him with the documents that prove Jarnac secretly controlled Carmago's vast industrial empire and planned to use his financial power to launch a Fourth Reich. Santayana will use this evidence to expose the fascist fifth column in Argentina and awaken the people to the fascist menace. He crows, "We cannot kill the whole animal with one blow, but we'll make him scream. We'll make a start." In the final lines of the film, Madeleine is fully rehabilitated and absolved of all suspicions that she was a collaborator, as Gerard announces, "She was a little confused, but she's all right now. She's a good girl. She's French." This emphasis on Madeleine's essential Frenchness is both a reminder of the un-Frenchness of the Vichyite collaborators and an insistence that "true" Frenchness is essentially

36

democratic and nonfascist. Thus, the conclusion of Cornered works to rearticulate the boundaries between democratic and antidemocratic forces in the postwar world and to construct the antifascist vanguard as a broad-based movement that incorporates all freedom-loving peoples throughout the world.25

The Public Reception of Cornered On November 1, 1945, nearly a year after the project was first conceived,

37

Cornered was finally previewed in Los Angeles. Overall, the film fared well with local audiences: of the sixty-five members of the preview audience, fifty-nine rated the film "excellent" or "good," while only six rated it "bad." Several viewers felt the picture was too slow, or were confused by the beginning and felt that they needed more information on the character of Gerard. Many—generally those who disliked the film—felt that Dick Powell was out of his element in a thriller and preferred him in the more familiar musical-comedy roles of singer and dancer. Those who disliked the film provided less valuable critiques of the film's content such as "too many scenes with fat fellow" or "don't like to have to sit through that type of picture to see the bill I came to see." Those who enjoyed the film, however, tended to applaud Powell's reincarnation as a tough guy and commend his acting. Interestingly, those who rated the film "excellent" offered critiques with a bit more depth than those who disliked the film. For example, one mentioned feeling disillusioned to learn that Jarnac was an unknown person; another saw in Jarnac's makeup a "too perfect" replica of the devil. Another was disturbed by the scenes of devastation in postwar France. Unlike Crossfire later, the preview audience for Cornered did not find the "propaganda" at the end to be jarring or intrusive.26 Not surprisingly, the RKO front office was more concerned with the box office than with the continuing dangers of fascism. Thus, in selling and publicizing Cornered, the RKO advertising campaign downplayed the political angle and pitched the film as a mainstream thriller, hoping to build on the success of Murder,

My

Sweet.

The

trade

press,

always

concerned

with

box-office

performance, certainly made the connection and predicted that this "tense, suspenseful yarn" with "a few nifty diatribes on Fascism" would do almost as well financially as Murder, My Sweet.27 An early review in the Hollywood Reporter argued that "high-powered exploitation and selling can bring some impressive box office business to first-run engagements, but this will chiefly be cashing in on Murder. It is doubtful if there will be a proportionate critical response."28 Variety was more optimistic and predicted a box-office smash. Writing in typical industry-ese, Variety called Cornered "lurid to the last minute," enthusing: Cornered is an exciting batch of melodramatic international intrigue. . . . Chills, shivers and violent death are the ingredients of the story, which

38

stems from the plotting of some of the nastiest Nazis yet screened to perpetuate themselves in a war-battered world. Adrian Scott has produced with a de luxe finish and Edward Dmytryk's direction whips the dramatic values and a lot of eerie atmosphere into the most suspense an average audience can take.29

Dick Powell's "new" screen persona was an integral part of the publicity

39

campaign, and film reviewers frequently drew parallels between his roles in Cornered and Murder, My Sweet. One reviewer noted, for example, "Having first established in Murder, My Sweet a distinctly individual and arresting technique of unshaven charm and gun-wielding toughness, Powell now extends his reputation in a swifter, harder, more solid and gripping characterization.30 The reviewer for the New York Herald commented that Powell's performance "is likely to make Humphrey Bogart suspect that he is being asked to move over.31 The violence in the film also became a selling point, particularly the final showdown between Gerard and Jarnac. As one reviewer noted, "The final shots must be seen to be appreciated. They constitute a memorable chapter in the depiction of sheer violence on the screen."32 The reviewer for The New Yorker found the final scene "filled with just about as much violence as I, personally, can stand."33 Highlighting Cornered as its "Movie of the Week" in early December, Life Magazine published a splashy four-page photo spread on Cornered that focused almost exclusively on the final fight scene. The review emphasized not only the violence in the plot—a vengeful search that "gets [Powell] blackjacked by energetic Argentine patriots, slugged by Fascist conspirators and mixed up in one of the most brutal beatings ever filmed"—but also the behind-the-scenes details of the fight itself, which suggested that Powell was a tough guy both on and off the set: But in this movie middle-aged Dick Powell also shows he can dish it out, a fact which pleases Powell and may earn him a place with middle-aged Humphrey Bogart on the hard-boiled hero's bench. . . . It took five days to rehearse and film this scene, but Luther Adler, Powell's opponent, never wholly mastered the art of pulling his punches, at which Powell was an expert. As a result Adler emerged from the screen battle unscarred but Powell wound up with a bruised jaw, a slashed wrist, and a sprained finger.

Life illustrated the article with two still photos from the final fight scene, accompanied by remarkably lurid captions: "With bone-crushing blows of his fists an enraged Powell methodically mashes the face of the conspirator who had tried to kill him. Here battering fight is nearly over." And: "Conspirator begins to slump as blow after blow crashes against his bearded jaw but Powell holds him up and keeps on pounding in a frenzy even after his victim is dead."34

40

In many cases, RKO's attempts to sell Cornered as a conventional thriller were

41

successful. Interestingly, some reviewers acknowledged the political elements in the film, but then reviewed the film as a typical thriller, burying the political message in genre-appropriate language and style, as in this review in Cue: A savage melodrama of intrigue and revenge . . . [Powell's] portrait of a Canadian flyer, tracking down the collaborationist executioner of his French wife in a Fascist-infested Buenos Aires, is violently right. [In this] vipers' nest of Fascist collaborators, [Powell is] caught up in a twisted, tortuous maze of private villainy and public camouflage, with the identity of friend and foe equally uncertain behind the swirling smoke screens of espionage

and

breathtaking

intrigue.

Powell

melodramatic

finally

climax.

runs

down

The

picture thrilling—among the best of its kind this season.35

his is

prey

swift,

in

a

tense,

Other reviewers made the political connections, but were not impressed. Arguing

42

that "[t]here is nothing especially cogent about the international complications of the show," the New York Herald Tribune reviewer suggested, "What is important is

the

man-hunt

and

the

slugging

sequences

that

give

it

a

sustained

crescendo."36 And The Hollywood Reporter sniffed, If a post-war warning is the purpose of this picture, a very round-about way is chosen to give it importance. The pursuit is by a man seeking revenge for the woman he loved. It is therefore incidental that he brings to justice a Nazi band. His antagonists could just as well have been jewel thieves or coffee planters. It wouldn't have changed the chase.37

Though these are not terrible reviews, they do point to the limitations of using traditional film genres to convey overtly political themes. Nevertheless, a significant number of reviewers recognized and commended the

43

antifascist message in Cornered. Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times, for example, praised the film's depiction of "the ambition of one supreme scoundrel, seeking to spearhead the way for a war of aggression at some time in the future." Schallert clearly made the connections the filmmakers had hoped viewers would make: "For the most part, Cornered evolves in the Argentine, refuge of Nazi-Fascist factions, as well as their opponents. Buenos Aires is here depicted as a fertile field for far-reaching schemes for conquest, and a vast array of spying activities."38 Even the punch-drunk review in Life got the point: "RKO's Cornered is a bluntly outspoken spy thriller which gives Hollywood its first big chance to unmask a World War III plot being spawned in Argentina."39 Writing for Liberty Magazine, Helen Parker gushed, "Here's a picture that's alive—both politically and dramatically. . . . A devastating picture of the morally decadent Fascist society [in Buenos Aires] . . . , the plotters of a third world war."

44

She was particularly impressed with the film's emphasis on a united front against fascism: On our side (that is to say, Powell's side) is an intelligent lawyer (Morris Carnovsky) who does a thoroughly creditable job of broadening the young fanatic's philosophy, finally making him see that the murderer of his wife is not the single enemy, and that a really successful attack must be a broadside against all Fascists. . . . This isn't just another war picture or just another murder mystery. Cornered is genuine drama, illuminating reality in a most telling way.40

Don Craig, the reviewer for the Washington Daily News, pointed out the

45

timeliness of the topic: "What really makes Cornered of importance—and Hollywood won a neat gamble to achieve it—is the coincidence of having a picture ripping into Nazi-Fascist sympathizers in Argentina playing day and date with the State Department's blast on the same subject in headlines all over the country." Though Craig was disappointed that "what Cornered tries to say is of more interest, for the most part, than the way it says it," he was impressed enough with the film's final scene to quote from it extensively: Collaborationist Jarnac's sneering prophecy—in effect: "You defeated us once before and we rose again on the dregs of victory you carelessly let slip through you fingers . . . and we'll do it again"—is enough to make everybody who hears it stop and think, if only for a moment. So is his other warning in approximately these words: "Wherever you let poverty and disease and unrest go unheeded, you leave fertile ground for our seeds."41

The Radical Response to Cornered Though Scott had been more or less successful in steering the film through the political labyrinth of the studio system, there was one final scene in the political saga of Cornered. This time, the criticisms of the film's political content came not from the conservative executives at RKO or the Breen Office, but from one of Scott's own comrades: John Wexley. Though Wexley ultimately came to believe that Cornered was "superior to most 'B' melodramas and an alert viewing audience could fill in the gaps," at the time he was very disturbed by John Paxton's revisions to his screenplay, which he felt had eviscerated its antifascist message. Though the details remain murky, it is clear that, at some point after he was removed from the project, Wexley took his complaints to John Howard Lawson and Albert Maltz, asking them to arrange a meeting with Scott and Dmytryk to discuss the political content in Cornered. Apparently Wexley hoped to "shame Dmytryk and Scott into restoring the cuts they and Paxton had made in his script—particularly the criticism of the Perón government."42

46

In Dmytryk's recollection, written many years after the fact (and more

47

importantly, after he had repudiated the Party and his former comrades), he and Scott went to the meeting expecting a challenge to Paxton's sole screenplay credit.43 However, they were confronted by a sort of Party tribunal made up of Lawson, Wexley, Richard Collins, and a fourth writer— "all communists, of course, who had been picked to hear Wexley's complaint." Dmytryk claims that "Wexley charged that our severe editing had emasculated his work, that it was now prorather than antifascist, and he demanded that we shoot the eliminated scenes and insert them in the film." Scott, who "understood party procedure much better than I," requested another meeting to discuss the issue in greater depth, "now that the nature of the problem was clear." According to Dmytryk, in order to "balance the scales" at the next meeting, Scott brought Albert Maltz into the proceedings, while Dmytryk recruited Ben Barzman as his advocate. The second meeting, held in Dmytryk's apartment, proved inconclusive. Apparently Lawson and Maltz "did not think the two scripts were as dissimilar as Wexley claimed." In Dmytryk's words: "After a long Kafkaesque meeting in which Wexley took his lumps, nothing had changed." And yet, in Dmytryk's mind, everything had changed. He was outraged by Wexley's "silly demands" and the "incredible situation": Scott and I would have needed the studio's permission to recall the film, and such permission could not have been obtained without a complete disclosure of our reasons. Very obviously, that would have been impossible, and I knew that everyone at this meeting was fully aware that Wexley's request was unrealistic beyond belief. I couldn't imagine on what grounds it was being made. Aesthetically and commercially, Wexley's scenes were pure trash, and though our film was by no means great, Scott and I had earned a reputation for a certain standard of excellence, and we weren't about to throw it away on scenes that would ruin both it and us.44

For Dmytryk, the meetings were a "masquerade," a bizarre and arbitrary show of power by the Communist Party. He believed that the issue at hand was "not the salvaging of a writer's ego, but the savaging of two recalcitrant members. It was a question of the Party's control over its artists." According to Dmytryk, this marked the end of his affiliation with the Party. He wrote in his first memoir, It's a Hell of a Life (1978), that the formal break came immediately after that second meeting, as he and Scott walked Lawson to his car, while his later Odd Man Out (1996) describes yet a third meeting with Lawson at the Gotham Deli (arranged by Scott, who hoped to make "a reconciliation with the Party"), but his account of the exchange with Lawson is essentially identical in both: "If this is the way things are going to go," I finally ventured, "I think I want out." Scott agreed with me.

48

"I think you're quite right," said Lawson. "For the time being, consider yourself adrift. When you decide that you can accept party discipline, we'll explore the situation again."45

Wexley's version of the meeting is, of course, rather different. Wexley remembers

49

that he asked Lawson and Maltz to intercede not because they were Communists, but because he considered them "'distinguished, politically wise writers'" and trusted their judgment in such matters. According to Wexley, I gave the script to Maltz, a colleague who was politically minded and who would know what we were talking about. . . . But it had nothing to do with any Party approval or getting consent from Moscow. It was to say to Dmytryk, "This is a more exciting story than if you take out the juice . . . the substance of it. Otherwise, it'll just be a melodrama." And that's what he turned it into.46

The inconsistencies and contradictions in the various accounts raise a number of

50

troubling questions: Was Wexley being disingenuous in denying that he approached Lawson and Maltz to arbitrate as Communists? Was it Wexley or Scott who brought Albert Maltz into the proceedings? Did Dmytryk's break with the Party come after the second meeting, at his home, or at another meeting at the Gotham Deli, or even later? At what point in the writing or production process did Wexley raise his concerns about the political content in Cornered? According to Dmytryk, the film had been "cut, dubbed and was ready for release printing" when he and Scott "received the summons" from Lawson.47 If so, he is certainly correct in emphasizing both that Wexley's request for changes was pointless and that everyone involved knew that, lending credence to Dmytryk's claim that the Party was simply flexing its political muscle. But what if Wexley raised his concerns earlier, in April or May, or even June or July, at any point in the tortuous process of revising the screenplay when he might have been able to truly influence the film's content? Is it possible that Dmytryk "postdated" the meetings to make more credible his tale of commitment and betrayal by the Communist Party that he had already repudiated? In the end, there are no definitive answers to these controversies surrounding Cornered. However, as Ceplair and Englund point out, there were two important consequences of the experience. First, it justified Dmytryk's "break" with the Party. Though members of the Hollywood Ten would insist that Dmytryk was "one of them" during and after the 1947 hearings, Dmytryk would later cite the conflict with Lawson over Cornered as the beginning of his disenchantment with Communism and as justification for his collaboration with HUAC and the anti-Communist apparatus in Hollywood. Second, "it proved that screenwriter, director, and producer Communists were far more vulnerable to the dictates of the studio system than to the demands of their ideology or the influence of fellow

51

Party members."48 This is particularly important, since the Cornered incident, along with the vociferous debate over Albert Maltz's article in defense of artistic freedom, "What Shall We Ask of Writers?" are often cited by conservative critics as examples of leftist "thought control."49 However, as the case of Cornered makes quite clear, artistic freedom was not exactly a top priority within the Hollywood studio system, and ultimately, it was the studio executives—and not Party functionaries like Lawson (however doctrinaire or threatening he might have been)—who held the real power to enforce "political correctness" in Hollywood filmmaking. It is not at all clear, however, that Adrian Scott joined Dmytryk in repudiating the Communist Party at this point. Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence one way or the other on this issue. Perhaps more importantly, despite the political and creative difficulties surrounding the production of Cornered, Scott was not deterred from his desire to make films that were both popular and progressive.

Notes Note 1: Typescript excerpt from speech by Harry S. Truman, San Francisco, June 26, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 2: Article by David Hanna, July 19, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 3: Edward Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, But Not a Bad Living (New York: Times Books, 1978), 69; Bernard Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 144–145; Cornered Script Files, Collection of Motion Picture Scripts, Arts Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles [ALSC-UCLA]. Note 4: Wexley, interview in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 699–715; Edward Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 19. Note 5: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 19. According to Dmytryk, before Scott brought Wexley onto the project, William Dozier had assigned a well-known right-wing writer to the project. Dmytryk, intent upon establishing himself as broadminded and reasonable, wrote: "This bothered me not at all; whatever his political bent, he had a solid reputation as a writer of mystery and suspense. Adrian, however, blew a fuse; he had many strong objections to the man, all of them political." Dmytryk offered to help make the case for Wexley, but Scott said he would handle it himself. When Scott received the script from the right wing writer, he promptly tossed it in the trash without reading it, told Dozier the "material was unusable" and

hired

Wexley.

Dmytryk

maintains

this

story,

with

minor

variations,

in

both

autobiographies, though in Odd Man Out he says that he "had a feeling that someone behind Adrian was pulling the strings" (18–19). However, there is absolutely no evidence in either the script or production files to suggest that anyone worked on Cornered prior to Wexley. The script files, which thoroughly document the writing process through extensive notes by Wexley and multiple drafts of the screenplay by both Wexley and Paxton, contain nothing to suggest a mysterious first writer. It is possible, of course, that Scott threw any evidence in the trash. The Cornered budget file, however, lists only two writers—John Wexley and, later, John Paxton. It is hard to believe that there would be no trace of another writer on the project, given the meticulous financial record-keeping required by the studio. The budget

52

files for Crack-Up, for example, lists the dates worked and the amounts paid to seven different writers—including Irving Block whose contribution was so miniscule that he only earned $50 for the project. See Cornered and Crack-Up Production Files, RKO Studio Collection, ALSC-UCLA. Note 6: Wexley, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 716; Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 314. See also the RKO Script Files, Motion Picture Scripts Collection, ALSC-UCLA, which contain extensive notes from the planning stage of the project and Wexley's incomplete first draft of Cornered, dated December 28, 1944. Note 7: William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell Publishing, 1962), 162–200; Michael E. Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.'s Campaign against Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 22–23; "Nazi Propaganda in America," Look (December 31, 1940): 15. Note 8: RKO memo from William Gordon to William Dozier and telegram from George Dorsey to William Gordon, February 8, 1945, both in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 9: Wexley's notes on Cornered are included with his screenplay drafts in the RKO Script Files, Motion Picture Script Files, ALSC-UCLA. Note 10: Wexley, Cornered screenplay, in RKO Script Files, Motion Picture Script Files, ALSC-UCLA. Note 11: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 19. Note 12: William Dozier to Adrian Scott, April 3, 1945; James Francis Crow to Dozier, April 24, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 13: Crow to Dozier, April 24, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 14: Ibid. Note 15: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 19. Note 16: Wexley, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 716. Note 17: Article by David Hanna, July 19, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 18: Wexley, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 716; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 315; Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 19. Note 19: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 19; Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. See also John Paxton, taped interview, [n.a.], 1977. Of all the films he worked on with Adrian Scott, Cornered was probably John Paxton's least favorite. Years later he described it as "a very poor film," remembering, "I had no feeling for the script. It was a hack job on my part." Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 315. Note 20: Crow to Dozier, April 24, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 21: Letter from Gene Kern, Office of War Information, to William Gordon, RKO, July 5, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 22: RKO memo from William Gordon to Adrian Scott, July 7, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 23: "Walter Slezak," in The Film Encyclopedia, ed. Ephraim Katz (New York: Perigee Books, 1979), 1066. Note 24: "Luther Adler," and "Morris Carnovsky," in The Film Encyclopedia, ed. Katz, 12, 209. See also Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), on their work with the Group. Note 25: All quotes from the film are taken from the Cornered Screenplay File, Motion Picture Scripts Collection, ALSC-UCLA, and from the revised screenplay by Paxton in Scott Papers, B11-F2, AHC.

Note 26: Summary of preview cards for Cornered, November 5, 1945, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 27: Review of Cornered, Independent, November 24, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 28: Review of Cornered, Hollywood Reporter, November 14, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 29: Review of Cornered, Variety, November 14, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 30: Review of Cornered, Cue, December 29, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 31: Review of Cornered, New York Herald Tribune, December 16, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 32: Ibid. Note 33: Review of Cornered, New Yorker, December 29, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 34: Notice the slippage between fantasy and reality in the caption, as Dick Powell is identified by his own name rather than by the name of his character, while Luther Adler is identified wholly with his screen character and referred to only as the "conspirator." "Cornered: Ex-crooner Dick Powell is Tough Guy in Film about Argentine Plotters," Life Magazine, December 10, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 35: Review of Cornered, Cue, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 36: Review of Cornered, New York Herald Tribune, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 37: Review of Cornered, Hollywood Reporter, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 38: Edwin Schallert, "Cornered Absorbing Melodrama," Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1946, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 39: "Cornered: Ex-Crooner Dick Powell is Tough Guy," Life. Note 40: Helen Parker, "Liberty Goes to the Movies," Liberty, February 9, 1946, Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 41: Don Craig, "New Powell Tackles Fascists in Argentina," Washington Daily News, February 15, 1946, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 42: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 315. Note 43: Brian Neve suggests that Wexley had complained unsuccessfully to a Screen Writers Guild arbitration committee about Paxton's sole credit on Cornered. Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1992), 95–96. Note 44: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 20–21; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 315. Note 45: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 20–21; Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, 72. Drawing on the memories of other Hollywood radicals, however, Ceplair and Englund suggest that Dmytryk remained a Party member during his years as one of the Hollywood Ten. Once he decided to recant, during his imprisonment for contempt of Congress in 1951, the Cornered incident provided a plausible excuse for his break with Party. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 358. These issues are discussed in greater detail in chapter 8. Note 46: Wexley, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 716; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 315. Note 47: Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, 71.

Note 48: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 314–315. Note 49: See, for example, Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), 123–136.

Chapter 5 You Can't Do That: From The Brick Foxhole to Crossfire People called me. . . . Some said: Why do it? We were young. This picture could come later. We were sticking our necks out. It could be catastrophic. Not only did people say this to us—we said it to ourselves. —Adrian Scott, "You Can’t Do That"

In his next project, Scott hoped to shift his lens from the threat of international

1

fascism to the threat of domestic fascism. As early as the summer of 1945, even before filming on Cornered was complete, Scott was becoming disturbed by the rising tide of anti-Semitic and racist organizing and outbreaks of violence in the United States. Two important events spurred him to action. The first and perhaps most shattering was the liberation of the German concentration camps by Allied troops, which revealed to the world the horrifying consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism. Like most Americans, Scott was stunned to learn the full extent of Hitler's Final Solution, and he, along with his friends and comrades, struggled to make sense of it. At the same time, the forces of reaction were on the march in the United States. During the first session of the Seventy-Ninth Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by John Rankin, attacked Hollywood as "a hotbed of subversive activities" and "the red citadel" dominated by "aliens and alien-minded people plotting the overthrow of the government of the United States."1 Rankin's attack on Hollywood was coordinated with a "visitation" to Los Angeles by the notoriously anti-Semitic demagogue Gerald L. K. Smith. In the summer of 1945, Smith made a speaking tour of California, starting in San Francisco to protest the establishment of the United Nations and traveling throughout the state, preaching his message of hate. In Los Angeles, both cheering throngs and outraged pickets greeted Smith. The opposition was led, of course, by Hollywood progressives, particularly members of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP).2 On June 29, 1945, an organizer for HICCASP contacted its director, George Pepper, for support in an anti-Smith educational campaign, reminding him: Smith's Nazi-patterned political activity has been repeatedly condemned by Americans of all political faiths, from Harry S. Truman and Thomas L. Dewey down to our humblest officials. For these reasons Smith has been unable to get a foothold in San Francisco and other major communities where he has attempted organizational activities. However, he seems to be making some progress in Los Angeles, and is reportedly seeking to establish a permanent "church" here.

2

HICCASP joined with over four hundred civic, religious, labor, and political groups to organize an enormously successful counterdemonstration. Held on the same night

as

Smith's

rally,

the

protest

meeting—"An

American

City

Action

Rally"—packed more than twelve thousand people into the Olympic Auditorium and turned away three thousand more at the door. One city official called the rally "one of the three greatest meetings in the history of Los Angeles."3 Despite the massive protests to his appearance in Southern California, Smith

3

planned to return to Los Angeles that fall, and in October local organizations, including HICCASP and the Council for Civic Unity, geared up to protest his return. The use of military language in the protest literature is striking: "Last spring Gerald L. K. Smith came to Southern California to establish a 'Beachhead.' Now he is planning an 'invasion.'" Arguing that "[i]t is a vital necessity to combat the type of hate propaganda and mass viciousness spread by Gerald L. K. Smith," the letter cited an ominous quote from Smith: "I want to get to as many people as I can now, so that when chaos comes, I'll be a leader."4 This sort of apocalyptic rhetoric dovetailed closely with progressive fears that the postwar period would bring another economic depression and political turmoil, creating fertile soil for fascist demagogues like Smith. For Adrian Scott, the parallels between the anti-Semitic rhetoric and activities of German Nazis and of such domestic fascists as Gerald L. K. Smith were chilling. Like other Hollywood progressives, Scott believed that the postwar period would bring a new vitality and maturity to filmmaking, and new opportunities to tackle the controversial subjects that had been discouraged by the OWI. Recognizing that the productivity, idealism, and patriotism of the war years had merely papered over long-simmering class and racial tensions in American society, Scott was certain that the end of the war would bring a return of the Depression, and with it, a resurgence of intolerance, repression, and violence—the very conditions that had fueled the rise of fascism in Europe.5 In the summer of 1945, the death camps had just been liberated, revealing the full extent of the Nazi atrocities, while in the United States, a surge of anti-Semitic violence suggested to him that it could happen here. Scott, with his muckraking faith in the transformative power of public indignation,

believed that this danger "needed

public airing."6

Determined that his next film would address anti-Semitism and the potential for fascism in America, he began searching for a literary vehicle to adapt for the screen. When his friend Edmund North recommended Richard Brooks's The Brick Foxhole as the best book on Army life he had ever read, Scott knew he had found his story.

The Brick Foxhole: Popular Nationalism and the Specter of Native Fascism

4

A writer for newspaper, radio and film in civilian life, and a Marine Corps corporal

5

assigned to produce combat documentaries during wartime, Richard Brooks had excellent credentials to write a "true story" about the Second World War. Like other, more famous GI novelists of the war—Joseph Heller, James Jones, Norman Mailer, and Irwin Shaw, for example—Brooks drew on his own experience in the South Pacific to depict the all-male world of the military as brutalizing, authoritarian, and potentially fascist.7 However, unlike the canonical fiction of the war, The Brick Foxhole is set far from the bloodshed and violence of foreign battlefields, in the "safety" of a stateside barracks, a critical staging for Brooks's argument that the antifascist war must be waged at home as well as abroad. Less a conventional war novel than an exposé of some of the American ingredients of domestic

fascism—intolerance,

homophobia,

racism,

and

particularly

anti-Semitism—The Brick Foxhole's authenticity lay also in Brooks's position as a subaltern American: a Jew, the only son of Russian working-class immigrants.8 Brooks's experience as an "outsider" fueled a disturbing counternarrative that challenged the representational and ideological boundaries of wartime popular nationalism. Refusing to collaborate in the wartime conspiracy of silence on the troubling fissures in American society, The Brick Foxhole relentlessly exposes the divisive and unsettling realities of the war years. Brooks takes particular pains to challenge the wartime glorification of American cultural pluralism. The multiethnic combat unit romanticized in most World War Two movies is evident in The Brick Foxhole: Jeff Mitchell, a cartoonist with the Walt Disney studio, hails from Southern California; Peter Keeley is an Irish American newspaperman from New York City; Monty Crawford is a former policeman from the Midwest, the heartland of America; Floyd Bowers is a Southerner; and Max Brock is a New York Jew, the radical son of a wealthy businessman. In a Hollywood film, these men would come together as strangers and through the rigors of war and the possibility of death would learn to depend upon, trust, and perhaps even to love one another. Certainly their differences—whether ethnic, regional, political, or social—would become less important than the ties that bound them together, and in fact, wartime popular nationalism insisted that the loyalty of the "band of brothers" was critically important to winning the war against fascism. In The Brick Foxhole, Brooks reflects these common tropes back to the reader as though through a fun-house mirror. The camaraderie of overseas soldiers is completely absent among the men serving in the "brick foxhole." Instead, Brooks suggests that in the absence of the "glue" of battle, the differences among men are ultimately exacerbated, allowing bigotry, intolerance, hatred, and violence to reign.9 At the same time, however, Brooks also suggests that despite these problems, the liberal values embodied as American—tolerance, individualism, universalism—still represent the best defense against the threat of fascism, both at home and

6

abroad. Thus, The Brick Foxhole also works as a narrative of conversion in which the main characters move from tolerance of intolerance and self-absorption in their own petty troubles, to the realization of the essential interconnectedness of all humanity and the necessity of individual responsibility and risk-taking to defeat fascism. Significantly, The Brick Foxhole also suggests the ways in which wartime popular

7

nationalism was a deeply gendered enterprise. The experience of the war itself and the military training and regimentation necessary to turn citizens into soldiers profoundly shaped 1940s definitions and representations of masculinity. During World War Two, the "average American" constructed in the 1930s by social scientists, the advertising and marketing industries, and popular culture, particularly Hollywood films, flowed into the wartime figure of "GI Joe." On the one hand, GI Joe represented American masculinity at its finest: virile but clean-cut, democratic and tolerant, trustworthy, brave, and generous, committed to both his buddies and the girl he left behind. On the other hand, GI Joe was a professional killer, schooled in violence, aggression, and dehumanizing military discipline, and inured to suffering and death.10 As the war drew to a close and Americans contemplated the demobilization of millions of GIs, these competing representations of masculinity raised profound doubts about the very possibility of a "return to normalcy," both for civilians and the GIs themselves. Much of the postwar discourse on demobilization was dominated by the political concern that the returning veterans, damaged by their wartime experiences with violence, death, and military discipline, might be vulnerable to the lure of fascist demagogues. However, experts were also deeply concerned that the war had unleashed an aggressive and dangerous male sexuality. Of particular concern were the intense homosocial (and potentially homoerotic) bonds created by the war experience. Though wartime popular nationalism insisted that the bonds between men were critically important to winning the war, in the postwar period, they seemed to threaten the heterosexual bonds central to the American Way of Life.11 The masculine performances in The Brick Foxhole clearly reflect these concerns, as well as the radical dislocation of wartime sexuality and gender relations and the resulting crisis of masculinity.12 The Brick Foxhole is structured around three violent battles—a boxing match, a homophobic murder, and a final showdown in hand-to-hand combat—that pit representatives of cosmopolitan liberalism against representatives of native fascism, dramatizing Brooks's argument that fascism must be fought, literally, at home as well as abroad. These battles can also be read as skirmishes in the larger struggle between the characters Keeley and Monty for moral authority and control over Mitchell and the band of brothers. As the novel opens, Mitchell, a young and sensitive artistic type, is troubled by loneliness for his wife and frustration that he

8

hasn't been sent overseas to "act like a real soldier" and "kill some Japs." Overhearing some soldiers sniggering about a war hero and a woman named Mary who "showed him a good time," Mitchell immediately assumes that the woman referred to is his own wife Mary. Distraught over this perceived betrayal, he turns to his friend Keeley, the novel's manly spokesman for liberalism, tolerance, and universalism. Keeley is an "oracle" for Mitchell, offering both advice and a model on how to be a real man. Thus, Keeley takes him to a boxing match on the base, the first battle in The

9

Brick Foxhole. The prizefight, a quintessential site of modern masculinity, represents Keeley's attempt to reintegrate Mitch into the bonds of manhood, the world of "real" men and "real" soldiers, and reinforces the centrality of violence in the performance of masculinity. Underlining the deeply gendered nature of wartime popular nationalism, these performances of masculinity are also, crucially, performances of Americanism. The fight, in which Max Brock, a Jew, takes on the crowd (mob) favorite, "Whitey," works on a number of levels. First, the fight reiterates the fact that homosocial bonds can also work to maintain hierarchies of class and race, as well as gender, excluding not only women but "Other" men: blacks, Jews, homosexuals, and so on. Thus Max fights to prove to Whitey and the white male boxing fans his worthiness for inclusion—as a man and as a Jew—in both the band of brothers and the imagined community of Americans.13 In this sense, the fight between Max and Whitey also resonates to a prizefight familiar to Americans in this period: the bout between African American fighter Joe Louis and German (Aryan) fighter Max Schmeling in the 1930s. Fight fans across the nation—both white and black—embraced Louis as a specifically American hero, viewing his victory over Schmeling as proof of the ideological and physical superiority of Americans to Germans and a repudiation of Nazi racial theories.14 The prize fight in The Brick Foxhole is also a recapitulation of the larger struggle between democracy and fascism. In particular, the juxtaposition of Max Brock, the fighting Jew, and Monty, the anti-Semitic bigot and potential leader of the irrational mob, reiterates the importance of fascism as a foil to liberalism in the construction of an imagined community of Americans during World War Two. Monty's nativist Americanism is rooted in the biological determinism of fascist ideology, while Max's Americanism insists on the voluntarism and pluralism of liberal ideology. Thus, the character of Max, like Keeley, suggests the ways in which the wartime crisis of masculinity was linked to the revisioning of race and ethnicity by the inclusive popular nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s. In the boxing match scene, Brooks makes clear that Max's enemies are the forces of fascism and intolerance—the irrational, undifferentiated mob. As Keeley says, "I know this mob. They're the same mob the world over. Whether they wear

10

uniforms or not, they're a mob."15 As the novel's personification of the mob mentality, Monty's response to Max is important. Monty is "highly excited" by the fight, filled with blood lust. His teeth ache from watching the fight, and he stabs Max with his hatred. "What're you trying to do? Be a hero? You're no hero. . . . You're just a Jewboy." Monty believes that Max is fighting not only to prove something about himself, but to make a statement about the mob: "Trying to show us we're no good. Show us we're trying to persecute you." Monty refuses to grant Max his humanity, reinforcing Brooks's contention that "Jew" is a monolithic construct of the anti-Semite's irrational hatred: "You think I'll say it's a great fight. That you've got guts. You're crazy. Just a crazy Jew. Always plotting. Plotting. Got a plan. All Jews got a plan. Dirty up the place with your sheeny blood. Down, now. Down."16 For Brooks, an obsession with socially constructed boundaries is inherently

11

fascist, and throughout The Brick Foxhole, he is preoccupied with both the power and limits of socially constructed identity and the choice between maintaining or transgressing these boundaries in order to express solidarity or universal humanity. Though Brooks could not have read Jean-Paul Sarte's Anti-Semite and Jew (1946) before writing The Brick Foxhole, the parallels between Sartre's brilliant delineation of the roots and nature of the French anti-Semite and Brooks's representation of the American anti-Semite, Monty, are striking. Sartre argues that the French anti-Semite sees his Frenchness as a birthright: it is a natural and essentialist category of identity, perceived as an entitlement that accrues without reference to individual effort or personal merit. In the mind of the anti-Semite, he belongs to his nation by virtue of blood, rather than national history or culture. For the fascist, the nation is essentially racial; the very idea of "becoming" a citizen is therefore a betrayal of blood lineage. Sartre's example here is the "natural" Frenchman who believes he intuitively knows more about Racine than Proust, the assimilated Jew, ever could. Similarly, the nation itself belongs to him, reinforcing his sense of entitlement, his inalienable right to whatever privileges and opportunities follow from that belonging. Thus, the anti-Semite is "rightfully" contemptuous of the interlopers and intruders whose Frenchness is achieved or earned, "naturalized" rather than "natural." Jews, of course, are particularly despised, since, as members of an "alien race," they have the wrong blood for Frenchness. The anti-Semite is outraged by these Others' claims to Frenchness, since for him assimilation and naturalization are inherently inauthentic, and as such, represent usurpations of his own "blood right" to Frenchness.17 In The Brick Foxhole, Brooks makes a similar argument for Monty's sense of entitled "Americanness," though Monty's roster of interlopers is not confined to Jews, but includes all the Others in the American melting pot, from African

12

Americans to the many immigrant "hyphenated" Americans: "Monty was strongly American. Frenchmen were Frogs; Negroes, niggers; Poles, Polacks; Italians, wops; Chinese, Chinks; Jews, Christ-killers." In Monty's Manichean worldview, fervent nationalism runs parallel with aggressive anti-internationalism, lumping together all "foreigners" as the Other—not "one of us." He is particularly resentful of the presence of "rotten refugees," linking them with the native-born Jews who were so visible in Hollywood, the New Deal, and other sites of political and cultural power in American society. Monty suggests that despite—or because of—their wealth and political influence, the Jews are "contaminating" the nation with their "dirty" accents and their money. Significantly, his isolationism is largely intuitive, just as his sense of entitled Americanism is essentially irrational and anti-intellectual. Monty does not have to actually know the Others to know about them: "I know these lousy foreigners. All the same. Every one of 'em." However, he is also quick to point out that he is "broadminded:" "Mind you, I got nothing against the good ones but . . . "18 For Monty, the end of the war represents an ideal opportunity to neutralize these un-American elements, and he looks forward to the day when the generals, businessmen, and those who "know how to run things" take over the country.19 The novel's second battle, between "real" men and a "fairy," offers a different

13

take on Brooks's vision of the relationship between masculinity, violence, and fascist boundary-keeping.20 This battle, which ends in murder, invokes the threat posed by homosexuality to normative heterosexuality and highlights even more clearly the wartime crisis of masculinity. Mitchell, still looking for a way to act like a "real" soldier, gets a weekend pass to Washington, D.C., where he hopes to forget his wife's supposed betrayal in the arms of another woman. Despite some misgivings, he falls in with Monty and his racist Southern buddy, Floyd Bowers. Hitchhiking into the city, the three soldiers catch a ride with Mr. Edwards, who is unmistakably a "sexual pervert." Edwards invites them to his apartment for drinks. Monty and Floyd, the novel's native fascists, taunt Mr. Edwards, and the mood gets ugly. Though this murder is crucial to both plot and theme of The Brick Foxhole, Brooks does not give homophobia the same careful delineation that anti-Semitism receives. Perhaps he felt that homophobia was a more "natural" prejudice than anti-Semitism, one that did not need to be explained to his readers. Certainly, as several historians have noted, World War Two heightened the visibility of gays, particularly in the military, and ultimately fueled a backlash. In the postwar period, a virulent panic over homosexuality (similar to, and indeed, linked to the panic over Communists) resulted in a wholesale purge of gays and lesbians from the military, the federal government, education, professions.21

and other

"responsible"

14

Nevertheless, in creating a "setting in which to experience same-sex love,

15

affection, and sexuality, and to participate in the group life of gay men and women," the Second World War marked a critical turning point in the creation of gay communities throughout the United States. According to John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, "For some, their wartime careers simply made more accessible a way of living and loving they had already chosen. For others, it gave meaning to little-understood desires, introduced them for the first time to men and women with similar feelings, and allowed them to embark upon a new sexual road. Truly, World War Two was something of a national 'coming out' experience."22 Once granted leave or weekend passes, GIs, both straight and gay, flooded the cities near military bases or major ports, looking for love, sex, companionship, and relief from the boredom and constraints of military life. As Allan Bérubé explains, "Servicemen openly cruised each other in the anonymity of crowded bus and train stations, city parks, restrooms, YMCAs, beaches, and streets. They doubled up in hotel beds, slept on the floor in movie theaters, and went home with strangers when there was no other place to sleep."23 Soldiers often hitchhiked into town, and civilians considered it their patriotic duty to offer them rides. Thus, "Routes between military bases and cities became cruising areas where civilian men with cars picked up men in uniform. Many gay male soldiers and military employees welcomed these erotically charged roadside offers."24 In this context, Mr. Edwards's offer of a ride to the hitchhiking servicemen suggests a deliberate sexual pick-up. In Brooks's construction, Mr. Edwards is a classic "fairy": an effeminate

16

homosexual whose gendered performance of "womanliness" virtually defined homosexuality in the mid-twentieth century.25 Without having met Mr. Edwards before, Mitchell notes the very pale "hungry" face, the "full, red lips" and "too graceful" hands, and knows him intuitively as a homosexual. Mitchell sees something "familiar" about Mr. Edwards even before Monty makes the insinuating comment—"Mr.

Edwards

is

a

simply

wonderful

interior

decorator"—that

unquestionably identifies the man as a "fairy." In fact, there is a subtle affinity between Mitchell, the sensitive artist, and Mr. Edwards, the homosexual interior decorator. Mitchell defends him against the mocking comments of Monty and Floyd: "It's an art. . . . It takes taste, ingenuity, and a knowledge of colors and spaces."26 In The Brick Foxhole, the two men are also linked by their loneliness and "hunger," a desire not only for sex, but for human connectedness—a feminine and feminizing need in the eyes of Brooks. However, Mitchell's defense of Mr. Edwards and his "recognition" of him are not only meant to suggest his own possible homosexuality. Instead, I would argue that within Brooks's universalist liberalism, in which boundary-keeping is equated with fascism, Mitchell's identification with Others, both the homosexual, Mr.

17

Edwards, and the Jew, Max Brock, also marks him as potentially "nonfascist." Thus, as Monty and Floyd flirt with Mr. Edwards, Mitchell's first impulse is to warn him: "He didn't know against what. But the whole thing seemed evil to him. He wanted to tell the man to withdraw his invitation. There was something about the way Monty was talking that frightened [Mitchell]."27 It is possible to imagine that, under different circumstances (i.e., without the brutalizing influence of Monty and Floyd) that this meeting between Mitchell and Mr. Edwards—two sensitive and lonely young men—might reach a very different conclusion. However, Mitchell has chosen to "pass," identifying himself not as an "artist" (feminine, sensitive, empathetic, liberal), but as a "real soldier" (masculine, violent, sexually aggressive, potentially fascist). Therefore, instead of repudiating Monty and Floyd, he remains silent when Floyd includes him in the homophobic highjinks, with a nudge and a whispered, "We're set, buddy. Set. I ain't beaten up a queer in I don't know how long." As Mitchell tells himself, "You wanted to be a soldier, didn't you? Well, now you're being a soldier."28 In this context, being a soldier requires Mitchell to participate in the brutalization of Mr. Edwards. "Beating up a queer" becomes a rite of passage, an initiation into the fascist band of brothers. This bloody rite is a distorted mirror image of Max's fight against Whitey. Though Mitchell leaves before the murder occurs, his tacit consent to the bashing and his abandonment of Mr. Edwards represents a betrayal, a personal violation that makes him vulnerable to a potential demagogue like Monty. Brooks's juxtaposition of Mr. Edwards and Max Brock—the novel's despised Others—is also significant. In sharp contrast to Max's performance of manly heroism

and

univeralist

Americanism,

Mr.

Edwards's

performance

of

womanliness—from his good manners to his pathetic tears—mark him as weak and pitiable. Brooks is clearly contemptuous of the "hunger" that drives Mr. Edwards, and his constant iteration of the man's anxious, desirous responses to the GIs' come-ons—grateful glances, blushes, nervously licked lips, and hard swallows—implies that Mr. Edwards "asked for it." During the drive from the base to the city, Monty and Floyd alternately mock and flirt with Mr. Edwards. "[A]s though to say: Listen to this. This is going to be good," Monty winks at Floyd and Mitchell and begins the seduction: "Mr. Edwards, you got no idea how tough it is for a serviceman." Monty suggests that girls are "too much trouble"—it takes too much time and money to get them into bed. Floyd follows Monty's lead, saying that he's considering giving up girls all together, to which Monty replies suggestively, "A guy's got to have some fun." Licking his lips and swallowing hard, Mr. Edwards invites the men to his home, despite their obvious contempt for him. To mark his difference from the women who demand dinner and drinks before sex, Mr. Edwards offers to supply the whiskey as well as a few sandwiches. "I bet you make them yourself, don't you, Mr. Edwards?" Monty says snidely, and Mr. Edwards blushes, aware of the unmanliness of his domestic performance.29

18

Brooks's presentation of the "seduction" of Mr. Edwards powerfully suggests the

19

conflicting interpretations of homosexuality in the 1940s. On the one hand, the behavior of Monty and Floyd is reminiscent of the aggressive working-class masculinity described by George Chauncey: "A man's occasional recourse to fairies did not prove he had homosexual desire for another man, as today's hetero-homosexual binarism would insist, but only that he was interested in the forms of phallic pleasure a fairy could provide as well as a female prostitute could."30 Monty and Floyd are clearly motivated, not simply by a desire for sex, but by a need to assert their masculinity through dominance. As Chauncey argues, "If a man risked forfeiting his masculine status by being sexually passive, he could also establish it by playing the dominant role in an encounter with another man. Sexual penetration symbolized one man's power over another." Similarly, homophobic violence was a means of policing the boundaries between "fairies" and "virile" men: "Some men beat or robbed their effeminate male sexual partners after sex as if to emphasize that they felt no connection to them and had simply 'used' them for sexual release." "[I]f fairies were tolerated because they were regarded as women, they were also subject to the contempt and violence regularly directed at women."31 At the same time, however, this scene clearly underscores the emerging link

20

between homosexuality and psychological definitions of "deviance." Though the medical demonization of homosexuality was well underway by the 1940s, the rise of fascism suggested a new spin, in which repressed homosexuality was linked to an "authoritarian personality," a construction that would ultimately dominate postwar thought. Brooks clearly accepts this link between fascism, sexual "perversion," and sadism, suggesting that Monty's overt homophobia conceals a repressed homosexuality. In murdering Mr. Edwards, Monty eliminates the sexual "disorder" represented by homosexuality (both outside and within himself) and reaffirms the "natural" social order and his own normative masculinity. In addition, for Brooks, Monty is dangerous because his fascist sympathies are deployed to recruit the men around him. Indeed, he is not just a potential storm trooper, but a demagogic corporal, à la Adolph Hitler. Monty very deliberately cultivates the prejudices of the other soldiers, particularly Floyd Bowers. Importantly, the homophobic violence only erupts after Monty willfully inflames Floyd's racism. The trouble starts when Mr. Edwards—now called "Eddie" with disturbing familiarity—plays a recording by a Negro singer: "There's a nigger thinks he's hot," Monty said. "But he has such a talent," Eddie said. . . . "That bastid," Monty said without particular venom, and therefore with

21

more venom. "Holding that white girl in his arms, kissing her, making love to her."32

This enrages Floyd, who snatches the record from the phonograph and breaks it over his knee. Monty uses Floyd's irrational rage at miscegenation—another "unnatural" sex act—to win his consent and perhaps participation in the brutal bludgeoning of Mr. Edwards with the porcelain top of the toilet in his own bathroom. In The Brick Foxhole, then, prejudices are virtually interchangeable, and one irrational rage can be deployed against a variety of "enemies." The closing chapters of The Brick Foxhole are dominated by a narrative of

22

conversion, as each of the major characters (save Monty the unregenerated fascist) realize their essential interconnectedness with the rest of humanity. With the world around them in upheaval, they recognize (as does Rick in Casablanca) that their individual problems "don't amount to a hill of beans in this lousy world." Keeley, of course, understood this from the beginning. It was his knowledge of "the score" and "what to do" that made him an oracle for Mitchell. However, even Keeley is not certain how or when the world became so complicated, and he reviews key turning points in the rise of fascism in search of the answer: "Had it begun with Pearl Harbor? With Hitler's march into Poland? With the castration of Spain's

liberty?

With

Ethiopia?

With

Manchuria?"

Unsatisfied

with

these

possibilities, he reaches further back into history for the source of the "universal blight that had destroyed love and substituted hatred and frustration." Working back through history, invoking first the Versailles Treaty, and then the Inquisition, Attila the Hun's "plunge through history," Kublai Khan, the death of Christ, and finally "some wild thought expounded in a cave among prehistoric men," Keeley (and Brooks) suggest that modern fascism is simply a manifestation of ancient hatreds or a primitive, even biological, lust for power. As Keeley muses: Every single act and utterance made by any man or woman affected every other man and woman in the world in some way. The unknown man who died unjustly in the dark alley of a Hungarian city left a blot on justice throughout the world. The Greek child whose belly is bloated with rickets today will haunt us tomorrow. These things Keeley knew. He knew we were all part of the whole, and that no man can say he stands alone.33

Thus, Keeley insists that our responsibilities to each other are profound and eternal. And this responsibility is to everyone in the entire world—not just the people who look or think or talk like "us"—not just "America for the Americans" but "One World for all Humanity." This recognition propels Keeley into action, on behalf of Mitchell and all humankind. Mitchell's failure to do the right thing—to warn Mr. Edwards, to protect him or at

23

least stick by him in the face of the fascist threat posed by Monty and Floyd—results in his own implication in the murder. After abandoning Mr. Edwards to his fate, Mitchell drunkenly wanders the Washington streets until he finds a whorehouse and Ginny, a prostitute, to help him forget his marital troubles. When Mr. Edwards turns up dead, the police detective, Captain Finlay, believes that Mitchell is the murderer—a story that Monty encourages. However, Keeley, the sophisticated, liberal "hero," knowing that Mitchell is the kind of man who "cannot kill," immediately recognizes that Monty is the real murderer and urges Finlay to arrest Monty. Finlay hesitates, certain that "everybody lies" and that Keeley may be "stringing me along to save his friend." Finlay's resistance reveals the terribly skewed priorities of liberal justice: "Not so fast, Sergeant. This isn't the battlefield you know. Things aren't all black and white here. The colors are gray. We have to move slowly. A mistake in the battlefield is only a mistake. A lot of guys may get killed, but it's still just a mistake. Here a mistake means somebody's job."34 For Keeley, however, the war against fascism—the struggle for liberal humanism—can only be black and white: kill or be killed. Either you're with us or against us. Finlay's selfish concern with protecting his own job rather than pursuing the enemy and his callous indifference to the millions of lives lost in the war shows Keeley that Finlay is not "one of us." In fact, both Finlay the Washington detective and Monty the Chicago cop are both representatives of an unjust state. In Brooks's critique of the inadequacy of social institutions in the struggle against fascism, Finlay's self-serving indifference represents the official tolerance of intolerance that allows Monty's racist violence to flourish. Thus, for Brooks, it is neither social institutions nor the state, but strong, committed individuals, who represent the antifascist vanguard. Keeley knows immediately that he must take justice into his own hands. The road back to the post leads him through the forgotten battlefields of the Civil War, past Manassas, past Bull Run; Keeley despairs that these bloody battlefields in the war against American slavery have been forgotten, suggesting that the roots of the current war against fascism lie in that historical amnesia.35 At the post, he lures Monty to a war museum, where the two men join in hand-to-hand combat, crashing through the glass display cases, grabbing ancient bayonets rusty with the dried blood of older battles. Monty fights dirty, jabbing his fist into Keeley's groin, howling, "You dirty Irish mick. . . . What've you got against me?" Keeley replies, "I've got you against you. . . . This is a jungle, Monty. . . . This is a piece of the war. . . . This is the same war people are fighting all over the world. . . . And you're the same enemy." This collapsing of historical specificity and political difference—so central to the 1940s faith in universalism and "normality"—stands in sharp contrast to Monty's potentially fascist insistence on ethnic differences and boundary-keeping. In this final battle, the forces of liberalism and fascism are evenly matched. Monty—a "savage butcher" like the Japs and Nazis—is a fighting

24

machine, untouched by fear, fueled by hatred: "He knew only that he had to kill and kill swiftly. He hated Keeley now as he hated everything else." Like a mad, slavering dog, Monty lunges at Keeley, and both of their bayonets strike home. With his dying breath, Monty whispers, "Mick bastid." As Keeley's lifeblood seeps from his body through his fingers, his final thought reaffirms his One World vision, linking himself, his mother, Mitchell and the band of brothers, and the suffering humanity of the world into one seamless web: "Mom! Oh Mom! When an old woman is hungry in China it hurts everybody in the world. Remember that, [Mitchell]. . . . Yes, Mom."36 Interestingly, Brooks does not end The Brick Foxhole here, with Keeley's selfless

25

sacrifice in the war against fascism. Instead, there is a final chapter in which Mitchell's wife Mary works with Captain Finlay, confronting the prostitute Ginny to prove her husband's innocence and to save her marriage. In one sense, this chapter ends the novel on an upbeat note: with Mitch exonerated of the murders and forgiven by his wife, he and Mary are reunited, and together they look forward to rebuilding their lives. Mary asks him, "Will everything be the same as it was with us?" She is talking about their marriage, and very specifically about sex, but Mitch misunderstands her, commenting instead on the future of the postwar world. "No," he replies. "But I think things will be better. They'll be better for everybody, and that means for us, too." With this promise of domestic harmony, both marital and political, The Brick Foxhole anticipates the full realization of the therapeutic, containment culture of the 1950s.37 At the same time, however, the confrontation in Ginny's apartment works to undermine the basic premises of this happy ending, raising disturbing questions about the very possibility of trust, stability, and certainty in the postwar world. Though Brooks sets up this scene as a showdown between the "good wife" and the "other woman," he subverts these categories by suggesting that the "honest woman" is Ginny rather than Mary. The distinctions between Mary the madonna and Ginny the whore could not be clearer. Though Mary looks tired, her hair is neat and orderly, her lipstick fresh, and she is properly accessorized with ladylike gloves, hat, and brown leather handbag. Mary announces herself: "'I . . . I'm Mrs. Mitchell,' as though that explained everything." Indeed, in some ways it does: Mitch is her husband and "this girl," Ginny, "had taken something that belonged to her." Mary's "property" claim is reinforced by the power of the state, both in the person of Captain Finlay and the fact of her legal marriage to Mitch. Ginny, on the other hand, answers the door looking like the scarlet woman she is, wearing a maroon bathrobe with a tasseled sash and fuzzy pink mules on her bare feet. Her tiny apartment smells of fried eggs. With one glance, a powerful gaze that establishes the differences between them, Mary sees "everything she wanted to know about the girl."38

26

Most importantly, perhaps, Mary "collaborates" with the corrupt state, while Ginny

27

resists, a distinction with significant implications in the struggle against fascism.39 Mary begs her to tell Detective Finlay that Mitchell was with her, but Ginny refuses, saying only, "A lot of men come to see me. . . . I never remember 'em." When Finlay, "a blot of ominous blue and brass," appears at the door, she snaps, defiantly, "I don't like cops," and challenges his authority with streetwise cracks: "Is this a raid or something? . . . You can't make me talk." Mary insists that Ginny help them: "I know [he] was with you. He told me. But it doesn't matter any more. Don't you see? . . . Never mind me. You've got to think of him." At this, Ginny turns the tables on Mary, challenging their presumed roles as "good wife" and "other woman." Given Brooks's suspicion of women, it is impossible for the women to form a common cause, and Ginny furiously mocks Mary, "Now ain't that just too goddam noble for words. . . . And where were you when he needed you? If you'd been where you should of been, at home in bed with him, all this wouldn't of happened. But I guess you're too good for anything like that."40 When Ginny still refuses to cooperate, Finlay says sadly, "We're just wasting our

28

time here. This girl's word wouldn't stand up anyhow." Stung, Ginny retorts, "What's the matter with my word? . . . I'm as good as anybody else. Just because I'm a whore don't mean I'm a liar!" Indeed, Brooks suggests that Ginny is the only truthful woman in the novel; as a whore, she—like Keeley—"knows the score" and refuses to indulge in romantic fantasies: "Trouble is, all you wives really believe that crap about men winning the war for you. You don't know anything about the war," she snipes. Ginny (and perhaps Brooks himself) have only scorn for the "good girls." "These decent women, they lie more'n we do anyway. They start by lying to themselves, and wind up lying to live. They haven't got the guts to face the truth. All these good women . . . aaah!"41 Though Brooks implies, through the reunion of Mary and Mitch, that Mary can be trusted, he subverts the "happy ending" through Ginny, who suggests that women like Mary—who lie to themselves and tell others the truth—are not to be trusted. At this point, the novel's most outrageous "story teller" emerges from the bedroom: "The Man," a nameless character who serves not only to confirm Mitchell's alibi, but also to reiterate the radically dislocating effects of the war. The Man makes his first appearance earlier in the novel, when Mitchell wakes up in Ginny's apartment. Hung over and confused, he doesn't remember his encounter with Ginny until The Man appears at the door. As The Man settles in and begins to make coffee it becomes clear that he belongs there. "You're wondering about this set-up, aren't you?" he asks and offers a series of strange and contradictory explanations about his relationship with Ginny that clearly presage the postmodern emphasis on multiple and fractured identities. Claiming first to be her husband, then a customer just like Mitch, then her lover, and finally

29

her pimp, The Man emphasizes, "It's lies. All lies." Later, in his conversation with Finlay, The Man offers a story that may finally be the truth: "I'm a D.D. . . . Dishonorable Discharge, you know. I was in the Army. I met her over at Mama Bell's same as . . . everybody else."42 The hostile relationship between Ginny and The Man subverts the "return to

30

normalcy" promised to postwar couples like Mitch and Mary. Ginny despises The Man and resents his intrusion in her affairs: "It's not your business to spy on me . . . to watch me like I belonged to you or something. Because I don't, see? I hate you . . . I hate your guts." The Man himself is a rather pitiable, emasculated character, who is too weak to challenge either Mitchell or Ginny: "I haven't got any nerve. That's why she hates me. I take whatever she says to me and never answer back. I know I ought to. But I can't." The Man blames himself for the failure of the relationship: "We made a lot of plans. They fell through. I'm one of those guys that never finishes anything." The Man stands in stark contrast to the "heroic" men in the novel, men of moral certainty like Keeley and Max Brock. Restless and out of step, unable to get into the "excitement" or take charge of his domestic life, and indeed, a failure even as a soldier, The Man represents all the returning veterans for whom "normalcy" would remain elusive. Mary speaks for the entire society when she wonders, "How many more men would there be with dishonorable discharges? Who would think of them? What would be their place?"43 Mary herself prefigures both the domestic ideology and the triumph of therapeutic culture in the postwar period. As she ponders the meaning of the war, she first acknowledges the physical violence and suffering—the casualty lists and lines of straggling refugees—but quickly moves on the psychological realm, realizing "that war did not come from outside of people. It came from inside them. And when people had cured themselves, there would be no war."44 Certainly, there are echoes here of Keeley's message that every human act or thought affects everyone in the world in some way or another. Mary, however, suggests that war—whether against fascism abroad or intolerance at home—is not a social or political problem, but essentially a psychological problem, an irrational impulse that

can

be

"cured."

Significantly,

Mary's

emphasis

on

"understanding,

understanding, understanding" reflects the contemporary assumption that women were largely responsible for the psychic reintegration of the returning veterans. Thus, American women would face the future and rebuild their lives by understanding their men and forgiving them their wartime trespasses, an approach encouraged by the "experts." By the end of the war, a significant body of advice literature instructed women to devote themselves to home and family and to subordinate their own needs to their husbands', emphasizing that "the restoration of peace must lead to the restoration of the status quo antebellum in

31

gender relations."45 However, the postwar domestic ideology was not simply a return to the prewar status quo; instead, recognizing the changes in sexual behavior during the war years, it acknowledged female sexuality as long as it was properly channeled into sexually-charged marriage.46 Significantly, then, The Brick Foxhole ends with Mary's embrace of her own sexual desire: "She was listening now to the wisdom of her own body, and it was aflame. There was something she had to prove to herself and to Jeff. . . . She would prove that she was better than Ginny. She wanted to wipe Ginny from his mind forever. She wanted to go to bed with him."47 Though this happy ending anticipates the postwar construction of normalcy, it

32

also strikes a false note and raises a number of disturbing questions. Brooks's deep ambivalence about women, marriage, and normative heterosexuality cannot be fully contained by the promise of a blissful, erotic future for Mitch and Mary. Are we to assume that Mitchell's weakness will be "cured" in the future? How will he function in the postwar world without Keeley's guidance? Will he no longer need his "oracle" in the brave new world populated by other men like himself who "cannot kill"? Will there be no Montys to lead him astray? No separations, frustrations, or miscommunication to drive him into the arms of a prostitute? And what of Ginny and the Man? How will they fare in the therapeutic, containment culture? And, indeed, what would be the fate of the internationalist One World vision articulated by Keeley as Americans like Mitchell and Mary set aside the antifascist struggle and embrace the containment domesticity of the Cold War? In June 1945, with the end of World War Two finally in sight, The Brick Foxhole was published—to decidedly mixed reviews. The critics greeted the novel with either cheers or hisses, with little middle ground. Sinclair Lewis's take on the book was one of the most positive: "The Brick Foxhole is a powerful, shocking tale about soldiers fighting the war from a stateside barracks. For them it became a war without meaning. Their driving force was hate. Hatred for Negros [sic] and Jews and Catholics and especially homosexuals. Hatred, finally, for each other and themselves. It's a blistering novel you'll never forget." Novelist and screenwriter Niven Busch, perhaps best known as the author of Duel in the Sun, agreed with Lewis's assessment. Busch praised The Brick Foxhole in the Saturday Review of Literature as "angry, rapid, stream-lined, and beautifully written; it is tough without self-consciousness and bitter without irritability and it has a mood in it which looks like the mood of the best of the new stuff coming out of this war." Walter Bernstein, however, described it in The New Republic as a "pretentious book, tough on the outside and soft on the inside." Hamilton Basso, writing in The New Yorker, also skewered the novel, calling it "a lot of nonsense" and "confused, badly written." Unimpressed with the social issues addressed in The Brick Foxhole, Basso dismissed it as "full of frantic striving to think large

33

thoughts." Basso concludes that Brooks, "having lost his theme in the tangles of melodrama, loses his melodrama in the tangles of purely incidental issues—the issue of race prejudice, primarily."48 Basso's primary criticism of the novel was that the rumor and the ensuing murder

34

and manhunt seem almost incidental, serving primarily as a hook on which to hang the novel's larger themes—the endemic racism and anti-Semitism in American society, the radical dislocation of the military experience for American men, and the potential for fascism in the United States. Nevertheless, it is precisely this "nest of mechanical incident and contrived behavior" that gives The Brick Foxhole its existential power and resonance. In rooting his novel in a series of random coincidences, Brooks captures the sense of contingency that dominated the war years. For many Americans, struggling to deal with the radical dislocation, suffering and loss of total war, the moral certainties offered by popular nationalism could not completely contain their doubts and fears. Thus, the initial catalyst of suspected infidelity in Brooks's novel also reflects an overriding preoccupation with the issue of trust—or, more precisely, lack of trust. Who can you trust? This question haunts all the relationships in the novel, from the heterosexual marriages to the homosocial bonds between men. In various ways throughout The Brick Foxhole, the major characters struggle to determine who can be trusted, or are tested to prove their own trustworthiness, both personally and politically. These questions and issues posed by The Brick Foxhole resonated powerfully for Americans in the 1940s, and they struck a chord for Adrian Scott as well.

The Brick Foxhole in Hollywood Soon after its publication in the summer of 1945, The Brick Foxhole made the

35

rounds in Hollywood, sparking the interest of several major progressive players. Humphrey Bogart read it and passed it on to independent producer Mark Hellinger. Hellinger, who had made his Hollywood reputation with gritty, almost existential films like They Drive by Night and High Sierra, liked the book, but wasn't interested in filming it.49 Group Theater playwright Clifford Odets planned to adapt the novel to the stage and convinced his friend Elia Kazan to direct. Unfortunately, Odets was in the middle of a divorce and had to put The Brick Foxhole on the back burner, while Kazan ran into financial difficulties and was unwilling to wait for Odets to finish writing the play, and they ultimately abandoned their plans for a stage adaptation. Nevertheless, it was Odets who introduced Adrian Scott to Richard Brooks, at a party in Odets's home.50 Like several of the literary critics who reviewed Brooks's novel, Scott thought The Brick Foxhole was significantly flawed, describing it as "an angry, chaotic book"

36

with a "botched" theme. Nevertheless, he saw that if the story were revised so that a Jew instead of a homosexual became the murder victim, The Brick Foxhole would be an ideal vehicle for his dream project on anti-Semitism and the potential for fascism in America: The Brick Foxhole was melodrama. It was soldiers in wartime. It was an attack on native Fascism—or the prejudices which exist in the American people which when organized lead very simply to native Fascism. It was an angry book, written with passion rooted in war—'in a dislocated, neurotic moment in history.' While it did not deal exclusively with anti-Semitism, it nevertheless gave an opportunity to focus simply on anti-Semitism. It was a subject we wanted to do something about, it was a subject that needed public airing.51

In his public statements on the making of Crossfire, Adrian Scott focused almost

37

exclusively on the opposition and doubts he and his colleagues encountered: from the front-office men at RKO, the censors at the Production Code Administration (PCA), their friends and comrades in the industry, and even each other. Certainly, Scott understood very well the limitations of the studio system. As he described it, "The working producer doesn't have the right or the power to make what he wants. Neither does a writer. Nor a director. The problem was the okay from the Front Office—that civilized monster which has no other concern but to think up devious ways to make you unhappy, or so you think." Though Murder, My Sweet showed him it was possible to manipulate the Production Code, his experience on Cornered had taught him the difficulties of injecting explicitly political themes into Hollywood films. The studio moguls, sensitive to charges of Jewish influence in the film industry, had long been unwilling to depict Jews and anti-Semitism on the screen. Though nothing in the Production Code specifically prohibited an anti–anti-Semitism film, Scott and his colleagues were "consumed with fear" and "imposed a censorship" on themselves, both in the early conceptual stages and in the

production

censorship

process

shaped

the

itself. film

Ultimately, more

however,

profoundly

than

their any

expectations actual

of

outside

interference.52 Given his sense of wide-ranging opposition to the project, Scott's choice of The Brick Foxhole was rather risky. Certainly there were other, more critically acclaimed literary sources he might have used. Arthur Miller's Focus was published in 1945, and Laura Z. Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement was serialized in Cosmopolitan before appearing in book form in early 1947. The Brick Foxhole, however, attracted Scott more powerfully, for a variety of reasons. First, Brooks's novel, with its seamy milieu, rather sordid characters, and violent, sensational murder plot, lent itself to the noir style and existential themes that Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk had begun to develop in Murder, My Sweet and Cornered. Second, Brooks's political vision resonated profoundly for Scott. Like many progressives of

38

that era, they both understood intolerance to be a product of ignorance and hatred, and saw anti-Semitism as part of a larger constellation of essentially interchangeable and equally irrational prejudices. For both men, this inclusive bigotry was symptomatic of an "authoritarian personality" that, if unchecked, could form the basis of a fascist state in America. Third, Scott was attracted by the novel's exploration of the slippage between the rhetoric of popular nationalism and the reality of widespread intolerance and injustice. Brooks's depiction of the ennui, despair, and intolerance of the soldiers corroborated Scott's vision of a postwar world filled with dangerous and potentially explosive uncertainties. Most importantly, however, both men embraced a liberal universalism, in which difference is erased and all people are seen as essentially the same. For example, when Scott and Paxton discussed the adaptation with Brooks, he agreed fully with Scott's plan to focus the film on Monty's anti-Semitism and to change the murder victim from a homosexual to a Jew, saying, "They got the same problems. Everybody does."53 Several historians have assumed that the Production Code's ban on the depiction of homosexuality was Scott's main reason for changing the murder victim from a homosexual to a Jew, implying that in the absence of such restrictions he might not have made such a critical change.54 Certainly, Scott was concerned about getting this project past the industry censors, but it is clear that his political concern—his belief that rising anti-Semitism was a harbinger of fascism in America—was more important than censorship issues in this case. From the beginning, he intended to make a film exposing the dangers of anti-Semitism rather than homophobia, and he chose The Brick Foxhole for its explication of the irrational hatred that fueled a wide range of prejudices. Though I agree with James Naremore's contention that "World War II had made attacks on anti-Semitism topical, safe, and even patriotic,"55 I think he underestimates the impact of Crossfire's depiction of the murder of a Jew by an American soldier. Scott's insistence that anti-Semitism in America could have violent and potentially murderous consequences was profoundly disturbing and injects the problem of American anti-Semitism with an urgency lacking in a "safer" attack on anti-Semitism such as Gentleman's Agreement. Also, the fact that the murder in Crossfire is committed by an American soldier, by "one of us," rather than a German Nazi or other threatening outsider, raises the unsettling specter of fascism as a specifically domestic problem, a specter made all the more chilling by the European example of the consequences of anti-Semitism and the graphic images of the bodies of murdered Jews that were widely disseminated after the liberation of the Nazi death camps. In this context, changing the focus from homophobia to anti-Semitism did not necessarily eradicate the film's subversive potential or the political objections to it.

39

At the same time however, Scott's own attitudes toward homosexuality did play a

40

role in his decision to change the murder victim from a gay man to a Jew. For Scott,

like

many

leftists

of

this

period—and

indeed,

for

some

gay

people—homophobia or gay rights were not specifically political issues in the same way that the rights of labor or the oppression of blacks clearly were. For the Communist Party, in particular, despite its official positions against, for example, male chauvinism, the "personal" politics of gender and sexuality were distinctly subordinate to the "public" politics of class and race.56 At the same time, Scott himself was ambivalent toward homosexuality, in ways that we might now consider homophobic. Like many in the 1940s, he saw homosexuality as a form of mental illness, an aberration of nature, and believed that the practices of homosexuals

should

be

neutralized

through

therapy

and

adjustment.

Nevertheless, he deplored the public ridicule and contempt leveled at gays and was outraged by the postwar purge of homosexuals from the State Department, as evidenced by his letter to the editor of the New York Herald Tribune, written in the mid-1950s. Clearly seeing the parallel to his own blacklisting, Scott defended the rights of gays to keep their jobs. He argued, "To do otherwise is an uncivilized practice, one which does not advance us prominently as an understanding people." Scott added, however, "I am not now, nor have I ever been a homosexual, nor do I intend to be."57 This disclaimer, echoing the language used by HUAC in its investigations of Reds, is intriguing. Did Scott hope to convince readers that his defense of homosexuals was a principled stand against discrimination, uncompromised by any conflict of interest? Is it simply an ironic reference to Scott's own experiences with the Committee and its smear tactics? Or might it suggest a concern that readers would mistake Scott's defense of homosexuals as evidence of

his own

homosexuality? Whatever his intention, I think Scott's disavowal is significant, particularly in light of his consistent refusal to publicly discuss his own ethnic background, which became an issue after Crossfire was released: A troubled few had difficulty assigning the right motives to the making and to the makers of Crossfire. Eddie Dmytryk was labeled a Jew. It was said that I was a Jew, too, a fact which I had managed to conceal for many years but which now came out since I was involved in the project. Of John Paxton . . . it was noted by someone who read the script that he couldn't possibly have been this brilliant about antisemitism unless he himself was an antisemite. Finally, it was said categorically that the whole bunch at RKO involved in this project were Jews.58

For Scott, it was a point of pride to refuse to rise to such Jew-baiting. As he wrote to columnist Earl Wilson, "We none of us bothered to answer the attack. We didn't want this interpreted as an admission that we preferred to be known as Gentiles. It would have been a kind of anti-Semitism in itself."59 Despite Scott's limitations

41

on issues of sexuality, there is a kind of heroism in his commitment to cross-class, cross-race solidarity that is reminiscent of the pivotal scene in Spartacus (1960), written by his close friend and fellow Communist Dalton Trumbo: When the Roman commander demands that the slave Spartacus identify himself so that he can be punished for his subversion, the band of slaves rallies around him and each calls out, "I am Spartacus! No, I am Spartacus!" It was this affective solidarity that made the Popular Front so appealing and powerful. At the same time, however, it is critically important to recognize that Scott could

42

take pride in his refusal to comment on his ethnicity precisely because he was not Jewish. Indeed, Scott's risk-taking was enabled by his own privileged position, both in the film industry and the culture at large. His middle-class upbringing, his elite education, even his Irish Catholic background (which, read against the "Jewishness" of Hollywood, marked him definitively as "white") made Scott an insider and gave him a sense of belonging, even authenticity, that an "outsider" like Richard Brooks simply could not take for granted in 1940s America. Despite Scott's sincere solidarity with the oppressed—he is a "class traitor" (and proud of it!)—his privileged position translated into an abiding faith in the American democratic tradition. Scott's idealism, so profoundly at odds with Brooks's pessimism, significantly shaped his creative and political decisions in adapting The Brick Foxhole. Ultimately, I think Scott preferred the riskiness of The Brick Foxhole to a liberal

43

text like Gentleman's Agreement or even the more challenging novel Focus because using Brooks's novel reinforced his sense of himself as both a political radical and a cutting-edge, even controversial, filmmaker. This is not to say that Scott's political motivations were not sincere; I believe that they were. However, it is important to recognize that, even as Scott worried about the opposition to his plans for an anti–anti-Semitism film, he also welcomed it, even sought it out by choosing The Brick Foxhole as his literary source, because it confirmed that he—like the antifascist heroes in The Brick Foxhole—was a risk-taking individual. In this sense, then, I think he saw Crossfire as an act of resistance, both against the rising tide of racist conservatism that challenged his vision of a truly democratic America and against the political constraints and aesthetic limitations of the studio system.

Pitching The Brick Foxhole Soon after The Brick Foxhole was published, Scott approached the RKO front office to discuss purchasing the film rights to the novel. In July 1945, RKO executive William Gordon sent a copy of the novel to the Production Code Administration for consideration by Joseph Breen. Gordon had spoken to Breen's assistant, Mr. Shurlock, about The Brick Foxhole and, despite Shurlock's

44

lukewarm response, forwarded the novel anyway. Gordon's cover letter to Breen is hat in hand, almost subservient: "While we recognize that as presently constituted, this novel will probably not pass muster under the Production Code, we yet would appreciate the opportunity to discuss a certain treatment which one of our producers has in mind." Clearly, Scott had already broached the idea of The Brick Foxhole as an expose of anti-Semitism. However, Breen's reply was swift and absolute: "We have read the novel, The Brick Foxhole, and, as you can well understand, the story is thoroughly and completely unacceptable, on a dozen or more counts. It, also, goes without saying that any motion picture following, even remotely, along the lines in the novel, could not be approved."60 It should have come as no surprise to Scott or RKO that The Brick Foxhole

45

received the kiss of death from the Breen Office. The novel's "dozen or more" violations of the Production Code included homosexuality ("sex perversion"), prostitution, adultery, illicit sex, nudity, obscenity, profanity, blasphemy, revenge, excessive use of alcohol, bigotry, and the use of racial or ethnic slurs. In addition, the novel might well have been seen as violating the PCA's first General Principal: "No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it."61 Despite the discouraging verdict from the Breen Office, Scott did not give up on

46

The Brick Foxhole. Almost a year later, in early 1946, even before filming had begun on Cornered, he again pitched his vision to the RKO front office. Studio executives Charles Koerner and William Dozier suggested that Scott write a prospectus for them detailing how he would translate Brooks's "completely unacceptable" novel to film. Scott's memo is prefaced by a series of titles designed to illustrate the fecundity of the material, but which also provide a glimpse into Scott's sense of humor: THE BRICK FOXHOLE or THE PEACETIME HITLER'S CHILDREN or LET'S MAKE THREE STARS! or A POWELL PICTURE FOR $250,000 or

HOW CAN YOU LOSE?62

Scott's memo to Dozier and Koerner is a brilliant pitch piece that weaves together words that are music to front-office ears—"low cost" and "box-office appeal"—with his own stirring idealism. Scott opened his pitch with a discussion of money, promising that the picture could be made for only $250,000. Noting that he, Dmytryk, and Paxton were currently turning out two pictures a year, Scott

47

suggested that the trio would charge their normal rates on two films for the 1947 schedule, and would work on The Brick Foxhole as an extra assignment, charging only a nominal fixed fee. Though Scott suggested $5,000 apiece, he also intimated that the trio would be willing to work gratis in order to see the picture made.63 Scott also argued that production costs could be kept to a minimum if the film

48

were shot on a tight schedule of only twenty-one to twenty-five days, which Dmytryk had assured him was possible if the schedule was well-planned and sets "clearly visualized" before shooting started. Reminding the executives that Dmytryk "knows how to shoot fast," Scott promised that the director would be "helped by a tight script without one superfluous scene, a script written and timed for length." And, to reiterate to the executives that excellent films did not necessarily require big budgets and long shooting schedules, he pointed out that John Ford had filmed the Academy Award–winning The Informer in only eighteen days. Scott also pitched The Brick Foxhole as a star-making project, another angle

49

designed to appeal to the bottom-line sensibilities of studio executives. Arguing that the "characters in this book are all dynamite," Scott predicted that the three male leads would yield "at least one star if the boys are carefully selected" and that the female role of Ginny, though not large, also had the "earmarks of a star-making role." Scott's plan was to use actors already under contract to RKO—"our boys, Mitchum, Tierney, Bill Williams, etc." If that group proved unsatisfactory, Scott suggested that they "look among the returned veterans for new and interesting personalities," pointing out the success of that strategy for Warner Bros.'s Destination Tokyo, which had made stars of Robert Hutton, William Prince, and Dane Clark. Scott also dangled the possibility of Dick Powell starring in one of the male leads. Though he was concerned that "Powell's dough is pretty high for us if we expect to bring it in for $250,000," he also suggested that the studio might be willing to consider a percentage deal if the actor's going rate of $50,000 per picture proved too expensive.64 Interestingly, John Paxton has suggested that Scott didn't tell the RKO front office his real plans for the adaptation of The Brick Foxhole. As he recalled: I doubt if he really told them what it was all about—"It's about some soldiers in Washington . . . " I think that's just about all he told them. I don't think he would have dared mention any idea about anti-Semitism, but the studio had this list of picture categories, with so many love stories, so many melodramas, and really all the studio knew about that was it was a melodrama.65

50

Paxton's memory was probably influenced by his experience of the difficulties

51

they had faced on Cornered. However, he is incorrect. In his memo to Dozier and Koerner, Scott was remarkably frank about his plans for an anti–anti-Semitism film as well as the political concerns that underlay his vision. Scott's argument clearly reveals the liberal universalism—the belief that prejudices were essentially irrational and interchangeable—that he shared with Richard Brooks. However, it also suggests the extent to which they both conceived of the fascist threat to America in terms of individual personalities rather than an organized state apparatus. Scott's target is not the state but "the prejudices which exist in the American people which when organized lead very simply to native Fascism."66 These dangerous, irrational prejudices, which can be deployed against any number of different "enemies," threaten the solidarity of the imagined community of Americans: This is a story of personal fascism as opposed to organized fascism. The story, in a very minor sense to be sure, indicates how it is possible for us to have a gestapo, if this country should go fascist. A character like Monty would qualify brilliantly for the leadership of the Belsen concentration camp. Fascism hates weakness in people; minorities. Monty hates fairies, negroes, jews and foreigners. In the book Monty murders a fairy. He could have murdered a negro, a foreigner or a jew. It would have been the same thing.

And then he outlines the moral high ground, the political—and in Scott's mind, most important—argument for filming The Brick Foxhole: "Anti-semitism is not declining as a result of Hitler's defeat. The recent negro race riots even in a high school (an unheard of event in this country) is symptomatic of the whole cancer. Anti-semitism and anti-negroism will grow unless heroic measures can be undertaken to stop them. This picture is one such measure."67 Scott concluded his memo by reiterating the reasons they wanted to make the

52

film: "Dmytryk, Paxton and I . . . are ambitious. We want to make fine pictures. This will be a fine picture." He also assured the money men that his political vision would not compromise the film's box-office potential, promising, "This will never in our hands be a depressing pamphlet. It will have all the rugged excitement and speed of Murder, My Sweet and a white hot issue to boot."68 Scott's memo worked. In March 1946, RKO paid $1,500 for a nine-month option on The Brick Foxhole, with the stipulation that the studio could extend the option for an additional six months for $1,000 against the purchase price of $15,000 if they did so by December 5, 1946.69 Later, Scott suggested that William Dozier's decision to take out the option on the novel was influenced by his own concerns about native anti-Semitism, which Dozier believed had increased since the end of the war and military defeat of fascism abroad.70

53

Whether unable to contain his delight over RKO's decision to purchase the film

54

rights to The Brick Foxhole or fearful that the studio would back out of the deal, Scott immediately embarked on a public relations campaign to advertise the project. On Thursday, March 28, Virginia Wright, the drama editor at the Los Angeles Daily News, devoted her entire column to the upcoming projects planned by Scott's production unit, including the adaptation of The Brick Foxhole, which she called "the most exciting story in Hollywood today."71 A personal friend to both Scott and Paxton, Wright shared their progressive politics (Myron Fagan, in Red

Treason

in

complexion"),72

Hollywood,

described

her

as

"notorious

for

her

'pink'

and she often used her column to promote their work.

Interestingly, key portions of her column announcing Scott's plans for The Brick Foxhole are taken almost verbatim from his memo to Dozier and Koerner, suggesting that Scott himself shared the document with her. In addition to reprinting Scott's "commercial" arguments for the proposed film—low budget, tight script, short shooting schedule, and star-making potential—Wright also gave a great deal of space to his political reasons for wanting to adapt this particular novel, quoting Scott's comments about the theme of "personal fascism" in Brooks's novel and his own concerns about growing intolerance in America. Wright elaborated further, however, emphasizing Scott's challenge to Hollywood's silence on this issue: "Adrian Scott sees an opportunity here to bring the dangers of anti-Semitism into the open and to say dramatically what the movies have so long avoided saying."73 From

the

first

announcement

in

Wright's

column,

Scott's

plans

for

an

55

anti–anti-Semitism film provoked a flurry of controversy in the film community. According to Scott, he and Paxton and Dmytryk received a number of worried and pessimistic telephone calls from others in the industry. Though he was certain that some were motivated by anti-Semitism, Scott believed that most of his colleagues felt "genuine anxiety about the project and thought it would be better left alone:" Pictures should be made on the subject, the sources said, but not Crossfire. Others among the minority said Crossfire should be made but it should be done differently. Still others: if it were done badly, it would cause more antisemitism. Still others: If it were done well, it would be those smart Jews in Hollywood at work, and this, too, would not have the effect of abating but rather increasing antisemitism.74

Scott received a similar response to his plans following a lecture at the People's Educational Center. One of the audience members, Irwin Steinhart, was a former film exhibitor, and he wrote Scott an extended letter predicting that the project was "doomed to failure." Drawing on the example of other "propaganda" films like The Ox-Bow Incident, Fury, and They Won't Forget, Steinhart warned Scott that

56

audiences had failed to understand the message about "mass hysteria" in these films because they became too involved in the plot. While Steinhart commended Scott for his "obvious and intense desire to produce a picture, not for profit and for entertainment primarily, but for mass enlightenment," he predicted that a dramatic (rather than documentary) treatment of the dangers of anti-Semitism, as Scott envisioned, would meet a similar fate.75 Concerns about the project also came from sources outside the film industry.

57

During this pre-production period, Scott discussed the adaptation of The Brick Foxhole with Colonel Flournoy, a public relations representative with the U.S. Army Ground Forces in Los Angeles. Scott's notes from his telephone conversation with Flournoy record that the colonel had requested a conference to discuss his concerns over the representation of the Army in the novel. Flournoy said, "The book is a pretty sordid kind of story. It presents several soldiers as getting drunk and fooling around with pansies, etc.,—and we're always on the lookout to see that the Army will not be presented in a bad light to the public." He was particularly concerned because the current international situation was so unsettled. Arguing that the Army needed all the popular support it could possibly get, he reminded Scott of the "splendid" support the film industry had given the armed forces in the past. Flournoy offered his help as a technical advisor on "military customs and usages" and concluded with a plea to "treat the Army as well as you can." Scott replied somewhat noncommittally, assuring Flournoy that, although the film would not be made until the following year, it would deal with the Army only in that the characters would be in uniform and that the filmmakers had no intention of criticizing the Army or civilians.76 Despite these early naysayers, Scott remained committed to The Brick Foxhole. Nevertheless, the various criticisms of the project powerfully shaped his perceptions of the material and the possibilities for adapting the novel to the screen. At that point, however, Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk were deeply involved in the pre-production planning of their next film, an adaptation of James Hilton's novel So Well Remembered.77 Work on The Brick Foxhole was put on the back burner until the summer, when the three men traveled to England for six months to film So Well Remembered at the Rank studio at Denham. As one of the first American production companies to go abroad to film on location after the war, they were pioneers in a real sense, an early example of international cooperation in filmmaking.78 The trio rented rooms at a nearby farmhouse, which ironically had once belonged to the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Moseley. During the days, Scott and Dmytryk worked at the studio in Denham, while Paxton stayed behind to work on the adaptation of The Brick Foxhole. In their free time the trio discussed Paxton's progress on the screenplay:

58

In odd moments, when Dmytryk was momentarily free of directing, we kicked "The Foxhole" around Sir Oswald's grounds. On Sundays we took it out for walks through the overgrown gardens or out across the cow pasture where the natives believe Hitler once landed by plane to attend a meeting in Moseley's 13th Century barn. At night, occasionally, when the ghost of Lady Cynthia Moseley was supposed to roam the upper halls, we sat with it by the fire. It was a comfortable, lusty American thing to have along.79

Dmytryk remembers, more prosaically, "We all worked on it together. It became a question of thinking about the shape of it, the general color of it, the kind of mood we're going to have in it. We talked about cast, bouncing that around for a long time."80 At this point, however, the early criticisms of the project by their Hollywood

59

colleagues began to loom large for Scott and Paxton, undermining their confidence in the very premise of the project and giving both men health problems. Scott developed a mysterious case of sinusitis, while Paxton had stomach problems that he blamed on the English food, though neither Scott nor Dmytryk had trouble with it. According to Scott, "We worried about [the project] more than we thought about it," and their story conferences produced not a script but a laundry list of reasons why the film couldn't be made: 1) It had never been done before. 2) They wouldn't let us do it. 3) Everybody says that pictures of this kind lose their shirts at the box-office. Besides, motion pictures decline social responsibility. They have one responsibility only: to stockholders, to make them rich or richer. . . . 4) This was the wrong way to do the subject. 5) Actors would not risk their reputations. 6) A number of exhibitors would refuse to play the picture. 7) This picture would hurt somebody's feelings. Probably some nice anti-Semite's. 8) This was not an effective way to combat anti-Semitism. It was much better not to talk about it. And, having exhausted that, we continued discussions on the most effective way of making it.81

In Paxton's remembrance, "As usual we began to argue against ourselves. We argued that it would be impossible in a melodramatic framework to do a definitive picture on anti-semitism. We answered ourselves by saying it was too vast a subject for one picture, anyway. We could never hope to be definitive—we could only hope to make a small start." Though both Scott and Paxton had done a great deal of research on anti-Semitism, relying particularly on Ray Billington's history of intolerance, The Protestant Crusade, they still struggled with the basic format of the story: "We discussed a severe documentary approach, and discarded it. Wanting to save as much as possible of Brooks's introspective material, we discussed a 'Strange Interlude' device, tried it, and discarded it." Despite the

60

months spent hashing over ideas and approaches, Paxton still had trouble conceptualizing the outlines of the story and made no significant progress on the screenplay: "I kept rereading the book and became more and more depressed by it."82 Part of the problem seems to have been that Paxton was "not particularly keen"

61

on the possibilities that Scott saw in the novel. But Scott refused to give up on The Brick Foxhole, and he "explained, exhorted, cajoled, bullied, persuaded, helped" until Paxton came around.83 Finally, as work on So Well Remembered neared completion, Paxton had a brainstorm, realizing that "the tension and menace of a cops and robbers format was the most promising" and that "the way to do it was strictly as a murder mystery—to follow the traditional clichés of the police investigation, with witnesses . . . [and a detective] who pursued the investigation as interminably as a Javert pursues a Jean Valjean." By the time they left for the United States in November 1946, Paxton had written a treatment but not yet completed a script.84 Upon their return to Hollywood, the trio learned that the option on The Brick

62

Foxhole was about to expire and the studio planned to drop it. Desperate to save their rights to the novel, they rushed to see Peter Rathvon, who had taken over as the interim head of production at RKO after Charles Koerner became ill with leukemia. As president of both the RKO production company and of RKO Theaters, Rathvon—as Scott put it—"speaks with some authority" and "was quite a man to have things out with." Rathvon had "run across" The Brick Foxhole while familiarizing himself with the studio, and although he was intrigued by Scott's pitch, he hadn't heard much about the proposed film since the creative trio had been abroad for six months. Believing that the "subject of anti-Semitism and its particular moment in history could be better analyzed with the passage of time," Rathvon had assumed that Scott would drop the option on his own. Still, he was not opposed to a picture on anti-Semitism and believed that this might be an ideal way of introducing new subject matter and combating the "general sterility" in filmmaking that had been "bothering him for some time." Rathvon ordered the option renewed, saying, "I'll gamble $1,000 on your enthusiasm."85

The Role of Dore Schary With the go-ahead from Rathvon, Paxton and Scott went to work on the screenplay, completing the first draft continuity on January 25, 1947.86 There was still another hurdle to cross, however: even as Rathvon agreed to gamble on The Brick Foxhole, he and RKO owner Floyd Odlum were negotiating for Dore Schary to take over as RKO's vice president in charge of production. Schary assumed his new position on January 1, 1947, and it was now Schary, rather than

63

Rathvon, who was responsible for the fate of The Brick Foxhole. Though Scott was pleased with their first screenplay draft, he was still greatly worried by the prospect of getting Schary's approval for a film on anti-Semitism: Schary was new. He had an extremely difficult job of reorganization facing him. Sure, he wanted to make pictures with a mature content. He was on record as saying that. But anti-Semitism was a different matter. This was an explosive subject. It would be highly embarrassing to present him with a decision of this nature a few weeks after arriving on the lot. Was it right to do it now? Maybe a few months from now? These were our nightmares.87

Though Scott had developed ulcers by this point, in many ways he could not have asked for a better production head than Dore Schary. Schary's own experience both as a screenwriter-turned-producer-turned–studio executive and as an outspoken, hardworking liberal Jewish activist gave Schary an outlook uncommon among the industry executives.88 Born in 1905 in Newark, New Jersey, Schary was the youngest son of Russian

64

Jewish immigrants. In his several years as an off-Broadway and Borscht Belt actor, Schary had one significant success, playing a supporting role in John Wexley's play The Last Mile, which starred Spencer Tracy. Schary was also an aspiring playwright, and in 1932 he was recruited by Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, and moved to Hollywood to try his hand at screenwriting. After a year of moderate success writing for Columbia's B-unit, Schary was fired summarily when he asked for a raise. He spent the next few years on the "script-writing carousel," taking a "long string of quick assignments" at nearly every major and minor studio in town, from glitzy MGM to low-budget Monogram. In 1938, Schary was hired at MGM to write a screenplay about a home for wayward boys in Omaha, Nebraska; that film, Boys Town, earned Academy Awards for its star, Spencer Tracy, and for Dore Schary, for his original story.89 Following his success with Boys Town, as well as with Young Tom Edison and Edison the Man (both 1940), Schary hoped to tackle not only the writing but also the directing of his next project, Joe Smith, American. In a meeting with Louis B. Mayer, Schary pitched his plan for a low-budget (hence, low-risk) project. Like Scott, Schary believed that a B picture could still be a good picture, and he openly criticized MGM's low-budget films as lacking "punch and point." He told Mayer that in his view, "low-cost pictures should dare—should challenge—that they also should be used as a testing ground for new talent—directors, writers, actors, producers." Schary's agent was sure that this outspokenness would cost Schary his job; instead, Mayer promoted him, putting him in charge of production for MGM's entire B-unit. Schary put together a crack team of new young writers, producers, and directors that both made money for MGM and raised the quality of

65

the studio's B pictures. However, internal friction, particularly with aging executive Maurice Rapf, and the studio's decision to cancel production of Storm in the West, an antifascist allegory Schary had written with novelist Sinclair Lewis, convinced him that it was time to leave MGM. Accepting a position with independent producer David O. Selznick, Schary took charge of his own production unit, and over the next three years produced a string of well-received films, including I'll Be Seeing You (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1945), Till the End of Time (1946), The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947), and The Farmer's Daughter (1947).90 As part of Selznick's independent production deal, most of Schary's movies were

66

filmed on the RKO lot, and Schary was very familiar with the studio and its practices and personnel by the time he became the head of production in early 1947. Significantly, in 1946, Schary had worked with Edward Dmytryk on Till the End of Time, a postwar reintegration drama. Often considered a low-budget The Best Years of Our Lives, Till the End of Time follows the same general plotline: three demobilized soldiers, one disabled as a result of his wounds, rely on each other in their struggle to "return to normalcy." The film's final scenes are actually quite radical in their suggestion that the antifascist war must now be waged on the home front, as the three soldiers (Robert Mitchum, Bill Williams, and Guy Madison) take on members of a racist veterans' organization in a barroom brawl. In an exchange that is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Crossfire, the protofascist organizers try to recruit the soldiers into the veterans' group—if they can demonstrate that they are not Jews, Catholics, or Negroes. Mitchum responds to their overture by telling the story of his friend Maxie Klein, who was killed at Guadalcanal. Saying, "If Maxie were here, he'd spit in your eye," Mitchum acts in Maxie's stead, launching a wad of spit that begins the fistfight. Even the paralyzed soldier (a former boxer) finds that by balancing himself against the wall, he, too, can get in a few good punches. Screaming, "Send them to me!" he regains his manhood through his participation in the battle. In contrast to The Best Years of Our Lives, which suggests that the "return to normalcy" requires that the male bonds of wartime be replaced by privatized, heterosexual domesticity, Till the End of Time insists that those male bonds be maintained and channeled into the postwar struggle against fascism at home.91 Thus, by the time he was recruited by RKO, Schary had established a solid reputation as a visionary, both as a creative artist and an industry executive. He was equally well-known, however, as an outspoken, liberal activist—a New Dealer par excellence. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Schary became politically active on several fronts, working with the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; sitting on the Screen Writers Guild's bargaining committee, which finally won studio recognition of the union; serving as chairman of the Hollywood for Roosevelt Committee's

67

local reelection campaign in 1940; and writing pamphlets and speeches "lambasting Father Coughlin and Congressmen Bilbo and Rankin, along with the German-American Bund" for the Anti-Defamation League.92 Schary's high profile in the Hollywood political community was such that as early

68

as 1940 (years before either Scott or Dmytryk had come to the FBI's attention), informants were dropping his name to the FBI as "one of a group of individuals who

had

been

sympathetic

with

Communists,

had

attended

Communist

gatherings, had helped raise funds by allowing the use of his name, and had knowingly traveled with Party members." Various informants detailed Schary's involvement with a number of Communist front organizations during the 1940s, including the Jewish Peoples Committee, the League of American Writers, the Hollywood Writers Mobilization, the Council for Civic Unity, the American Arts Committee for Palestine, the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief, American Youth for Democracy, and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Council for Arts, Sciences and Professions (formerly the Hollywood Democratic Committee). In addition to compiling Schary's political affiliations, several of the informants offered their opinions of his character. One described him as "one who is always pushing some new movement or group of social significance." The file continues, "This informant stated that Schary is a consistent protester against 'reactionism' and Fascism and was a strong advocate of the 'Second Front Now.' The informant added that Schary is open in his contempt for the Southern white man." Another advised that "Schary had 'pinkish' tendencies but that he did not believe that Schary could be classified as one of the more dangerous figures in the film colony. The informant . . . supposed that Schary considered himself a liberal thinker. He characterized Schary as the type of individual who argued sincerely for what he thought was right even though others may not have agreed with him." Significantly, the issue of radical influence over film content was evident in a number of informer comments, including those of one who described Schary as "probably the most potent of MGM studios' 'Comrades,'" and complained that Schary used his power at the studio "to hire and fire" and "consistently absorbed into his unit only those writers and producers whose philosophy and politics agreed with his own." This informant also noted that "Schary insisted that all the pictures produced by his unit contain social significance and that Schary had engaged in the glorification of the Negro race."93 Clearly, Schary's political commitments intersected with his vision as a filmmaker, and he was a leading spokesperson for those who believed that Hollywood movies could

be

both

entertaining

and

socially

relevant.

Like

other

Hollywood

progressives, he saw enormous opportunities for political filmmaking in the postwar period. In Virginia Wright's column, Schary went "on the record" with his belief that postwar audiences wanted more "adult" fare and his commitment to

69

making message movies: Our responsibility as citizens and picture makers is to make sure that no one gets us into another war. We've got to point out in films that World War II was worth fighting; that it destroyed Naziism [sic]; that the past was worth living and that the future will be more worth living because of the past. . . . We must be alert, vigilant, be willing to portray whatever evil and sinister forces spring up, and attack them by the use of our talents and our skill and our power as a medium.94

In late February, Scott presented Schary with the final draft of Paxton's

70

screenplay, for his approval. The wait to hear Schary's comments was agonizing for Scott. As he described it, "[That] night . . . , two sleeping pills didn't work. I arrived haggard the next morning—a little late. I learned that Mr. Schary had made an appointment with my secretary—I was due in his office in ten minutes. So I went up." Despite Scott's concerns, Schary made an "overnight" decision to put the film into immediate production and even postponed the starting dates of two other films and approved the use of stages and sets from other pictures to help keep down the production costs. According to Scott, Schary said, "'I think this will make a good picture. Let's go.' Overnight, the lot was transformed into a unit for Crossfire. Every department swung into operation to meet the challenge of making an 'A' picture on a 'B' budget."95

Paxton remembered, "The single

most important factor in the making of Crossfire, to me, was the speed and excitement with which it was made. The day Schary approved the project, a little parade went off around the lot . . . looking for sets that could be borrowed or adapted or stolen. An unusual procedure with front office blessing."96 Schary's decision to put Crossfire into immediate production was also spurred by

71

Darryl F. Zanuck's recent announcement that Twentieth Century–Fox had purchased the rights to Gentleman's Agreement, Laura Z. Hobson's best-selling novel about anti-Semitism. On March 6, 1947, the Los Angeles Times ran a brief story on RKO's decision to make Crossfire, asking, "Can this be an early offset . . . for 20th's Gentleman's Agreement that is receiving so much advance ballyhoo?"97 Schary himself later admitted that the competition with Zanuck and Gentleman's Agreement was a key factor in his decision to greenlight Crossfire: "[Zanuck] expressed his annoyance at my having put Crossfire into work before his film. We exchanged a few notes—then a phone call during which I was compelled to tell him he had not discovered anti-Semitism and it would take far more than two pictures to eradicate it. The conversation ended with both of us not having budged one inch."98 While Schary clearly supported Crossfire, there is some debate over the extent of his participation in the production of the film.99 Certainly his greatest contribution

72

was in casting decisions. In February, in the first formal casting conferences, some very big names were discussed for the leading roles: James Cagney, Melyvn Douglas, and Pat O'Brien were initially considered for the role of Finlay, while John Garfield was an early contender for the role of Keeley. Scott's 1946 memo had indicated that Dick Powell was interested in Crossfire, but Scott was concerned that Powell's salary of $50,000 was too expensive for the low-budget project. Though Powell was not considered in these casting conferences, by early 1947, star salaries were no longer an issue. The final budget for Crossfire came in at $589,000—more than twice the amount Scott had originally pitched—largely because of Schary's decision to invest in expensive actors with box-office appeal, allotting $125,000 for the three male leads.100 Robert Young, on loan from Columbia for a whopping $100,000, was cast as Finlay, while Robert Mitchum was cast as Keeley and Robert Ryan as Monty. As RKO contract players, both Ryan and Mitchum had worked with Dmytryk before. Ryan had played a supporting role in Behind the Rising Sun (1943) and had starred with Ginger Rogers in Tender Comrade (1944), while Mitchum had played one of the trio of returning GIs in Till the End of Time (1946). By 1947, both actors personified what film historian Robert Sklar calls the "city boy"—an edgy, rebellious, often working-class, and quintessentially masculine American type.101 Character actor Sam Levene was cast in the role of Samuels, the Jewish murder victim. For the role of Ginny, Scott and Dmytryk were looking for "freshness and vulnerability under a hard exterior." Jane Greer, who by 1947 was developing a "bad girl" screen persona with performances in They Won't Believe Me and Out of the Past, was an early contender for the role of Ginny, but once Scott and Dmytryk saw Gloria Grahame's screen test, the part went to her.102 The rest of the picture was cast with RKO contract players, all virtual unknowns. Despite Scott's early concern that actors might see such a controversial film as career suicide, the cast was enormously excited by the project. Paxton remembers that the actors "took fire" and worked "like sons of bitches on their characters." Several were studying with outside acting teachers or coaches, who also got into the spirit. Charles Laughton, who worked with Bill Phipps, the actor who played one of the supporting roles, was particularly thrilled by the production.103 According to Scott, "Robert Young left Columbia at 12 o'clock, having finished one picture, and at 1 o'clock started Crossfire. Robert Mitchum cut short a vacation. Robert Ryan would have murdered anyone who prevented him from playing the part of the anti-Semite."104 In fact, Ryan's enthusiasm became the stuff of studio lore. In the version that appeared in the Rivoli Theater program (produced by the RKO publicity department), Ryan and Brooks were wartime buddies, and when Ryan read the book, he went after the role of Montgomery, bullying Scott and Dmytryk into casting him. In the version told by Brooks himself, he and Ryan were Marines together. Ryan approached Brooks, either at

73

Camp Pendleton or at the library at Quantico, congratulated him on The Brick Foxhole, and said, "One of these days they're gonna make that into a movie and I'm gonna play that Sergeant." Brooks replied, "Are you really?" and Ryan said, "Yeah, I know that son of a bitch. . . . No one knows him better than I do." Three years later, according to Brooks, as he was leaving the theater after the Los Angeles preview of Crossfire, a man tapped him on the shoulder. It was Ryan, who wanted to know what Brooks had thought of his portrayal of Monty.105 Schary clearly played a critical role in the casting of Crossfire, since only he—and

74

certainly not Scott—had the authority to double the film's budget in order to hire Young, Mitchum, and Ryan. There is some question, however, as to the extent of Schary's contribution to the screenplay. Schary remembered, for example, that he played a key role in revising the script, while Paxton insisted that Schary had little input; in fact, he was outraged by such claims in Schary's autobiography: As he remembers it in Heyday, Schary rescued a sick script from rejection and oblivion. "It needed work," he says. . . . "We spent time pruning and refining it until it was strong and shiny as steel. . . ." We did no such thing. One of the happy results of the studio's eagerness (Schary's eagerness) to have Crossfire out before Gentleman's Agreement was that there was little time for the nervous, endless front-office polishing that has rubbed so many interesting films to death. Except for very minor editing and some clumsy meddling by the censors, the script was shot almost exactly as prepared by Scott.106

Paxton's outrage may well have been influenced by Schary's role in firing Scott and Dmytryk after the HUAC hearings, and by the fact that Schary continued to accept awards and kudos for Crossfire without acknowledging the work of the blacklisted filmmakers. However, in the spring and summer of 1947, both Scott and Schary were

75

committed to making Crossfire and had developed a warm friendship and positive working relationship. On March 4, the day filming began, Schary sent a note to Scott: "I never thought you would be making this one, but I am sold as a result of your work and enthusiasm. My congratulations and thanks for doing a job that I am sure is going to be an enormous credit to you." Scott, in turn, publicly acknowledged Schary's support and contributions to the project. Speaking on Crossfire's production history at a PCA-sponsored forum in July, Scott stated, "Conferences were held with Schary, who made suggestions which improved the script. This, of course, is revolution, when it is necessary to admit into the record that the contributions of a studio head were not only used but welcomed."107 Though it is unlikely that Schary made truly substantive contributions to the screenplay, nevertheless, he did play a critical supportive role, bolstering Scott's

76

confidence in his ability to guide the project through the studio system and rearranging shooting schedules to rush the film into production. A greater external influence on the project, however, was Scott and Paxton's expectation of censorship—from the Breen Office, the Office of War Information and its military advisors, and their own colleagues in the film industry—which powerfully shaped Scott and Paxton's approach to Crossfire from the earliest conceptual stages.

Adapting The Brick Foxhole Paxton remembers, "As soon as I discovered the cliché format I wrote the

77

damned thing in five weeks. It was the fastest picture I ever wrote."108 Though the decision to follow the genre conventions of the traditional thriller—to focus on the murder and ensuing police investigation—solved many of the structural problems Paxton had wrestled with in England, the resulting revisions ultimately created new problems. In The Brick Foxhole, the murder does not occur until the ninth chapter, ninety pages into the story, and then is only alluded to, while the manhunt itself only gets underway in the last third of the novel. To make the script work as a police procedural, Scott and Paxton decided to scrap the entire first half of the novel, in effect deleting many of the scenes that had carried the weight of the novel's attack on intolerance and the dangers of fascism, particularly the boxing match between Max Brock and Whitey. The erasure of Max Brock is particularly important. In The Brick Foxhole, Max is a

78

manly, fighting Jew, a liberal spokesman for universalism and the inclusion of Others within the imagined community of Americans. Max's performance of masculinity is decidedly heroic, all the more so because he refuses to deny his Jewishness and proudly fights like a man for recognition of his essential humanity. In Crossfire, the sole Jew is Samuels, who replaced Mr. Edwards as the passive victim of irrational prejudice. Though, as we will see, Scott and Paxton tried to create a "good" Jew in the character of Samuels, the manly heroism of Max was lost in the translation, and instead, the passivity and even effeminacy of Mr. Edwards bleeds through in the representation of Samuels. Similarly, despite the efforts of Scott and Paxton to "straighten" The Brick Foxhole, the homosocial and potentially homoerotic bonds between men represented by Brooks could not be completely excised from Crossfire. They linger around the edges of the text, emerging not only in the representation of the Jewish murder victim, but especially in the relationships between the soldiers. In early 1946, Scott and Paxton still saw Keeley as the story's hero. At this point, they planned to end the film with Keeley as the risk-taking antifascist hero, though they included the other soldiers in the denouement. Though Scott found the final fight scene between Keeley and Monty "tough to swallow" and planned to "overhaul" the ending, he was certain that "Monty's death is a must, of course."

79

Thus, he envisioned "a series of taut suspense sequences during which the soldiers led by Keeley try to trap Monty and finally succeed."109 However, once Paxton decided to write the screenplay around the conventions of the police procedural, Finlay usurps Keeley as the film's main antifascist agent and he, rather than Keeley, becomes responsible for bringing Monty to justice. Though Keeley remains a pivotal figure, the film emphasizes his collaboration with Finlay, rather than his individual heroism, and reaffirms the centrality of the Popular Front

in

the

antifascist

struggle.

Most

significantly,

perhaps,

the

genre

conventions of the police procedural, in which the police detective Finlay leads the charge against intolerance and the fascist potential, shifted the locus of antifascist responsibility from the risk-taking individual to the state. Thus, instead of three battles pitting the forces of democracy against fascism, the film features three murders: Monty's murder of the Jew, Samuels, and of his buddy, Floyd, and finally, Finlay's killing of Monty as he tries to escape the net of justice. Though the conventions of the police procedural obviously demanded a larger role for the detective, the expansion of Finlay's character also reflected Scott's own political vision. In The Brick Foxhole, Brooks clearly identifies with Keeley and Max, the novel's spokesmen for liberal universalism. In Crossfire, however, this task was largely ceded to Finlay, the Irish Catholic cop, with whom Scott strongly identified. Indeed, I would argue that Scott was speaking of himself when he described Finlay as a man who "understands anti-Semitism because he's Irish and Catholic." Despite Scott's privileged position, he believed that his understanding (though not personal experience) of the historical oppression of the Irish—"his people"—gave him special insight into the experience of other oppressed groups like the Jews. Even at this early conceptual stage, Scott had created a historical backstory for Finlay, revolving around the murder of his grandfather, an Irish immigrant who was killed by anti-Catholic Know-Nothings. Clearly, Scott had been researching the history of intolerance in America, for he added, "This actually happened in New York City and Philadelphia in the last century."110 Indeed, the fact that, by the mid–twentieth century, the Irish had made the transition from racialized Others to "white folk" confirmed his sense that history was an inexorable and natural story of progress, from barbarism to civilization, from slavery to freedom. For Scott, it was logical and inevitable that Jews, like the Irish, would move over time from being despised outsiders to becoming full members of the imagined community of Americans. While his faith in the interchangeability of prejudice enabled him to ignore the historical specificity of anti-Semitism, his belief in the essential irrationality of prejudice enabled him to propose cultural solutions—education or "right thinking"—to a specifically political problem. In giving "public airing" to the problem of anti-Semitism, Crossfire would demonstrate that, just as there was no "good" reason to hate the Irish, there was no "good" reason to despise the Jews.111

80

Scott also made a number of changes that he believed would make The Brick

81

Foxhole more palatable to the censors as well as more credible for movie audiences. First, he updated the setting from wartime to the immediate postwar period, when the soldiers would be on terminal leave or awaiting discharge. Next, he rejected the device of the "overheard rumor" as too coincidental and "invalid." At this point, he planned to change Mitchell's motivation from the improbable scuttlebutt in the barracks to a fight with his wife: "It doesn't matter about what. Some difference regarding their future, where they will live, how they will live, what his job will be when he gets out. It is not important that a major issue should involve them. Something slight will intensify the misery and loneliness of an already miserable guy."112 Though Scott claimed that the details of the disagreement were unimportant, the examples he cites all involve problems with postwar readjustment, reflecting his belief that the "return to normalcy" would be fraught with difficulties, both for individuals and for the nation. The plot changes also led to several key changes in the minor characters of the

82

novel. Even as they first began working on the adaptation, Scott and Paxton had recognized the impossibility of the whorehouse scenes and the need to rehabilitate the character of Ginny, given the limitations of the Production Code. Scott suggested using the familiar Hollywood strategy of "indirection" to portray Ginny as "a B-girl, working in a barroom."113 Floyd, too, was somewhat rehabilitated: no longer specifically identified as a Southerner or an outspoken racist, he is simply an "ordinary" guy who doesn't recognize the danger represented by Monty. Though Scott and Paxton deleted several key characters as they began the process of tightening the story, they also added several characters, particularly Miss Lewis, Samuels's girlfriend, and Leroy, a young soldier from Tennessee. Despite these changes in plot and characters, however, Scott and Paxton remained largely faithful to the remaining portions of the novel, using many scenes intact or simply compressing the dialogue. Input from outside agencies also influenced the adaptation process, though not to the extent feared by Scott. For example, in The Brick Foxhole, Brooks had emphasized the squalor and degradation of the soldiers and their barracks as symptoms

of

their

vulnerability

to

fascist

influences.

In

Crossfire,

the

representation of the military is markedly different, perhaps in deference to Colonel Flournoy, who had asked Scott in 1946 to "treat the Army as well as you can." Indeed, during the scriptwriting phase, RKO had consulted the public relations office of the Army, inviting a Colonel Davidson to read a draft of the screenplay and including him in a story conference in March 1947. Davidson's contributions were actually quite minor, and even then, sometimes not acted upon. For example, during his first interview with Finlay, Keeley comments, "Soldiers don't have anywhere to go unless you tell them where to go. When

83

they're off duty, they go crawling. Or they go crazy." Though Davidson felt this line made the Army look bad and asked the filmmakers to delete it, it appears in the final filmed version of Crossfire.114 Nevertheless, Davidson's participation in the adaptation process, if only by his presence during discussions of the screenplay, surely influenced the representation of the military in the film. The Breen Office also influenced the adaptation process, though the changes

84

requested were not as substantive as one might expect, given Breen's vehement rejection of The Brick Foxhole in early 1946. For the most part, the Breen Office merely asked the filmmakers to tone down the excessive consumption of alcohol in the script and to delete specific words—slang such as "lousy" and "nuts" as well as racial and ethnic slurs like "nigger" and "Yid"—that were forbidden by the Production Code.115 This lack of substantive comment reinforces Scott's assertion that he and his colleagues censored themselves in adapting The Brick Foxhole to film. Significantly, however, RKO did not formally take up the option on The Brick Foxhole until February 24, 1947, several days after Breen approved a final draft of the screenplay.116

Telling Stories, Telling Lies: Ruptured Narrative in Crossfire In adapting The Brick Foxhole, Paxton and Scott used once again the flashback

85

sequences that had proved so powerfully innovative in Murder, My Sweet; this was perhaps the most radical change made during the adaptation process. Instead of the straightforward, chronological narrative of the novel, they constructed the screenplay around two flashbacks. In the first flashback, Monty gives his version of the meeting with Samuels, and in the second, Mitch provides an alternative take on the same events. As many critics have pointed out, flashbacks are a key narrative strategy in film noir, contributing to the genre's existential exploration of truth and falsehood.117 Historian William Graebner, suggesting the ways in which film noir prefigured postmodernism, explains, "By interrupting a traditional, linear narrative, the flashback challenged the form strongly identified with progress: the story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and open to all possibilities." Explicitly connecting the ruptured narrative strategies of film noir to the pervasive postwar sense of contingency and doubt, he argues: In the context of a military victory that seemed to have been won at the cost of demonstrating the inhumanity of humankind, and of a cold war that called for eternal vigilance, the ability of a cultural text to produce a conclusion consistent with, and implied in, everything that had gone before—what literary scholar Frank Kermode calls "the sense of an ending"—withered and died.118

In

Crossfire,

the

ruptured

narrative

works

not

only

to

reinforce

the

86

untrustworthiness elaborated in The Brick Foxhole, but also, ironically, to challenge the filmmakers' own faith in progress. The flashbacks, which cast doubt on the truthfulness of the versions of events offered by Monty and Mitch, the serial lies told by The Man, and even Finlay's story of his grandfather, which as told to Leroy challenges Monty's stories about Jews, all force the audience to ask themselves, "Who can be trusted?" Certainly, this "storytelling" is embedded in the investigation that drives the plot: Finlay sifts through the "facts" to find the "truth." However, his search for the truth is not in the positivist investigative mode of the 1950s; Finlay is a far cry from Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday who wants "nothing but the facts." Instead, Finlay's investigation has an existential quality that presages the postmodern recognition that there is no master narrative, that no "answer" is complete or permanent. The moral and political contingencies produced by the war could not be contained, particularly by Scott's own idealist hopes for the forward march of history. Indeed, when "progress" produces scientifically managed concentration camps and atomic weapons, history itself becomes ironic. In the radical contingency of the 1940s, in which the banal evil of the Holocaust seemed matched by the barbarism of the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, it became difficult to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys." The existential solution, represented by Finlay, recognizes the impossibility of reconciling contradictions or imposing order, and instead, embraces the "primacy of the struggle, the value of waging the good fight for what one believed was right, if need be forever."119 Crossfire's negotiation of these two competing impulses—the recognition of contingency and the idealist desire for progress—is one of the reasons academic critics have had such trouble with the film. On the one hand, Crossfire is often linked with Gentleman's Agreement, largely because both films were released in 1947 and both dealt with the problem of anti-Semitism. Critics who see Crossfire as a social problem film, however, tend to argue that it is inferior to Gentleman's Agreement because it explores the "radical fringe" of violent and depraved prejudice, while Gentleman's Agreement, however sanitized and relentlessly liberal, focuses on the "genteel" anti-Semitism practiced by "you and me."120 On the other hand, precisely because of its representation of the seamy underbelly of irrational hatred, as well as because of its visual and narrative style, scholars have also placed Crossfire in the ranks of film noir. Though these critics have been far kinder to Crossfire, they still are a bit troubled by the "liberal pronouncements" in the film, which seem to undercut the bleak existentialism that defines noir.121 I believe, however, that it is this very negotiation between despair and faith, between contingency and commitment that makes Crossfire so powerful. At the same time that the film forces viewers to ask, "Who can you trust?" it also demands that they declare, "Which side are you on?" These, I would argue, are the defining questions of Cold War America, and they resonated

87

as powerfully for Crossfire's audiences as they did for its producers.

Notes Note 1: "Hollywood Democratic Committee: Background," unsigned typescript, n.d., in Hollywood Democratic Committee [HDC] Papers, B1-F1, Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS), 42. Note 2: HICCASP was the reincarnation of the Hollywood Democratic Committee. In the summer of 1945, HDC leaders agreed to affiliate with the New York–based Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP) and to change the organization's name to Hollywood ICCASP. This amalgamation was heralded as "the first step in creating a national, non-partisan, political organization of cultural workers . . . that will markedly influence the Peace." Invitation to Membership Meeting, June 6, 1945, in HDC Papers, B1-F11, WHS. Note 3: "Hollywood Democratic Committee: Background," in HDC Papers, B1-F1, WHS 47–48. Note 4: Letter from Raymond Booth, Council for Civic Unity, October 11, 1945, in HDC Papers, B8-F3, WHS. Note 5: Scott, draft notes for "You Can't Do That," n.d. [Spring–Summer 1947], in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 6: Scott, "You Can't Do That," in Thought Control in the U.S.A.: The Collected Proceedings, ed. Harold J. Salemson (Hollywood, Calif.: Progressive Citizens of America, 1947), 324. Note 7: Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (New York: Dell, 1961); James Jones, From Here to Eternity (New York: Scribner's, 1953); Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1948); Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (New York: Random House, 1948). Note 8: Today, Richard Brooks is remembered primarily as the director of such Hollywood classics as The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), In Cold Blood (1967), and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). Though his film work has largely eclipsed his reputation as a novelist, writing was Brooks's first vocation. As a child Brooks wanted to be a newswriter when he grew up, a dream that was strongly encouraged by his parents. Born Ruben Sacks on May 18, 1912, in the slums of South Philadelphia, Richard Brooks was the only child of Jewish immigrants from the Crimea. Both of his parents were factory workers who learned to read and write English from newspapers. Pursuing his childhood ambition, he studied journalism at Temple University for three years. After the stock market crashed in 1929, however, one of his parents was fired and there was no more money for him to continue college. Trying to get a job with the Philadelphia Bulletin, he quickly learned that most newspapers were firing rather than hiring writers. Then, like many young men of his generation, Brooks hit the road, bumming around the country for two hard years, working all sorts of odd jobs to support himself, from washing dishes to digging ditches to picking cotton. During these years, Brooks came to believe that "just being hungry is a state of violence," and he began writing about his experiences on the road and selling those stories to newspapers. Eventually he landed full-time work as a newspaperman, and in the mid-1930s he moved to New York City, where he wrote crime news and special features for the World-Telegram. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, he went to work writing an original short story a day to fill a fifteen-minute air spot on the Blue Network, but quickly expanded into work as a script doctor at Universal Studios, and then wrote radio scripts for Orson Welles's Mercury Theater. Brooks's work as a screenwriter was confined largely to B films such as White Savage and Cobra Woman, and he soon grew frustrated with the ignorance and inanity of the studio system. Prior to the attack on Pearl

Harbor, he joined Frank Capra's Motion Picture unit as a civilian and eventually worked on the Army's "Why We Fight" documentary series. In 1943, Brooks enlisted in the Marine Corps and, after completing boot camp in San Diego, was attached to the Photographic Section of the Second Marines and sent to the Pacific theater to film the invasions of Guam and the Marianas. When Brooks returned to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, to assemble his combat footage into a documentary, he also began work on his first novel, The Brick Foxhole. Patrick McGilligan, "Richard Brooks: The Professional," in Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s, ed. Pat McGilligan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 35–36. The information on Brooks's name change came from "Real to Real: Interview with Richard Brooks," broadcast on American Movie Classics, January 18, 2000. Interestingly, none of the other interviews with or writings by Brooks mentions this name change. See McGilligan, "Richard Brooks: The Professional"; Interview with Richard Brooks, GQ, September 1985, 433; Interview with Richard Brooks, Los Angeles Magazine, January 1978, 120, both in Richard Brooks Biographical File, AMPAS; American Movie Classics Web site, http://www.amctv.com. Note 9: Richard Brooks, The Brick Foxhole (New York: Harper, 1945), 74. Note

10:

Even

the

designation

"GI

Joe"—in

which

"GI"

refers

to

"government

issue"—reinforced the sense of "expendable human elements in the mass-produced machine of twentieth-century warfare." John Costello, Virtue under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 75. Note 11: Costello, Virtue under Fire, especially 76–99; Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), especially xiv–xv. Note 12: Judith Butler and other postmodern feminist theorists have powerfully argued that gender is a performance or a "cultural masquerade" rather than a product of universal and timeless biological sex. Challenging the idea that masculinity and femininity inhere in and flow "naturally" from biological sex—that men, for example, act like men because they are men—or even that biological sex itself is a "bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed," Butler argues that gender is performative because it "enacts or produces" the very normative phenomenon—"sex"—that it "regulates and constrains." As she puts it, "If gender consists of the social meanings that sex assumes, then sex does not accrue social meanings as additive properties but, rather, is replaced by the social meanings it takes on." Or, in the more accessible language used by Lisa Duggan, "Sexual representations construct identities (they do not merely reflect pre-existing ones)." Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993), 2, 5; Lisa Duggan quoted in Linda Kerber, "Gender," in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Anthony Mohlo and Gordon S. Wood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 48. Note 13: For a fascinating exploration of the interconnections between Jewishness, masculinity, and Americanness, see Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). Note 14: The careers and contests of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling are the focus of several new books, including Lewis Erenberg, The Greatest Fight of Our Generation: Louis vs. Schmeling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) and David Margolick, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink (New York: Knopf, 2005). See also Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988). On boxing as a performance of masculinity, albeit in an earlier period, see Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1986). Note 15: Ibid., 42–48. Note 16: Ibid., 44, 50–51.

Note 17: Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1965). Note 18: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 30. Note 19: Ibid., 34–35. Note 20: The fascist obsession with boundary-keeping has been explored by many current historians and theorists of fascism. As these scholars explain, a central goal of German fascism was to tame the cultural, sexual, and racial "disorder" of Weimar Germany and to impose a conservative order based on stringent biological hierarchies of sex and race in which virile, heterosexual, Aryan men embodied "order" and "normality." In the Nazis' biological order, sexual and racial difference confirmed the "naturalness" of the hierarchy. At the same time, however, these differences were potentially threatening to both the purity of the biological order and the stability of the sociopolitical order. In this simultaneous obsession with sex and race, Nazi ideology often conflated women and Jews as equal sources of contamination, pollution, or disorder. In this trope, deviant women and feminized male Jews were associated with decadent modernity and linked with other "disorderly" modern evils: the city, radicals, homosexuals, foreigners, criminals, jazz, modern art, and so on. The maintenance of fascist order thus required constant policing and regulation, whether the banishment of women to the private sphere to reproduce the master race, or the forced sterilization of "unfit" women; whether the internment of homosexuals in concentration camps, or the implementation of laws that both stringently defined the racial category of "Jew" and severely circumscribed the participation of Jews in German public life. See, for example, Sander Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York: Routledge, 1991); Klaus P. Fischer, The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust (New York: Continuum, 1998); Alice Yaeger Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1, Women, Floods, Bodies, Histories, trans. Stephen Conway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Renate Bridenthal et al., eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984); Atina Grossman, "The New Woman and the Rationalization of Sexuality in Weimar Germany" in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, Ann Snitow et al., eds. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983); and Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt, 1986). Note 21: On homosexuality in the military, see, for example, Costello, Virtue under Fire; and Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1990). On the postwar purge, see especially John D'Emilio, "The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America," in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, ed. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 226–240, and Estelle B. Freedman, "'Uncontrolled Desires': The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920–1960," in Passion and Power, ed. Peiss and Simmons, 199–225. Note 22: John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 289. Note 23: Allan Bérubé, "Marching to a Different Drummer: Lesbian and Gay GIs in World War II," in Powers of Desire, ed. Snitow et al., 91–92. Note 24: Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 107. Citing The Brick Foxhole as a fictionalized example, Bérubé also notes, "Civilians who picked up soldiers and propositioned them, however, had to develop a cruising style that protected them from getting beaten, robbed or blackmailed by offended GIs." Note 25: George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

Note 26: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 86; on the "fairy," see Chauncey, Gay New York. Note 27: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 88. Note 28: Ibid., 89. Note 29: Ibid., 87–88. Note 30: Chauncey, Gay New York, 97. Note 31: Ibid., 60, 81. Note 32: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 91. Note 33: Ibid., 206–207. Note 34: Ibid., 208. Note 35: Ibid., 218–219. Note 36: Ibid., 225–226. Note 37: For a wide-ranging explication of the intersection of gender politics with domestic and foreign policy in postwar America, see Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1999). On the therapeutic culture, see, for example, William Graebner, The Age of Doubt: American Life and Culture in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1991), 101–120, and Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Note 38: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 227–230. Note 39: This is not to say that Brooks believed that the United States was literally a fascist state, but merely to reiterate that, for him, individuals rather than social institutions represented the antifascist vanguard. Brooks's negative characterization of Finlay is clearly linked to his recognition of the limitations of the liberal state. Note 40: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 230–233. Note 41: Ibid., 232–233. Note 42: Ibid., 173–174, 234–235. Note 43: Ibid., 234–235, 237. The Man's inability to "control" Ginny should be read against the strength Mitch takes from Mary's weakness. In postwar domestic ideology, a "normal" marriage depended on a strong husband and a deferential wife. See May, Homeward Bound. Note 44: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 237. Note 45: David Gerber, "Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans" in The Best Years of Our Lives, American Quarterly 46, no. 4 (December 1994): 550. Note 46: As Elaine Tyler May argues, female sexuality was a fundamental component of the postwar domestic ideology: "Male power was as necessary in the home as in the political realm, for the two were connected. Men in sexually fulfilling marriages would not be tempted by the degenerative seductions of the outside world that came from pornography, prostitution, 'loose women,' or homosexuals." May, Homeward Bound, 97. Note 47: Brooks, Brick Foxhole, 237–238. Note 48: Hamilton Basso, "Notes from Purgatory," The New Yorker 21:6 (June 2, 1945), 68; Niven Busch, "A Yell of Pain in War" The Saturday Review of Literature 28:22 (June 2, 1945): 12; Walter Bernstein, "Stateside Army," The New Republic 113:4 (July 23, 1945): 10; Sinclair Lewis, Esquire (1945). Note 49: Hellinger did, however, hire Brooks as a screenwriter after he was muscled out of the Marine Corps. Brooks wrote several gritty, noir-ish films for Hellinger, including The Killers (1946), Brute Force (1947), and, with John Huston, Key Largo (1948), before directing his first film in 1950. McGilligan, "Richard Brooks," 32–33, 41–44.

Note 50: McGilligan, "Richard Brooks," 41. Odets and Scott were then working together on Deadline at Dawn, which Odets scripted and Scott produced. Note 51: Scott, "You Can't Do That," in Thought Control in the U.S.A., 324. Note 52: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 324, 328. Note 53: RKO memo, Scott to William Dozier and Charles Koerner, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, B1-F2, AHC; McGilligan, "Richard Brooks," 41. Note 54: See, for example, Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 342; Keith Kelly and Clay Steinman, "Crossfire: A Dialectical Attack," Film Reader 3 (1978): 115; and Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1981), 239. Even James Naremore, in his exceptionally nuanced reading of Crossfire, emphasizes the role of the Production Code Administration in the change: "To avoid potential objections from censors, Scott and Paxton eliminated all references to homosexuality, emphasizing instead the theme of race hatred." Naremore, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998), 115–116. Note 55: Naremore, More than Night, 116. At the same time that wartime popular nationalism encouraged cultural pluralism as a bulwark of American democracy, the OWI still kept a watchful eye to ensure that ethnic representations conformed to its vision of democratic, antifascist Americanism. For example, OWI censors were disturbed that the representation of anti-Semitism and finance capital in Mr. Skeffington (1944) was "gravely detrimental" to the OWI agenda because "the Jewish question is presented in such a way to give credence to the Nazi contention that the discrimination for which Americans condemn fascists, is an integral part of American democracy." OWI quoted in Lary May, "Making the American Consensus: The Narrative of Conversion and Subversion in World War II Films," in The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II, ed. Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 78. Note 56: Nevertheless, it is significant that several founding members of early gay organizations, such as the Mattachine Society, were members or former members of the Communist Party; their experiences as Communists in theorizing and organizing against class and race oppression provided a framework for theorizing and organizing against their own oppression as gays in the 1950s. See, for example, the interview with Chuck Rowland in Eric Marcus, ed., Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945–1990: An Oral History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 26–36. On the Party's position on women and gender politics ("male chauvinism"), see Rosalyn Baxandall, "The Question Seldom Asked," in New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism, ed. Michael Brown et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 141–162; Ellen Kay Trimberger, "Women in the Old and New Left," Feminist Studies 5:3 (Fall 1979): 432–461; and Robert Shaffer, "Women and the Communist Party, USA, 1930–1940," Socialist Review no. 45 (May-June 1979): 73–118. For the Communist Party's position on homosexuality, see Ann Snitow et al., "Introduction," in Snitow et al., eds., Powers of Desire, 19. Note 57: Scott to Editor, New York Herald Tribune, n.d. [mid-1950s], in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 58: Scott, typescript copy of "Some of My Worst Friends," n.d. [July 1947], in Scott Papers, AHC, pp. 1–2. This article was later published in Screen Writer (October 1947). Note 59: Scott to Earl Wilson, October 15, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 60: Joseph Breen to William Gordon, July 17, 1945, in Crossfire Production File, Production Code Administration, AMPAS. Note 61: Gerald Gardner, The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934–1968 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987), 207–211. Perhaps even more important than the moral bankruptcy detected by the Breen Office was the fact that The Brick Foxhole

directly challenged the official vision of World War Two as "the good war." Though the novel was not presented to the OWI for review at this time, it clearly did not conform to the recommendations for the "correct" portrayal of the solidarity of the American people or the moral rectitude of military personnel. Note 62: Scott to William Dozier and Charles Koerner, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, B1-F2, AHC. Note 63: At this point, Scott earned a flat rate of $20,000 per picture and Dmytryk a flat rate of $23,400, while Paxton earned $150 a week. See, for example, Cornered Production Files, RKO Studio Collection, ALSC–UCLA. Note 64: Scott to William Dozier and Charles Koerner, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, B1-F2, AHC. Note 65: J. D. Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word for It, Meaning—Exaltation—John Paxton" [interview with Paxton], in J. D. Marshall, Blueprint in Babylon (Tempe, Ariz.: Phoenix House, 1978), 262. Note 66: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 324. Note 67: Scott to William Dozier and Charles Koerner, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, B1-F2, AHC. Note 68: Ibid. Note 69: RKO memo, Manny Wolfe to Joe Nolan, March 6, 1946, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 70: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 325. Note 71: The two films scheduled for the Scott-Paxton-Dmytryk unit in 1946 were an adaptation of James Hilton's novel So Well Remembered, and Who Is My Love?, a "psychoanalytical subject" based on an original story by Ruth McKenney and Richard Bransten, a project that never materialized. See Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, March 28, 1946, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. The following month, Wright devoted another entire column to the work of Scott and Paxton, focusing this time on the "backstory" of their friendship and creative partnership, tracing their Hollywood "success story" from its beginnings at Stage Magazine to the present. See Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, April 16, 1946, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 72: Myron Fagan, Red Treason in Hollywood (Hollywood: Cinema Educational Guild, Inc., 1949), 28. Note 73: Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, March 28, 1946. Note 74: Adrian Scott, typescript of "Some of My Worst Friends," in Scott Papers, AHC. 1. Note 75: Irwin Steinhart to Scott, March 28, 1946, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 76: Scott, notes from telephone conversation with Flournoy, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 77: For a fuller discussion of So Well Remembered see my forthcoming article, "The Progressive

Producer

in

the

Studio

System:

Adrian

Scott

at

RKO,

1943–1947,"

"Un-American" Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era, Frank Krutnik et al, eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), pp. 152-168. Note 78: Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [interview with Paxton], 263. For a fuller discussion of the production of So Well Remembered, see Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, "The Progressive Producer in the Studio System: Adrian Scott at RKO, 1943–1947" in "Un-American" Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era, Frank Krutnik et al, eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 152–168. Note 79: Unsigned typescript, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Though this document is unsigned, internal evidence (including the deadpan humor) strongly suggests that the author was John Paxton.

Note 80: Ray Neilson, "Edward Dmytryk and Crossfire," Classic Images 89 (November 1982): 30. Note 81: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 325–326. Note 82: Unsigned [Paxton] typescript, in Scott Papers, AHC; Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [interview with Paxton], 263. See also Paxton's notes on Ray Billington's The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), in Paxton Bio Files, AMPAS. Note 83: John Paxton to Keith Kelly and Clay Steinman, June 20, 1977, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. This correspondence was part of the background research for Kelly and Steinman's article "Crossfire: A Dialectical Attack." Note 84: Paxton, interview with Larry Ceplair, June 29, 1977. Note 85: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 326; Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, But Not a Bad Living (New York: Times Books, 1978), 89; Ray Neilsen, "Edward Dmytryk and Crossfire," Classic Images, November 1982, 30. Note 86: Paxton wrote four screenplay drafts between late December 1946 and the end of March 1947, including the first draft continuity, dated January 25, 1947; a revised continuity (now titled "Cradle of Fear"), dated February 12, 1947; and a version that was supposed to be final, dated February 19, 1947. Paxton and Scott continued to fine-tune this last draft, making changes and edits through March 30, after shooting had already begun. The "Final Script as Shot" is dated August 4, 1947. Note 87: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 326–327. Note 88: In addition, Scott may have known Schary personally. In the late 1930s and 1940s, Betsy Blair Reisz often took political speeches she had written to the writers at MGM for review. She remembers talking with both Scott and Schary at the MGM writers' building during this period. Reisz, interview with author, August, 1999. Note 89: Dore Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979). Note 90: Ibid., 104–132. Note 91: Lester Friedman, in Hollywood's Image of the Jew (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982), misattributes Mitchum's speech to Crossfire (p. 87). For an excellent discussion of The Best Years of Our Lives, see Gerber, "Heroes and Misfits," 545–574. Note 92: Schary, Heyday, 85–86, 101, 105–110; quote on page 101. Note 93: Interestingly, the first document in the FBI file on Schary is Hoover's response to a request from the Attorney General for information on Schary; the date on the document is November 13, 1947—approximately two weeks after the HUAC hearings in Washington. It is also quite interesting that while most of information in this document comes from "confidential informants," the FBI also relied on material from wiretaps of Communist Party headquarters and of director Joseph Losey. FBI Director to Attorney General, November 13, 1947, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 94: Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, July 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 95: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 237. Note 96: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, n.d. [July 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 97: Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1947, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 98: Schary, Heyday, 157. Roffman and Purdy describe 1947 as the "year of the Jewish film." In addition to the release of Crossfire, Body and Soul, and Gentleman's Agreement, three other films focused on Jewish issues were announced: Samuel Goldwyn was preparing Earth and High Heaven, a drama about a Jewish-Gentile marriage; MGM planned production of Sholem Asch's East River; and Arthur Miller's novel Focus was scheduled by the

independent King Brothers. Though Earth and High Heaven, East River, and Focus were never made, Roffman and Purdy argue that the fact that they were announced and that Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement were so successful "indicates the high level of audience receptivity to the theme of anti-Semitism in 1947." Roffman and Purdy, Hollywood Social Problem Film, 238. Note 99: For example, Paxton remembers that Schary was responsible for the film's final title. However, an interstudio memo indicates that an RKO script clerk (and a former serviceman, no less) named Ben Saeta came up with the title Crossfire and was paid $50 for his idea, "money he needed to care for his ill mother." RKO memo, Schary to J. J. Nolan, March 7, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 100: "Preview Report: Crossfire," New York Times, July 6, 1947, in Crossfire Production File, AMPAS. Note 101: Mitchum was paid $15,000 and Ryan $10,000 for Crossfire. See Crossfire Budget Files, RKO Studio Collection, ALSC–UCLA; Robert Sklar, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1982). Note 102: Confidential notes from RKO producers' meeting, February 19, 1947, in Schary Papers, B112-F4, WHS; pencilled notes on front cover of first draft continuity, February 12, 1947, in Crossfire Script Files, Motion Picture Scripts Collection, UCLA; Vincent Curcio, Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Graham (New York: Morrow, 1989), 162. Note 103: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, n.d. [June 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 104: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 327. Note 105: "Odds & Ends on Crossfire," Rivoli Theater Program, July 22, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC; McGilligan, "Interview with Richard Brooks," 41; clipping, no author, n.d., in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 106: Paxton, Letter to the Editor, February 27, 1980, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 107: Schary to Scott, March 4, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC; Scott, "You Can't Do That," 327. Note 108: Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word" [interview with Paxton], 264. Note 109: Scott to Dozier and Koerner, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, B1-F2, AHC. Note 110: Ibid. Paxton's Biographical File at AMPAS includes some of their research on anti-Semitism, particularly notes from Billington's The Protestant Crusade. Note 111: On changing attitudes toward the Irish, see Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers, Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration, 3d ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), 147–151. Note 112: Scott to Dozier and Koerner, n.d. [1946], in Scott Papers, B1-F2, AHC. Note 113: Ibid. Note 114: Harold Melniker to John Paxton, March 1, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 115: Joseph Breen to Harold Melniker, February 27, 1947; Melniker to Paxton, March 1, 1947, both in Crossfire Production File, AMPAS. Note 116: Crossfire production chronology, n.a., n.d., in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 117: See, for example, Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (1981; rpt. New York: Da Capo, 2001); Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History (New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1989), especially chapter 5; and J. P. Telotte, Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir (Urbana and Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1989). My analysis of narrative style in Crossfire was also sparked by Leonard Leff and Jerrold Simmons's article, "Film into Story: The Narrative Schema of Crossfire," Literature/Film Quarterly 12:3 (1984): 171–179.

Note 118: William Graebner, The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1981), 54, 145. Note 119: Graebner, Age of Doubt, especially 147. Note 120: See especially Roffman and Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film and Friedman, Hollywood's Image of the Jew. Note 121: Two excellent, though brief, analyses of Crossfire as a film noir are found in Naremore, More than Night, 114–123, and in Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1991), 209–210.

Chapter 6 It Can Happen Here: Noir Style and the Politics of Antifascism in Crossfire Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire (1947) merits closer attention, however. It's been too rapidly pigeonholed among films dealing with American racial problems. . . . Dmytryk has attended the school of film noir, and this is felt in every sequence. Here, the influence is indisputable: without Murder, My Sweet, Crossfire wouldn't have had this style. —Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton, A Panorama of American Film Noir

Though numerous critics have since struggled with how best to categorize

1

Crossfire—is it film noir? Is it a social problem film?—here, in one of the originating texts on film noir, French critics Borde and Chaumeton, argue for Crossfire's inclusion in the noir canon. For them, Crossfire stands out for its narrative and visual style—clearly linked to Murder, My Sweet, the original Scott-Paxton-Dmytryk noir—which for them sets Crossfire definitely apart from a "stodgy" social problem film like The Best Years of Our Lives (though Gentleman's Agreement is probably the more appropriate comparison).1 Borde and Chaumenton's auteurist privileging of the noir visual style and the role of

Dmytryk

as

director

in

Crossfire,

however,

masks

the

2

critical

contributions—creative and political—of writer-producer Adrian Scott. It was Scott who chose the hard-boiled, politically inflected literary material, and Scott, along with writing partner John Paxton, who was responsible for the film's "rapid-fire brutal narrative" and its "edgy, terse dialogue." Even more important, I think, these critics' privileging of noir style over social content underestimates the ways in which film noir was itself rooted in resistance—resistance to the Production Code and to the limitations of the studio system; resistance to a Hollywood style and mode of production that embraced "entertainment" over "art"; resistance to the glossy Hollywood vision that skated over the violence inherent in capitalist America, the discontent and instability that simmered below the prosperous, complacent, self-congratulatory surface of the American Way of Life. In the noir films produced by Adrian Scott, this resistance is fundamentally rooted in the politics of the Popular Front.2 Indeed, I would argue that the historical significance of Crossfire and the other films by this creative trio lies in the melding of noir style and antifascist politics. As a writer-producer, Scott took three stabs at the noir oeuvre, and with each film the political agenda embedded in the investigative narrative became more defined, focused, and hard-hitting. In Murder, My Sweet the search for a jade necklace opens the door to an exploration

3

of the collision of the criminal underworld and a corrupt upper class; in Cornered, a soldier's search for revenge opens the door to exploration of the persistence of fascism in the postwar world. Though both films suggest that the investigative narrative and the visual style of noir held great potential for dramatizing the politics of antifascism, Scott was also aware of the limitations of these devices, and was stung by comments such as these, which were part of the Hollywood Reporter's review of Cornered: If a post-war warning is the purpose of this picture, a very round-about way is chosen to give it importance. The pursuit is by a man seeking revenge for the woman he loved. It is therefore incidental that he brings to justice a Nazi band. His antagonists could just as well have been jewel thieves or coffee planters. It wouldn't have changed the chase.3

With Crossfire, Scott was determined to make a film in which the political message was not incidental and would not be lost in either the narrative conventions of the investigative thriller or the visual style of noir. In focusing on the investigation of a politically motivated murder, Crossfire negotiates the realism of noir and the idealism of the Popular Front and suggests that, in the hands of a leftist like Adrian Scott, noir was indeed an ideal vehicle for dramatizing antifascism.

Performativity and Intertextuality Film historian James Naremore notes that "films depend on a form of

4

communication whereby meanings are acted out; the experience of watching them involves not only a pleasure in storytelling but also a delight in bodies and expressive movement, an enjoyment of familiar performing skills, and an interest in players as 'real persons.'"4 In Crossfire, performance is particularly crucial to the dramatization of its Popular Front politics. The casting decisions made by Scott and the performances of those chosen actors are crucial in embodying on-screen fascism and antifascism, Jewishness and Americanness, masculinity and femininity. These performances were often reinforced in interesting ways by the actors' offscreen personas, created for the actors by the studio's publicity machine, as well as by public perceptions of these stars that accrued from their work in other films. Following Naremore's lead, this chapter weaves together an analysis of the ideological work of narrative, particularly through the process of revising the screenplay, and a discussion of visual style, performance, and star personas in Crossfire. Expanding the previous discussion of performances of masculinity in The Brick Foxhole, I argue that the competing versions of masculinity embodied by

Crossfire's

Mitchum—reflect

leading the

men—Robert

postwar

Young,

negotiation

and

Robert

Ryan,

construction

and of

Robert

normative

5

masculinity. As Steven Cohan notes, "Film makes it especially difficult not to think of masculinity as a masquerade. Because, as both a medium and an institution, Hollywood cinema depends so greatly on making the sexually differentiated bodies of stars visible to an audience, it invariably brings the performativity of gender to the forefront."5 Star personas, aided by studio publicity that emphasize the congruence between the actors' on-screen roles and offscreen lives, played a key role in this negotiation by suggesting that the stars were simply "acting naturally" in these performances of masculinity. In addition, the intertextuality between the actors' previous roles and their performances in Crossfire provided a further guide for audiences to read the meanings embedded in the stars' personas.6 Visual style, too, played a critical role in constructing meaning in Crossfire. By

6

1947, Dmytryk, considered by one film historian to be "perhaps the most underrated stylist of Hollywood's expressionist period," had come into his own as a noir director.7 Working with cameraman J. Roy Hunt on Crossfire, Dmytryk masterfully used high-contrast lighting, exaggerated camera angles, extreme close-ups, tight cutting, and other classical noir stylizations to create a visual mood that reiterates the danger, volatility, and vulnerability constructed by the narrative.8 Ultimately, visual style and performance intersect to reinforce the ideological work of Crossfire's narrative.

Screenplay Revisions and the Final Shoot Before Dmytryk began shooting Crossfire on March 4, Paxton wrote three more drafts of the screenplay. Though each follows the same general plot set in the first draft, the various revisions—some large, some small—reveal much. Many of the changes document Scott and Paxton's attempts to reclaim the political material they had excised in adapting the novel. For example, in the early drafts Paxton included a series of establishing shots that precede the murder scene. All three versions opened with a lone soldier walking with a girl against the backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial. In the first draft, Paxton followed this opening with a shot of a faceless soldier walking unsteadily through the night, one foot on the curb and the other in the gutter, perhaps to foreshadow Mitch's innocence by intimating that he was wandering the streets while Samuels was murdered. The second draft omits this wandering soldier and instead opens with the Lincoln Memorial and a voice-over narration: This story began a long time ago. . . . It isn't over yet, either. . . . It began in the time of Genghis Khan, in the time of Moses, in the time of Jesus Christ, in the time of Attila the Hun—and in the time before that. . . . This part of it happened in Washington, D.C. in 1946.9

7

Drawn from the final pages of The Brick Foxhole, this brief quote condenses Keeley's extended examination of the historical roots of the modern antifascist war. Like author Richard Brooks, Scott and Paxton wanted to convey the long history of intolerance, linking present prejudice to past hatreds. The final script as shot, however, omits these establishing sequences and the voice-over narration. Paxton suggests that these shots, requiring cars and back projection, might have been too expensive to film and so were deleted. However, he also notes that he often began his screenplays with such devices "to help frame the material, and then, in the end discovered nobody liked them, that they didn't really mean much."10 More importantly, perhaps, Joseph Breen objected to the invocation of Jesus Christ, particularly "in view of the fact that in its present context, being mentioned along with Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, it might prove highly offensive to religious-minded people"11 (including Breen himself, one might suppose). The final version of Crossfire opens abruptly with the murder of Samuels. As

8

directed by Dmytryk and filmed by cameraman J. Roy Hunt, the opening scene is a stylistic tour de force, establishing Crossfire definitely as a film noir. The scene opens with a single lamp burning against a black screen. The camera pulls back to reveal a struggle—though we never actually see the two men fighting, only their larger-than-life shadows projected onto the wall, accompanied by a vivid soundtrack featuring heavy breathing and grunts and the wet, smacking sound of slaps and punches. A body crashes into the table, sending the lamp to the floor, and the screen goes black. Then the lamp is switched on, revealing a man's crouched body, his head obscured by the darkness that dominates the top half of the screen. The camera lingers portentiously on the man's hands: large, limply curled, but definitely menacing. The top of the screen remains black and we see only the man's legs as he crosses the room, picks up another man, and carries him from the room. The door opens and light spills into the apartment, revealing a coffee table littered with glasses and liquor bottles, and then the camera pans back to the lifeless body lying face down on the floor. It is a powerful shot: a murder victim, unknown; a murderer, equally anonymous. The next scene opens with the body being rolled over, and the camera pans from the bespectacled coroner to a tight shot of Detective Finlay. Played by Robert Young, Finlay is low key, almost deadpan. With his hair graying at the temples and a pipe clenched in his teeth, Young's Finlay evokes both professionalism and a specifically paternal authority—an image that would come to define Young in his later television roles in Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, M.D. However, in 1947, Young was known primarily as a debonair leading man, specializing in romantic comedies, though he had appeared in a number of more serious dramatic roles, particularly in antifascist films like Three Comrades (1938) and

9

The Mortal Storm (1940). Cast slightly off type in Crossfire, Young's good-guy screen persona ultimately lent credence to his portrayal of Finlay. In Young's first appearance on screen, a close-up of his face dominates the shot,

10

just as his character will dominate the narrative of investigation throughout the film. Finlay steps away from the body (and the camera), revealing the interior of Samuels's apartment. Tastefully decorated, with elegant furniture, shelves of books and curios, and artwork on the walls, the setting suggests wealth and class status. Miss Lewis, Samuels's girlfriend (played by Margo Dwyer), is equally sophisticated: dark, attractive, well-dressed. However, Finlay's first question to her—"Was Samuels drunk when you left him at the bar?"—sets a sordid, menacing tone, undercutting the bourgeois comfort of their surroundings. Miss Lewis's story of meeting the four soldiers in the bar is classic noir: a random encounter with strangers embroils innocents in a complicated web of deceit and danger. As if to reinforce the theme of inexorable fate, Finlay then turns his attention from

11

Miss Lewis to the lifeless body of Samuels. In the first draft of the screenplay, the coroner wordlessly illustrates the mode of death with several short quick punches; in the second draft, he comments that "he probably hit his head on the way down." In his personal copy of this screenplay draft, Scott scribbled "no hit table," and in the final draft, Finlay asks the coroner, "Could he have hit his head on the table as he fell?" "He could have. But with the beating he took, it wouldn't have made much difference one way or the other," the coroner replies, removing any speculation

that

Samuels's

death

might

have

been

an

accident.

Having

established that Samuels was the victim of a deliberate murder, Finlay sets the investigation in motion. He has a suspect: a Corporal Mitchell, whose wallet has been found in the couch. Finlay instructs his men to begin by asking questions at the bar, saying: "They won't know anything, but check anyway."12 This gloomy prediction signifies both Finlay's positivist professionalism—he will check all the facts and follow every lead—and his existential recognition of the inadequacy of the investigative process itself, his realization that the facts will not necessarily provide meaningful or enduring answers. At this point Monty appears, filling the doorframe with his looming presence. His soldier's uniform, stripped of all military insignia save a discharge button, registers simply as a khaki shirt, suggesting the German Brown Shirts or Italian Black

Shirts.13

Robert

Ryan,

ruggedly

masculine,

dark,

unconventionally

good-looking, brought a tough physical presence to the role of Monty. Ryan, a Chicago native, had been the heavyweight boxing champion in his four years at Dartmouth College. After graduating, he held a wide variety of odd jobs while studying acting with celebrated German director Max Reinhardt in Hollywood and

12

playing small parts at the Paramount studio. Ryan made his stage debut in 1939, and from 1941 to 1942 he appeared as a cynical lover in the Broadway production of Clifford Odets's play Clash by Night. Ryan returned to Hollywood in 1942 with a contract at RKO and appeared with excellent notices in a number of war films. In early 1944 he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served as a drill instructor at Camp Pendleton until he was discharged in November 1945.14 By 1947 Ryan was beginning to establish a definite screen persona: a "good guy" and a team player. In Bombardier (1943), for example, he played a reckless but honorable flyer, a man who defies doctor's orders and the pain of broken ribs rather than be left behind by his crew, and who exposes a ring of fifth-columnists who want him to reveal military secrets. In Behind the Rising Sun (1943) he played Lefty, an American coach of a Japanese baseball team, who steps into the boxing ring—with a burly Japanese karate expert—to save the reputation of a friend and fellow expatriate. His breakthrough role came in the romantic wartime weepie, Tender Comrade (1944), as Ginger Rogers's charming and very patriotic soldier-husband who gives his life for the cause of freedom. Playing Monty in Crossfire was a marked change from Ryan's earlier roles, and it began a new trend for him. While he frequently played heroic roles in later films, he was just as often cast as a menacing, violent, or intolerant character, in films such as Act of Violence (1949), Beware My Lovely (1952), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), and Odds against Tomorrow (1959). Though the accounts of his wartime conversation with Richard Brooks may well be apocryphal, it is clear from a number of sources that Ryan lobbied hard to win the role of Montgomery in Crossfire. The physical presence he brought to the part captured much of the barely repressed violence, latent homosexuality, and authoritarianism that were not always explicit in Paxton's adaptation of The Brick Foxhole. Returning to the scene of his crime, Monty feigns innocence, asking "Has something happened?" and noting cannily, "You're cops?" In this scene, Dmytryk used a series of over-the-shoulder shots and indirect lighting to great effect. Standing just outside the doorway as Finlay questions him, Monty is merely a hulking black presence in the shots taken from his back, and he crowds the frame when the camera is positioned behind Finlay. While the shots of Finlay show his face in full light, Monty is half-hidden in shadow, his face bifurcated into dark and light. Though Monty is deferential to Finlay's authority and frequently calls the detective "sir," there is a subtle defiance in his stance, his arms akimbo, thumbs tucked into his waistband. Finlay asks him if he was drunk that night, and Monty replies, with smug bravado, "I had a couple, but I can handle that." He tells Finlay that he came to the apartment looking for his "buddy" Mitchell. In this first encounter with Finlay, Monty constantly invokes his "buddies," a markedly repetitive litany that not only introduces the film's theme of loyalty and homosocial bonds among fighting men, but also suggests Monty's repressed

13

homosexuality: Finlay:

Who's we?

Monty:

Me and another buddy of mine.

Finlay:

Who'd you come here with?

Monty:

With these two buddies of mine and this fellow.

After Miss Lewis confirms that Monty was at the bar, but that he was not the soldier Samuels was talking to when she left, Finlay resumes his questioning: Finlay:

What are you doing in Washington?

Monty:

I just came back to see some of my buddies.

Finlay:

Where are you staying?

Monty:

At the Stewart Hotel. The Stewart's where I used to be stationed. I'm sponging a free bunk from one of my buddies.15

Monty's affirmation (and reaffirmation) of his membership in the band of brothers

14

rings hollow, however, particularly in light of the next scene, in which Sergeant Keeley and his men demonstrate a more authentic military (and masculine) solidarity. The soldiers are playing poker in Keeley's room (which he shares with Mitchell) at the Stewart Hotel. Keeley, brilliantly underplayed by Robert Mitchum, is clearly the leader of these men: he tells them that he's "closing up early" that night because he and Mitch are going "crawling"—soldierly slang for barhopping. One of the men chimes in, "What are you? His father or something?" suggesting a caretaking, paternal element to Keeley's authority. When the MPs arrive, Keeley takes charge. He is the only man who responds to their questions about Mitchell, and he alone accompanies them to the police station to intervene in support of his buddy. Later, when Keeley returns to the hotel, the GIs jump to their feet—as if responding to a superior officer's cry of "Attention!"—and gather eagerly around him to hear the news about Mitch. As in The Brick Foxhole, Keeley is an oracle, not only for Mitchell but for all of "his" men. When he tells them that they have to find Mitch, the men respond instantly to his command: "Well, what are we waiting for?" Keeley deploys the soldiers, sending them out into the night on a reconnaissance mission in search of Mitch, while he establishes his headquarters behind the lines, in the hotel coffee shop.16 Robert Mitchum, even more than Robert Ryan, personifies the street-smart, wisecracking "city boy." Audiences in 1947 identified Mitchum as a regular guy, both on-screen and off. This impression was deliberately constructed by studio

15

publicity that emphasized his marriage to his high-school sweetheart and his work in a Lockheed defense plant during the war, for example, and suggested that Mitchum, rather than consciously pursuing either creative expression or stardom, was a "natural." As gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky remarked in a 1947 article, "Robert Mitchum admits that he originally wanted to be a bum. He became a movie actor." Indeed, Mitchum never formally studied acting, though as a youth he performed in a vaudeville act with his sister. In 1942 he joined the Long Beach Theater Guild and the following year made his film debut in a series of Hopalong Cassidy westerns, making eighteen movies in 1943 alone. Mitchum definitively broke into starring roles in 1945 with The Story of G.I. Joe and was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Lieutenant Walker. Drafted in 1944, he spent eight months in the Army. Upon his return to Hollywood, he starred in a string of hard-boiled thrillers, including The Locket (1946), Pursued (1946), and Out of the Past (1947), as well as the postwar demobilization drama Till the End of Time (1947), directed by Dmytryk and produced by Schary. These roles reinforced the audience's association of Mitchum with a rugged and slightly rebellious masculinity, an image reiterated by the Hollywood publicity machine. For example, according to Skolsky, Mitchum hated the color pink, fancy desserts, and "people who wear monograms on their clothes." Skolsky's article continues, "He takes his work seriously but has fun while doing it. He comes on the set knowing his job, but eager to improve. He is not in awe of any person. . . . He still pals around with the same group he knew when he was struggling, and likes to make the rounds with the boys."17 As played by Mitchum, Keeley's manliness is never in question. He exudes a virile

16

self-confidence, from the jaunty angle of his soldier's cap to the casual way he tips back his chair, nonchalantly balancing himself during his interview with Finlay. Keeley, like Mitchum, is "not in awe of any person," including Captain Finlay, as his subtle sarcasm indicates. In Crossfire, Keeley is tough through and through. As he explains, "Look, Finlay, this sort of life doesn't bother some soldiers. It doesn't bother me much. I haven't seen my wife for two years. When I do, maybe we'll pick right up again. Maybe we won't. But I don't worry about it now. Mitchell's not like that. He's not tough. He needs his wife."18 In the first drafts, this speech was prefaced by the line, "Some soldiers can get away with this sort of thing," suggesting that for some men the war was a not altogether unwelcome opportunity to be free of their wives. Though this is certainly in keeping with Brooks's emphasis on the complicated nature of marital relations, the line was deleted following PCA objections that it seemed to condone adultery.19 In this interview with Finlay, Keeley establishes his own manliness—and Mitch's lack thereof—with great economy. As in The Brick Foxhole, Keeley is a war hero:

17

he—unlike Mitch—has killed men "where you get medals for it." Keeley used to work as a "newspaperman," an eminently masculine synonym for "journalist" in the Hollywood lexicon. Now, for the Army, he does an "ink job. Purple ink. Instead of the Purple Heart, we get purple ink."20 Mitch's artistic background, established in The Brick Foxhole, is also tightly compressed in the film. All mention of his work as a Disney cartoonist is omitted, and Mitch is transformed simply into "an artist." In the early drafts, Paxton characterized Mitch as a painter of nudes, suggesting that he is a "serious" artist. However, the Breen Office objected to this reference to nudity, however attenuated, and Paxton changed the line to the less offensive remarks, "He's an artist. He used to do cows eating grass. He's branched out now. He does signs. KEEP THIS WASHROOM CLEAN."21 Later, during Mitch's conversation with Samuels in the bar, we learn that as a civilian Mitchell had painted a post-office mural for the WPA, a reference that serves not only as a hint of Mitchell's liberalism, but also as a quick reminder of the cultural work of the New Deal—an issue of significant importance to the Hollywood Left. In Crossfire, Paxton and Scott deleted the overheard-rumor device that provoked

18

Mitchell's crisis in the novel; instead, the problem between Mitchell and Mary is simply a failure to communicate, though Keeley does hint at a possible infidelity in suggesting to Finlay, "Maybe she said something in one of her letters that made him suspicious of her love life. I don't know." Finlay asks why Keeley called Mrs. Mitchell, spearing the telephone message aggressively with his letter opener. Keeley explains that Mary called him first, going behind her husband's back to get information from his best friend. The problems in Mitch's marriage, particularly the lack of communication, as well as the dislocation of military service, have pushed him over the edge. As Keeley explains: "He's homesick—he's wife-sick. . . . Anyway, he's got snakes. He's been nuts—but not nuts enough to kill anybody." Keeley adds that Mitchell, trying to "act like a real soldier," had gone to find a girl.22 Some of Brooks's suspicion of the state filters through in this scene. Though his shirt sleeves are rolled up to signify that he is ready to get down to work, Finlay's evident exhaustion—he sits slumped behind his desk and frequently rubs his face and eyes as if to stay awake—raises doubts about his fitness for this job. As Finlay himself says, "Nothing interests me anymore. It used to, but not any more. I've been at this too long. I go about it the only way I know how. I collect as many facts as possible. Most of them are useless." Earlier drafts included the line, "It's just a job," perhaps in reference to Finlay's concern, in the novel, with keeping his own job.23 These doubts about Finlay's judgment are exacerbated by his naïveté about Monty's character and his seeming willingness to accept Monty's story as fact.

19

The competition between Keeley and Monty to influence Mitch is also clearly laid

20

out in this scene. Finlay identifies the bond between Keeley and Mitchell: "You're Mitchell's closest friend, aren't you?" Keeley replies, "Yeah, but I don't advertise it." In sharp contrast to Monty, who repeatedly announces his place in the buddy system, for Keeley the bonds of male friendship need no elaboration or public affirmation. Finlay, however, seems unable to see Monty's insincerity, and Keeley immediately becomes suspicious when Finlay mentions Mitch's "other friend." "Where does Montgomery come in?" he demands. As Finlay recounts the discovery of Samuels's body and the appearance of Monty, Keeley interrupts him, commenting sarcastically: "You're just taking Monty's word for all this?"24 As in The Brick Foxhole, Monty's "defense" of Mitch only casts more suspicion upon him. "Keeley, you hear all this they're trying to pin on Mitch? This is serious. They're crucifying the kid. You know Mitch—he won't have a chance." Though the novel's frank depiction of homosexual pickup and seduction is excised from the screenplay, there is still an insinuation of homosexuality in Monty's line, "Well, I just mean that Mitchell's not the kind of guy who knows the scoop on things like this. He's an artist—He's sensitive." Monty, however, is "in the know," especially about violence and murder. As he reminds Finlay: "I been a cop myself. In St. Louis. Four years in the jungle on the East side. I know the score."25 In earlier drafts, Paxton and Scott used the phrase, "Four years in a nigger precinct," to emphasize Monty's wide-ranging prejudices. Though they later deleted the word "nigger" at the instruction of the PCA, their change to "the jungle" retains the same connotation, particularly in reference to East St. Louis, a historically black city known for its poverty and troubled race relations and located quite literally on "the other side of the tracks"—or in this case, on the other side of the Mississippi River.26 Monty's earlier deference to Finlay's authority is now replaced by belligerence, as Monty asserts his own authority—as a former cop himself, as a soldier (reinforced by the presence of Keeley, his comrade-in-arms), and as a narrator, as he tells his version of what happened. The scene fades from Finlay's office to a flashback to the bar where Monty and his "buddies"—Mitch

(George

Cooper),

Floyd

(Steve

Brodie),

and

Leroy

21

(Bill

Phipps)—encounter Samuels (Sam Levene) and Miss Lewis. Reflecting not only his role as narrator, but also his own sense of self-importance, Monty is the center of attention throughout this scene, while the other characters remain virtually silent. Mitch sits moodily at the edge of the group, morose and withdrawn, while Floyd and Leroy sit flanking Monty. Even as Monty presents himself in the best possible light in narrating this flashback, it is apparent that he is trouble. In this scene, Paxton and Scott captured much of Brooks's explication of Monty's authoritarian personality. When a waiter reaches between the men for a tray of glasses, Leroy steps out of

22

the way and bumps into Miss Lewis, spilling a drink on her dress. He apologizes in a soft Southern drawl, and Samuels replies civilly, "That's all right. It was an accident." Monty, however, seizes a towel and begins dabbing at Miss Lewis's sleeve, holding her arm familiarly. Her knowing glance at Samuels communicates their shared disdain for the bullying Monty as he barks, "You silly hillbilly, why don't you watch what you're doing? You'll have to forgive Leroy here. Leroy's from Tennessee. He just started wearing shoes." Even as he is making fun of him, Monty drapes his arm insinuatingly around Leroy's shoulders. When Leroy pulls away, Monty says, insincerely, "Well, look there. I hurt Leroy's feelings." Miss Lewis escapes to take care of her dress, saying, "Right back, Sammy," and Monty eases himself into her seat next to Samuels, insinuating himself into a conversation, with "Well, that's the way it is, Sammy."27 As in The Brick Foxhole, Monty is too friendly, too familiar; he imposes himself

23

upon others, physically and verbally. Again, he dominates the conversation, while Samuels sits quietly, politely tolerating Monty's aggressive bluster. In his speech, Monty establishes himself as a professional soldier through his bitterness that military standards have been compromised to accommodate the "amateur" citizen-soldiers: "That's what you get when you get an army full of stinking civilians. I been in the regular army, see? But I been out a couple of weeks. . . . And am I glad to be out! I had enough of an army full of stinking civilians. I never seen anything like these guys—." Significantly, Monty notes that Mitchell was "okay. . . . He's very talented." For Monty, Mitch is "one of my boys," a reminder of the struggle between Monty and Keeley for leadership of the GIs in The Brick Foxhole, as well as a suggestion of Monty's hidden homosexuality. Monty's reverence for authority is suggested by his complaint that most of the citizen-soldiers "got no manners." As he launches into a diatribe against his fellow soldiers, the camera moves in for a tight close-up. Monty's face fills the screen, giving a disturbing menace to his monologue: One day one of the men complains to me that he had swiped from him a wrist watch his mother sent him. His mother sent it to him! Half of these guys, I think, got no mothers. They got no respect for the service. You can always tell a man by how he don't have respect for the service; he don't respect his mother. . . . He's the kind of guy that spoilt the army for a guy like me.28

Looking to the far side of the bar, Monty sees Samuels talking to Mitchell. Realizing that he has lost his audience, that Samuels has slipped away from him, his face becomes dark and angry, and he watches Samuels and Mitch through narrowed eyes. When they leave the bar, Monty and Floyd follow them. As Monty explains via voice-over, "Things were pretty expensive in that bar, anyway—and I figured if the Jew-boy was setting up the drinks someplace, we might as well get

24

in on it." In early drafts, Monty remarks that he and Floyd followed Samuels because they were worried about Mitch—Monty didn't "like the looks of that Samuels," insinuating that Samuels might have homosexual designs on Mitch. Barging in to Samuels's apartment, Monty claps Samuels on the shoulder too heartily, with barely repressed violence—"You thought you could skip out on us, didn't you?"—suggesting that it is impossible to avoid the fascist menace, that in tolerating Monty, Samuels sowed the seeds of his own destruction. Though there is an undertone of menace in this scene, in his narration Monty presents himself as a good guy. He is understanding when Samuels announces that he has another appointment, saying, "Well, that's too bad, Sammy. We gotta look after Mitch anyhow. Come on, Floyd. . . . Thanks just the same, Sammy."29 When the flashback fades back into the present in Finlay's office, the detective

25

probes for a motive, asking Monty if he and Samuels had an argument. Monty replies, with perfect sincerity, "What was there to argue about? His liquor was good. Everything was okay." When Finlay asks if he had ever met Samuels before, Monty says no, then adds insinuatingly, "Of course, I've seen a lot of guys like him. You know—guys that played it safe during the war, scrounged around keeping themselves in civvies—got swell apartments—swell dames—you know the kind. . . ." Finlay replies carefully, "I'm not sure that I do. Just what kind?" Monty says again, "You know," attempting to draw Finlay into the "understanding" about Samuels and his "kind": "Some of them are named Samuels. Some of them got funnier names."30 In earlier drafts, the reference to Samuels's Jewishness is more open, and Monty tries to win Finlay over by appealing directly to the bond of "whiteness" that they share as Irishmen—a bond that, for Monty, clearly excludes Jews: "Look, Captain, one Mick to another, ain't this a pretty big stink about nothing?" Finlay refuses to cooperate: "About nothing?" Monty hems and haws, saying, "Sure. Samuels. After all . . ." and "Look, Captain—one of them guys more or less." Finally, the detective challenges him: "You mean he was a Jew?" Monty replies, "Sure," and Finlay asks how he knows. Monty cites Samuels's class status, his "swell apartment" and "hot dame," adding, "You could see that. You could smell it. You know what I mean?"31 In the final draft of this scene, Finlay does not challenge Monty. Instead, he simply "collects the fact" that Monty is a bigot and lets him go. After Monty has gone, Keeley remarks, "He should look at a casualty list sometime. There are a lot of funny names there, too." Finlay is not paying attention and merely murmurs, "Hmmm?" Keeley snaps, "I said Monty's illiterate. He ought to read more. I was just philosophizing." At this point, it is clear that Finlay and Keeley are at cross-purposes. Keeley is trying to save his buddy by pointing out Monty's untrustworthiness, but Finlay cuts him off: "I'm not interested in philosophy. I'm trying to solve a murder." Finlay's positivist reliance on rational "facts" blinds him

26

to the irrational motive behind the murder. He seems only too willing to accept Monty's version of the encounter with Samuels, and in fact, Finlay uses Keeley's own testimony to build his case: "Mitchell was in a strange mood tonight. You admit that. He left Samuels's apartment—intending to come back. . . . We arrive, and find Samuels beaten to death—and we find Mitchell's wallet in the sofa. I say Mitchell did come back—some sort of an argument developed. . . ." Keeley cuts in with, "Monty's a liar. What makes you believe his story?" and Finlay replies, "It just happens to be the only story I've got."32 As in The Brick Foxhole, Keeley realizes that he cannot trust Finlay and that he

27

will have to take justice into his own hands. However, instead of challenging Monty to hand-to-hand combat in a personal battle between fascism and democracy, Keeley turns to his men, mobilizing the soldiers to protect one of their own and sending out his own dragnet to find Mitchell before Finlay does. When Mitch wanders innocently into the hotel lobby, one of the soldiers, Harry (played by Lex Barker), spots him just as the MPs do. Shoving him to the ground, Harry takes off into the night, and the MPs follow him, assuming that the running man is their suspect. In the confusion, Keeley grabs Mitchell and smuggles him out the back door. Hiding him in an all-night theater, Keeley explains the situation: "We can't stay here forever. You've got to have a story for the cops. They've got Monty's and it sounds pretty good, but not for you. I want you to tell me everything you did tonight." Keeley's language here, his insistence that Mitch come up with a "story," reiterates the inadequacy of "facts" or "truth" in the morally contingent postwar world, but it also insinuates that Mitch, who was blind drunk for much of the night, may be as untrustworthy as Monty.33 As Mitch begins narrating his version of the events, the second flashback picks up

28

the barroom scene in the middle of Monty's complaints about the unfitness of the citizen-soldiers: "Monty was shooting off his mouth. I wasn't really listening to him." In Mitch's version, the dialogue is virtually the same, but Monty is far drunker and angrier. His voice is rough and loud, and his face looks slack and coarse. Mitchell tells Keeley, "I remember I was suddenly sick of him, and Floyd. I wanted my wife. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be somewhere else."34 He walks to the other side of the bar and sits alone, until Samuels slides onto the bar stool next to him. This begins Samuels's "big scene," but it provides no more than a glimpse into his character—an omission that would later be roundly criticized by Jewish defense organizations. In fact, Paxton and Scott struggled to attain the "correct" representation of Samuels in Crossfire, and the results offer key insights into the complex and contradictory discourses on race, ethnicity, and Americanism following the Second World War. On the one hand, Scott and Paxton wanted to use the character of

29

Samuels to challenge common anti-Semitic stereotypes and to suggest the essential Americanness of Jews, and by implication all racial or ethnic Others. In creating a "good" American Jew, whose murder at the hands of a vicious bigot would (they hoped) outrage other "good" Americans, Scott and Paxton flirted with the celebration of a multi-ethnic Americanism elaborated by wartime popular nationalism, and embraced the belief that "America" can not only tolerate but is strengthened by difference. This, of course, is not really difference, merely a surface variation on a standardized and universalized "average American" constructed by social scientists and popular culture. On the other hand, however, the representation of Samuels was fundamentally shaped by Scott's opposition to fascism

and

the

scientific

racism

that

fueled

German

(and

American)

anti-Semitism. In this sense, Scott and Paxton used the character of Samuels to challenge theories of a biologically distinct Jewish race and to suggest that the preoccupation with difference was inherently un-American and potentially fascist. This works on two levels in Crossfire: 1) in the way that Scott and Paxton constructed Samuels's Jewishness in the screenplay, and 2) in the visual representation of Jewishness embodied by actor Sam Levene. The casting of Levene as Samuels is particularly important in this context, since

30

Levene was recognizably Jewish—if not necessarily physically, then certainly "filmicly." He had played openly Jewish roles in a number of previous films, particularly in war films such as Action in the North Atlantic (1943) and The Purple Heart (1944), in which his characters served as Jewish spokesmen for democracy. Of Russian Jewish heritage, Levene chose acting over a place in his family's dressmaking firm in New York. Making his debut on the vaudeville circuit at age 20, he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and by 1927 was working steadily in legitimate theater. After starring in the Broadway comedy hit, Three Men on a Horse in 1935, Levene went to Hollywood the following year to reprise his role in the film version. By 1947, he had established a solid reputation as a character actor, specializing in roles as a "fast-talking, hard-boiled, streetwise New Yorker."35 Nevertheless, Levene's screen persona lacked the edgy rebelliousness of a "city boy." Even in gritty noir films, he was cast as the genial, sincere foil to the bad boys. In The Killers (1946), for example, he played Lubinsky, a policeman and childhood friend of the doomed antihero "Swede" (Burt Lancaster), while in Boomerang (1947), he played an honorable newsman intent on preventing a miscarriage of justice. Thus, Levene was, in many ways, an ideal choice for the role of Samuels, the good (civil, urbane) Jew who falls prey to the bad (lumpen-proletarian) fascist. The representation of Samuels was one of the most revised sections of the screenplay, possibly because the character did not appear in The Brick Foxhole and the role had to be written from scratch. Nevertheless, in creating the

31

character of Samuels, Scott and Paxton clearly drew more inspiration from Mr. Edwards, the novel's homosexual murder victim, than from Max Brock, the novel's fighting Jewish spokesman. The shadow of Mr. Edwards is particularly evident in the first draft of the screenplay. In the bar, Samuels and Mitchell talk about painting and classical music, and Samuels convinces him that "the most important thing in the world was for me to hear some records he had. Some Prokofiev. Something called 'Lieutenant Kiji.'" There is a seductiveness in this invitation, a "looking at etchings" suggestion reminiscent of the homosexuality at the center of The Brick Foxhole. Significantly, Joseph Breen was concerned about Samuels's questionable performance of masculinity in this version, warning Paxton and Scott, "It is understood, of course, that there will be no suggestion of a 'pansy' characterization about Samuels or his relationship with the other soldiers."36 Thus, by the third draft, Samuels's highbrow tastes were significantly toned down

32

and his heterosexuality confirmed. He and Mitchell talk about baseball—a quintessentially masculine and all-American subject—and Mitch thinks he "must have been on a newspaper or something." Instead of taking Mitchell back to his apartment to listen to classical music, Samuels invites him to have dinner with him and "his girl," an invitation that bespeaks heterosexuality. Even with these changes, however, one member of the preview audience, who had read The Brick Foxhole, detected a whiff of homosexuality in Samuels, commenting, "It seems a shame that censorship and public opinion should force you to change the true character of Samuels, and the reason for his murder."37 Certainly, there is a sharp difference between the virility projected on screen by Ryan and Mitchum and the softness of Sam Levene. In this context, it is particularly interesting to speculate on the ways in which a different casting choice might have affected the representation of Jewishness in Crossfire. For example, a younger, more virile Jewish actor—John Garfield comes immediately to mind—would have brought a fundamentally different persona to the role of Samuels. For Scott and Paxton, however, it was not Samuels's performance of masculinity, but his patriotism and war service that were the most contested issues in the representation of Jewishness in Crossfire. In the initial version of the screenplay, Samuels (like Mr. Edwards) is not a war veteran, as he reveals in the first flashback when Monty asks him, "You been in?" In this first version of Mitch's flashback, Samuels reiterates the fact that he did not serve during the war, greeting Mitchell with, "But for the grace of God . . ." Samuels's "pep talk" in this first draft is confused and unwieldy: It's a funny, complicated thing. It's not something I should be grateful for—that I'm not in your place. Yet I'm grateful—not for that. But for you, to you. It wouldn't be honest to say I envy you, though. I don't. But I

33

don't envy myself, either, all the time. I've tried to think how I would have made out if it had been different. . . . I wonder if I wouldn't have ended up sometimes feeling just the way you do now.

Paxton and Scott seem to have been trying to translate some of Brooks's conversion narrative, in which Mitchell comes to realize that he and the others have been resisting the recognition of their connectedness and common humanity. When Mitchell asks Samuels how he thinks he feels, Samuels replies, "Alone. Lonely. They're not very good words are they? Well, then, feeling different, not a part. . . ." He nods toward Monty and Floyd, saying, "You're obviously not a part of that. You're too smart."38 By the second draft, however, Samuels is a World War Two veteran—though this is not confirmed until late in the narrative when Finlay receives a report from the War Department informing him (and the audience) that Samuels had served with distinction and was discharged after being wounded at Okinawa, one of the bloodiest

battles

of

the

Pacific

theater.39

Thus

rehabilitated,

Samuels's

conversation with Mitchell in the bar is substantially different in the later drafts of the screenplay. As a decorated vet, Samuels has a new moral authority that enables him to serve as a quasi-therapist, diagnosing the problems of both Mitchell and postwar America. This is clear from his first lines: "My girl's worried about you. . . . She says you're not drinking, but you're getting drunk anyway. Anybody that can do that has got a problem." Mitchell tries to ignore him, but he persists: "It's a funny thing, isn't it? . . . It's worse at night, isn't it? I think it's suddenly not having a lot of enemies to hate anymore. Four years now we've all be focusing our minds on—on . . ." Samuels picks a peanut out of the dish on the bar. "On one little peanut. The win-the-war peanut. That was all. Get it over. Eat that peanut." He pops the peanut into his mouth. "That was all. Eat that peanut. . . . Now—all at once—no peanut. We start looking at each other again. We don't know what we're supposed to do. We don't know what's supposed to happen. We're used to hating and used to fighting. But now we don't know who to hate, or who to fight. So we feel lost." Samuels indicates the crowded bar. "We start milling around like this. A lot of fight and hate that doesn't know where to go. A guy like you could start hating himself." In the final version, Samuels adds, "You can feel the tension in the air. . . . One of these days maybe we'll all learn to shift gears. Maybe we'll stop hating and start liking things again, huh?"40 Like Keeley, Samuels is something of an oracle, a father-confessor or therapist who helps Mitchell makes sense of his despair and malaise. Though Scott and Paxton clearly intended this as an important element in their construction of Samuels as a sympathetic character, this speech especially was criticized by Jewish defense organizations for pandering to anti-Semitic stereotypes. Members of the American Jewish Committee, in particular, felt this scene showed Samuels as overly intellectual, on the one hand, and as pushing himself in where he was not

34

wanted, on the other.41 As a corollary to their sympathetic presentation of Samuels, Scott and Paxton also

35

wanted to repudiate earlier ideas of biological racial types, positing instead a universal humanity. Like Brooks, they suggest that the insistence on racial and/or ethnic categories is inherently fascist, and they insist on problematizing the idea of recognizable Jewishness. A number of texts in the postwar period, particularly Gentleman's Agreement and Focus, as well as The Brick Foxhole, explored the question of a Jewish "type" or "race" through the trope of "mistaken identity." In Gentleman's Agreement, a Gentile writer poses as a Jew in order to experience and expose anti-Semitism; in Focus, a Gentile is mistaken for a Jew (after a new pair of glasses makes him "look" Jewish), and he comes to identify with his Jewish neighbor after both are harassed by the local Christian Front. The implications of "mistaken identities" are particularly relevant to the question of Jewishness and fascism, in that Jewishness often is not "visible." (Thus, Nazi attempts at racial and other categorizations sometimes proved elusive, requiring literal badges of identity in the form of yellow stars or, for homosexuals, pink triangles.)

In

suggesting

that

Jewishness

(i.e.

"race"),

like

gender,

is

performative, these postwar texts illustrate the instability of socially constructed categories of race and ethnicity at a critical historical moment.42 Crossfire deals with these same issues, but uses a "real" Jew (both actor Sam Levene and the character Samuels) to explore and destabilize the categories "Jew" and "American." For Scott, particularly, this preoccupation with "looking Jewish" and "seeing Jews"

36

was profoundly un-American and paralleled the German fascist obsession with racial boundary-keeping. Thus, in Crossfire, the fact that Monty believes that he "knows a Jew when he sees one" is evidence of his potential fascism. In the first draft, Scott and Paxton played on the popular misconception that Jews did not "do their part" for the war effort: since everyone knows that "real" Americans are patriotic (that is, they fight for their country), the fact that Samuels "played it safe" during the war marks him unmistakably (for Monty) as a Jew. Thus, Monty's question to Samuels—"You been in?"—is really a way of asking, "Are you one of us?"43 By making Samuels a veteran in the later drafts, Scott and Paxton problematized this association, refusing to give Monty—or the audience—any "clues" that Samuels is a Jew. Just as Paxton and Scott wanted to be certain that the audience recognized Monty as a cold-blooded killer, they also wanted to be sure that he would be understood as a racist. Significantly, Mitchell doesn't know that Samuels is a Jew until Finlay tells him, and Finlay only knows, presumably, because Monty has told him. Thus, when Finlay later confronts Mitch with the fact of Samuels's

37

Jewishness, Mitch is baffled, unable to see its relevance: Finlay:

(coming suddenly to life; raising his voice) Maybe you didn't like him. (forcefully before he can answer) Mitchell—Samuels was a Jew—

Mitchell:

All right—so he was a Jew.

Finlay:

Some people don't like Jews!

Mitchell:

(topping him)

Some people don't like oranges!44

In the final version, this exchange was slightly revised. Finlay suggests that Mitch might have hated Samuels, and "hatred is a good motive." Confused, Mitchell asks, "Why would I hate him? I hardly knew him. . . . He seemed like a nice guy. . . ." Finlay plays the Jewish card: "You know he was a Jew?" Mitchell looks at him blankly, perplexed: "No . . ." Finlay is surprised: "You mean to say you didn't know he was Jewish?" Mitch replies, "No. I didn't think about it. . . . What would that have to do with it? What's that got to do with me?"45 Mitch's lack of knowledge or, more precisely, his refusal to "know" that Samuels was Jewish marks him as essentially nonfascist. However, as much as Scott and Paxton resisted racist ideas of recognizable Jewishness, they also consciously or unconsciously reified it, particularly in the casting of Sam Levene, whose dark curly hair, deep-set dark eyes, and swarthy skin did, indeed, "look Jewish" in the racial lexicon of the 1940s. This was apparent, at least to some on the RKO lot, from the film's rushes. As executive William Gordon pointed out to Scott, "I share the view that one Samuels closeup at the bar is most unfortunate in that its effect is of a bloated caricature so well stereotyped in anti-semitic cartoons."46 In fact, despite the narrative's rather facile appeal to Samuels's sameness—the insistence that Jews are just like any other Americans—his difference is reinforced in myriad ways. For example, though as a war veteran Samuels is part of the band of GIs, he is the only specifically ethnic soldier in the film. In sharp contrast to the multi-ethnic microcosm glorified by wartime popular nationalism, the military unit in Crossfire appears monolithically white, and the vague ethnicities ascribed to the soldiers in The Brick Foxhole are erased in the film. Keeley is no longer specifically Irish, and the various supporting characters in Keeley's band have bland, WASP-ish names like Harry and Bill Williams, rather than Kowalski, Liebowitz, O'Grady, or other "funny" ethnic names that appear on casualty lists. Southernness has shifted from Floyd, the white racist who is collaborator in Monty's fascist violence, to Leroy, the naïve "hillbilly" who is himself a victim of Monty's bullying. Even Finlay's Irishness, which is critical to the argument in the film's denouement that

38

intolerance is essentially un-American, serves more to confirm his whiteness than to celebrate or mark his ethnic difference. Read against this undifferentiated whiteness, Samuels's Jewishness becomes a visible sign of difference. In this context, the erasure of Max Brock in the adaptation of The Brick Foxhole to

39

Crossfire is particularly significant, since Samuels is clearly not Max Brock, a risk-taking, fighting Jew, the proud spokesman for Jewishness and Americanness. First, though there is no doubt in the film that he is Jewish, Samuels himself never speaks openly of his Jewishness, and Crossfire certainly never addresses the "Jewish Question" with the forthrightness or complexity of The Brick Foxhole. Similarly, though the murder of Samuels by Monty is intended to invoke the Holocaust, the film does not explicitly mention it or the concentration camps. Instead, Samuels serves primarily as a spokesman for a universal, rather than specifically Jewish, postwar optimism. The final line in his "peanut" speech —"maybe we'll stop hating and start liking things again"—reflects both the general hope for postwar peace and a progressive version of the One World vision. With the defeat of fascism, he seems to suggest, there is no need any longer for enemies, for a world divided into "us" and "them." Second, though he is a decorated soldier—a fighting man—Samuels does not do battle with the forces of fascism as does Max Brock in The Brick Foxhole. Thus, his final comment about hating and liking becomes terribly ironic since we already know that Samuels himself is a victim of the irrational hatred and the violence unleashed by the war. When Monty and Floyd appear at Samuels's door, the "Jew as passive victim" motif takes on a terrifying resonance. In this scene, the muffled music and dialogue and the disturbing visuals—tight close-ups of Monty's leering face, slow zooms in and out of focus, off-kilter camera angles—reinforce the narrative differences between the two flashbacks. In Mitch's recollection, an aggressive Monty shoves his way into the apartment with a bellicose, "Hiya Sammy! We come to the party!" Though he insists that there is no party, Samuels is exceptionally civil, and his politeness borders on passivity. Monty:

Sammy, let me tell you something. Not many civilians will take a soldier into his house like this—for a quiet talk. . . . Well, let me tell you something. A guy's afraid to take a soldier into his house—he stinks! And I mean he stinks! He ought to have the screws put to him. Am I right, or am I right?

Samuels:

Sergeant, don't you think . . .

Monty:

I asked you a question, Sammy!

Samuels:

What was that?

40

Monty:

You know what was that! Am I right or am I right?

Samuels:

You're right, Sergeant.

Monty:

You can say that again. You're all right, Sammy. You're okay.47

When Mitch begins to feel sick, Samuels is concerned and nurturing. He tries to get Monty and Floyd to leave, saying politely, "I'm afraid there isn't time for another drink." Monty becomes angry: "What kind of a brush is that? What's the matter, Jew-boy—you afraid we'll drink up all your stinking wonderful liquor?"48 In The Brick Foxhole, Mitchell at least thinks about warning Mr. Edwards about Monty and Floyd. In Crossfire, however, Mitch simply leaves, abandoning Samuels to his fate. Mitchell's failure to recognize the danger posed by Monty links him with the "good Germans" and liberal democratic leaders whose tolerance of anti-Semitism and appeasement of the fascist powers ultimately enabled violence and death. A trumpet's blare announces Ginny, the jazz riff underscoring her sexuality. From

41

the blur of street lamps and street signs as Mitch wanders in a drunken haze, the camera suddenly focuses, with pristine clarity, on Ginny's face in a medium close-up. In the role of Ginny, Gloria Grahame captured the tough-yet-vulnerable look Scott and Dmytryk wanted. A relative newcomer to film, she had extensive stage experience, making her debut with the Pasadena Community Playhouse at age nine, studying acting at Hollywood High School, and working in stock theater before making her Broadway debut in 1943. She had appeared in only four films prior to being cast as Ginny in Crossfire, a role that helped establish her as a sultry siren. Frequently cast as a fallen woman or erring wife, she later starred in several outstanding films noir, including In a Lonely Place (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952); she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the latter.49 Playing the tramp in Crossfire, Grahame is simply superb. She is exceptionally well-dressed for a B-girl, in an elegant black evening dress with a plunging neckline. With long, curly blonde hair, false eyelashes, and a rouged pout, she oozes sexuality, but her sophistication is undercut by her round, almost babyish face. Her obvious youth is an integral part of Scott and Paxton's "rehabilitation" of Ginny. The soft toughness that Grahame brings to the role sets her apart from the hard-edged, manipulative, and very duplicitous noir "heroines," such as Claire Trevor in Born to Kill (1947), or Barbara Stanwyck in The File on Thelma Jordan (1949) or even Double Indemnity (1944). In The Brick Foxhole, Ginny is a whore, working in a whorehouse. This obviously could not be represented on the screen, but translating prostitutes into taxi dancers was the standard Hollywood ploy to evade outright censorship by the

42

Breen Office, and audiences were clearly intended to read these characters as "fallen women."50 In the first draft of the screenplay, working around the Production Code's prohibition on prostitution, Paxton attempted to capture some of the despair and bitterness in Brooks's depiction of Ginny, and to suggest both her sexual servitude and her streetwise defiance: Soldiers stink. Just because you work in a place like this they treat you like a bear in a zoo you throw peanuts at—What's wrong with working in a place like this? I don't kid anybody. I'm always here—anytime anybody wants to talk to me and have a drink with me. . . . I know what you think—you all think we go out with anybody asks us. Well, I don't! But you think we do, even if we say we don't! You think we'll go out with you, if you try hard enough, because you think you're special—you're something different—and we been waiting for you! Well, look, to me you're just a bunch of guys in brown suits—and you all got dirty minds!51

In this first draft of the screenplay, Scott and Paxton also adhered closely to

43

Brooks's representation of Mitchell in this scene, attempting to translate the novel's emphasis on his alienation and frustration with the regimentation of military life: Ginny, I've been in this brown suit three years now—so long I don't feel human anymore. I feel—(interrupting his own thought) I'll tell you something else. I'm special. I've got signs and writing on me that tells everybody I'm special. If you know how to read them you know all about me—(with gathering intensity)—you even know how many Japs I didn't kill. It's the loneliest feeling in the world, Ginny. It feels naked.52

Ginny replies flippantly, "What am I supposed to do about it? Do I look patriotic or something?" This line reflects a sentiment from The Brick Foxhole, a condensation of a scene in which Mitchell asks Ginny what she has against the uniform, and she replies: "'Me?' she said, and the word was an accusation. 'Nothing. I'm patriotic. I'm for the four freedoms. I'm for democracy. I'm giving my all for my country. In God we trust. Salute the flag. Hail Columbia.'"53 In the final version, though she is still sarcastic and flip, Ginny is less overtly hostile and all references to her (dubious) patriotism have been deleted. When Mitch follows her out to the patio, she snaps, "You didn't want to drink. All you wanted to do was yap. I don't make any money on that." He replies with a little smile, "You're not getting so rich out here all by yourself," and he asks her what is wrong with him. "You're corny," she replies, mimicking him: "'You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to take you dancing. You remind me of my wife.' What's the idea of saying a thing like that?" Ginny explains that she hasn't been out dancing—for fun, for herself—in years, because she's been working for a living. And when Mitch asks her what she does when she's not working, Ginny's bitter

44

reply—"I live"—suggests that it's not much of a life at all.54 As in The Brick Foxhole, Mitch tries to penetrate the economic arrangement that

45

binds them into commodity and consumer. Attempting to make a human connection, he asks Ginny to dance with him. In the first draft, Mitch says, "Not inside. You work inside. Out here we can dance—just because we're a couple of people who like to dance."55 In the final version, in a more overt recognition of the financial basis of their "relationship," he asks her, "How much would you charge to dance with me now? I mean here." Giving him the key to her apartment, Ginny tells him that she wants to make him some spaghetti.56 Mitch has told her that she reminds him of his wife, giving her a window through which to step into a new and purer version of herself, to rehabilitate herself and transform herself from a bad girl into a good girl, from dance hall floozy to a shadow, or fantasy, wife. Mitch, too, participates in the fantasy. Though he really wants his wife, he is willing to accept Ginny as a substitute. They kiss, as passionately as the Production Code, with its prohibition on open mouths, allows; Mitch grips Ginny's arms with an urgency that indicates his willingness to betray his marriage vows. When Mitch wakes up in her apartment, he finds not Ginny, but The Man (Paul

46

Kelly). The dialogue in this scene, as The Man offers contradictory explanations for his presence in Ginny's apartment, is taken almost verbatim from The Brick Foxhole. As The Man makes himself at home in the apartment, bustling around the kitchen making coffee, Mitch asks him, "Do you belong here, or something?" The Man replies, "Or something," and explains that he is Ginny's husband and that he was a soldier, but that he "conked out," tapping his chest to indicate heart trouble. As in the novel, The Man claims to have known that she was a "tramp" when he married her, and though he enlisted to get away from her, he couldn't wait to be with her again. However, he insists that is a lie, saying, "I met her the same as you did, at the joint. I can't keep away from her. I want to marry her. She won't have me." But that, too, he claims, is a lie: "I don't love her and I don't want to marry her. She makes good money there."57 Interestingly, though it is not at all clear in The Brick Foxhole which, if any, of The Man's stories are true, in Scott's reading of the novel, the character was Ginny's pimp. In earlier drafts of the screenplay, The Man says that he is Ginny's "business manager," a coy way of saying "pimp." This did not escape the notice of the PCA, and Breen asked Scott and Paxton to make "radical changes to this scene to remove any flavor of prostitution."58 According to Scott, "It never seemed important to us specifically what this man was, i.e., friend, lover, husband or pimp." They deleted the offending line, though they kept much of the original dialogue, which to them reflected "purposeful

47

confusion. . . . What was important was his insecurity, his lack of root and the dreadful personal agony that results from this." Scott argued that he and Paxton intended for The Man to be "more than a prop" who could confirm Mitchell's alibi. In their minds, [H]e was part of a pattern of people variously affected by the period of readjustment following a war. We tried to say that this man is symptomatic of a neurosis which is national in scope. If you look around you will see people are upset; they don't know what to do; they are restless, insecure, uncertain. The Paul Kelly character was one of many in Crossfire which represented this point of view. This was not an attempt at cross-section—merely a description of a set of neurotic values which have filtered into the national conscious and unconscious.

Scott further argued that the theme of postwar dislocation and "neurosis" was clearly presented, though "in less extravagant terms," in other characters, particularly Mitch, Keeley, and Ginny.59 This emphasis on neurosis reflects the shift from the economic and class-based Marxist explanations of alienation that dominated the 1930s to the normative psychological explanations of the postwar therapeutic culture. At the same time, however, the fractured identity described as "neurosis" in the 1940s also anticipates the fragmentation, multiplicities, and identity politics of postmodernism. As the coffee pot symbolically boils over, Mitch says, "Suddenly the whole thing

48

was screwy." The flashback ends, and Mitchell returns the narrative to the present via a voice-over narration recalling that he was supposed to meet Keeley at midnight. In earlier drafts, this narration has distinctly homoerotic overtones, playing suggestively with Mitch's "date" with Keeley: "I like you, I want to show you the Washington Monument and the cherry blossoms in the moonlight."60 In the final draft, however, this suggestiveness was deleted, and Mitch remembers Keeley's instructions simply as: "Meet me—I like you and I want to show you Washington. It is educational. Maybe you'll learn something. Meet me or I'll murder you." And, as if overcompensating for the homoeroticism they had already deleted, Scott and Paxton reiterate that Keeley's motives are pure, that he wanted to meet Mitch only to keep him sober because Mary was coming to Washington.61 Hiding from the police in an all-night movie theater, Mitch is terrified to learn that he is suspected of Samuels's murder, but, significantly, he connects his personal crisis to the larger problem of postwar dislocation: "Keeley, what's happened? Is everything suddenly crazy? I don't mean just this—I mean everything—or is it just me?" Keeley, the oracle, replies: "No. It's not just you. The snakes are loose. Anybody can get them. I got them. But they're friends of mine." Keeley explains that Mary is in town and he has to "figure out how much of this to tell her." As

49

Mitch digests this news, two of the soldiers, Bill and Leroy, appear out of the darkness, and Leroy tells Keeley that Floyd has contacted him. Leroy, the innocent young soldier from Tennessee, doesn't want to get involved: "I don't want to have nothing to do with this. I shouldn't have told anybody. Keeley, I don't want to get in any trouble." Keeley reassures him: "All you have to do is tell us where Floyd is, then you can go back to the hotel and stay there—and forget it." Keeley leaves Mitchell in the theater, under strict orders: "Watch the picture then—and don't move."62 Significantly, this scene in the theater seems to suggest that movies can provide a momentary escape from postwar problems. This, too, is a quintessentially noir scene, redolent of the "lounge" spaces described by Vivian Sobchack: the shadowy theater, bright light spilling from the high window of the projectionist's booth and diffusing into murky darkness below, where the audience sits in scattered lonely clots, waiting out the long empty night by escaping into a Hollywood fantasy. Mitchell sits at the back of the theater, the flickering light highlighting the sweaty sheen of his face, waiting, alone, like the others. The next scenes, leading up to the death of Floyd, the film's second murder, clearly illustrate the struggle between Keeley and Monty for leadership of the band of brothers. Though both Keeley and Monty are "natural" leaders, there is a sharp distinction between Keeley's liberalism and concern for his men and Monty's violent authoritarianism and concern for saving himself. In the cheap rooming house where Floyd is hiding, Monty takes charge, and like Keeley, emphasizes the need for a story to tell the cops. "We have to be careful now, Floyd. The cops are screwing down. And that Finlay is sharp. I tried out a couple of things on him. But I don't know about him. . . . We'll be okay as long as we keep our story straight." Floyd is jittery and begs for a cigarette to calm his nerves. His hands shake so badly that he is barely able to hold the match. Monty despises this sign of weakness: "Get hold of yourself. I got to leave you here again, right away, so's I can go out and keep in touch with things. All you got to do is keep out of sight until they find Mitch—" Floyd begs Monty to let him go, and he promises to disappear, but Monty, needing Floyd to back up his story, refuses. Floyd is terrified of the cops, certain that there will be trouble: "I can't say there was no argument. Mitch was still there when you went after Samuels. The cops are gonna pick up Mitch . . ." Monty reassures him: "Mitch won't say nothing. Mitch was stinko. He won't remember, exactly. Nobody knows exactly but me and you. . . ." Floyd loses his cool: "What did you have to go after that guy for? Criminy, Monty, what did you have to start an argument for?" In a terrifying glimpse into Monty's rage, he throttles Floyd, shouting: "No Jew is going to tell me how to drink his stinking liquor!" The word "stinking" carries, as critic Nora Sayre has noted, "the savagery of an old-fashioned obscenity—it conveys the fury of the racist in a way that was new to the screen." Getting control of himself and becoming reasonable

50

again, Monty continues: "There wasn't no argument, Floyd. There was just a quiet discussion. We left right after Mitch did, remember that, Floyd."63 A knock on the door sends Monty into hiding. Floyd opens the door to reveal

51

Keeley and the band of brothers. Keeley demonstrates his leadership and concern for "his" men: "What's the matter, Floyd? Leroy tells me you're in a jam, and need some dough. We don't like to see anybody in our outfit in a jam." He asks if Floyd heard about the trouble with Mitch, and Floyd tries to stick to the story outlined by Monty: "Yeah, I heard about it—this has got nothing to do with that. I wasn't there—I left—me and Monty left—the cops can't pin anything on Monty and me." Keeley says he'll try to scrounge up some money to help Floyd, and asks if Monty knows where he is. "How would Monty know I'm here?" Floyd says, in effect signing his own death warrant.64 After they leave, Monty emerges from the shadows. Though Monty kills Floyd in

52

The Brick Foxhole, Brooks did not write that scene and the murder is simply announced, rather than dramatized. In Crossfire, too, the murder is not shown, but the film dramatizes the encounter that leads to Floyd's murder. Though the PCA warned about "excessive brutality" in this scene, it is still terrifying. Dmytryk and Hunt's used of disconcerting close-ups and chiaroscuro lighting from a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling enhance the menace and claustrophobia of the scene. Closing in on Floyd with quiet menace, Monty says softly, "I told you not to go out anywhere, Floyd. You went out Floyd. You went out and got in touch with Keeley. You shouldn't have done that. . . ." Floyd is near hysteria: "No, I didn't Monty. I didn't. . . ." Monty chides him with a barely repressed fury: "I had everything figured out just what we was going to do. I told you to stay here—you went out and phoned—you spoiled everything—" Floyd insists that he didn't spoil anything, that he stuck to the story. Monty boasts: "That's right, Floyd. Nobody can pin anything on me."65 Significantly, Floyd is not a committed racist, as in The Brick Foxhole. Instead, he deplores Monty's violence and the murder of Samuels: "I didn't have nothing to do with it—I don't want to get mixed up in it—Criminy, Monty, you went crazy or something—Samuels didn't do anything to you—you went crazy. . . ."66 In earlier drafts, Floyd adds, "You went after him like he was a nigger or something," but this was deleted even before the script was submitted to the Breen Office.67 Floyd's refusal to go along only enrages Monty more. The camera angles here enhance Monty's physical menace. His face a shadowy distorted mask, his shoulders bunched with rage, he seems to tower over the cowering Floyd. Monty sneers, "I didn't do nothing to Samuels, either, except I flicked him—" He slaps Floyd's face. "Like that—not that hard, maybe—More like that—or that—Not hard enough to hurt anybody. . . ." The first three drafts added, "Not hard enough to

53

hurt anybody with any guts—but he didn't have any guts!" Monty slaps him again, harder now. Floyd screams, "Stop it, Monty! Stop it, Monty! You went nuts! I haven't got nothing against any Jews. . . ." Drawing the line between "us" and "them," Monty snarls: "I don't like Jews! And I don't like nobody who likes Jews!"68 Monty launches himself at Floyd, and the scene fades ominously to black. At the police station, Keeley is stunned to learn that Floyd is dead, "strung up by

54

his necktie." Finlay, furious that Keeley acted on his own, lays down the law: "You might as well work with me now. It's the only way, if you really want to help Mitchell. Because you're in custody, in case you didn't know it. So is Williams. You're both going to stay there—forever, if necessary. I'll listen to anything constructive either one of you have to say, but I won't stand for any more interference." Outraged at the inadequacy of liberal justice embodied by a bureaucrat, Keeley explodes: "You've got a mind like a dogcatcher! Okay! I'm in custody!

Williams

is

in

custody!

Everybody

is

in

custody!

What's

that

prove—except that you've got a big jail?" Though he refuses to reveal where Mitch is hiding, Keeley tells Finlay about Ginny, the girl who can provide an alibi. At this point, Mary (played by Jacqueline White) steps forward, out of the shadows and into the light. Though shaken by the news of her husband's infidelity, she makes a deal with Finlay: if he will let her talk to Mitch alone first, Keeley will tell them where to find him.69 In dramatizing the reunion of Mitch and Mary in the theater, Scott and Paxton drew heavily on the scene written by Brooks in The Brick Foxhole. In early drafts of the screenplay, Mary wants to know why Mitch didn't write to her, while in the later versions, she focuses on the investigation, explaining to Mitch that the police are waiting outside for them. Mitch, however, wants to talk about the miscommunication that has threatened their marriage, explaining that his anxieties about the return to "normalcy" made it impossible for him to write. In the first draft, Mitch's concerns focus largely on class status and the trappings of bourgeois consumerism. He says, "Look, there's a time when a man is young enough—and crazy enough—to be able to plan—to work his tail off—for some beautiful dream—for a living room with a bar in it—for being able to buy six bottles of whiskey at once to put on the shelf." Mitch feels that the war has derailed his desire for upward mobility and his faith in the American Dream. "I've a hole shot in me—a big four year hole." He explains to Mary, "I got to the point where I got sick at the idea of beginning everything again—then I got sick at the thought of you sitting there, waiting for me to come back and expecting me to start again—I couldn't even think about you." In this early version, Mary smiles at him tenderly and replies, dismissively, "Mitch, is that all it was?"70 Like a good postwar therapist-wife, Mary can take this all in stride. In the final version, Paxton

55

simply links Mitch's inability to communicate with his wife with a generalized postwar malaise. Mitch's explanation to Mary echoes Samuels's "diagnosis," prefiguring the therapeutic culture of the 1950s: Because I was depressed and jittery. Samuels—the man I'm supposed to have killed—he understood. . . . He said a guy like me, now, with the war over, could start hating himself. Maybe that's what happened. Maybe I started hating myself because I was afraid of getting going again—of trying to draw again—of looking for a job—of having you waiting all that time—after having waited four years already. . . . It began to be too hard to think about you. I couldn't write. Does that make any sense?71

In the next scene, Mary and Finlay confront Ginny. In The Brick Foxhole, this

56

scene occurs in the final chapter and has a tacked-on feeling. Here, it is integrated into the narrative as a critical part of the murder investigation. Nevertheless, the scene is taken almost verbatim from The Brick Foxhole. As in the novel, Mary's prim propriety contrasts sharply with Ginny's overt sexuality. Wanting to appeal to her woman-to-woman, Mary asks Finlay to wait while she talks to the girl alone, but Ginny is uncooperative: Mary:

All I want you to do is say he was with you tonight—

Ginny:

Tonight's a long time ago. I wouldn't be able to remember.

Mary:

You'd remember Mitch—

Ginny:

Why? Does he have two heads or something?

Though surprised that Mitch told his wife about her, Ginny is still hostile: "Well, he lied to you. If he was here I didn't know about it." She tells Mary to leave and throws open the door to reveal Finlay, leaning nonchalantly against the door frame, his hand tucked into his waistband. As in The Brick Foxhole, Ginny resists Finlay's authority, sneering, "I don't like cops." In early versions of the screenplay, as in the novel, Ginny confesses that her real name is Esther Goslav; however, this was deleted in response to criticisms after a screening of the film for members of the Anti-Defamation League, who felt the name made Ginny appear to be Jewish.72 Thus, in the final print of the film, Ginny merely tells Finlay that she is from Wilkes-Barre. Finlay asks what she does, and she replies flippantly, "I work." She tells him she works at the Red Dragon, then explodes, "Well, what's wrong about working there? Does that make me a criminal or something? Does that give you the right to bust into my house and start asking a lot of questions?"73 Finlay explains Mitch's dire situation to Ginny, noting, "Mrs. Mitchell doesn't think he did [it], of course, but that's only natural." Mary bursts in here, "I know he

57

was here—he told me—but that doesn't matter anymore—never mind me—you've got to think of him—" With a barking laugh, Ginny mocks Mary's selflessness: "Oh, brother, listen to that! 'Never mind me—you've got to think of him.' Now isn't that sweet! Isn't that just too sweet!" As in The Brick Foxhole, the women remain adversaries, and Ginny turns the tables on Mary, raising doubts about the wife's goodness and her own deviance: He wasn't here with me. He could have been, but he wasn't. He could have come up—I could have cooked him something—and we could have talked. And what would have been wrong with that? What's the matter with me being with her precious husband? Does he break or something? And where was she? Okay, where were you when he needed you? Maybe you were someplace having beautiful thoughts? Well, I wasn't. I was in a stinking gin-mill where all he had to do to see me was walk in and sit down at the table and buy me a drink. And that's all I know about it. I didn't ask him if he killed anybody.74

At this point, The Man appears from a back room; though he is able to confirm that Mitchell was in the apartment that night, the timing is off, and Mitchell's alibi remains unconfirmed. As far as Finlay is concerned, this interview has been a waste of time; Mitchell is still a prime suspect in the murder of Samuels. Interestingly, though this scene is taken almost verbatim from The Brick Foxhole, as filmed by Dmytryk and Hunt, it has a dark poignance: The Man hangs pathetically over the banister, rambling about his troubled relationship with Ginny and his fears about what the postwar world holds for him, as Finlay and Mary turn their backs on him and walk down the stairs. Back in his office, Finlay interviews Mitchell, who reveals that he is not a bigot,

58

that he was not even aware that Samuels was Jewish. At this point, Finlay's assistant hands him the paperwork from the War Department that definitely establishes that Samuels was a decorated war veteran. Finlay again confronts Monty, asking how he knew that Samuels had not been in the Army. Puzzled, Monty smiles shiftily: "Well, like I said, you could tell. You could see. Those guys got ways of keeping themselves from getting dirty."75 As dawn breaks over the Capitol dome and sunlight streams through the window into Finlay's office, the detective literally sees the light and understands that the motive for Samuels's murder is irrational, racist hatred. At this point, the film shifts from a narrative of investigation to a narrative of conversion. In The Brick Foxhole's conversion narrative, each of the major characters recognizes the essential interconnectedness of all humanity and takes personal responsibility for their actions. Keeley, in particular, realizes that the actions of each individual have repercussions that affect every other person in the world. In Crossfire, however, Captain Finlay, the representative of the liberal state, works to convince

59

the GIs to work with him to catch the murderer. This represents a significant shift in the locus of antifascist responsibility, from risk-taking individuals—seen in the vigilante justice meted out by Keeley in The Brick Foxhole—to a version of the Popular Front, in which committed individuals work together, in concert with the scarcely visible but omnipotent state, to bring the fascist murderer to justice. Though this shift was in keeping with the narrative conventions of the investigative thriller genre, it also reflected Scott's liberal faith that the rule of law distinguishes democracy from fascism. Significantly, the dawn's early light also reveals two pictures on the walls of

60

Finlay's office: a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. It is no accident that Roosevelt's picture, rather than Harry S. Truman's, decorates the walls of Finlay's office. According to John Paxton, "It wasn't my idea and it's not in the script . . . I do think I know who put it there, but only because I was given a quite similar photo which I still have." Paxton does suggest that "it could have been the set dresser, or art director,"76 but it seems more likely that Scott was responsible; or at the very least, as the film's producer, he approved the use of these two visual markers of American democracy in Crossfire. For Scott the idealist, the state represented the will of the people—or at least it should; and for him, Roosevelt's New Deal was proof that, in fact, it could. Scott may have been a Communist, but he had great faith in the power of the liberal state to transform the lives of ordinary citizens. For Scott, socialist democracy would come to America not through violent revolution but by popular participation in representational government and the constant expansion of a protective, activist state. Though leftists of every persuasion sometimes disagreed with policies of the Roosevelt administration, the Popular Front vision also frequently overlapped with the New Deal agenda, and, particularly after his untimely death in the spring of 1945, FDR remained a powerful symbol for American progressives. The literature of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, for example, constantly invoked the memory of Roosevelt and the principles of the New Deal, particularly to measure and illustrate the illiberalism of his successor and the failure of the Truman administration to live up to the legacy of the New Deal. In fact, Scott had hoped to use an excerpt of one of FDR's speeches, either as a voice-over or as a written prologue in Crossfire. The speech, delivered to the Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 1, 1940, succinctly expressed the vision of American strength and unity through cultural pluralism that dominated wartime popular nationalism and dovetailed neatly with Scott's own antifascist commitment: We

are

a

nation

of

many

nationalities,

many

races,

many

religions—bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality.

61

Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another seeks to degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.77

Scott was "very anxious" to include this quotation in Crossfire, as was Schary, apparently. On April 26, Schary send a long telegram to Eleanor Roosevelt, asking her permission to use the speech. Noting that its inclusion "would make a contribution to what I know you stand for," he offered to screen a rough cut of the film for her. There is no evidence, however, that Mrs. Roosevelt replied to Schary's request, and the excerpt did not appear in the film.78 The presence of the Declaration of Independence reiterates Scott's belief that the

62

state represents the will of the people, but also references the revolutionary origins of the United States and a radical democratic tradition in America. Though the "Americanism" of the Communist Party during the Popular Front has been criticized as cynical and self-serving, Scott himself was anything but cynical. He was an idealist, a man who truly believed in America and the promises of the Declaration of Independence, particularly that "all men are created equal." In this sense, he was far more optimistic and "liberal" than Brooks. Brooks mourned the historical amnesia of American culture, seeing the "forgetting" of the Civil War as the reason America had to fight again, against fascism. For Scott, however, the Civil War was not forgotten, and in fact, he saw the war against slavery and the figure of Abraham Lincoln as part of the historical continuity of democratic progress toward the New Deal and social democracy.79 As Finlay, explaining the irrational motive behind the murders, comments: "You almost have to be a historian to understand it."80 In the first draft, Paxton and Scott envisioned another flashback—this time a glimpse into American history—to convey their message of the historical continuity of intolerance and the interchangeability of prejudices. In this version, Finlay tells the story of his Irish immigrant grandfather to Keeley in a voice-over narration that explains the images on the screen. As the scene in his office dissolves to a printing shop in 1850, Finlay explains, "My family arrived in the land of the free and the home of the brave about 100 years ago. Some of them stayed in New York, some of them went on to Philadelphia. Thomas Finlay was an editor—a pamphleteer. He was what we used to call a God-fearing man. He loved America. The only thing he didn't like about the Constitution was that he didn't write it." A discordant note of music signals a shift in mood, as Finlay's grandfather sees an orator speaking to an angry, milling crowd and realizes that

63

something is terribly wrong: "He discovered that some people didn't think the Constitution applied to Irish Catholics. He discovered that the Irish Catholics who had

come

to

America—looking

for

freedom—were

really—"

Here

Paxton

envisioned the screen image focused on the orator mouthing the words Finlay speaks: "Dirty Papists! Scheming against native Americans! Depriving us of our jobs and infecting our children with foreign idolatry! Hanging our flag in their windows but secretly worshipping their Pope in their parlors! Smiling in our faces, but plotting behind our backs with their fat, licentious priests!" Now the mob attacks a Catholic priest, then the scene dissolves to a pamphlet in Finlay's grandfather's hands with the title, "America is Big Enough For All Races and For All Religions." The angry babble of the mob underscores a shot of the immigrant pamphleteer being engulfed by the mob. The scene ends with a shot of the pamphlet on the ground, stained by blood. As the image slowly dissolves back into Finlay's office in the present, the detective drives home his point: That's history. They don't teach it in schools, but it's history just the same. . . . Thomas Finlay was killed in 1850, because he was an Irish Catholic. A few weeks ago, a Negro was lynched, because he was a Negro. . . . This evening, Samuels was killed, because he was a Jew.81

Admitting that his own faith in the American Way of Life blinded him to the

64

motive behind Monty's murders, Finlay reiterates the film's central tension between positivist idealism and irrational contingency: "It's always hard to believe. You keep looking for a stronger motive. I did—this time. . . . When you can't find one, you suddenly realize there isn't any stronger motive than the right combination of prejudice, ignorance, and hate—especially when it's mixed with whiskey." Keeley asks simply, "How can you pin it on him?" and Finlay replies, invoking the Popular Front against fascism, "I think it can be done, if we work together."82 In this version, Finlay makes an off-the-cuff comment to Keeley about using Leroy to set a trap for Monty, and the next scene cuts to that trap. By the second draft, Scott and Paxton had made substantive changes to this section of the screenplay. In this revision, Finlay and Keeley are equal partners in the antifascist struggle. Finlay does not need to win Keeley's consent through the story of his grandfather since both men clearly understand the nature of the enemy. Finlay says, "I'm taking the chance that you're smart enough to know what—" but Keeley interrupts him: "You don't have to draw me any pictures. I know what you're getting at. And I think you're right. What do you want me to do?"83 Indeed, Keeley has always been "in the know," while Finlay struggled throughout the investigation to understand the irrational motive behind Samuels's murder. Finlay explains the investigative process, underscoring that his usual "routine" is useless in such a case since none of the suspects had known Samuels well enough to have an "ordinary" motive—to be in love with his wife or know

65

that he had money to steal. Instead, Finlay acknowledges that "the motive had to be inside the killer himself . . . something he brought with him . . . something he had been nursing for a long time."84 This construction of prejudice as a psychological aberration signals the growing hegemony of the therapeutic culture. In the postwar period, intellectuals of varying political persuasions would link a potential

for

fascism—or

in

its

Cold

War

articulation,

totalitarianism—to

psychological disorders, from the "other-directed" individual described by David Reisman to the "authoritarian personality" elaborated by Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School intellectuals. In suggesting that social problems were really individual problems that could be solved by personal adjustment or social engineering by psychologists and other experts, this ideological shift worked to delegitimize the mass political action of the 1930s and paved the way for the "consensus" society of the 1950s.85 Though Scott certainly accepted the psychological model of prejudice, he also

66

recognized the political dangers posed by organized groups of "personal" fascists. In this, he drew on the model of fascist Germany, particularly the Nazi mobilization of economically and psychologically threatened lower-middle-class men into bands of thuggish storm troopers. Scott clearly believed that under the right conditions—that is, with a resurgence of the Depression and the rise of a demagogic leader—fascism might indeed come to America: Monty, the antisemite in Crossfire, exists. This very night he is roaming the streets of Queens, N.Y., looking for a Jew to beat up. He has already beaten up many. He has associates. They are looking to prove their superiority by kicking around someone they consider decidedly inferior. They want a scapegoat for their own insecurity and maladjustment. They are ignorant and organized. They hoot and howl with fanatic energy at the Messianic raving of Gerald L. K. Smith. They are the storm troopers of tomorrow. If this country were depressed enough to fall victim to a Leader, these men would qualify brilliantly for the chieftains of American Buchenwalds and Dachaus. Such a group, the native American fascist, organized and disciplined, is a threat to the Jews, and to the entire population. It is depressing at this point in our history to find it necessary to say that.86

In Crossfire, however, though they clearly articulate the danger in Monty's influence over the other GIs, Scott and Paxton do not explicitly link Monty's "personal fascism" to a larger network of fascist organizations or structures. Instead, Monty is represented as a solitary psychopath. Given their experience on Cornered, in which the studio quashed John Wexley's attempts to locate the postwar fascist threat in an international industrial cartel, it is possible, of course, that they deliberately chose a liberal rather than Marxist framework in order to assuage the studio heads. However, I suspect that, despite his obvious concerns, Scott's faith in the democratic state and right-thinking Americans made it difficult

67

for him to articulate the precise mechanism by which "personal fascism" might be translated into a fascist state in America. Thus, in the final version of Crossfire, the democratic state, embodied by Finlay,

68

and right-thinking, risk-taking individuals, represented by Keeley, collaborate to expose and destroy the fascist threat. Pointing out that it "might take months to polish this off the usual way," Finlay says he wants to take "a long chance on nailing him quick." As in The Brick Foxhole, the homosocial bonds of the GIs can be marshalled both for and against the antifascist cause, and in this final version, Finlay draws on Keeley's knowledge of his men to set a trap for Monty: Finlay:

Just how do you think he [Leroy] feels about Monty?

Keeley:

You're getting ahead of me.

Finlay:

I was hoping he didn't like Monty.

Keeley:

I think he's scared to death of him.

Finlay:

Is he really as dumb as Monty says?

Keeley:

He's pretty young. He doesn't always know which end's up. . . .

Finlay:

Monty doesn't think he's smart enough to lie. What if he told Monty a fantastic story—would Monty believe him?

Keeley:

He might.

Finlay:

I'll risk it.87

Instructing his assistant to keep the news of Floyd's murder out of the papers, Finlay sends Keeley back to the Stewart Hotel with orders to sneak Leroy out and bring him back to the police station. Most importantly, the final version of the screenplay places Leroy, an "average" American, at the center of a conversion narrative. Though Finlay does tell the story of his grandfather, there is no flashback in the film. Instead, the story is only one element in Finlay's attempt to win Leroy's allegiance to the antifascist Popular Front consensus. Leroy says he can't imagine Monty doing "a thing like that" without a reason. Finlay tells him that Monty thought he had a reason: "You know the way Monty feels. You've heard the things he says." Leroy is not only reluctant to think the worst of Monty, but is also uncertain about Finlay's version of the "truth" about Jews and the evils of bigotry. He stammers, "Well, yes, I—I—guess I heard him say a couple of times about Jewish people living off the fat of the land while he was out there—you say that's all lies—and I guess it is—I don't know." Finlay patiently maps out the coordinates of American anti-Semitism for Leroy: "This business of hating Jews comes in a lot of different sizes. . . .

69

There's

the

You-Can't-Join-Our-Country-Club

kind

.

.

.

and

the

You-Can't-Live-Around-Here kind . . . yes, and the You-Can't Work-Here kind."88 While Scott deplored what he called "casual" anti-Semitism, the violent

70

consequences of hatred are critical to his vision of the dangers of intolerance. To the critics who argued that Crossfire was "not about you and me," and therefore, failed as a "message" film, Scott answered: Lunatic fringe

antisemitism

is important,

dangerously

and

terribly

important. It was important in Hitler's Reich and in Czarist Russia, and in most of the countries in Europe at some time. The social discrimination variety is important, too; so is every minor and major practice which goes to make up the whole hateful body of antisemitic practice. And anyone who attempts to estimate which kind of antisemitism is most important or which

should have the most emphasis understanding of antisemitism.89

announces

an

incomplete

For Scott, violence was the ultimate and possibly inevitable result of "genteel" anti-Semitism. As Finlay insists, "Because we stand for all these, we get Monty's kind. He's just one guy—we don't get him very often—but he grows out of all the rest." Reminding Leroy that the United States has laws against carrying a loaded gun because guns are dangerous, Finlay explains: "Well, hate—Monty's kind of hate—is like a gun. If you carry it around with you, it can go off and kill somebody. It killed Samuels last night."90 The final draft of this conversion narrative includes an Army major, the soldiers' commander, who witnesses Finlay's interview with Leroy. During the March 1947 script conference with Colonel Davidson, it was decided that "[i]n this sequence, it will be brought out that although the Major does not directly advise and command Leroy to lay the trap for Monty, he does encourage Leroy to assist the police in cornering Monty."91 Nevertheless, the Major's presence does give a stamp of approval to the proceedings, suggesting that the antifascist front can include the military as well as the liberal state and risk-taking individuals. Confused by Finlay's pressure and reluctant to betray another soldier, Leroy appeals to the Army major for advice. The major replies noncommittally, reinforcing the conversion narrative's emphasis on individual responsibility rather than official coercion: "That's up to you. I can't tell you what to do. This isn't an Army matter." However, the major reassures him that Monty's actions set him outside the bonds of military or male loyalty: "The Army has never been proud of men like Montgomery. So don't worry about being disloyal to your outfit." Finlay reminds him that Monty killed Floyd, and Leroy says sadly, "I hate to think of anything like that happening to Floyd—after going through the Philippines and everything—and I hate to see Monty get away with anything." However, Leroy still doesn't want to get involved, especially since he is about to be demobilized:

71

"I might get in trouble. And I don't see this is any of my business, anyway."92 Finlay tries another tack, pointing to the connection between Monty's hatred of

72

Jews and his contempt for Leroy: "He calls you a hillbilly doesn't he? He says you're dumb. He laughs at you because you're from Tennessee." Thus, Finlay suggests that it is indeed Leroy's business, that Monty's hatred affects him personally. Through Finlay, Scott and Paxton reiterate the contemporary notion that prejudice was the product of ignorance: "He's never even been to Tennessee. Ignorant men always laugh at things that are different—things they don't understand. They're afraid of things they don't understand—they end up hating them." Leroy still resists: "You get me all mixed up! You know about all these things I don't know anything about! How do I know what you're trying to do? How do I know you aren't a Jewish person yourself?"93 Though he asks Leroy if that would really make a difference, Finlay tells him the story of his Irish grandfather. On the one hand, this story works to remind Leroy of the interchangeability of prejudice and its historical continuity, and to suggest that just as anti-Catholicism is a thing of the past, so too will anti-Semitism one day be eradicated. On the other hand, however, the story also works to remind us that Finlay is not Jewish. Reiterating that this is "real American history," Finlay narrates his grandfather's

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death at the hands of a drunken mob, noting that, like Monty, they didn't start out to kill. But they started out hating, which led inexorably to murder. Rejecting historical specificity to assert a timeless universal humanism through the parallel between the murder of his Irish Catholic grandfather in 1848 and the murder of the Jew, Samuels, a century later, Finlay asks: "Do you see any difference, Leroy? Any difference at all? Hating is always the same, always senseless." Finlay's litany of the potential victims of American intolerance is reminiscent of Pastor Niemoller's recitation of the victims of the Nazis: In Germany, they first came for the communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me—and by that time no one was left to speak up.94

Finlay's version, however, is specifically American: "One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. . . . It's hard to stop. It can end up killing men who wear striped neckties. . . . Or people from Tennessee."95 Ultimately, Leroy agrees to help Finlay trap Monty. Lying in wait for him at the Stewart Hotel, Leroy follows Monty into the communal bathroom. While the two

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men shave together, Leroy lays the trap: Floyd is alive and wants to see Monty. Leroy gives him a slip of paper with the wrong address written on it and instructs Monty to meet Floyd there later that night. In all versions of the screenplay, Monty returns to the room where he killed Floyd. When Finlay confronts him with his mistake, he realizes that he is trapped and makes a run for it. According to Paxton, The "right-house-but-the-wrong-address" ploy was Adrian's idea. I think it was inspired and a wonderful example of his talent. Neither of us thought of it as "entrapment," I don't think of it as that now; it was a dramatic device, a quick, economical and surprising way of getting from Monty an instantaneous, unspoken, irrefutable confession. If Monty showed up, Monty was the man. As simple as that.96

The details of the trap, however, are far less interesting than its setting. This

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scene, which was not in The Brick Foxhole, could have taken place anywhere—the coffee shop, a bar, even a park bench. Yet Paxton and Scott set the scene in the communal bathroom at the Stewart Hotel, where Monty and Leroy, stripped down to their T-shirts, shave together while they talk. There is an almost palpable intimacy to this scene, with its male bodies on display, underscoring the homoeroticism of the all-male world of the military. It is hard to imagine that Scott and Paxton intended the scene in this way, given their other overt attempts to "straighten" The Brick Foxhole. Nonetheless, the scene heightens the visibility of the homoerotic subtext that permeates the film despite the filmmakers' desire to render it invisible. Though the men wear undershirts in deference to the Production Code, they seem naked, visibly reminding us of the almost limitless possibilities for male homosexual fantasy (and more covert sexual acts) that made the military such a disturbing site in the postwar period. The erotic masculinity of Monty (Robert Ryan, the former Dartmouth boxing champion), with his muscular arms and big hairy chest, is sharply contrasted with the softer, more boyish and vulnerable (even womanish) body of Leroy, who looks barely old enough to shave. On the one hand, their physical asymmetries imply the prevailing 1940s stereotypes of homosexual couples (virile stud and "fairy"), and indeed, it is possible to imagine that under different circumstances, this solitary meeting in the bathroom might lead in a different, more explicitly sexual direction. On the other hand, however, Monty's obvious physical superiority suggests that "ordinary" men like Leroy cannot hope to challenge the fascist threat physically. Instead, they must rely on their wits and work in solidarity with other risk-taking individuals (men) and the democratic state. The

film's

denouement—the

trapping

and

killing

of

Monty—proved

quite

controversial, and Scott and Paxton struggled to find an appropriate way to bring Monty to justice. In the first version of the screenplay, Monty flees into the street

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and Finlay shoots him through the window of the apartment above. Though wounded, Monty rises and keeps running, and Finlay nods to the waiting MPs, who close in on Monty with tommy-guns. In the second draft, Finlay merely fires a warning shot from the apartment window, but Monty, undeterred, makes a break for an alley. In both of these early versions, Paxton envisioned that one expressionless, gum-chewing MP would follow Monty into the alley, and the sound of a single blast from his machine gun would signal Monty's death.97 Despite the clear deliberation in these versions, suggesting a cold-blooded execution rather than the swift hand of legal justice, only two objections were made during the process of revising the screenplay. Colonel Davidson, the Army's representative, objected to the participation of MPs in the "trapping and destruction of Monty," and insisted that city police be substituted in this scene.98 RKO executive Harold Melniker also suggested to Scott that the white-coated doctors in the scene be replaced by uniformed or plainclothes policemen to avoid the impression that "the police were definitely expecting an ambulance case."99 Once the filmmakers actually saw this scene on film, however, they themselves

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began to have doubts. Though their original intent was that Monty "should appear like a rat who is cornered—and you kill a rat," after they screened the dailies, Dmytryk expressed concern that they "might get a totally different reaction from the one intended, that it would look overpowering; it was kind of overkill." RKO executive William Gordon felt the scene played as an "ambush set up by Finlay" and warned, "Those who will sympathize with Monty (and let's face it: there will be varying numbers of them in different communities) will feel that he's a rat in a trap who has not been given his day in court and according to his constitutional rights." He continued, "I don't want people to say, 'Maybe this guy would be convicted in Jew York (or some other place) but no jury in my town would find him guilty.'"100 Schary agreed with him wholeheartedly: I said, "I think it's a terrible mistake . . . 'cause you got all these big figures with helmets—it's like Storm Troopers," I said, "I think people would feel sorry for him, and I said why doesn't Bob Young order him to stop and just with one shot knock him off. It's legitimate. He's going to escape but Bob Young warned him."101

In the final filmed version, written by Paxton on the set, Finlay warns Monty to stop running, and then fires a single shot from the window. The policemen and soldiers gather around the body, and Leroy asks if he's dead. Finlay says, "He was dead for a long time. He just didn't know it." "I guess I did the right thing?" Leroy asks, and Finlay replies, "The rightest thing you ever did soldier."102 From William Gordon's perspective, this ending still left much to be desired. After screening a rough cut of the film in mid-April, he reluctantly conceded, "If you

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have to shoot him, and I suppose you do, then he should be felled by Finlay's shot through the window." However, he advocated some changes that would explain the "justice" of this ending for moviegoers. I think that your film can be so edited that Finlay can then come down the stairs and join the others who surround the body. This would of course delete the chase. I would like it even more if Monty were not dead so Finlay could deliver a little speech about a long-suffering democratic Society now being forced to go to the trouble and expense of curing a repairable body in order to bring an apparently incurable mind to trial. Keeley might conceivably reply that the enlightenment resulting from such a trial could halt the spread of the same insidious infection in similarly diseased people.

Gordon's comments capture perfectly the various tropes through which prejudice was understood in the 1940s: the medical model of prejudice as an infectious disease and the psychological model of prejudice as the product of an "incurable mind."103 However, Gordon also saw parallels to the treatment of Nazi war criminals and urged Scott not to violate the democratic principles and due process of law—the very values that distinguished "us" from "them"—in bringing Monty to justice in Crossfire. Thus, he argued, "Maybe we're just too damned fair in this country. It's important that we maintain that reputation here and abroad. Germans laughed at us for staging war criminals' trials, but maybe they admired us a little bit, too. Let's not out-Nazi the Nazis."104 Scott and his collaborators may well have discussed an ending that included bringing Monty to trial. Schary later argued that there was not enough time to include a trial in the film, though it is unclear whether he is referring to the shooting schedule, the pace and running time of the film, or the race to beat out Gentleman's Agreement. In contrast, Paxton suggested that they were guided by dramatic conventions in framing the ending. He recalled, "For the time and the idiom of the time, I think it was obligatory to conclude with this kind of melodrama, in action, and not leave Monty's fate to some future trial. I believe my instinct or inclination was to satisfy this convention as quickly and un-objectionably as possible and get out of there." Interestingly, Paxton preferred the spirit of his original ending, in which Monty was killed offscreen, "indicating that he had somehow . . . broken through the ring of men surrounding him into the clear, and that there was no other way to stop him."105 In fact, he was "angry and offended" by the ending that ultimately appeared on film, which he felt was "dramatically crude, in lousy taste, and improbable marksmanship."106 Novelist Richard Brooks, however, supported the film's ending, arguing that "the picture is powerful enough as it is to carry through over the end without further philosophizing." Brooks believed that Crossfire would have a tremendous impact, and congratulated the filmmakers on a "great motion picture."107

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Though Scott and Paxton did not heed William Gordon's suggestions, they did

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include a final scene to tie up the loose ends. In early versions of the screenplay, the film closes with tidy heterosexual pairings, undercutting the male bonds so critical to solving the murder and winning the war. The first draft shows Keeley, Mitch and Mary leaving the police station together. Keeley, spying a pretty girl walking by, says with suggestive nonchalance, "Well, I think I'll get a drink," and follows the girl down the street. Left alone to face the future together, as in The Brick Foxhole, Mary asks, "Mitch, will everything be just the same again, with us, I mean?" and he replies, "No. It can't be. It won't be the same. But it'll be better."108 In the final version of the screenplay, the film ends at the site of Monty's death,

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as the policemen and soldiers gather around his body. Though Mitch and Mary are absent from this final scene, an exchange between Keeley and Finlay makes clear that their marriage has survived this ordeal and that they will eventually "return to normalcy." Finlay asks if Keeley thinks Mitch and Mary will be able to "make a go of it." Keeley replies, "It'll be a little rugged for a while. But they'll be all right." In this version, there is no pretty girl to distract Keeley. Instead, the film ends with an affirmation of the homosocial—and quite possibly homoerotic—bonds between men that solved the murder and won the war. Keeley turns to Leroy and asks him out: "How about a cup of coffee, soldier?" Leroy accepts the invitation and the two soldiers start off together up the sidewalk.109

The Industry Buzz On March 28, 1947, after only twenty-three days on the set, Dmytryk wrapped

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filming on Crossfire. Scott was thrilled with the results, stating publicly, "Dmytryk brought it in on schedule and, most important, achieved his finest direction to date."110 In fact, as Schary boasted, "The script was so carefully prepared . . . that from the first assembly to the final cutting we lost only 150 feet of film."111 Despite the relative ease with which Crossfire was made (compared, for example, to the studio meddling with Cornered), questions about the reception of the film—by moviegoers, critics, and particularly American Jews—loomed large for the filmmakers. Once RKO began screening a rough cut of the film to select colleagues in the industry, however, the industry buzz was overwhelmingly positive, despite the doubts expressed when Scott first announced his plans for an anti–anti-Semitism film. The filmmakers received dozens of congratulatory letters and telegrams from Hollywood liberals, praising Crossfire's courage, daring, and innovation. Jerry Wald, the powerful Warner Bros. producer, wrote to Schary, "As a mystery story, it is a slick, exciting film, but your clever blending of the racial hatred problem

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through this project, has made it a triple 'A' film. I'm glad you made it because it might open the screen to a whole flood of such pictures. If so, I hope they are all done as well."112 Paul Nathan, who worked with Hal Wallis's production unit at Paramount, raved, "Last week I saw Crossfire, and I can think of nothing else. It is the tightest, most brilliant job of picture making I have seen in a long time."113 Character actor Sam Jaffe (who played a small but important role in Gentleman's Agreement) described Crossfire as "one of the most gripping and violent pictures I have ever seen. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I am sure that it will be one of the most talked of pictures of the year."114 Entertainment attorney and liberal Jewish activist Martin Gang wrote, "I think you have shown that freedom from fear is just as important in the motion picture industry as it was in world affairs when we entered the depression in 1932."115 Applauding both Crossfire and The Farmer's Daughter, Gene Kelly praised Schary, "You've proven very successfully (as you've always known) that good entertainment can be combined with truth and be commercial. . . . But more important—I think that from now on it will be a lot easier for a lot of fellows in this business to say a lot of things—and I give you the credit."116 Schary's mentor, David O. Selznick, sent him a brief telegram: "It is a fine achievement, especially because of its cost, but not only because of its cost. My congratulations to you and to all concerned." To which Schary generously replied: "Scott, Dmytryk, and Paxton should take most of the bows on this one, and I am glad that you agree with me that they did a helluva job."117 Scott also received his share of praise for Crossfire from exalted Hollywood

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players. Academy Award–winning screenwriter Robert Riskin, best known for his extended collaboration with Frank Capra, wrote to him, "It is a magnificent job. Exciting, intelligent, and for a delicate subject handled in the finest of taste. It will create a great deal of talk and you've a right to be proud."118 Congratulating both Scott and Paxton on their "superb work," Allen Rivkin, a liberal screenwriter (who worked with Schary and Dmytryk on Till the End of Time) and long-time activist in the Screen Writers Guild, enthused, "I want to tell you what a genuine thrill I got out of looking at your picture last night. It is one of the best of its kind I've ever seen. . . . I was gripped from beginning to end. . . . Thank you both for saying so many good things about tolerance, understanding, and the human decency of man. It is an important subject and you have set it importantly."119 Scott was also quite pleased about a request to screen the film that he received from a transportation desk worker at Paramount. He sent a note to Schary asking permission to run it for the man and his friends, noting "he is clearly one of Henry Wallace's 'common man' as are his friends. I'd like to run it for them."120 For Scott, the interest expressed by these "common men" indicated that Crossfire had tapped into a substantial segment of the population: the "good" Americans who believed in tolerance and democracy and would support a film exposing the evils

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of anti-Semitism. However, the filmmakers were troubled by signs that the public response to Crossfire might not be so positive. Dmytryk, for example, recounts the reaction of "one of the young assistant sound cutters, an Argentine," following an early screening on the lot for the sound department: "It's such a fine suspense story," he said. "Why did you have bring in that stuff about anti-Semitism?" "That was our chief reason for making the film," I answered. "But there is not anti-Semitism in the United States," he protested. "If there were, why is all the money in America controlled by Jewish bankers?"121

Dore Schary was particularly disturbed by the ominous rumbling from key players in the Jewish community. As RKO's vice president in charge of production and the sole Jew involved in the making of the film, Schary had a great deal invested, both professionally and personally, in Crossfire's success. Though he certainly supported the film and applauded its political intent, he was particularly sensitive, perhaps more than Scott, to the potential for a public backlash. As early as February 1947, even before filming had begun on Crossfire, the powerful and respected American Jewish Committee voiced concerns and began actively maneuvering against the project. Concerned that this opposition would damage Crossfire's critical reception and box-office appeal and might even lead to a Jewish boycott of the film, Schary decided to fight fire with fire and began actively recruiting Jewish support for Crossfire.

Notes Note 1: Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton, A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953, Paul Hammond, trans. (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002), 115–116; translation of Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1955), 115-116. Note 2: Borde and Chaumeton note that a number of directors of social problem films—Anthony Mann, John Huston, and Robert Wise, as well as Edward Dmytryk—cut their teeth on classic noir before grappling with such noirish "social documentaries" as Border Incident, We Were Strangers, The Set-Up, and, of course, Crossfire. However, instead of seeing this as rooted in the political commitments of the filmmakers, they argue merely that "it's an ongoing tradition for so-called American 'realist' films to include noir elements. One even gets the impression that the Hollywood producers only accept a realist screenplay to the extent that it's capable of being noirified. Noir sells, and it permeates the documentary." Panorama of American Film Noir, 113–114. Note 3: Review of "Cornered," Hollywood Reporter, November 14, 1945, in Cornered Production File, AMPAS. Note 4: James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988): 2.

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Note 5: Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the 1950s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), xvi. Note 6: On the ideological work and cultural significance of stardom, see Richard Dyer, Stars (London: British Film Institute, 1979) and the essays in Christine Gledhill, ed., Stardom: Industry of Desire (London and New York: Routledge, 1991). Note 7: Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 131. Note 8: For a fascinating discussion of noir stylistics, see Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983), 71–112. Note 9: Cradle of Fear, First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 1947, 1, in Scott Papers, AHC [hereafter, First Draft Continuity Revised]. Note 10: See Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, n.d. [July 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 11: Joseph Breen to Harold Melniker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 12: First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 1947, 3; Crossfire, Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 2–3, in Scott Papers, AHC [hereafter, Final Script as Shot]. Note 13: I am indebted to James Naremore for this insight. See More Than Night, 121. Note 14: Franklin Jarlett, Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1990): 3–24. Note 15: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 4–6. Note 16: Ibid., 7–9, 25. Note 17: Ephraim Katz, "Robert Mitchum," in The Film Encyclopedia, ed. Ephraim Katz (New York: Perigee Books, 1979), 815; Sidney Skolsky, "Hollywood is My Beat," Art News, April 10, 1947, in Robert Mitchum Bio File, AMPAS. Note 18: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 12–13. Note 19: The Brick Foxhole, First Draft Continuity Unrevised, January 25, 1947, 13 [hereafter, First Draft Continuity]; First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 1947, 13; Breen to Melniker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 20: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 10. Note 21: Breen to Melniker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC; First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 1947, 11. Note 22: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 11–12. Note 23: Ibid., 12; Cradle of Fear, Final Script with Changes, February 19, 1947, 12, in Scott Papers, AHC [hereafter, Final Draft with Changes]. Note 24: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 13. Note 25: Ibid., 14. Note 26: Breen to Melnicker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC; First Draft Continuity, January 24, 1947, 15. Note 27: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 16–18. Note 28: Ibid., 18. Note 29: Ibid., 18–21. Note 30: Ibid., 22–23. Note 31: First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 23–24. Note 32: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 23–25. The heroics of the beleaguered Allies during the Battle of the Bulge, particularly General Anthony McAuliffe's curt reply: "Nuts!" to the Germans, was widely publicized. See Stephen Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers Ambrose,

Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944–May 7, 1945 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 224–225. Note 33: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 29–30. Note 34: Ibid., 31–32. Note 35: "Actor Sam Levene, 75, Dies," Los Angeles Herald Examiner, December 29, 1980, in Samuel Levene Bio File, AMPAS. Interestingly, the studio biographies and obituaries in the AMPAS files disagree on the place and date of Levene's birth. A Warner Bros. publicity bio claims Levene was born in 1906 in New York City, while the obituaries state that he was born in 1905 in Russia and immigrated to New York in 1907 (becoming a citizen rather belatedly, in 1937). Note 36: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 35–36; Breen to Melniker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 37: Final Draft with Changes, February 19, 1947, 37; typescript, "Breakdown from 89 Preview Cards Sent In from Crossfire," May 19, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. RKO's preview screenings are discussed in greater detail in chapter 7. Note 38: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 34–35. Note 39: First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 1947, 77; Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 70. Note 40: Final Draft with Changes, February 19, 1947, 35–36; Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 32–33. Note 41: For a full discussion of the response to Crossfire by Jewish defense organizations, see chapter 7. Note 42: Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 187–199. Note 43: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 18. Note 44: Ibid., 71. Note 45: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 70. Note 46: RKO memo, William Gordon to Adrian Scott, April 17, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 47: Final Draft with Changes, February 19, 1947, 38–38A; Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 34–35. Note 48: Final Draft with Changes, February 19, 1947, 38B; Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 35–36. Note 49: "Gloria Grahame," in Katz, ed., Film Encyclopedia, 497. Note 50: Joseph Breen specifically cautioned the filmmakers about the proper attire for the female characters, in guidelines that were clearly meant to contain the representation of Ginny's sexuality and "profession": "We also direct your attention to the need for the greatest possible care in the selection and photographing of the dresses and costumes for your women. The Production Code makes it mandatory that the intimate parts of the body—specifically, the breasts of women—be fully covered at all times. Any compromise with this regulation will compel us to withhold approval of your picture." Breen to Melniker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 51: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 41. Note 52: Ibid. Note 53: Richard Brooks, The Brick Foxhole (New York: Harper, 1945), 130–131. Note 54: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 37–39. Note 55: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 42.

Note 56: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 40. Note 57: Ibid., 41–43. Note 58: Breen to Melniker, February 27, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 59: Scott to Sol London, June 16, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 60: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 47. Note 61: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 44, 46. Note 62: Ibid., 45–47. Note 63: Ibid., 48–49; Sayre quoted in Jarlett, Robert Ryan, 27. Note 64: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 50–52. Note 65: Ibid., 52–53. Note 66: Ibid , 52–53. Note 67: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 54. Note 68: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 53–54. Note 69: Ibid., 55–59. Note 70: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 60–61. Note 71: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 60. Note 72: See chapter 7 for a further discussion of these issues. Note 73: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 63–65. Note 74: Ibid., 66. Note 75: Ibid., 72. Note 76: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, June 20, 1977, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 77: RKO memo, William J. Fadiman to Dore Schary, April 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 78: Schary to Eleanor Roosevelt, April 26, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Giuliana Muscio notes that Roosevelt and his aides instituted strict rules prohibiting the commercial or promotional use of FDR's image and voice. Giuliana Muscio, Hollywood's New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 23. Apparently this policy remained in force even after Roosevelt's death. Note 79: In fact, even as he was working on Crossfire, Scott was also adapting, with Paxton, his own one-act historical play, Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers, which RKO eventually purchased and planned to film. Note 80: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 75. Note 81: Ibid., 75–78 Note 82: Ibid., 78. Note 83: Final Draft with Changes, February 19, 1947, 81–82. Note 84: Ibid., 80–82. Note 85: David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961); Theodor Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950). These issues are discussed more fully in chapter 7. Note 86: Adrian Scott, typescript of "Some of My Worst Friends," 5, in Scott Papers, AHC, 1. Note 87: Final Script with Changes, February 19, 1947, 81–82A; Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 76–77. This speech appeared in the final filmed version, with the exception of "they aren't sweethearts," which was deleted at the request of the PCA.

Note 88: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 78–79. Note 89: Scott, "Some of My Worst Friends," 4–5. Note 90: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 79. Note 91: Harold Melniker to Paxton, March 1, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 92: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 79–80. Note 93: Ibid., 80–81. Note 94: Martin Niemoller was a pastor in the Confessional Church. A decorated submarine captain in the First World War, Niemoller initially welcomed Nazism as a bulwark against Bolshevism, but soon became critical of the regime's flagrant disregard for the rule of law and its efforts to co-opt the churches. In 1937 he was imprisoned for his outspoken sermons and spent the next eight years in a concentration camp. See Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (New York: Penguin, 1997), 151–152. Note 95: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 81–82. Note 96: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, n.d. [July 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 97: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 90; First Draft Continuity Revised, February 12, 1947, 99–100. Note 98: Harold Melniker to Paxton, March 1, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 99: Harold Melniker to Scott, March 11, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 100: Gordon to Scott, April 17, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 101: Kelly and Steinman to Paxton, June 29, 1977, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Kelly and Steinman quote in full the text from a previous taped (but unidentified) interview with Schary. Note 102: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 93–94. Note 103: Medical metaphors dominated the language of prejudice during this period. This is discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, but several examples will suffice here: In the educational film Can We Immunize Against Prejudice? the Anti-Defamation League argued, "We have learned to protect our children against smallpox and diphtheria. How can we find some antitoxin against this other disease? . . . How can we immunize our children against prejudice?" Similarly, John Slawson, director of the American Jewish Committee, insisted: "Prejudice is a disease of the personality and is susceptible to cure. . . . Just as your city must have a health department to prevent disease, so also must your city have a sound program of human relations to prevent prejudice and disorder based on prejudice." Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 30. Note 104: Gordon to Scott, April 17, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 105: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, n.d. [July 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 106: Kelly and Steinman to Paxton, June 29, 1977, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 107: Brooks to Scott, April 25, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 108: First Draft Continuity, January 25, 1947, 92. Note 109: Final Script as Shot, August 4, 1947, 94–95. Note 110: Scott, "You Can't Do That," 327. Note 111: Seymour Peck, "There's New Hope for Hollywood in Dore Schary of Crossfire," PM, July 22, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 112: Jerry Wald to Schary, June 20, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 113: Paul Nathan to Schary, June 30, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS.

Note 114: Sam Jaffe to Schary, June 28, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 115: Martin Gang to Schary, October 15, 1947, in Schary papers, B126-F16, WHS. Ironically, Martin Gang, who represented a number of leading Hollywood Communists including Dalton Trumbo and Larry Parks and who signed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the Hollywood Ten in 1947, eventually served as the main intermediary between the studios and blacklistees seeking "clearance" to work. Representing more "informers" (including Lee J. Cobb, Sterling Hayden, Richard Collins, and many more) than any other Hollywood attorney, by 1951 he had become a "symbol of collaboration," and Charles Katz, one of the legal team for the Ten, likened Gang to "Torquemada's adjutant." Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Penguin Books, 1981): 98. Note 116: Gene Kelly to Schary, July 30, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 117: Selznick to Schary, September 17, 1947; Schary to Selznick, September 30, 1947, both in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 118: Robert Riskin to Scott, n.d., in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Riskin's screenwriting credits include It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), and Meet John Doe (1940). Katz, ed., Film Encyclopedia, 975. Note 119: Allen Rivkin to Scott and Paxton, April 25, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Ironically, Rivkin—who wrote the screenplay for the highly antifascist Schary-Dmytryk film Till the End of Time (1946)—was part of the group of "moderates" who orchestrated the purge of the left wing of the Screen Writers Guild following the 1947 HUAC hearings and encouraged the union to withhold its support from the beleaguered Hollywood Ten. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, especially 292–298. Note 120: Bob Laurence to Scott, July 30, 1947; Scott to Schary, n.d., both in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 121: Dmytryk, It's a Hell of a Life, 92.

Chapter 7 Is it Good for the Jews? The Jewish Response to Crossfire Some will be queasy at the mere mention of the word "Jew." Others will question the literary exploitation of the thesis that a man may be moved to kill a Jew just because he is a Jew, although historical examples are not wanting. —David Coleman to Richard Gutstadt, April 14, 1947

Despite the relative ease with which Crossfire was made (compared, for example,

1

to the studio meddling with Cornered), questions about the reception of the film—by moviegoers, critics, and particularly American Jews—loomed large for the filmmakers. As RKO's vice president in charge of production and the sole Jew involved in the making of the film, Dore Schary had a great deal invested, both professionally and personally, in Crossfire's success. Though he certainly supported the film and applauded its political intent, he was particularly sensitive, perhaps more so than Scott and Dmytryk, to a potential public backlash. Even before filming had begun on Crossfire, the powerful and respected American Jewish Committee (AJC) voiced concerns and began actively maneuvering against the project. Concerned that this opposition would damage Crossfire's critical reception and box-office appeal, Schary decided to fight fire with fire and actively recruited support for the film from his allies at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Critical differences between the ADL and the AJC, particularly over the

2

representation of Jewishness in the postwar period and over the efficacy of film as a tool for Jewish defense, powerfully shaped the Jewish debate over Crossfire. In the wake of the Holocaust, Crossfire's representation of the murder of a Jew by a violent bigot was particularly controversial, and raised significant questions about the public perception of the Jew in postwar America. Against this highly charged backdrop, both organizations subjected the film to intensive audience testing, invoking the "objectivity" of social science and the opinions of "experts" to buttress their essentially political reactions to the film. In fact, the artistic merits or structural problems with the film were often overshadowed by internal conflicts and interagency rivalry between the ADL and the AJC. Crossfire ultimately became a lightning rod in the competition between Jewish organizations for moral authority and political hegemony in the diverse Jewish populations concerned with anti-Semitism and Jewish defense. The Jewish debate over Crossfire was also an early salvo in the mass-culture critique that dominated the 1950s. The arguments marshaled against the film by the AJC, and particularly its reliance on "experts," clearly reveal both a distrust of

3

the influence of mass culture on the values and attitudes of "ordinary" Americans and a contempt for the corrupting effects of popular culture on modernist art. In contrast, the defense of Crossfire, particularly by Dore Schary, offered a more populist vision of the value of film as both an educational tool and a democratic art form, reflecting a pragmatic faith in the intuitive responses and intellectual abilities of ordinary Americans—the "real" experts on mass culture. In this sense, the issues raised in the Jewish debate over Crossfire reverberated far beyond the question of whether or not it was "good for" American Jews.

Strategizing Jewish Defense The New York–based American Jewish Committee was the oldest and most

4

prestigious defense organization in the United States. Founded in 1906 to protect the civil and religious rights of American Jews and to counteract the anti-Semitic attitudes and activities that emerged around immigration restriction and the work of the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups in the 1920s, the AJC was composed primarily of affluent, assimilated German Jews. Though its membership was small and exclusive, with its substantial wealth and contacts in high levels of government the AJC's influence far outweighed its numbers. Anti-Zionist and elitist in the 1940s, the AJC zealously guarded its position as the leading Jewish defense organization and resisted collaboration, particularly with leftist and Zionist groups. The AJC's patrician leaders, seeing themselves as American Jewry's "council of elders," eschewed mass political action and preferred to work informally through "discreet pressure and backstairs diplomacy." Their approach was formally articulated by Solomon Andhil Fineberg, the Director of the AJC's Community Services Department and author of several books on Jewish defense. "Accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative," the refrain of a popular song of the 1940s, neatly summarized Fineberg's philosophy. Known popularly as the "quarantine" or "sha sha" (hush hush) defense, the AJC strategy held that drawing attention to the prevalence of anti-Semitism and the activities of demagogues would only create a backlash by confirming and reinforcing anti-Jewish attitudes. Thus, Fineberg insisted, the best defense strategy was to ignore or downplay negative images or anti-Semitic incidents while publicizing positive images of Jews and instances of interfaith cooperation and collegiality.1 Particularly during the 1930s and 1940s, other organizations, representing different constituencies and advocating different strategies, challenged the AJC's hegemony in the field of Jewish defense. The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress), founded after the First World War to provide relief to war refugees, was

composed

primarily

of

middle-

and

working-class

Eastern

European

immigrants. Outspokenly Zionist and committed to mass action, the AJCongress was the most overtly political of the mainstream Jewish defense organizations. Its

5

president, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, had the ear of President Roosevelt and was a vigorous proponent of plans to rescue European Jews from fascist persecution. The Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), founded in 1934 to represent Jewish organized labor in the antifascist struggle, was comprised primarily of Jewish socialist groups and labor unions, particularly in the garment industry. Advocating democratic socialism, though generally opposed to Zionism, the JLC represented half a million Jewish workers and was also influential within the American Federation of Labor.2 The most direct challenger to the AJC's hegemony was the Chicago-based

6

Anti-Defamation League. Though the AJC and the ADL were united in their commitment

to

American

liberalism,

anti-Zionism,

and

eventually,

anti-Communism, there were, nonetheless, significant differences between the two groups that fueled interagency rivalries, particularly after World War Two. Founded in 1913 as an offshoot of B'nai Brith, the oldest Jewish fraternal society in America, the ADL primarily worked through local B'nai Brith lodges and Jewish community councils, and by 1942, it had a membership of 150,000. Like the AJC, the ADL represented old-stock German Jews, rather than the more recent immigrants from Eastern Europe; its constituents, however, tended to be middle class, rather than upper class, and the ADL's primary strength lay in the Midwest and South. Though both groups believed that anti-Semitism was a product of ignorance about Jews and Judaism and developed wide-ranging (and sometimes overlapping) campaigns to educate the American public and to counteract negative stereotypes, the more activist and grassroots ADL worked energetically to uncover and publicize domestic anti-Semitism. Viewing anti-Semitism primarily as a public-relations problem, the ADL leadership firmly believed that the "'calm voice of truth' was the most effective weapon against anti-Semitism," a stance that frequently clashed with the AJC's "quarantine" strategy.3 The ADL's faith in the goodwill of ordinary Americans and their ability to "do the right thing" once presented with the "facts" about anti-Semitism also placed it at odds with the AJC's elitism. Though the AJC leadership certainly believed in educating the public about the dangers of anti-Semitism, they did not share the ADL's populist sensibilities, preferring to define themselves as power brokers or experts rather than muckrakers or grassroots activists.4 The Nazi campaign against the Jews, and particularly the revelations of the Holocaust, transformed the ideological underpinnings of Jewish defense work in the postwar period. In recent years, a number of scholars have harshly criticized the failure of both American Jews and the Roosevelt administration to do more to save Europe's beleaguered Jews.5 Others, however, pointing to the complexities of the "politics of rescue," are more sympathetic in their judgments.6 During the 1930s, American Jews themselves, though desperate to help the Jews of Europe,

7

were divided on how best to respond to the crisis. While Jewish individuals and groups did speak out and organize for rescue, both internal differences and a general unwillingness to antagonize either the Roosevelt administration or the American public undermined their effectiveness. And, though Roosevelt and key advisers in the State Department were concerned, they ultimately capitulated in the face of widespread isolationism, opposition to expanding the immigration quotas,

and

general

anti-Semitism.

By

1942,

when

incontestable

eyewitness-accounts of mass executions, gas chambers, and crematoria in Poland reached the Allies, the issue of rescue had become secondary to the need to win the war. Despite their personal anguish, Jewish defense leaders, even the outspoken Rabbi Wise, tended to acquiesce to Roosevelt's insistence that a decisive military victory was the best (and perhaps only) way to save the remnants of European Jewry.7 In addition, as historian Peter Novick forcefully argues, during the war, and even

8

in the immediate postwar period, most Americans—including American Jews—did not

perceive

the

Holocaust

as

a

specifically

Jewish

experience.

Though

anti-Semitism was certainly recognized as a fundamental component of Nazi ideology, Jews were seen as only one group among many (whether political dissenters

such

as

Communists,

unionists,

or

clergy

members,

or

such

Untermensch as Poles or gypsies) persecuted by the Nazi regime. At the same time, the mass murder of Jews could not be separated from the vast, tragic carnage of the war, whether the millions of soldiers and civilians killed in both the Pacific and Europe, or the Japanese civilians incinerated in the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.8 Thus, even before the liberation of the concentration camps revealed the full

9

extent of Nazi atrocities, many American Jews, whatever their private feelings, were reluctant to dwell publicly on their "special victimization." The AJC was particularly concerned with the representation of Jews as victims. Following a national conference on American anti-Semitism in 1944, AJC leader John Slawson noted, "In an effort to arouse the conscience of the world, as the one possible means of alleviating the tragic plight of our brethren in Europe, we have had to publicize the mass atrocities committed by the Nazis. That was unavoidable." Now, however, Slawson felt that it was critical for defense organizations to shift the emphasis from victimization to the normalcy of American Jews: "Jewish organizations should avoid representing Jews as weak, victimized, and suffering. . . . There needs to be an elimination or at least a reduction of horror stories of victimized Jewry. . . . We must normalize the image of the Jew. . . . The Jew should be represented as like others, rather than unlike others."9 As historian Arthur Hertzberg explains, in the postwar period, "[t]he Jewish

10

agenda was dominated by one desire, to expand the place of Jews in America. They wanted to be accepted by the Gentiles, not to confront them—at least not then."10 In fact, American Jews were remarkably successful in realizing this goal. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews were generally considered a distinct race, biologically and culturally separate from Anglo-Saxons (the "real" Americans, according to the tenets of scientific racism) and fundamentally unassimilable. By midcentury, Jews had made the transition to "whiteness" and were defined, along with other "white ethnics," as Caucasian, under the new racial rubric of the three "great races of the world" (Caucasians, Negroids, and Mongoloids).

Many

diverse

factors—including

immigration

restriction,

the

proliferation of mass culture, the racist ideology of fascism, and the Americanizing rhetoric of the New Deal and World War Two—were important in this transition. However, anthropologist Karen Brodkin, in How the Jews Became White Folks, points particularly to postwar interventions by the federal government that helped to integrate "white ethnics" into the American mainstream, while reinforcing the segregation of African Americans and other "colored" groups. The low-interest government loans provided by the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Authority, for example,

undermined

the

quota

systems

and

restrictive

covenants—the

"gentlemen's agreements"—that had barred Jews from higher education and suburban housing for decades. Significantly, the racist application of these federal policies not only excluded most black Americans from the vaunted postwar prosperity, but also reinforced the "whiteness" and Americanness of Jews and other ethnics. By the 1950s, then, Jews were an integral part of the "imagined community" of Americans.11 Jewish defense organizations played a key role in redefining the place of Jews in

11

postwar American society. Beginning in the war years, both the ADL and the AJC expanded their budgets, professionalized their staffs and operations, and embarked on a wide range of new programs. The ADL, in particular, increased its activities during this period, establishing regional offices in major cities on both coasts in an attempt to enlarge its traditional power base from the Midwest and South. In addition, the ADL moved its national headquarters from Chicago to New York City after the war, effectively signaling its challenge to the AJC.12 More importantly, however, in the postwar years both the AJC and the ADL moved away from a strict focus on Jewish defense toward a broader emphasis on "intergroup relations." As Leonard Dinnerstein explains, "The Jewish agencies assumed the position that antisemitism, along with other forms of bigotry, threatened American democracy and therefore posed a problem for the entire society, not merely one segment of it."13 Drawing on what John Higham has called the "theory of the unitary character of prejudice"—the belief that anti-Semitism, white supremacy, and all manifestations of racism were part of the

12

same phenomenon—Jewish defense organizations argued that "the security of American Jews was dependent upon the realization of full equality for all Americans." As Benjamin Epstein, national director of the ADL, explained in 1948, "'We approach life in America with the premise that the progressive development of a democratic society will bring with it for Jews, as for other groups, the freest and fullest development as individuals and as a community.'" Though some in the ADL criticized the retreat from Jewish defense, Epstein insisted, "'We are concerned with human rights, inter-group harmony; with fighting bigotry; with promoting equal economic, social and educational opportunities for all. These are pertinent contemporary applications of ancient Jewish ethical precepts.'" The AJC leadership shared this perspective, with an anti-Communist fillip: "Good will and understanding among racial, religious and national origin groups are of the utmost importance for the security and welfare of the Unites States, and for the protection of American institutions and the American way of life from the encroachments of totalitarianism both of the right and the left."14 Perhaps the most important component of the professionalization of Jewish

13

defense was the application of social science techniques to the problem of prejudice. Both the ADL and the AJC had eagerly embraced opinion polling in the 1930s, and after the war they relied even more heavily on social science to "analyze prejudice and develop a cure for it, mobilize public opinion against intolerance, and utilize the courts and legislative bodies to eradicate those discriminatory policies that could be controlled by law." For both groups, this new emphasis was not seen as a step away from social activism, but a step toward "action-research." They argued that "any positive effort to counter and conquer the hatred that can poison and destroy our society must begin in an understanding of why people hate, how their anxieties, frustrations and insecurities are exploited by hatemongers, and how the forces of good in our society can be mobilized to isolate and eliminate the disease of hate."15 The AJC, in particular, worshipped social science, especially after Dr. John Slawson became executive vice president in 1943. Slawson, who held a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University and had an extensive background in social service work, ardently championed social-scientific research. Under his leadership the AJC's Survey Committee, inaugurated in the mid-1930s, was transformed during the war years into a full-fledged Department of Scientific Research, chaired by Paul Lazarsfeld and staffed largely by European refugee intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, most notably Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.16 The Frankfurt School intellectuals were horrified by the lack of theoretical sophistication in American public-opinion research, particularly the naïve assumption that "whatever people responded when asked questions by survey researchers or when filling out questionnaires was important and to be

14

taken seriously." This was the position that had been taken by the AJC's own pollsters in the myriad surveys undertaken during the 1930s to gauge public attitudes toward Jews and levels of support for anti-Semitic and fascist ideologies. By the late 1940s, however, under the influence of the Frankfurt School intellectuals, the AJC's Scientific Research Department was leading the charge for a more rigorously theoretical scientific method in social research.17 The collaboration between the AJC and the Frankfurt School intellectuals also

15

precipitated a fundamental shift in the postwar discourse on prejudice away from Marxist analyses of class and social conflict to a model of prejudice as psychological pathology. The Marxist critique of Popular Front writer Carey McWilliams,

for

example,

was

enormously

influential

among

left-liberals

throughout the 1940s. In both Brothers Under the Skin (1943) and especially A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America (1948), McWilliams argued that racism—particularly anti-Semitism—was a product of unequal class relations, an ideological

tool

by

which

economic

and

political

elites

maintained

their

hegemony.18 Marxism also significantly informed the early work of Frankfurt School theorists Horkheimer and Adorno, particularly their collaborative projects, Studies of Authority and the Family (1936) and Dialectics of Enlightenment (1947). Alarmed by the rise of Nazism, particularly Hitler's use of mass media, Horkheimer and Adorno applied a combination of Marxist and Freudian theory to the study of propaganda techniques and mass culture. By the late 1940s, however, influenced by their new American context and their affiliation with the more conservative AJC, they stepped back considerably from their earlier radicalism. Though there is a clear thematic continuity with their early work, their postwar perspective, emphasizing the psychological domination of the masses by the "culture industries," ultimately eclipsed the Marxist interpretations offered by McWilliams and others.19 Horkheimer was a leading proponent of this philosophic shift, and as the AJC's Director of Scientific Research from 1944 to 1946, his views significantly shaped the AJC's approach to Jewish defense. It was upon his advice, for example, that the AJC canceled plans for a picture album of Nazi atrocities in May 1945, for fear that overemphasizing "the atrocity story . . . might have an undesirable effect on the subconscious mind of many people." Under Horkheimer's leadership, too, the AJC sponsored a five-volume Studies in Prejudice series, exploring the roots of intolerance and the psychological appeal of totalitarianism to individuals. Three books in the series—The Authoritarian Personality by Horkheimer's collaborator, Theodor Adorno, and others; Dynamics of Prejudice: A Psychological and Sociological Study of Veterans by Bruno Bettleheim and Morris Janowitz; and Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation by Marie Jahoda

and

Nathan

Ackerman,

both

AJC

staff

members—interpreted

16

anti-Semitism through a psychoanalytic lens and helped to establish the decidedly non-Marxist psychosocial model of prejudice that dominated postwar thinking.20 At first glance, the postwar psychosocial interpretation seemed to suggest that

17

prejudice was a pathological personality disorder, an individual mental illness that affected only a small portion of the population and could be "cured," presumably by intensive psychoanalysis, or at least contained by institutionalization or incarceration. In the postwar years, however, this psychological interpretation was grafted onto an older medical model that saw anti-Semitism (like other forms of prejudice) as a social "disease" or a "cancer" in the body politic against which citizens must be "inoculated." Thus, the postwar psychologization of prejudice lent the weight of scientific authority to the medical model, but it also suggested that the authoritarian personality itself was highly "contagious." This enormously seductive thesis was popularized in a wide variety of Hollywood films, particularly of the science-fiction genre, in which alien or monster "germs" threatened to invade the bodies or psyches of normal Americans, requiring the intervention of experts (usually doctors or government officials) to stem the invasion. By the 1950s, too, this model informed the Cold War theory of political containment: Communism, like racism, was contagious, and all Americans needed to be inoculated against the totalitarian germ.21 Ultimately, the shift from Jewish defense to intergroup relations and the

18

psychosocial model of prejudice placed the leading Jewish organizations within the mainstream of Vital Center liberalism. Repudiating the radicalism of the 1930s and hailing "the end of ideology," this postwar liberal consensus embraced the "virtues of pluralism and interest-group competition, the superiority of Keynesian economics and a limited welfare state." Though they recognized the continuing existence of racism, class inequalities, and other challenges to New Deal liberalism, the Vital Center liberals agreed that "the problems of modern America were no longer ideological but technical and administrative, and that these could be solved by knowledgeable experts rather than by mass movements."22 Gunnar Myrdal signaled the shift in mood in his 1944 study of race relations, An American Dilemma, remarking, "We are entering an era where fact-finding and scientific theories of causal relations will be seen as instrumental in planning controlled social change. The peace will bring nothing but problems, one mounting upon another, and consequently, new urgent tasks for social engineering."23 In the 1950s, of course, social engineering did eclipse social movements as the key lever to social change, and a profound suspicion of "mass man" superseded the Popular Front embrace of "the masses." In 1947, however, as the Jewish debate over Crossfire suggests, these issues were still hotly contested. Though the crisis of the war years spurred greater collaboration among the Jewish

19

defense agencies, their postwar relations were often highly charged. The AJC, in particular, resisted challenges to its authority and expertise by other—and in its opinion lesser—agencies. In the postwar period, the strategic differences between the ADL and the AJC, particularly around the issues of publicizing anti-Semitism and the application of social science to the problem of prejudice, fueled an interagency rivalry that profoundly shaped the Jewish response to Crossfire.24

The Debate over Crossfire As early as the 1930s, defense agencies had been interested in working with

20

Hollywood to monitor and shape the representation of Jews and Jewishness in movies. The studios, however, sensitive both to encroachments on their creative territory and to perceptions of Jewish domination in Hollywood, resisted the early overtures by the Jewish organizations. Though both the ADL and the AJC had offices in Los Angeles, there was no coordinated strategy for dealing with the film industry, and defense organizations responded on an ad hoc basis to challenge unflattering Jewish images in specific movies. With the rise of European fascism and increasing anti-Semitism at home and abroad, however, they began to pressure the studios to produce antifascist films. Realizing that more coordinated activity was needed, in the early 1940s, leaders in the Jewish community and the film industry formed the Uptown Committee within the Jewish Community Committee's Community Relations Council (CRC) in Los Angeles.25 The Uptown Committee served as an informal clearinghouse, collecting and

21

commenting on scripts that "in any way touch upon minority subjects of any character whatsoever or on subject matter dealing with Americanism or any form of Free World Propaganda." The committee was controlled by Mendel Silberberg, an entertainment attorney representing Columbia, RKO, and several independent producers, as well as a member of the national executive committee of the AJC. A handsome, wealthy, charming, and completely acculturated Jew—exactly the image the Hollywood moguls wished to project for themselves—Silberberg wielded enormous influence in both the film industry and the Los Angeles Jewish community. David Coleman was the ADL's official liaison to the film industry, and he shared an office in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with AJC representative Leon Lewis. Though Lewis was assigned to monitor only 16mm documentary filmmaking, he also served as secretary to the Uptown Committee, a position that gave him entrée to leading Jewish producers, including committee member Dore Schary.26 During the war years, largely satisfied by the representations of Jews and intergroup harmony produced under the oversight of the OWI, the defense organizations remained content to work within the structure of the CRC. However,

22

in the summer of 1944, Richard Rothschild, the AJC's Director of Public Education and Information, contacted Silberberg to broach the idea of establishing a separate AJC monitoring organization in Hollywood. Silberberg and other members of the CRC discouraged this idea, pointing out that previous efforts in this direction had only created "confusion, conflict and ill-feeling."27 Though the AJC apparently tabled the plan, in early 1946, David Coleman's decision to retire as head of the ADL's West Coast office sparked discussions of a possible merger of Jewish defense organizations working with the film industry. In January, Silberberg wrote to Slawson proposing that the ADL and AJC hire a single executive to manage all contacts with the movie studios. Though Slawson agreed to help in the executive search, he also indicated that the AJC planned to hire its own Hollywood liaison, and asked Silberberg to comment on Leon Lewis's qualifications for such a position. Alarmed, Silberberg reiterated his belief that multiple contacts would be counterproductive in their dealings with the studios. However, Slawson remained committed to an independent AJC presence in Hollywood, citing the AJC's history of success in the field of radio and suggesting that much remained to be done in the film industry. Pointing to the public relations value of The Bells of St. Mary's for Catholics, he argued that Jewish organizations needed to be more assertive in providing Hollywood producers with similarly uplifting stories about Jews. Though little substantive action was taken at the time, the release later in 1946 of Abie's Irish Rose, an "interracial" romance which offended many Jews with its stereotyped images, convinced the AJC leaders that they could not rely on the CRC to aggressively monitor the studios.28 Against this backdrop of interagency rivalry and heightened concerns about

23

Hollywood's representation of Jews, the AJC's Richard Rothschild visited Los Angeles in late February 1947. Learning of RKO's plans to adapt The Brick Foxhole, Rothschild became deeply alarmed at the prospect of a film in which a Jew is killed simply because he is a Jew, and immediately arranged a meeting with Dore Schary. Schary went out of his way to cooperate with Rothschild, inviting him to his own home to discuss his concerns about the film, and then meeting with him a second time in his office on the RKO lot. However, Rothschild was "unable to convince Schary of the dangers that he felt were involved," nor was he able to persuade Schary to give him a copy of the script.29 While this intransigence probably added to Rothschild's anxiety, Schary surely resented being told how to run his own studio and how best to make a picture about anti-Semitism. Several weeks later Mendel Silberberg stepped into the mix on behalf of Rothschild. He spoke to Schary and convinced him that Rothschild would use the script in a helpful way. Schary reluctantly agreed to send Rothschild a copy of the script, as long as he promised to keep that information quiet.30 In the interim,

24

however, on March 24, before filming had wrapped on Crossfire and even before he received the script from Schary, Rothschild visited the New York offices of the Motion Picture Producers Association (MPAA) to discuss "in general terms the application of the motion picture code to a number of pictures currently being produced in Hollywood on the so-called 'Jewish question,' including Crossfire." His contacts at the MPPA were not familiar with the film but promised Rothschild that they would look into it.31 Schary learned about Rothschild's interference on April 3, when PCA head Joseph

25

Breen telephoned him to discuss a letter he had received from Eric Johnston, head of the MPPA, along with a copy of a letter written by Rothschild expressing his doubts about a series of films on anti-Semitism. Rothschild's letter named Crossfire as the film about which he was most concerned. Schary immediately telephoned Leon Lewis. Though he remained "personally cordial" as he confronted Lewis with his knowledge of Rothschild's "breach of faith," Schary was livid. He clearly believed that Rothschild had read the script by the time he visited the MPA and felt personally betrayed by both Rothschild and Mendel Silberberg.32 By this time Rothschild had indeed received his copy of the Crossfire script from

26

Schary, though not perhaps the letter from Leon Lewis warning him of Schary's anger. One might think that Schary had misjudged Rothschild, except that upon reading the script Rothschild immediately shared it—against Schary's express wishes—with Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, president of the AJC. After a cursory reading of the script, Proskauer wrote to fellow attorney Ralstone "Shorty" Irvine, with whom he had worked on United States v. Paramount, the looming antitrust suit that would eventually destroy the studio system. Proskauer's letter lambasted Crossfire: The theme of it is that a gang gets so fed up by hatred and murder a Jew just because he is a Jew, and then try to make it pro-Semitic by some mealy-mouthed statement that a Catholic could be murdered in the same way; but the apologia is like pouring rose water on a cancer. The net effect of this script, as I read it, is to spread a gospel of racial hatred culminating in murder.33

Proskauer closed with a plea to Ralstone: tell him who to contact to discuss making substantive changes to the film. Ralstone obliged, sending Proskauer's letter to a friend in RKO's New York office—Peter Rathvon, the very executive who had, only months before, agreed to extend the studio's option on The Brick Foxhole, gambling $1,000 on the trio's enthusiasm. Rathvon wrote to Schary the next day, on April 4: "Apparently there is a difference of opinion between you and Mr. Rothschild regarding the efficacy of this

27

picture and it looks to me as though I were getting in the middle between two opinions and I don't like it. I told Mr. Rothschild I would be glad to do anything regarding the picture which you and he might recommend, but that there should be agreement on what steps ought to be taken, if any." Instructing Schary to send Rothschild a copy of the final script, Rathvon warned that he had promised that Rothschild could "submit suggestions whatever suggestions he may have" directly to Schary.34 Schary must have been furious, both with the AJC's covert machinations and with Rathvon's order to cooperate with them. John Slawson, the president of the AJC, suggested that this was all simply a

28

personality conflict, presumably between Schary and Rothschild: "Dick saw a number of movie people while he was on the Coast, and was received by all of them in the friendliest spirit of cooperation. His suggestions were seriously considered, and in no case other than the case of 'Crossfire' was there any element of unpleasantness."35 Slawson's obvious disingenuousness, as well as his approval and even encouragement of the covert maneuvering of his staff, consistently angered the Hollywood Jews and fanned the flames of the conflict over Crossfire. Schary

was

clearly

feeling

the

heat.

Rothschild's

machinations

had

generated—within a single week—letters from both the MPPA and the RKO front office in New York. Either one could sound a death knell for Crossfire, which was still in post-production. Though the Breen Office had signed off on the picture, Schary couldn't have wanted them to take another look at the film for fear of last-minute edits that might mangle its intent or power. Second thoughts from the front office could be equally deadly, delaying the release of the film or even scrapping it altogether, if Crossfire were deemed too politically sensitive or potentially controversial. Schary had his own concerns about Crossfire, but to his credit, he decided to fight fire with fire. It is interesting to consider whether Schary would have gone to such lengths for the film had Rothschild and the AJC not raised the stakes by challenging him personally. Certainly, Schary supported Crossfire for political reasons, but he also relished a good tussle, as the competition with Zanuck and their race to release the first anti–anti-Semitism picture shows. The conflict with the AJC reinforced Schary's vision of himself as a smart filmmaker, a serious filmmaker, a daring filmmaker—as well as a liberal, committed, activist Jew. Certainly, Schary was the ideal person to go to bat for Crossfire. A Gentile might have caved in the face of the AJC's opposition. A different kind of Jew might have done the same. It is difficult, for example, to imagine Louis B. Mayer taking on the MPPA, the front office, and the largest and most respectable Jewish organization in America. Schary, however, in the face of such opposition, dug in his heels and refused to budge.

29

Attempting an end run around the AJC, Schary turned to the Anti-Defamation

30

League (ADL) for support on Crossfire. He arranged a screening of the film, on April 11, at one of the RKO projection rooms, for key players in the ADL and the Los Angeles Community Relations Council (CRC), the umbrella group charged with monitoring Hollywood's treatment of the "Jewish Question." The ADL's executive director, Richard Gutstadt, was already familiar with the project. Schary had outlined the story of Crossfire to him earlier in the year, during a visit Gutstadt had made to the RKO studio with Mendel Silberberg. In April, Schary again enlisted Gutstadt's support for the project; Gutstadt instructed David Coleman, former director of the ADL's Los Angeles office, to attend the screening and report back to him. I. B. Benjamin, who succeeded Coleman as the ADL's director in Southern California, was also invited to view the film at this first screening on April 11, as was Fred Herzberg, the executive director of the local CRC. Interestingly, an AJC representative, Ben Scheinman, chair of the local chapter, was also invited to the screening, but could not attend. Scott and Dmytryk also were present at the screening and, with Schary, stayed afterward to discuss the film with Coleman, Herzberg, and several others.36 After seeing Crossfire, Coleman reported back to Gutstadt that though "Jews will

31

view the production with mingled emotions," he was "tremendously impressed" with the film. Arguing that Crossfire was not a "makeshift film built only to carry a burden of propaganda tamped in at every obvious crevice," Coleman pointed out that the film's message was, in fact, "heightened by well-sustained suspense, so that it moves rapidly and inexorably to its denouement, with all of the intriguing appeal that has made detective-story fans of poet and proletarian alike." Thus, he believed that Crossfire had great educational potential, and he strongly recommended that the ADL support both Schary and the film.37 After viewing Crossfire, Fred Herzberg wrote to Schary, suggesting ways that he

32

and the others in the CRC might help lay the groundwork for a positive response to the film. David Robinson, the assistant national director of the ADL for the Pacific Coast, for example, had offered to present the case for Crossfire at the ADL's upcoming national conference and had requested supporting materials including a story summary and the actual text from two key scenes—Samuels's comments in the bar on the postwar scene, and Finlay's speech to Leroy. Herzberg himself offered to write to his contacts in various Jewish defense agencies and assured Schary that between himself and Mendel Silberberg, they could reach the "most important people." Clearly anticipating opposition from the AJC, he added, "I think it would be well to do something of this kind in order to break down the expected resistance in advance."38 Not surprisingly, the AJC—and Richard Rothschild, in particular—remained keenly

33

interested in Crossfire. Leon Lewis served as Rothschild's "informant" in Los Angeles, keeping him up to date on the screenings. "Dore is obviously very deeply worried about our attitude and is fortifying himself in advance against the criticism which you and I voiced," Lewis reported to Rothschild on April 17. He had learned about the April 11 screening from Fred Herzberg, who told him that Coleman and the other ADL representatives were "very pleased with the picture and thought it would be most effective in combating anti-Semitism." Herzberg had admitted that no one "had raised any question about the deeper psychological implications in the film, and that apparently no such thought ever entered their minds. I doubt whether it did his either," Lewis added snidely.39 Bolstered by the positive response to this first screening, Schary arranged for

34

another showing of Crossfire on April 16, this time to a broader and riskier group of local dignitaries, including both Gentiles and Jews, most notably Rabbi Edgar Magnin, the powerful and popular "spiritual adviser" to the Hollywood Jews. Leon Lewis was not invited, a deliberate slight that Lewis attributed to Schary's personal resentment toward him, as well as to the fact that Schary did not want him to introduce the AJC position on Crossfire into the discussion. However, several prominent members of the local AJC were invited, including Walter Hillborn, Ben Scheinman, and most importantly, Frankfurt School intellectual Max Horkheimer, who had settled in Los Angeles after leaving his position with the AJC in 1946.40 From all accounts, the discussion following this second screening of Crossfire was

35

markedly positive and the AJC position was not mentioned—even by AJC members. Though Horkheimer did express reservations that the film "contained a message to the unconscious that was not so clear as the message to the conscious," he also stated that the picture "was a courageous one and accurately mirrored the mind of the anti-Semite."41 The following day AJC member Walter Hillborn wrote directly to Schary to say that he and his wife were "thrilled last night at Crossfire, both as entertainment and as a documentary drama. We should all be grateful to you, as I am, for the courage shown by the production and the purpose shown by the story." Hillborn's primary critique of the film was that Samuels's "peanut" speech, "with respect to the hates created by four years in the army," complicates the "pure" hate motive for the murder. Interestingly, Hillborn suggested that the picture is more compelling when the Jew is murdered simply because he is a Jew42—a marked break from the early position taken by Rothschild and others in the New York offices of the AJC. Schary must have been overjoyed by this group's response to the screening. It must have seemed a triumph that Crossfire—once seen on the screen—had the impact upon viewers that he and Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk had hoped.

36

Apparently, though, Horkheimer had held back during the discussion, or he had a change of heart after having had time to think and discuss the film with others. Certainly, Leon Lewis had been eager to hear Horkheimer's response to the film and to discuss its implications. He "went over the situation" with Horkheimer the day of the screening and again the morning after, and reported back to Rothschild: His reactions were what I thought they would be. He is convinced that the picture is a real danger. He tells me that he did not want to speak up at length in the discussion following the meeting because he did not know the people who were present and did not want to hurt Dore if it could be avoided. . . . I am meeting with Max later today to go over the script while the picture is fresh in his mind, to see what changes if any have been made, and to prepare a memorandum for submission to Schary, and as a report to you.43

Horkheimer did write up his notes on Crossfire, and he sent them to Schary on

37

April 18, with a cover letter thanking him for the opportunity to view the film. In either a humble disclaimer or a reminder of his intellectual authority, Horkheimer added, "Although part of my life's work has been filled with the study of the socio-psychological mechanisms involved in such reactions, I am still giving you a one-man's

opinion."

Not

surprisingly,

since

Horkheimer's

own

work

had

significantly shaped the psychosocial approach to anti-Semitism, his "individual" opinion

largely

reinforced

the

AJC's

concerns

about

Crossfire.

Many

of

Horkheimer's comments were quite positive; he thought, for example, that the film was "superbly acted and very entertaining." However, his privileging of "the psychological effect [of Crossfire] upon the simple theater-goer, particularly upon the adolescent" created grave doubts in his mind about the political and social efficacy of Crossfire.44 That Freud was eclipsing Marx in his philosophical views is evident from Horkheimer's despair at the degraded state of modern civilization and his portrait of the human psyche caught in the grip of dark, unconscious forces. Overall, Horkheimer believed Crossfire was an "honest and sincere attempt to enlighten the public about the destructive nature of antisemitism." Nevertheless, he had doubts about the film's "educational value for the masses," and continued, "In my opinion there is a danger that this picture will do more harm than good." While he praised the "conscious message" in Crossfire as "well-meant and even courageous," he was troubled by the "unconscious message" in the film: "It is well-known that what people remember of a work of art depends on sympathies and antipathies which are often in contrast with the intentions of the work's creators and even the conscious wishes of the spectators themselves." According to Horkheimer,

38

The unconscious message in this film could easily read that there are many people who do not like the Jews and that Jew-hatred is a very natural motive for killing a man. . . . Almost for the first time it is stated on the screen that there is a thrill in killing a Jew. The association between the ideas "Jew" and "killing" is made even stronger by the fact that the murderer is good looking, that his appearance is military and that he actually is a professional soldier. From the very beginning the audience will be induced to identify with him. In many respects and for many people the real hero of the film will be the murderer and not the detective.45

In The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno would argue that the excessive

39

masculinity of the authoritarian male masked an underlying passivity and possible homosexuality. A seed of this analysis is evident in Horkheimer's reading of Crossfire: "[It] is based on profound psychological insight into the functioning of the mind of the antisemite. The way in which the guilty soldier behaves before murdering Samuels, the aggressive familiarity of the murderer, his bullying Samuels, his kind of homosexual rudeness and sadism—all this is masterly [sic] expressed." He pointed particularly to the contrast between the handsome virility of Monty and the unmistakable Jewishness of Samuels: "He looks like an intellectual and is characterized as an understanding, keen and benevolent man through his attitude toward one of the soldiers who feels low. There is no doubt that he is a Jew."46 Certain that audiences would identify unconsciously with Monty, Horkheimer

40

believed that "[f]or the native spectator antisemitism dominates the scene." Thus, he believed that the anti-Semitic comments would "stick in the minds like slogans," while the film's "rational arguments" would be dismissed as mere propaganda. Horkheimer was not impressed by Finlay's speech to Leroy, which he described as the film's "propagandistic core." To him, the liberal propaganda in Crossfire—whether Finlay's speech or the insert that revealed Samuels's war record—sounded "apologetic and defensive." He added, "This is the more true since Samuels himself makes but a short appearance which is certainly not made more impressive by the fact that he looks like an intellectual. His high-brow remarks in the bar may well alienate an average audience. And then, the murderer is there and Samuels is absent—and, psychologically, the one who is absent is at a disadvantage."47 For Horkheimer, then, the representation of Samuels was at the heart of Crossfire's failure. Upon initial viewing of Crossfire, Horkheimer had felt that the problems and potential dangers of the film could be overcome by minor editing. However, after "careful thought" and perhaps a conversation with Leon Lewis, Horkheimer became "convinced that the considerable dangers involved in showing this film cannot be overcome. . . . I am the more depressed about the result of my

41

thinking as I have the greatest respect not only for the producers and actors of this picture, but also for the veracity of its manifest content. It is an unfortunate fact that a work can be psychologically sound in itself and still be naïve with respect to its psychological effect."48 Ten days later, Schary responded to Horkheimer, asking him to consider the

42

logical extension of his argument against Crossfire: "[I]f the murderer played in our picture exactly as he is was a Jew, and if he had killed a Protestant, would you contend then that we had made a good picture for the Jew, because we would have created a sympathetic character that the audience would have accepted, and because of that would they like the Jews because their sympathies would have been with the killer?" Noting that in two subsequent screenings nobody else had expressed Horkheimer's "psychological point of view," Schary argued, "Of course, I grant that it has still not played in front of a general audience. I believe, too, that we will receive criticism, but I expect that. I believe that any controversial subject will have a minority point of view." Schary subscribed to the notion that you have to break some eggs to make an omelette, but his examples are much more indicative of his political position: The atom bomb won a war and created attention. President Roosevelt brought a nation out of chaos and created his enemies. Lincoln led the nation in a struggle to free the slaves and set up southern prejudice. Our anti-Nazi films destroyed the [B]und, but didn't do away with Gerald L. K. Smith. I don't believe there is any psychological panacea to anti-semitism that will not leave in its wake, mental flotsam and debris. . . . This film will not reform anti-semites, but it should insulate people against the virus of religious or racial hate.49

Given the widespread use of medical metaphors in discussing anti-Semitism, Schary probably meant to use the word "inoculate" rather than "insulate." Certainly, he shared the prevailing view that anti-Semitism was a disease within the American body politic. Luckily for Schary—and for Crossfire—the ADL response to the preview screenings was far more positive. David Robinson, assistant national director of the ADL, and his colleague I. H. Prinzmetal, who both saw the film with Horkheimer on April 16, were very enthusiastic. As Robinson wrote to Schary, "I did not sleep much the night I saw the picture . . . am all for it. I think you have done a remarkable job, and I believe that box office appeal which this film will create is due to the merit of the picture itself." "It is my opinion that the picture Crossfire represents the most progressive step that has yet been made in the field of Jewish public relations," Prinzmetal enthused in a letter to Fred Herzberg. Noting that "the propaganda is so closely interwoven with the dramatic action that the audience is not conscious of any lesson," Prinzmetal added, "It opens the door to other

43

motion pictures all of which should do much to point out the undermining effects of race hatred to our democracy." Robinson, who was scheduled to meet with the ADL leadership in New York the following week, assured Schary that he would everything possible "to insure ADL co-operation in securing, as Mendel Silberberg so well suggested, a cushioning of the public to receive this tremendously important and well done film."50 Schary clearly reported to Peter Rathvon on the positive results of these preview

44

screenings, and finally, Rathvon backed Schary and Crossfire. From Los Angeles, he wrote back to Shorty Irvine at the end of April, after the film had been screened by the bigwigs: I feel quite confident that the picture will have approval generally of the organizations. Mr. Richard Rothschild, whom I saw and whose description of the picture caused Proskauer's uneasiness, has apparently antagonized a number of people out here [in Hollywood] and his judgement is not considered valid. . . . I don't think you need to do anything about this further other than to tell Proskauer if he inquires that we are proceeding with the greatest care and that I will hope to arrange for him to see the picture in the East at his earliest availability. This does not mean, of course, that if he doesn't like it we are going to withhold or change it.51

In fact, a number of small but interesting revisions were made to the final print of Crossfire in response to the criticisms voiced by the preview audiences. For example, in the scene in which Finlay confronts Ginny, she tells him that her real name is Esther Goslav, a line taken directly from The Brick Foxhole. The ADL viewers felt that this gave "the impression that she is Jewish," and the line was deleted from the final version, perhaps because they objected to portraying a Jewish prostitute in the film. Members of the audience also objected to the ending in which Monty is trapped in the alley and gunned down by an emotionless, gum-smacking MP. David Robinson was particularly concerned that "anything which would create sympathetic audience reaction in favor of so despicable a character would be a most unfortunate thing." To address these concerns, Paxton rewrote this scene and the ending was reshot so that Finlay warns Monty to stop running, and then shoots him from the window. Though the ADL audience praised the film's the representation of Samuels as "just another guy . . . neither particularly good or bad," they believed that the evidence of Samuels's war record needed to be strengthened, and Schary agreed to insert a close-up shot of the report from the War Department. Fred Herzberg, for one, felt "the result should be potent."52 Though Schary continued to run previews of Crossfire for "expert" audiences as well as "ordinary" moviegoers in two sneak previews in mid-May, no other changes were made to the film. Significantly, most of the changes resulted from the first screening for the ADL on April 11, and Schary remained adamant in his refusal to change the film to placate the AJC.

45

The Battle of the Experts By this time, Crossfire clearly had become a lightning rod for the diverse

46

communities of "Jewishness" embedded in the AJC and the ADL, and in the historical recasting of Jewishness in the wake of World War Two and the Holocaust. Mendel Silberberg now launched into a diatribe against the AJC at the mere mention of Crossfire, while John Slawson continued to feign innocence, protesting publicly that he could not understand why everyone was so upset with him. At the same time, however, he and the AJC continued to maneuver, both against the film and against the ADL members who supported it. The AJC clearly hoped to prevent Crossfire's release or, failing that, to force radical changes that would bring the film into conformity with their own perspective on the correct representation of Jewishness and the proper use of film to combat anti-Semitism. In May 1947, the ADL leadership, with the support of Schary, decided to subject

47

Crossfire to the analysis of its own "experts" in order to challenge the AJC's criticisms of Crossfire, particularly Horkheimer's charge that audiences would unconsciously identify with the anti-Semite rather than with the spokesmen for liberalism and tolerance. Frank Trager, the ADL's national program director, spearheaded the project, in collaboration with "an outstanding evaluation expert with a national reputation," Dr. Louis Raths, director of research at the New York University School of Education. The AJC leadership did not respond well to the project. When Trager first announced his plans to the AJC, John Slawson sniped at him for violating the spirit of interagency collaboration by undertaking an independent study of Crossfire. However, he clearly was more concerned with the ADL's challenge to the AJC's social scientific expertise and professionalism. The AJC, after all, commanded a star fleet of social scientists: Now, you know very well that the AJC maintains a Scientific Department and has equipped itself with a testing service utilizing the best opinion testers in America as consultants, having as its chief consultant on [the] problem of testing, Paul Lazarsfeld. A substantial portion of the staff of this department is concerned exclusively with the continued evaluation of pro-tolerance materials in the form of films, radio programs and print.53

Thus, while Trager was laying the groundwork for the ADL's audience-response survey, the AJC went on the offensive. Though most of the AJC leadership had seen Crossfire on May 8 at a special New York screening arranged by Schary, they prevailed upon him to run the film again on June 19 for a panel of "experts" chaired by New York psychiatrist David M. Levy.54 The expert audience was hand-picked

by

the

AJC,

and

included

leading

academics—sociologists,

psychologists, psychiatrists, and even anthropologist Margaret Mead—as well as key figures in the field of mass-media studies, most notably Paul Lazarzfeld, Leo Lowenthal, Robert K. Merton, and Sigfried Kracauer, author of From Caligari to

48

Hitler. John Slawson and Richard Rothschild also attended, as well as Dr. Samuel Flowerman and Dr. Marie Jahoda of the Scientific Research Department, and Elliott E. Cohen, executive editor of the AJC-funded journal Commentary. The only ADL representative in attendance was Frank Trager. Despite the preponderance of AJC staff members, Slawson assured Schary when he forwarded Dr. Levy's report that they had not participated in the post-screening discussion, so as not to sway the opinions of the experts.55 Nevertheless, the discussion was organized around a number of rather leading

49

questions: "Is [such a film] worth trying?" "Can the conflict between propaganda and entertainment in Crossfire be resolved?" "Will it intensify antisemitic feelings, even inflame smouldering feelings into active hostility among those already antisemitic? In other words, is Crossfire a dangerous movie?" "Can a group like ours . . . predict the response of the general public?" Or, "Are [such] considerations merely arm-chair strategy—nothing but hunches and abstract theories that make interesting conversations, but [are] completely irrelevant?"56 Following the screening, the experts filled out a questionnaire rating their own psychological identification with key characters in the film and speculating on the psychological identification of a "typical" movie audience. The experts' responses strikingly reveal their abiding faith in the efficacy of applying social-science techniques to the problem of prejudice, as well as an equally deep-seated lack of faith in both the intuitive responses and the intellectual capacities of ordinary Americans. Though they were not necessarily averse to the liberal propaganda in Crossfire, they were extremely concerned that average moviegoers might be easily "duped" by "dangerous" propaganda. In the specific instance of Crossfire, however, the experts were more concerned with psychological mechanisms than with overt propaganda;

like

Horkheimer,

they

believed

that

unconscious

psychological identification would most likely invalidate the film's liberal message. Given this commitment to a psychosocial model of prejudice (as well as the fact that they were "prompted" by the questionnaire), it is not surprising that much of the discussion focused on the potential for audience identification and the implications of such unconscious identification for the problem of prejudice. Significantly, the experts assumed that the average moviegoer, and particularly the average anti-Semite, was male. Thus, for some, Monty was the most troubling character in Crossfire. Though a few (particularly those with "experience with GIs") believed that Monty's bullying tendency would make him "feared more than admired," many felt that he was "too attractive, too virile" and thus, would be too appealing to the average moviegoer. In this context, some were worried that the film characterized Monty "as a pretty 'normal guy,'" which might reinforce identification among those filmgoers who were either mildly or vigorously anti-Semitic. Thus, most agreed that the filmmakers missed "a great

50

opportunity" in failing to show "why and how Monty developed into an anti-Semite, and that there were other people like him." Disturbed that "Monty's conflicts are never made clear and are never resolved," some suggested that the film should have included a scene in which Monty "tells his life story" after being wounded, or in which the GIs discuss his psychosocial development after he has been killed.57 In contrast to the debate over the characterization of Monty, the representation of

51

Samuels provoked consensus: the filmmakers missed the mark. On the one hand, the experts agreed that audiences did not have enough information about the character, arguing that Samuels "is a figurehead who disappears before one can develop any sympathy for him." On the other hand, however, they felt Samuels embodied several widespread anti-Semitic stereotypes. In their view, he is "too rational," a kind of "wise guy" who sticks his nose where it doesn't belong. He might be perceived as a slacker, since it is not clear that he was badly wounded at Okinawa. He "doesn't fight back hard enough when attacked," reinforcing his victimization. He is "so mysterious" that he might be perceived as a "crook or confidence man."58 Significantly, refugee intellectual and University of Chicago professor Bruno

52

Bettleheim, commenting on Crossfire at a later date, argued that the casting of Sam Levene reinforced the stereotypical representation of Jewishness in the film and undercut audience identification. Reiterating the postwar emphasis on the "sameness" of American Jews, he noted, "There was no valid reason for selecting an actor who utilizes all the stereotyped qualities assigned to Jews particularly when many second generation Jews are barely distinguishable from the rest of the American population." Thus, Bettleheim concluded, "[T]he picture does a disservice to the cause of tolerance by showing that Jews are different."59 One wonders how Bettleheim and the other experts might have responded to a young, handsome and very virile John Garfield in the role of Samuels. Most interesting, however, is the experts' very subtle but unmistakable homophobia, evident in their concern with the representation of Samuels. Arguing that the generally negative portrait of the Jew "was in no way enhanced by his girl friend," the experts warned that his relationship to her is never "made very clear." Even more suggestive, however, is their concern that in the bar scene Samuels is shown not only as an overly intellectual "buttinsky," but as "obtain[ing] power over Mitchell," whose character they described as "just a little too weak and confused." The potential homosexuality that they perceived in Samuels and Mitchell stands in sharp contrast to the "virility" they perceived in Monty. In this context, the debate over Keeley's character is particularly fascinating. Several were concerned that, as one of the "hero characters," Keeley

53

was not as virile as Monty. Others, however, applauded Keeley's "manliness," arguing that he was "virile but controlled his virility in a desirable manner." Though none of these experts agreed openly with Horkheimer's assertion that Monty's excessive masculinity indicated repressed homosexuality, their obsession with "virility" is very suggestive. Significantly, the experts also believed that the many

artistic

and

psychological

"faults"

in

the

film

"were

due

to

the

transplantation from the original story dealing with homosexuality in The Brick Foxhole to the movie, Crossfire."60 Clearly, they believed that for the average (male) moviegoer the excessive virility of the fascist would be more attractive than the subtle effeminacy and possible homosexuality of the Jew. Though the general consensus was that Crossfire would not be "harmful," the

54

experts agreed that the film would not be "very effective in a positive manner" since "prejudice is a deep-seated phenomenon not easily subject to change," and a single film could not "be reasonably assumed to change such deep seated attitudes." Not surprisingly, the experts agreed that thorough and objective scientific testing would be necessary to validate their "hunches" about the audience response, and they chided the filmmakers for failing to consult them during the planning process.61 Frank Trager and Louis Raths both attended the AJC's expert discussion, and they took up the challenge to subject Crossfire to rigorous—though not necessarily objective—scientific evaluation. In order to dispute what they believed to be the AJC's most devastating charge against Crossfire—that film audiences would unconsciously identify with the anti-Semite rather than the spokesmen for liberalism and tolerance—Trager and Raths designed two questionnaires to test audience attitudes before and after seeing Crossfire. One, given to adult audiences in Boston and Denver, used standard lobby response cards, while the other used a special before-and-after questionnaire developed by Trager and Raths; this one was given to a group of high-school students in Hamilton, Ohio, chosen as a "typical Middletown city." Trager was especially jubilant over the results of the student testing, cabling Schary to report that the students greeted the final credits with cheers, applause, and "every energetic and sincere expression of enthusiasm." On July 15, the ADL released a confidential memo to the regional offices of the ADL and CRC, summarizing the audience response. Interestingly in light of later developments, the ADL memo, though mentioning the testing of high-school students, actually reported only on the results of the lobby cards given to the adults in Boston and Denver: "There was an overwhelming endorsement of this kind of film, in the first place. There was an overwhelming majority who identified themselves with the heroes and against the villain. There was an overwhelming majority who held that the villain got his just deserts. There was an overwhelming expectancy that the picture would be a very

55

good success." The ADL urged its membership to support the film, saying, "We think that Crossfire will be an exciting film. We think it may be helpful, although no one picture can do the whole job for us. . . . We urge you to watch for it when it comes to your community."62 Though the audience response in both cases was overwhelmingly positive, the

56

tests themselves had serious methodological flaws—as the members of the AJC's Scientific Research Department were quick to point out. After receiving a copy of the report from Trager, department head Dr. Samuel Flowerman and his staff dissected the study in a flurry of in-house memos. Each memo pointed with increasing outrage to the problems in Trager's report: the lack of control groups, the vagueness of the questions, the use of confused psychological concepts and biased terminology, and untenable claims to statistical significance. Though their glee in reporting the study's flaws is a bit disturbing, Flowerman and the staff were essentially correct in their critique. Operating on the assumption that audience members would discuss the film after seeing it, Trager and Raths's questionnaire asked the students, both before and after they saw the film, to make judgments on the opinions of their friends on a variety of issues, including religious tolerance, compulsory military training, labor unions, racial tolerance, and so on. Trager and Raths assumed that by this method they would "secur[e] evidence concerning the influence of the movie in bringing about a change in attitude." Thus, for example, the students were asked, prior to seeing the film, how many people they knew who "think their own religion is the very best, and . . . think people with other religions are not as good as they are." Crossfire was shown the next day to the student group, and then on the following day, the students were again given the same questionnaire. In the pretest, the students answered that 24 percent of the people they knew believed their religion was the very best; in the posttest, the result was only 15 percent. From this evidence, Trager and Raths concluded that Crossfire might help to "release" the intolerance of audience members.63 An alternative conclusion, however, is that Monty's example of virulent, murderous anti-Semitism radically skewed the very definition of anti-Semitism for the high-school audiences, so that what had previously seemed

to

be

anti-Semitic

attitudes

among

their

friends

now

appeared

comparatively more acceptable.64 The really interesting thing here is not so much whether or not the Trager-Raths study was scientifically valid, but that the AJC took the study as a call to arms, as both a challenge to its own scientific authority and a threat to "standards" in the field of social scientific testing as a whole. Ultimately, the AJC's Scientific Research Department decided that it could not let either Trager's chutzpah in undertaking an independent study or the shoddiness of the Trager-Raths study itself go unchallenged. As they reported to Dr. Slawson, "In view of our

57

experience it appears highly unlikely that such a quick and methodologically unsophisticated study could produce scientifically meaningful results or serve as a guide for action. The Department is seriously concerned about the potential bad effect on the entire field of testing if investigations of inferior quality are allowed to stand uncriticized." In early October, Dr. Marie Jahoda and Dr. Seider Chein convened a meeting with Dr. Raths to confront him with the methodological flaws in his study. Bringing the full weight of the AJC's scientific reputation to bear, Jahoda and Chein used a thinly veiled threat of public exposure to pressure Raths into admitting his errors: "It was made clear to Dr. Raths that various pressures would be likely be placed on . . . [the] AJC to take some public stand on the study and that, in this case, they would have to criticize its methodology in order to safeguard the more time consuming and expensive studies [of its own]." By the end of the meeting, insisting "he was in no sense a lackey of Mr. Trager,"

58

Raths capitulated to Jahoda and Chein's bullying. "With great sincerity," Raths offered to "cooperate, without charge, in any interesting and worthwhile studies of . . . the AJC," and agreed to revise the study according to the guidelines suggested by the AJC's Scientific Research Department. Additionally, Drs. Jahoda and Chein extracted Raths's promise that he would "mention to no one that [the conversation] had taken place." As he left, the beleaguered Dr. Raths "expressed his great satisfaction at having had this discussion."65 The version of the Trager-Raths study that was published in 1948 in the Journal of Educational Sociology is remarkably guarded in its conclusions.66

The Commentary Debate The final act in the AJC's campaign against Crossfire was an article by Elliot E.

59

Cohen, "A Letter to the Movie-Makers: The Film Drama as a Social Force," that appeared in the August 1947 issue of Commentary. Though sponsored and funded by the AJC, Commentary was equally influenced by the cultural politics of the anti-Stalinist Left, particularly the New York Jewish intellectuals clustered around Partisan Review. Young, brilliant, and remarkably prolific, this group dominated and nearly defined the American intellectual scene in the late 1940s and 1950s, though they preferred to see themselves as outsiders, at odds with the dominant society by virtue of their Jewishness, their politics, and their superior intellect.67 Though Elliot Cohen, Commentary's executive editor, was raised in the South rather than in Brooklyn or Manhattan, and educated at Yale rather than at Columbia or City College of New York, he clearly belonged to this pivotal generation of New York Jewish intellectuals.68 During the 1920s, Cohen wrote for the Menorah Journal, gathering around him an elite clique of bright young Jewish

60

writers including Lionel and Diana Trilling, Herbert Solow, Clifton Fadiman, and Tess Slesinger. The group, in pursuing the Menorah Journal's goal of defining the place of the Jew in the modern world, embraced a cosmopolitan cultural pluralism. Emphasizing that Jews were shaped by the same forces that conditioned the rest of humanity, Cohen argued that knowledge of Jewish history and culture could shed light on the "pressing problems of adjustment among all self-conscious racial, national, and cultural minorities of the modern state." In the 1930s, the Menorah Journal group flirted briefly with the Communist Party, and Cohen was active in some of the celebrated causes of the day, defending the Bonus Marchers, the Scottsboro Boys, and Angelo Herndon, and writing a pamphlet, The Yellow Dog Contract, in support of striking coalminers in Harlan County, Kentucky. By 1933 or 1934, however, the group had repudiated the Party, though not necessarily revolutionary Marxism, and allied themselves with the Trotskyists and the anti-Stalinist Left.69 Soon afterward, in response to personal and family pressures, Cohen had retired from the world of little magazines and mass rallies to spend ten years working with the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. The contacts he made with Jewish community leaders helped him to secure funding from the AJC to launch Commentary in November 1945.70 As executive editor, Cohen infused Commentary with his own anti-Communist

61

left-liberalism and anti-Zionist cultural pluralism. In many ways, however, his politics complemented the views of the AJC's patrician leaders. Indeed, though Cohen prefaced his review of Crossfire with a disclaimer that the views expressed were entirely his own, his comments reflected the AJC's position on Crossfire. More interestingly, perhaps, Cohen's critique also reflected the emerging consensus among left-liberal intellectuals on the deleterious effects of mass culture on American society. This critique, deeply influenced by Freud and the Frankfurt School theorists, argued that the proliferation of mass culture had corrupted high modernist culture and aesthetic standards, and obliterated "individual genius." In elevating common entertainment over serious art and pandering to the middlebrow tastes of the masses, mass culture encouraged escapism and conformity and undermined critical thinking and the individual's will to resist the state. Though they certainly saw film as an art form, the mass-culture critics were particularly contemptuous of Hollywood filmmaking, believing that "collective creation" could only lead to a standardized, inferior cultural product.71 Cohen's contempt for Hollywood films is evident from the subtle sarcasm of his opening paragraph: "We see by the papers that Hollywood is to give us a cycle of movies on anti-Semitism. This is exciting news. At last we are to have the fabulous magic of the film, the influence of its stars on the millions, its infinite

62

technical resources, marshalled against this insidious social threat." Citing the industry's plans to follow Crossfire with Gentleman's Agreement, Focus, and other anti–anti-Semitism films, Cohen argued that film producers, like advertising executives, naïvely believe that "repetition, repetition, repetition" is sufficient to mold public opinion, whether concerning the virtues of Lucky Strike cigarettes or the evils of intolerance. For Cohen and the other mass-culture critics, the line between advertising, popular culture, and propaganda—with its connotations of totalitarian mind control—was not at all clear.72 Thus, he asked, "May we not, by similarly pounding away on the wrongness of hating Jews, wear a new groove in the reflexes of American social behavior?"73 Drawing on the "expert" discussion organized by the AJC, which he himself had

63

attended, Cohen noted that though many were impressed by the "movie as a movie," most of the experts had significant qualms about the film. While he was careful to describe the range of opinions expressed by the experts, he suggested that those who believed that "bringing prejudice to the surface and openly confronting it is healthier than continuing to leave it suppressed and hidden" may be as naïve as the film's producers. And though he acknowledged that the majority agreed that Crossfire would simply reinforce existing attitudes or at best convert the neutral, he gave far greater weight to the expert minority (those who "have learned to know [the anti-Semite] through their studies of his personality type and its motivations") who believed the film might inflame the violent prejudices of committed bigots.74 From this perspective, Cohen argued that Crossfire's noir milieu would actually

64

enhance the film's dangerous effect. His language reveals his outrage at mass culture's appeal to the basest instinct of movie audiences: [F]rom the start it projects you into the involved and unhealthy atmosphere of the 'hardboiled' detective thriller (Hammett-Chandler: Bogart-Alan Ladd), in which violence and intrigue have acquired a new, sadistic dimension. It is a milieu in which the characters are mostly not merely sinister, but depraved: fists crunch against skulls, and murder is only the final expression of a world of hostility, torture, betrayal, and cruelty. Vice is no longer a mere means of advancing the plot (for the characters: for the audience) but an end in itself. Perversities lie close to the surface.

Because of this depraved "social framework," Cohen argued, Crossfire was "bound to set reverberating group and class prejudices and loyalties not evoked by the ordinary crime film or Western."75 Like the AJC's expert panel, Cohen was concerned with audience identification with the characters. He argued that conscious anti-Semites, especially "the

65

'unadjusted'

veterans,"

would

identify

unconsciously

with

the

GIs:

"just

demobilized, ordinary, white native Protestant, 'our kind,'—a band of comrades with battle records, plagued by the unhappinesses and insecurities of that new, troubling No Man's Land between war and postwar." Against this obvious ethnic solidarity, Cohen believed, audiences would perceive Samuels as an outsider. Though he commended the filmmakers for presenting the Jew as more than a "pasteboard, Arrow-collar noble-innocent," Cohen saw in Samuels a "composite of many of the anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jew": "[S]oft-handed, flashily dressed, suave, artistic, intellectual, moralizing, comfortably berthed in a cushy bachelor apartment during the war, with a bosomy Gentile mistress, self-assured, pushing in where he is not wanted." Cohen, too, noted the sexual ambiguities in the film's representation of Samuels, despite the presence of "a fast-looking babe": "He makes up to Mitch and invites him to his room—what does he want of him?" Given the nasty elements of the Jew's character and his questionable motives in insinuating himself into the company of the GIs, Cohen argued, audience sympathies would naturally gravitate toward the anti-Semite.76 In this context, Cohen's characterization of Monty is also telling, as it reflects Horkheimer

and

Adorno's

psychosocial

explanation

of

the

66

"authoritarian

personality" and anticipates the "status anxiety" argument put forth in the 1950s to explain the appeal of McCarthyism to the masses.77 Noting that anti-Semitism is not a "casual bit of excess baggage" but a fundamental component of personality, Cohen argued, "It is perhaps his most important defense in a harsh world, enabling him to operate in the midst of conflicting pressures and personal frustrations. To greater or lesser degree, it protects him; and, needing it, he will fight to protect it." For him, Crossfire's Monty is an "every-man" with whom "the millions near enough like him" would identify: "A tough character, and a nasty streak in him, especially with a drink or two under his belt. But you're drawn to him. His personality overshadows the others. A plain, husky fellow, not much education, visibly troubled, up against a world too smart for him, fighting shrewdly, stupidly, blindly against the 'others' who hem him in—before his crime, after his crime." According to Cohen, even the bullying and villainous aspects of Monty's character would not deter audience identification. Instead, he argued (with appropriately modernist references), Monty will be perceived as "a kind of hero-victim—the movie equivalent of the Hemingway-Faulkner-Farrell male, hounded and struck down by a world he never made."78 In contrast, according to Cohen's interpretation, bigoted moviegoers would find little with which to identify in the other male characters in Crossfire. Cohen dismissed Finlay as a "slick detective," while excoriating Mitch as a "mild, moony kind of a softie, hardly a man, much less a murderer." He argued that Keeley's masculine appeal was compromised by his willingness to "put in with the law,"

67

while Leroy, a "weak, illiterate hillbilly," broke "every tie of soldier loyalty . . . not merely to give his friend up, like a stool pigeon, but to trap him to his doom like a Judas!" For Cohen, the ending, as Monty is trapped and shot "like a rat," would particularly

reinforce

the

audience

identification

with

him

as

an

underdog-hero-victim, and he read the denouement from the perspective of an unregenerated anti-Semite: "What the hell kind of justice is that, a soldier, who fought for his country, just for roughing up some smart-aleck Jew, and when the soldier was blind drunk and on a tear? What kind of country do you call this when . . . . It only goes to show . . . ." Cohen asked ominously, "Can you be sure that the anti-Semites in the audience won't react this way?"79 Cohen was equally critical that Crossfire applied a simplistic "cowboy-and-Indian"

68

solution to a complex social problem. "The easy going journalistic assumption that a mere expose suffices to cure a social ill is naïve or worse," he complained. Reiterating the AJC's "quarantine" defense, he argued that Crossfire could have a boomerang effect: "Don't you risk something when you voice before millions the old European cry (to our knowledge still unheard on these shores) 'Kill the Jew!'—and then show the scapegoat actually slaughtered?" Echoing the concern expressed by Max Horkheimer (identified only as "a West Coast psychologist"), Cohen asked whether a series of anti–anti-Semitism films "might not link up hidden emotions with open action . . . and stimulate violence—especially if the Jew continues to be presented as a helpless, non-resistant, made-to-order victim." Most significantly, however, he also invoked the recent example of the Holocaust, drawing on the medical metaphors so prevalent in midcentury analyses of anti-Semitism: At the moment, we know that the germs of this disease lie latent everywhere in this country, stimulating large masses to relatively discreet discriminations and exclusions, stimulating others to more or less open hatred and scarce-hidden violences and aggressions. (Pre-war Germany seemed less infected.) But suddenly—and this is the great fear—the disease can flare epidemically—and tens of thousands cry, 'Kill the Jew'—while the other millions stand passively by. Six million Jews—not to speak of most of Europe itself—died of such an epidemic not so long ago.80

Cohen concluded his "Letter to the Movie-Makers" with two recommendations for Hollywood. First, betraying again his deep antipathy to mass culture, he suggested that filmmakers must produce "art," rather than simplistic, escapist, "nickelodeon" fare. Arguing that film is indeed an art form, he condemned Hollywood for corrupting the artistic potential of film by its refusal to be responsible to "anything except the box-office." Interestingly, given his own elitism, Cohen criticized filmmakers for failing to "respect" the film audience, apparently by looking upon moviegoers as "the masses" or the "common man."

69

However, his greatest criticism was reserved for those simplistic filmmakers (including, presumably, Schary, Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk) who believed the problem of prejudice could be "lightly polished off in a few story conferences." For Cohen, art takes work: "There is no substitute, and there is no short-cut. . . . You cannot free your brother's spirit by half-baked 'progressive' catchwords or pious indoctrinations—no matter how well-intentioned—slipped into routine catch-penny thrillers and romances, written down to 'the morons.'" Thus, he patronizingly suggested

that,

to

produce

serious

and

effective

dramatic

exposes

of

anti-Semitism, Hollywood should "turn to the practitioners of thought and art themselves—I mean to serious writers, among them, hopefully, some with genuine social insight and more than superficial political understanding."81 Cohen's second—and clearly related—recommendation was that Hollywood should

70

turn to experts, the "historians, sociologists, psychiatrists, psychologists . . . [with] a fund of information about how the anti-Semitic personality works." Noting that "you wouldn't film a naval battle without a host of experts and technical advisors," he snidely commented that Hollywood could hire three experts on anti-Semitism "for the price of one starlet." Apparently unaware of the film industry's obsessive reliance on audience previews and Gallup polls, Cohen also suggested that filmmakers "use these experts and their skills to test the impact of previous films, to pre-test audience response to parts of your films or to the actors in the key roles, and to test the completed film with different groups, areas, types of audiences." This, he suggested rather pompously, "would be a contribution to American life of the first importance." Cohen's parting shot, though, is a real zinger: "Gentlemen, how about working at it?" 82 Cohen's "Letter to the Movie-Makers" appeared in the August 1947 edition of

71

Commentary. To reach beyond the magazine's regular readers, however, Cohen distributed reprints of his article to the Anglo-Jewish press and other trade publications, as well as to individual producers and executives in the film industry. Whether as a courtesy or a challenge, Cohen also sent a copy of the article to Dore Schary, along with a telegram reiterating his position as an "independent writer" and assuring Schary that his article "was neither stimulated [by] nor is necessarily in accord with [the] American Jewish Committee's views."83 Outraged by the smug condescension of "Letter to the Movie-Makers," Schary immediately took Cohen up on his offer to comment on the article, providing that Cohen agreed to publish his reply without deletions and to give it the same targeted distribution as Cohen's article. Before sending his response to Cohen, however, Schary sent a draft of his article for review to Mendel Silberberg and Dr. David Levy, who had chaired the AJC's panel of experts. Though Levy had not yet seen the August issue of Commentary, he responded to Schary via telegram:

72

"Read your excellent reply. As far as I know it covers all points and hits hard as it should."84 Schary also sent a copy of his reply to Frank Trager, and they exchanged a flurry of letters and telegrams, strategizing ways to counteract the effects of Cohen's article. Trager assured Schary that he had already started a "counter-current" throughout the "entire B'nai B'rith membership of several hundred thousand persons as well as with some of the Jewish Community Councils." Trager also suggested that they take the offensive by publishing some of the documents from the testing procedures that he and his ADL colleagues had done with Crossfire. At that point, too, Schary was negotiating with Random House publisher Bennett Cerf to publish the script of Crossfire in book form, and Trager was eager to have his testing documents included in that as well. Schary felt that Trager should wait until his reply to Cohen's article was in print before circulating the results of the audience research on Crossfire. Then, however, he agreed that Trager's research should be circulated "very thoroughly so that every avenue is saturated with the answer."85 Schary's response, "A Letter to Elliot Cohen from a Movie-Maker," reveals political

73

and aesthetic sensibilities fundamentally at odds with Cohen's. Indeed, one reader of the Commentary debate complained, "There must be some common ground on which the pro and con can stand before a debate becomes meaningful."86 If Cohen's elitist negativity toward mass culture suggests the growing influence of Freud and the Frankfurt School on American thought during the years after World War Two, Schary's heated defense of himself, the film industry, and ordinary American moviegoers against the mass-culture critics reflects the deep-seated, lasting influence of pragmatist philosopher William James on American culture. Cultural historian Ann Douglas, arguing that James "laid the philosophic basis for the American preference for popular culture over elite and self-consciously difficult art," points to James's "instinctive reliance on the conscious life to express and to modify the unconscious one" and his "trust that what shows up in the light is more important than what may remain hidden in the dark."87 This is clearly evident in Schary's reply, particularly his populist faith in the intuition and intellect of ordinary Americans, as well as his willingness to trust his own experience—as both a Jew and a filmmaker—in judging the political and social efficacy of Crossfire. Schary's response also indicates, however, the importance of class in his personal rivalry with Cohen. Though Schary had become a highly paid and well-respected film executive, his New Jersey childhood had been a roller-coaster ride from penury to prosperity and back, and his formal education had ended with high school—a sharp contrast to Cohen's petit-bourgeois background and elite Yale education.

Schary

obviously

interpreted

Cohen's

patronizing

tone

and

recommendations not only as a personal attack, but as an affront to the ordinary

74

Americans, the "little guys," with whom he still closely identified. Schary was a scrapper, and he vented his personal resentment toward Cohen, as well as his frustration with the machinations and self-righteousness of the AJC, in his reply. Citing Cohen's own admission that the majority of experts on the AJC panel

75

believed that Crossfire would probably reaffirm the opinions of liberals and perhaps "move slightly anti-Semitic people into the liberal camp," Schary noted triumphantly, "This is what we aimed at." To challenge Cohen's charge that experts should have been consulted, that the film should have been subjected to scientific testing, he cited the responses of his own experts—the American people—and noted that "Crossfire is doing remarkably good business to very appreciative audiences all through America." Drawing on the audience research conducted by Trager and Raths, as well as RKO's own screenings for preview audiences, Schary provided a statistical breakdown of the results to show that objective science could also be marshalled in the film's defense: "The mail we've received, and the preview cards totalling some 2,200 individual opinions, are about 93% enthusiastic and approving. Of the remaining 7%, some 5% are cautious and apprehensive, and the last 2% are anti-Semitic in character, varying from casual social anti-Semitism to the violent species." Schary also defended ordinary Americans against the mass-culture critique, arguing that filmmakers would never describe moviegoers as "morons," as Cohen did. Instead, he added pointedly, "Probably we give our audiences a greater vote of confidence than you do with some of your fears and irresolutions."88 Taking direct aim at Cohen's fear that the film would inflame dangerous anti-Semitic tendencies, Schary argued, "Crossfire was never intended to convert the violent anti-Semite. It was intended to insulate people against violent and virulent anti-Semitism."89 Thus, Schary emphasized the responses of ordinary moviegoers to the issues of most concern to Cohen: the "Judas" theme and the film's ending, and the representations of Monty and Samuels. On the "Judas" theme, he bragged: "[A]lmost 92% approved completely the ending, the trap, and understood the motive of LeRoy. The remaining 8% fell into two groups which argued about whether Montgomery (the killer) should have wound up in jail or whether he should have reformed. Nowhere in any of the answers was there an expression of your 'Judas' fear. They all hated Montgomery and enjoyed his getting two bullets in his hide." Schary also pointed out that few audience members agreed with Cohen's reading of Monty: "To the American audiences polled, he is cowardly (he runs), a double-crosser (he kills his best friend), he hates 'civilian' soldiers (who comprised perhaps 95% of our armed forces), and he is sweaty and sloppy (no bobby-soxer virtue for heroes)." On the representation of Samuels, Schary argued, "No matter what the Jew had been in Crossfire, the anti-Semite would have read something evil into his character."90

76

Significantly, Schary's analysis completely sidestepped the issue of unconscious

77

audience identification in his rebuttal. Though he clearly recognized that anti-Semitism was a complex problem, Schary had little patience with the hidden motives, repressed aggressions, and other psychological mechanisms that disturbed Cohen and the AJC's experts. Thus, he was particularly critical of Cohen's

invocation

of

Horkheimer,

identified

only

as

the

"West

Coast

psychologist": "[H]e forgets that in the years since 1931 some six million people have been

78

killed because they were Jews. A world horrified by the slaughter fought against Nazism. They didn't side with Hitler. If your thesis about Crossfire stimulating violence was true, the spectacle of all those sad dead six million would have raised enough violence to have had us all butchered." For the plain-speaking and pragmatic Schary, the psychologizing indulged in by the experts simply muddied the waters. As he commented, "The only confusion about Crossfire, I must say, seems to be articulated by you, not by the audiences who have seen it and who have expressed themselves with complete clarity on the subject; they like the picture and understand it."91 Schary clearly understood that a struggle for moral authority and political

79

expertise was at the heart of the criticisms by Cohen and the AJC. Thus, he defended

himself

by

invoking

personal

experience—rather

than

abstract

theorizing—to challenge the AJC's claims to monopoly in the field of Jewish defense. Citing his own "years of study and practical experience in the field of anti-Semitism" and particularly his history of defense work "on platforms, in Army Camps, in schools and in debate," Schary plugged the pragmatic, activist stance he shared with the ADL, emphasizing the power of organized public action. For example, he pointed to the example of antilynching campaigns to show that lynchings "have always decreased as people have protested vehemently against them." Similarly, he argued that while "you don't yell fire in a crowded movie house," if there is a fire, "you do something about it before somebody gets burned."92 Schary concluded his reply with a rousing defense of the "expertise" of his colleagues in the film industry. "The motion picture art contains people of wide and varied experience and education," he insisted, and, unable to resist a personal jab at Cohen, added snippily, "Some of them even went to Yale." Responding to Cohen's smug assertion that Crossfire was "polished off in a couple of story conferences," Schary set the record straight: "We consulted more than one expert in the making of Crossfire. We talked to many." However, he also pointed out that experts in Jewish defense were not necessarily experts in filmmaking: "If we had accepted all the reservations of the experts, we would

80

have compromised and inhibited and vitiated a picture that right now seems to be doing the job it was aimed at doing." Schary's conclusion reveals how very personally he took Cohen's critique: "We have the things you imply we lack—knowledge, imagination and art. . . . To us, and to our audiences, Crossfire was part of our job. I am very proud we made it."93 The Commentary debate created difficulties for the AJC leaders, since they had

81

not made a public statement on Crossfire.94 On the one hand, they were concerned about the general perception that the AJC had been "unaware of the existence of this picture, and that only the ADL had interested itself" in the film. On the other hand, anxious to maintain the impression, however erroneous, of Commentary's independence from the AJC, they were concerned that many in the Jewish

community

believed Cohen's

article represented the AJC's

formal

position.95 More importantly, however, their decision to distribute Cohen's article to the press angered key people in Hollywood—particularly the powerful Mendel Silberberg—and exacerbated the already troubled relations between the AJC and the film industry. Indeed, Gus Goldstein of the AJCongress suggested at a meeting of the Los Angeles CRC that the AJC be formally censured for its "activity in

relation

to

Crossfire."

Though

Goldstein's

motion

was

defeated,

AJC

representative Lawrence Bloomgarden urged the leadership in no uncertain terms to placate Silberberg: I know that it is a very difficult problem but Silberberg in my opinion is prepared to continue this as a community issue and to use all possible methods to discredit our actions. For my part I don't see how we can work effectively with the motion picture industry when Mendel Silberberg, Dore Schary, . . . and others would close all doors that Leon Lewis might seek to utilize. . . . [F]or the health and wealth and welfare of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Jewish Committee . . . the National Organization [must] negotiate a peace treaty to end the war with Mendel Silberberg.96

On October 1, following a particularly unproductive meeting to discuss ways to

82

salvage the situation, AJC staff member Dorothy Nathan wrote to John Slawson, bravely asserting that the Crossfire affair had been mishandled from the beginning. Noting that the AJC had never clearly articulated a policy for dealing with such films or with Hollywood in general, Nathan argued, "Our procedure would have been regarded by anyone, not only Dore Schary, as going over his head, yet it was recounted yesterday as if he had no right to so regard it. It antagonized him and put us at a great disadvantage vis-à-vis the ADL. It made many more enemies for us in Hollywood, I'm sure, than just Mr. Schary."97 Nathan also pointed out the AJC's hypocrisy on the Commentary debate, noting that they had roundly criticized Trager for publicizing information from a

83

confidential meeting (quite possibly the "expert discussion," though this is not entirely clear), but then were outraged when others criticized Cohen for doing the same. She also noted that it was disingenuous of them to expect that they might avoid being criticized for widely distributing reprints of Cohen's article simply by saying it was "automatic" when they knew full well that it was not, that the magazine only distributed select articles. She asked, "Is it more important to promote Commentary or to accomplish something in the field of combatting anti-Semitism?"98 Finally, Nathan argued that the AJC needed to make a public statement of their

84

position on Crossfire, both the clear up the confusion among their membership and to counteract the impression that only the ADL had been "active in evaluating the picture and promoting it." Thus, she suggested that they distribute a formal memo, along with Dr. Levy's summary of the expert discussion, rather than the Commentary articles by Cohen and Schary, which she felt would only fan the flames. In addition, she chided Slawson for failing to send Dr. Levy a note of thanks "for the trouble he went to . . . at our request," lamenting, "I just don't understand why we go ahead antagonizing people who can be, and have been willing to be helpful in our work."99 The imminent release of Gentleman's Agreement gave added urgency to Nathan's

85

desire for the AJC to mend its fences. She had spoken recently to someone at Twentieth Century–Fox, who told her that the ADL would "be in on any showing" of Gentleman's Agreement since they had been so active in promoting Crossfire within the Jewish community. She was also warned, however, that "Jewish agencies would probably do well to keep their hands off this picture as the producers did not want it regarded as a propaganda piece."100 At the end of October, Slawson and the other AJC leaders issued a formal memo to members of the National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC) written by S. Andhil Fineberg, the AJC's leading advocate of the "quarantine" defense. Though his "Memorandum on Crossfire" notes, in a brief stab at objectivity, that "there is no unanimity within the staff regarding its propaganda effect," the AJC's general disapproval of the film and its continuing commitment to the "quarantine" defense are abundantly clear.101 For example, though Fineberg acknowledges that many Jews had responded enthusiastically to the film's "unquestionable sincerity of purpose" and "remarkably fine technical execution," he insists that "a professional attitude requires that personal responses to the film's message be discounted." The AJC's concern with overemphasizing

Jewish

victimization

and

publicizing

the

prevalence

of

anti-Semitism in America is evident in Fineberg's plea for films that represent Jews in a positive light. Noting the public relations value for Catholics of films like

86

Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, he warns of the danger in representing Jews "to millions of people as rejected and unpopular" in the string of anti–anti-Semitism films planned by Hollywood: "We who know something about scapegoating should foresee the consequences of this process." And, reiterating the desirability of expert consultation and scientific testing, he argues, "There is too much at stake for the Jews of America to rely upon good intentions and rule-of-thumb judgements in dealing with intolerance. Intolerance is much too devious, subtle and misleading a phenomenon, and dangerous seeds may be planted in the very act of tearing off branches."102 To ensure that the AJC critique would reach a mass audience, Fineberg also wrote

87

an article for circulation to newspapers and magazines. A popularized version of the NCRAC memo, "Examining the Movie Gift-Horse" reveals even more clearly Fineberg's preoccupation with negative public perceptions of Jews. Noting that "the Jewish problem"—the "most damaging phrase" to Jews everywhere—was common parlance in Europe before the "debacle" (the Holocaust), he reiterates the postwar consensus that Jews should not be represented as "different" from other Americans: "If there is anything the Jews of America need, it is that they be regarded not as a problem but as people, who, as individuals, range from saints to sinners. When regarded as a group, they must appear as deserving people, who elicit respect, not animosity." For Fineberg, publicizing anti-Semitic attitudes would have a "boomerang" effect, creating the "impression of group support for the individual's hostility." As he argues, "No sane individual would advertise himself as unpopular in the hope of winning friends and allies thereby." Fineberg was particularly concerned with the

anti–anti-Semitism films planned by

Hollywood: If these are box-office successes, we may soon find the Jew presented on the screen as someone whose windows are smashed; as someone to whom jobs are refused; as someone unwelcome at the colleges; as someone mistreated in many other ways. In all of these pictures anti-Jewish scurrilities must be spoken. Some of the film characters will denounce anti-Semitism but the American Jews will be fixed in the public mind as persons most likely to be disliked.

Rather than relying on films featuring "fictitious characters which strengthen the impression that many people hate Jews," Fineberg maintained that anti-Semitism should be combated by "specific measures, wherein we take real action directed toward eliminating concrete acts of intolerance and discrimination in specific localities by specific steps and specific laws."103 Not surprisingly, Fineberg's public statements endorsing the "quarantine" defense did little to placate Mendel Silberberg, and the "private war" between AJC and the Hollywood Jews continued well into 1948. However, by late October, the HUAC

88

hearings on Communist influence in Hollywood (which ultimately resulted in contempt citations for Scott and Dmytryk) dramatically altered the political terrain. Fearful that they might be tarred by the "Jewish-Communist conspiracy" brush wielded against Hollywood by HUAC, the Jewish defense organizations scurried to present a united front, taking a hard line against Communism and reiterating

their

loyal

Americanism.

Apparently

agreeing

with

HUAC

that

outspoken criticism of anti-Semitism seemed suspiciously un-American, in December 1947 the ADL joined other leading Jewish defense organizations in the NCRAC, in officially endorsing the "quarantine" defense. Though the ADL never formally repudiated its support for Crossfire, its zeal for "social problem" films cooled considerably in the dangerous new political climate.104

Notes Note 1: Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 12–13, 143, 153; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 67; and Arthur A. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 22. Note 2: Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, 67–68. Note 3: Ibid., 68; Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 12–13; Leonard Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home: Anti-Semitism and the American Jewish Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 182. Note 4: Overcoming Prejudice, Solomon Fineberg's 1943 manual for organizing against anti-Semitism, is a far cry from the activist "bible" of the 1960s, Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. According to Fineberg, "The undeviating objective of a program for establishing security against anti-Semitism must be to make Jewish life in America as admirable as possible and to see to it that Jewish reputation is as good as Jewish character" (19). Nevertheless, the AJC's suspicion of "the people" is evident in Finberg's disturbing portrait of immature, overemotional Jews who overreact to every little anti-Semitic "incident." Such making of mountains out of molehills, he suggests, only confirmed Gentiles' suspicions that Jews are overly sensitive troublemakers. Discouraging his readers from trying to handle anti-Semitic incidents on their own, Fineberg counsels them to bring their problems to a mature, rational, and properly trained expert in Jewish defense. This is not to say that Fineberg recommends passivity in the face of anti-Semitism; quite the opposite, in fact. However, he is very clear that aggressive, outspoken action should be overseen by professionals, rather than individuals. See Solomon Andhil Fineberg, Overcoming Prejudice (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943). Note 5: See, for example, Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews; Rafeal Medoff, The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust (New York: Shapolsky, 1987); and Haskel Lookstein, Were We Our Brothers' Keepers? The Public Response of American Jews to the Holocaust, 1938–1944 (New York: Hartmore House, 1985). Note 6: See, for example, Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Henry Holt, 1982); and Henry Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New York: Holocaust Library, 1980). Note 7: Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 276–288; Novick, Holocaust in

American Life. Note 8: Novick, Holocaust in American Life. See also Hertzberg, Jews in America, 286–291. Note 9: In fact, according to Novick, well into the 1960s, American Jewish defense groups worked to downplay the victimization of Jews, emphasizing instead acts of Jewish resistance such as the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto and the battlefield heroism of American Jewish servicemen. Novick, Holocaust in American Life, 121. Note 10: Hertzberg, Jews in America, 291. Note 11: Karen Brodkin, How the Jews Became White Folks and What that Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 35–51. On changing racial definitions, see also Matthew Frye Jacobsen, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), and Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Note 12: Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 15, 31–36. Note 13: Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home, 182. Note 14: Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 18–21. Note 15: Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home, 181–182; Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 31–32. Note 16: The Frankfurt School, the popular term for the Institut fur Sozialforschung, was founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt. Many of the Frankfurt School intellectuals, fleeing Nazism, emigrated to New York in the 1930s, where they affiliated with Columbia University, recreating their workgroup as the Institute for Social Research. Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 33–35; Phil Slater, "Max Horkheimer," in Justin Wintle, ed., Makers of Modern Culture (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1981), 236–237. Note 17: Oliver Zunz, Why the American Century? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 65–69, quote on 66. On the AJC's public opinion surveys of the 1930s, see Charles Herbert Stember et al., Jews in the Mind of America (New York: Basic Books, 1966). Note 18: See Carey McWilliams, Brothers Under the Skin: African-Americans and Other Minorities (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943; rev. ed. 1964) and A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948; New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999). For more information on McWilliams and his work, see Carey McWilliams, The Education of Carey McWilliams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), and Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996), particularly chapter 12. Note 19: Both Horkheimer, ed., Studies of Authority and the Family (1936) and Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (1950), for example, are concerned with modern techniques for controlling public opinion and human behavior. However, in the earlier work, the antiauthoritarian type is the revolutionary, while in the later work, it is the "democratic personality" or the "genuine liberal." The mass-culture critique, which had great currency among left-liberal intellectuals in the 1950s, is discussed in more detail below. Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 33–35, 37; Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 217; William Graebner, The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1981), 54, 145, 110; Slater, "Max Horkheimer," 236–237. Note 20: The Studies in Prejudice series also included two sociological works that the AJC found less useful as a theoretical framework for its defense work. Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 33–35; Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 122. Note 21: For a stellar example of the application of medical metaphors to anti-Semitism, see Fineberg, Overcoming Prejudice. On Hollywood's popularization of this discourse, see

Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (New York: Pantheon, 1983). Note 22: Pells, The Liberal Mind, 130. In Why the American Century? Olivier Zunz brilliantly traces the continuities between prewar and postwar social engineering, particularly the uses of social science in the "knowledge matrix" (65–69). Note 23: Myrdal quoted in Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 31–32. Note 24: Though members of the AJCongress participated in various coalition groups with the AJC and ADL, the AJCongress as an organization did not participate in any substantive way in the debate over Crossfire. Nonetheless, in the conflict between the ADL and the AJC, the leftist AJCongress could generally be counted on to support the more populist views of the ADL, rather than the elitist AJC. This support, however informal or unspoken, no doubt bolstered the ADL's confidence in their position on Crossfire. Note 25: The Jewish Community Committee's Community Relations Council (CRC) was an interagency group representing a broad spectrum of national organizations, including the more left-wing AJCongress and the JLC, as well as the ADL and AJC. In general, the war crisis forced greater collaboration among Jewish defense agencies. In addition to their independent activities, the defense agencies worked together through a complex array of committees and subcommittees, as well as with local Jewish Community Councils, synagogues, labor unions, and other organizations. To coordinate these wide-ranging and often overlapping defense and public-relations activities, the National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC) was created in March 1944. Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home, 181; Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, especially 15; Memorandum on Community Relations Program with the Motion Picture Industry, March 1947, in American Jewish Committee Papers [hereafter AJC Papers], General File 10, Box 229, File 2, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research [hereafter YIVO], New York. Note 26: Memorandum on Community Relations Program with the Motion Picture Industry, March 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B229-F2, and Frank Altschul to Members of the Domestic Public Relations Committee, AJC Memorandum, July 10, 1944, in AJC Papers, G12-B145-F5, YIVO; Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 293–297. Note 27: Rothschild to Silberberg, August 4, 1944, in AJC Papers, G12-B145-F4, and Altschul to the Domestic Public Relations Committee, July 10, 1944, in AJC Papers, G12-B145-F5, YIVO. Note 28: Mendel Silberberg to John Slawson, January 29, 1946; Slawson to Silberberg, February 5, 1946; Silberberg to Slawson, February 13, 1946; Slawson to Silberberg, March 22, 1946; all in AJC Papers, G12-B145, YIVO. Note 29: Slawson to Walter Hillborn, May 5, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 30: Silberberg to Rothschild, March 19, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 31: Slawson to Hillborn, May 5, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 32: Lewis to Rothschild, April 4, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 33: Proskauer to Irvine, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 34: Rathvon to Schary, April 8, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 35: Slawson to Hillborn, May 5, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 36: Coleman to Gutstadt, April 14, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 37: Ibid. Note 38: Herzberg to Schary, April 18, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 39: Lewis to Rothschild, April 17, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO.

Note 40: Ibid.; Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 267. Note 41: Lewis to Rothschild, April 17, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 42: Hillborn to Schary, April 17, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 43: Lewis to Rothschild, April 17, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 44: Horkeimer to Schary, April 18, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 45: Ibid. Note 46: Ibid. Note 47: Ibid. Note 48: Ibid. Note 49: Schary to Horkheimer, April 28, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 50: Robinson to Schary, April 22, 1947, and Prinzmetal to Herzberg, April 22, 1947, both in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 51: Rathvon to Irvine, April 22, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 52: Herzberg to Silberberg, April 11, 1947, and Robinson to Schary, April 22, 1947, both in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 53: Slawson to Trager, May 13, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 54: It is unclear whether the AJC chose Levy to chair the panel with the expectation that he would be a neutral facilitator or an advocate for their position. However, after the fact, the AJC was unhappy with his performance in this role, perhaps because he failed to direct the discussion more stringently along the lines of the AJC's critique. Though Levy himself reported "objectively" on the proceedings, there is some evidence that his sympathies lay with the ADL's position. For example, his wife wrote to Schary after the screening, praising the film as a "fearless and forthright presentation of a problem that is threatening our democratic way of life," and Levy himself later supported Schary during the Commentary debate (see below). Mrs. David Levy to Schary, May 24, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 55: Slawson to Schary, July 8, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 56: David M. Levy, "Crossfire: The Case of Propaganda in a Mystery Thriller," July 8, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 57: [Samuel Flowerman], "Crossfire: A Discussion among Experts," n.d. [June 1947], in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 58: Ibid. Note 59: Though Bettleheim did not attend this screening and expert discussion, his reply to Elliot Cohen's review of Crossfire in Commentary [see below] reiterated the AJC's conclusions about the film's dangerous effect. Bettleheim to Cohen, October 29, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F3, YIVO. Note 60: "Crossfire: A Discussion among Experts," n.d. [June 1947], in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 61: Ibid. Note 62: Trager to Schary, June 5, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS; J. Harold Saks to CRC and ADL Regional Offices, ADL Memorandum, July 15, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 63: Louis E. Raths and Frank N. Trager, "Public Opinion and Crossfire," Journal of Educational Sociology 21 (1948): 351–355. Note 64: Indeed, a similar conclusion was reached by the AJC's Dr. Marie Jahoda in June 1945, after Tomorrow the World, a film about Nazism, was shown to thousands of

high-school students across the country. The "percentage of students who thought Jews were treated unfairly fell by more than a third after seeing the film: it set a standard of 'unequal treatment' that made discriminatory practices in America not worth noticing." Dr. Jahoda concluded that "these figures ought to be considered very seriously by everyone making use of Nazi atrocities for propaganda here." Novick, Holocaust in American Life, 122–123. Note 65: Department of Scientific Research to John Slawson, AJC Memorandum, October 9, 1947; Dr. Marie Jahoda and Dr. Seider Chein to Dr. Samuel Flowerman and Dr. Stuart Cook, AJC Memorandum, October 10, 1947, both in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 66: Louis E. Raths and Frank N. Trager, "Public Opinion and Crossfire," Journal of Educational Sociology 21 (1948): 345–368. Note 67: Indeed, Commentary strove to be a Partisan Review for its middle-class Jewish readers, and many of the writers associated with Partisan Review—Philip Rahv, Calvin Trilling, Sidney Hook, Leslie Fiedler, Daniel Bell and others—often wrote for Commentary as well. In addition, several key Commentary staff members frequently published their work in Partisan

Review,

including

Clement

Greenberg

(associate

editor),

Robert

Warshow

(managing editor), and David Reisman and Irving Kristol (both assistant editors). Pells, Liberal Mind, 71–77. For a thorough analysis of this pivotal generation, see Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). Note 68: Elliott Cohen was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1899 and raised in Mobile, Alabama, the son of a Russian-born rabbi who became a peddler and then owner of a clothing store in America. Cohen was a "prodigy from birth" who could read newspaper headlines from the age of 2 or 3. Enrolling at Yale at 15, he graduated at 18 with a brilliant record in English literature and philosophy, and then spent several years at Yale graduate school. Wald, New York Intellectuals, 31–32. Note 69: Elliot Cohen, quoted in Wald, New York Intellectuals, 32; Wald, New York Intellectuals, 31-32, 56-61. The political sojourn of the Menorah Journal group is brilliantly satirized in Tess Slesinger's novel The Unpossessed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1934), available with an introduction by Alice Kessler-Harris and Paul Lauter, and an afterword by Janet Sharistanian (Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1984). Note 70: Wald, New York Intellectuals, 110–111. Note 71: Pells, Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age, 216–228; Graebner, Age of Doubt, 137–140. Note 72: Cohen's example of Lucky Strikes is particularly interesting here. The mastermind behind the Lucky Strike ad that first "sold" cigarettes to women, Edward Bernays, was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays's seminal handbook on advertising, deeply informed by Freudianism, was provocatively entitled Propaganda. Bernays also served on Creel's "propaganda" committee during the First World War. Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), 47; Zunz, Why the American Century?, 62. Note 73: Elliot E. Cohen, "A Letter to the Movie-Makers: The Film Drama as a Social Force," Commentary 4:2 (August 1947): 110–111. Note 74: Ibid., 111–112. Note 75: Ibid., 112. Note 76: Ibid., 112–113. Note 77: See, for example, Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1960); Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: Knopf, 1948); and Reisman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of

Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950; rpt. 2001). Note 78: Cohen, "Letter to the Movie-Makers," 112, 115. Note 79: Ibid., 112–113. Note 80: Ibid., 113–114. Note that even as he raises the specter of the Holocaust, Cohen downplays the special victimization of the Jews, as well as the class, race, and gender complexities of fascism. Note 81: Ibid., 116–117. Note 82: Ibid., 118. Note 83: Cohen to Schary, August 26, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F2, WHS. Note 84: Levy to Schary, n.d. [September 1947], in Schary Papers, B127-F2, WHS. Note 85: Trager to Schary, September 18, 1947; Schary to Trager, September 29, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F2, WHS. Note 86: Irving Lipkowitz to Elliot Cohen, October 31, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10, B7, F3, YIVO. Note 87: Douglas, Terrible Honesty, 116, 119. Note 88: Dore Schary, "A Letter to Elliot Cohen from a Movie-Maker," Commentary 4:3 (September 1947): 1–2, 8, in Schary Papers, B127-F2, WHS. The audience response to Crossfire is discussed in more detail in the following chapter. Note 89: Schary, "Letter to Elliot Cohen," 1–3. Note 90: Ibid., 2–4. Note 91: Ibid., 6. Note 92: Ibid. Note 93: Ibid., 3, 8. Note 94: In August, the NCRAC had issued a report to its membership, summarizing the testing of Crossfire and noting only that "there was a division of opinion" among the AJC's experts "as to whether the picture would be helpful or harmful to the cause of intergroup relations." Samuel Speigler to NCRAC Membership, NCRAC Memorandum, August 1, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 95: Dorothy Nathan to George Hexter, Dick Rothschild and Sol Fineberg, AJC Memorandum, September 18, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1-15, YIVO. Note 96: Lawrence Bloomgarden to Nathan Weisman, AJC Memorandum, October 6, 1947, in AJC Papers, G12-B145, and Dorothy M. Nathan to John Slawson, AJC Memorandum, October 1, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-F1, YIVO. Note 97: Nathan to Slawson, October 1, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-F1, YIVO. Note 98: Ibid. Note 99: Ibid. Note 100: Ibid. Note 101: There is another "Memorandum on Crossfire" in the AJC papers, dated October 10, 1947. Though unsigned, it is clearly a rough draft of Fineberg's memo published memo of October 27. Though the two documents are almost identical, the differences between the two are important. The first draft, for example, acknowledges that there are "strong arguments to be made on either side" and notes "considerable wavering on the part of most of us" regarding the political and social efficacy of anti–anti-Semitism films. These comments do not appear in the final, public version. Note 102: S. Andhil Fineberg, "Memorandum on Crossfire," October 27, 1947, in AJC

Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 103: S. Andhil Fineberg, "Examining the Movie Gift-Horse," October 23, 1947, in AJC Papers, G10-B7-F1, YIVO. Note 104: Only the AJCongress formally protested this move, reiterating its position that mass action and public demonstrations against anti-Semitism, particularly by "rabble rousers," were critically important to Jewish defense and the continuous agitation for the civil liberties of all Americans. Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 272, n 39.

Chapter 8 Hate is Like a Loaded Gun: Shaping the Public Response to Crossfire If the audience don't like a picture, they have a good reason. The public is never wrong. I don't go in for this thing that when I have a failure, it is because the audience doesn't have the taste or education, or isn't sensitive enough. The public pays the money. —Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn, like most of the studio moguls, fervently believed that

1

Hollywood's defining mission was not merely to make money but to provide the American public with the kind of entertainment it desired. Indeed, the moguls took great pride in their intuitive knowledge of the tastes and desires of American film audiences, trusting their hunches, gut feelings, and even, in the case of Harry Cohn, the tingle in his buttocks to predict which films would produce box-office gold.1 By the 1940s, however, Hollywood increasingly relied on scientific polling techniques to take the pulse of the moviegoing public. By 1946 eleven studios pre-screened rough-cut films with Audience Research, Inc., an independent audience-testing firm run by George Gallup. Audience testing helped independent studios secure bank financing and helped major studios determine what rental fee to charge exhibitors, after a film-by-film rental strategy replaced block booking. In addition, with the postwar decline in audience attendance, market research helped the studios determine what audiences were interested in, and indeed, who those audiences were.2 Thus, following World War Two, the film industry pioneered a new relationship between scientific testing—what we now call market research—and cultural production. Though Hollywood films had always been deeply implicated in the manufacture of taste and desire, the postwar use of expert testing linked the film industry even more closely with the advertising industry in the construction of an "average American," a profoundly normative category that encouraged the "adjustment" model of the therapeutic culture and demonized difference and dissent. At the same time, however, the polls taken by Gallup and others also allowed the American public to take its own pulse, and in the case of the movie industry, to express their desires directly, rather than relying on the instincts of the moguls. This could be profoundly democratizing, giving a voice to ordinary Americans; however, it also reified "normalcy" by encouraging people to judge themselves (whether positively or negatively is almost irrelevant) against the "average." As Olivier Zunz argues: If social scientists "manipulated" people, it was by conceptualizing an

2

imaginary person who then exerted a powerful influence on the American psyche during the 1940s and 1950s and who still reverberates today as the counterpoint to our emphasis on diversity. Managing mass society amounted to turning the computing of a statistical device, the average, into an influential way of thinking about the self.3

In an era when difference and identity politics seemed a dangerous challenge to

3

the unity of the American polity, the introduction of expert testing reinforced the fundamental conservatism of the film industry, as Adrian Scott clearly recognized: I have had contact with the Gallup bunch and I must say that I loathe them. It's pseudo-scientific nonsense, geared for the palates of the guys who own motion pictures. It can accomplish any number of things which the owners want accomplished. But it chiefly is a weapon against innovation, against new ideas, any ideas. It is a device subscribing to the status quo of pictures—what they want is more of the same; whatever has been done, must be done again.4

Indeed, expert testing gave a new, "scientific" legitimacy to the moguls' obsession with public opinion and mass taste, profoundly shaping not only the kinds of films produced in Hollywood, but the ways that those films were marketed and advertised to the American public. Not surprisingly, public opinion was critically important in RKO's handling of Crossfire. Concerned with its "sensitive" theme and the objections raised by the AJC, RKO subjected Crossfire to intensive in-house audience testing, spent large sums on advertising and publicity to shape the public response to the movie, and closely monitored the reactions of film critics. Though radical filmmakers like Scott often interpreted scientific testing and the moguls' slavish concern with public opinion as a challenge to their own progressive creative agenda, the public response to Crossfire suggested that there was, indeed, a substantial desire for "message" movies among "average" Americans.

Will It Play in Peoria? In the spring of 1947, at about the same time that the Jewish debate penetrated the RKO front office, drawing Peter Rathvon into the controversy over Crossfire, RKO commissioned Gallup's polling service, Audience Research Inc. (ARI), to conduct a survey measuring audience response to an anti–anti-Semitism film. The pollsters presented the test audience with two movies' synopses, asking them to compare the sample storylines to "most movies they see" and rate them in terms of "much better, a little better, the same, a little worse or much worse." The first synopsis read: "A friendly G.I. party ends in the murder of a civilian whom none of the G.I.s had ever met before. A clever detective is kept from solving the murder by the G.I.'s who loyally band together and deny everything, until the detective uses his knowledge of human nature and an old trick to lure the

4

murderer into giving himself away." The second synopsis read: "An army sergeant's secret hatred of Jews results in murdering a stranger, killing a buddy in cold blood, and placing the blame on a G.I. friend. The soldiers stick together out of loyalty, denying everything to protect each other. A clever police captain shrewdly detects the motive behind the crime and is able to penetrate the group, trap the killer, and obtain his confession."5 While these two synopses are roughly parallel, there are clearly more variables than the issue of anti-Semitism at play in the design of the poll, and the differences between the two synopses leave vast room for different readings by the audience participants and for alternative interpretations by the pollsters themselves. No doubt the experts at the AJC's Department of Scientific Research would have had a field day picking apart the myriad methodological flaws in Gallup's audience test. While it is impossible to consider Gallup's analysis reliable in any meaningful or "scientific" way, it is nonetheless fascinating to see what meanings the pollsters and the studio executives made of the "results." Breaking down the results into the categories of "intense want-to-see" and

5

"intense don't-want-to-see," the pollsters found that Jewish moviegoers were the only group that significantly favored the "racial prejudice" storyline over the first synopsis. In contrast, the second synopsis was rated particularly unappealing in comparison to the first by women, younger moviegoers, urbanites, and Catholics. Noting that "the largest dislike category for synopsis #2 is that the picture is about anti-Semitism or that it is just about Jews," the ARI report, submitted to the top RKO executives on April 30, 1947, strongly implied that Crossfire would fare poorly with most American movie audiences6 Had this survey been undertaken a year or two earlier, Crossfire probably would

6

never have been made. However, by the end of April, Crossfire was already in post-production, and RKO production chief Dore Schary was determined to back the film against opposition from both inside and outside the studio. Thus, in mid-May, RKO ran two sneak previews of Crossfire, one at the Hill Street Theater in downtown Los Angeles and the other at the 86th Street Theater in the Yorkville neighborhood of New York City. Preview cards were filled out by the audience members following the screenings and either collected at the theater or mailed to the studio afterward. The studio then compiled the cards in large batches and retyped the responses, grouping the answers to the various questions separately. The studio also collated and posted the data on age and gender from the cards separately, suggesting that in processing the response data, the studio was more concerned with the overall response of its audience than in gauging the responses of specific audience segments.7 Significantly, audiences in Los Angeles came to the theater expecting to see The

7

Farmer's Daughter, the last film produced by Dore Schary before he assumed the helm at RKO. Schary often cited both The Farmer's Daughter and Crossfire as examples of his commitment to "message movies," and it is likely that the Hill Street Theater was chosen for Crossfire's Los Angeles preview, perhaps by Schary himself, in hopes of finding an audience amenable to dramatic films with political themes. Indeed, "[s]uch a quiet attentive audience speaks for itself," said one member of the Los Angeles audience. Crossfire faced a tougher crowd in the New York City neighborhood of Yorkville. A predominantly German and Irish working-class community, Yorkville in the 1930s had been the stomping ground of German American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn. One Jewish moviegoer at the Yorkville theater listened carefully for anti-Semitic comments, but found that the "surrounding audience was very quiet." Another, however, reported, "I saw quite a few spectators wince every time reference to the Jews was made." Nevertheless, others at the Yorkville screening noted that the film was followed by "thundering" and "spontaneous" applause, which one moviegoer suggested "showed that even if some of the audience couldn't directly accept the message they were held by the picture." Certainly, there were anti-Semites, both vulgar and genteel, in the preview audiences, and they made their views known in their survey responses. Nevertheless, the overall response to Crossfire was overwhelmingly positive. Over 80 percent of the respondents rated the film either "outstanding," "excellent," or "very good," and said they would recommend Crossfire to their friends. Asked if they believed the film could be educational as well as entertaining, nearly 70 percent answered yes, while 11 percent thought it was "questionable," and only 8 percent replied no. Though these results are no more "scientifically" valid than the Trager-Raths study, the audience responses to these sneak previews are far more interesting historically. The lobby cards used in the Trager-Raths study of adult audiences in Boston and Denver asked specific questions designed to gauge audience identification with either Monty the anti-Semite or the spokesmen for liberalism and tolerance.8 In contrast, the RKO lobby cards were open-ended, asking the audience members to list specific scenes that they liked and disliked and to answer two questions: "What will you primarily remember in terms of this picture?" and "Do you believe this picture can perform an educational function?" The audience response to these questions is fascinating and particularly revealing. Some in the audience continued to refer to Jews as a race, suggesting that the biological theories that underlay scientific racism still held a degree of explanatory power. For the most part, however, the audience-response data reveals a fundamental shift in American attitudes toward race and ethnicity. Reaffirming the popular nationalism elaborated by Hollywood and others in the war years, the vast majority of Crossfire's preview audience embraced cultural pluralism and tolerance as fundamental principles in the imagined community of postwar

8

Americans. Thus, many of the audience members at the preview screenings supported the

9

ADL's position on Crossfire, agreeing that anti-Semitism (or any form of racism) was inherently undemocratic, and indeed, un-American. One moviegoer felt the film showed "the necessity of democratic feelings toward different races and religions," while another commented, "The basic idea is that all Americans and the world must live together without hate of races and religion." A viewer from Yorkville emphasized, "We are all Americans," citing the line, "There are many funny names on casualty lists," as one of the most memorable in the film. This sentiment was widely shared by other audience members, and many believed the film "will make better Americans." For most of these viewers, a recognition of the essential humanity or individuality

10

of all people, regardless of race, creed, or color, was the bedrock of Americanism. Several respondents described it as "brotherly love," but others expanded the idea, arguing that Crossfire showed that there is "no sound reason for race hatred. Jews, Negroes, and what have you, are human too. They deserve to be treated as human beings." Another argued powerfully that merely tolerating difference was not enough: "There should not be tolerance but recognition of the indivisibility of man without prejudices." One particularly moving comment came from a moviegoer in Los Angeles: "I am a strong supporter of racial, religious and political tolerance. I found a deep sense of satisfaction to find out that I am not alone in an uncertain world." Many viewers also shared the ADL's faith in the power of muckraking and the importance of bringing social problems "into the light." Most believed that Crossfire accurately described the "truth of today here in the U.S.A." and hoped that raising the issue would help to make a difference. One moviegoer, praising the film as a powerful "lesson in bigotry and mindful of today's existing problems," argued that "understanding them is the first step toward eliminating them."

Most

respondents

agreed

with

the

ADL

that

Crossfire

was

thought-provoking and were hopeful that it would promote healthy debate among American audiences. As one Los Angeles viewer noted, "Although a great many people are beyond reach when it comes to prejudice against Jews, I think this picture is great food for thought and will start some people at least thinking about it." One outspoken Yorkville viewer quipped, "We need more like this to put more light on our psychopathic bigots and chowderheads." Another viewer, arguing that people must be "pounded on all sides," recommended that Crossfire be screened by schools, churches, clubs and other social organizations: "Keep showing it to the youth of America for that is where the germ is set." A Los Angeles moviegoer suggested with eerie prescience, "I think this picture should be shown to the

11

combined Congress of the United States." Others echoed the ADL's enthusiasm for liberal propaganda set within the

12

framework of a traditional Hollywood thriller. One audience member, for example, commended "the courage of the producer in taking a very 'difficult' topic, particularly in these times, and dramatizing it so effectively in almost typical Hollywood 'murder picture' style." James McLain wrote, "At first I thought I was in for seeing just another 'who done it'—then all at once I realized that something different was happening but again, I thought they must just be hinting—but again you spoke this time a little plainer. I still continued to think they'll just nibble around the edges and then 'Wham' and I knew you were not pulling your punches." Others, however, felt the film had "too much message, not enough entertainment." As one viewer wrote, "I go to pictures often for entertainment not to be filled up with guff." Another argued that feature films were an inappropriate vehicle for social issues, noting, "I'm sure it will have poor box office appeal as such." "This is a free country," another moviegoer commented tartly. "Let people do and think as they like without influence from movies—to prejudice them—one way or other." Nonetheless, for the most part, the preview audience agreed with the ADL that Hollywood movies could be a powerful political tool, capable of cementing American—even New Deal—values of tolerance, diversity, and democracy. Thus, one respondent praised the film industry for "acting as a positive force in advocating our principles." "I think the moving picture industry can do outstanding work in creating lasting democracy," wrote one viewer from Los Angeles, while a Yorkville audience member averred, "It is quite certain now that Hollywood has the power to keep our peoples united." For these broad-minded moviegoers, Finlay's "propaganda" speech marked the high point of the film, reinforcing for them the positive uses of propaganda to articulate and reinforce American ideals. One argued without apology, "It's a propaganda picture for Jews and it helps. It teaches one to respect any race, color or creed," while another cheered, "[I]t is propaganda for the democratic way of life. This picture will undoubtedly meet local opposition for its brutal bluntness, but it must be shown if we ever hope to attain true democracy." Another wrote, "Finlay's speech was simple and down-to-earth and would certainly appeal to the common sense of any American," while another applauded "the excellent lesson it preached, without seeming to preach, against intolerance. We need more pictures like this." Though one moviegoer believed that "the more intellectually sophisticated audience may object to the over-simplified lecture to Leroy," another appreciated the narrative of conversion in the scene, arguing, "It will preach directly to the type of people like Leroy who need to have exposed to them the Monty's [sic] of the world—the Hitlers—Ku Kluxers—who spread their hatred with Leroys as Converts."

13

Interestingly, in contrast to the AJC's desire to downplay the Holocaust, many of

14

these audience members argued that it was precisely because of the Nazis' anti-Semitic atrocities that Crossfire was such a powerful and necessary film. Drawing the obvious parallel between the murder of Samuels and the fate of Europe's Jews, several moviegoers echoed Scott's assertion that violence was the logical culmination of anti-Semitism. As one Yorkville viewer wrote, "I believe that this picture can be of great value in showing how any hatred can lead to violence and disunity." A moviegoer from Los Angeles noted, "An intense resentment or hatred nursed over a period of time will result in a physical combustion of retaliation," while a respondent from Yorkville stated bluntly, "Intolerance can lead to violence and should be curbed as early as possible." Others felt that the film performed an important public service by reminding Americans that "'Jew haters' are not imported product," and that, even in the postwar world, "we still have to be on the alert for bigots, fascists and their various types and breeds." As one Los Angeles moviegoer tersely summarized, "We all need a reminder from time to time on the question of minorities—a reminder that Hitler's methods are not wanted here." Nonetheless, some members of the audience, echoing the concerns of the AJC,

15

fearfully predicted that Crossfire might create an anti-Jewish backlash. One viewer argued, "I believe there is too much racial controversy as it is. Such propaganda is apt to create more rather than less racial feeling." Another commented, "While I am a strong believer in racial equality, I believe this picture brought it out too forcibly and may do more to incite racial unrest than relieve it." One Los Angeles viewer warned that the film "will cause resentment, as you will see in future—your propaganda scenes [are] too obvious. If you wish to promote Jewish antagonism, leave [the] picture as is." Another viewer suggested, "If this picture is shown to ignorant people who actually are not biased, might they not bring seeds of anti-Semitism just by the realization that Jews can be hated just because they are Jews?" "It will arouse some thought but feelings again will be biased," noted a viewer from Los Angeles. "The people it actually should teach are the ones who will say 'Jews in Hollywood.'" Indeed, some of the comments clearly illustrated the AJC's contention that Crossfire would inflame latent prejudices: far and away the most frequent criticism of Crossfire—from audiences in both Los Angeles and New York—was that it was "propaganda for the Jews." As one viewer asked, "Why all the Jewish propaganda? I think the Jews are treated all right in this country. So why try to get across the idea that they are not? And on top of that—do you mean to imply that all the Protestants are mistreating the Jews and Irish Catholics? You are only creating the very thing you think exists—which doesn't." One viewer noted that the film tied "right in with Jewish War Relief and the efforts to make Palestine a

16

Jewish state. Picture starts out very realistic as regards dialogue but the continual hampering of Jewish propaganda insults the intelligence of the audience." Another wrote, "I think that any race should be able to stand on its own record and should not need a propaganda picture to help it. It is fine to state true facts but don't try and make it seem as if the race is being picked on without giving any reason as to why if any." Another suggested ominously, "One leaves the picture with the feeling Robert Young and other actors in this picture played in this picture without their whole hearted consent or whether they were more or less forced to by a Jewish executive." A variation on this familiar theme was, not surprisingly, the Communist influence

17

in Hollywood, and particularly on Crossfire. Though one Los Angeles viewer simply dismissed the film as "the most communist inspired picture that I ever seen," others had more substantive critiques. A Yorkville moviegoer, for example, saw a parallel between the "drawing [of] race lines" in Crossfire and "the job done by communists to establish worker and capital class lines." Another, arguing that the film "will establish definite race consciousness which is not an asset—nullifying the 'Melting Pot of America,'" wanted an "assurance there are no 'party line' people involved." One Los Angeles viewer wrote, "[I]t seems to me that Finlay's speech, though good up to a point, would be a springboard for Communists to further infiltrate their ideology, i.e. destructive viewpoint for Americans." Another objected to the story of Finlay's grandfather on the grounds that it framed the issue of anti-Semitism incorrectly by "comparing Catholic persecution with Jewish." Rather than being a problem of religious intolerance, this viewer argued, "actually anti-Semitism is a racial characteristic antipathy," and should be compared to the "Negro race problem—Jap, Mexican, etc." Though the AJC's fear of "unconscious identification" is, of course, impossible to document from this kind of evidence, the preview audience itself was also deeply concerned with the issue of identification. However, they hoped that the latent anti-Semites in the audience would identify with Monty and thereby recognize their ideological error and become more tolerant of difference. Rejecting the AJC's emphasis

on

the

unconscious,

they

believed

that

Crossfire

could

be

a

consciousness-raising experience. Indeed, many argued, with Trager and Raths and the ADL, that Crossfire would awaken moviegoers to their own latent anti-Semitism, enabling them to "release" their intolerant feelings. As one Yorkville respondent commented, "The suddenness with which Monty voiced his dislike of the Jews made everyone sit up and think—Why I know someone just like that—perhaps it was themselves they recognized. This picture did not preach, it did something better; it brought to the people the realization that discrimination is senseless, that without realizing it they themselves might be fanning the fires of hatred." A viewer in Los Angeles predicted, "People will flinch in the right

18

places—probably not those who should, but you'll get plenty of decent flinches from plenty of decent Americans. Which is better than nothing." Another confessed to "a queer sense of embarrassment of hearing the word 'Jew' said out loud and a deep sense of shame that we should all need this." Others, however, were concerned that Crossfire's focus on the "lunatic fringe" let

19

audience members off the hook: "How many anti-Semites or the 'on the fence' people will recognize a kinship with Monty the killer, the mentally ill guy?" asked a moviegoer in Los Angeles. Another argued, "The problem of intolerance is not subtle enough [in the film]. Many people who should will not see in themselves potential Montgomerys." Noting that most Americans were simply "casual" anti-Semites, one viewer commented, "Monty is so completely unsympathetic that the common anti-Semite of Leroy's type refuses to identify himself with him. . . . His type of anti-Semitism is more common, therefore more harmful, and harder to overcome." Los Angeles respondent James McLain, however, disagreed: "This killer or his prototype is not overdrawn. I have met him dozens of times on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. . . . And right now if he was at the preview of your picture is writing you a letter denouncing you as 'filthy communist Jews' trying to overthrow the government." Interestingly, some of the audience responses to the representation of Monty also

20

suggest the growing influence of the AJC's psychosocial model of prejudice even among "ordinary" Americans. Seeing Monty's intolerance as a psychological problem, one viewer argued that "Monty the psycho needed doctoring more than killing," while another wrote, "It seems to me modern psychiatry could cure Monty and he should have been cured instead of killed in the picture." In this context, particularly, the film's ending was troubling to some viewers. One, for example, believed that the murder of Monty set a disturbing precedent: "So the guy hates the Jews, so he gets shot in the back from behind. I do not think this is a wise policy to bring such controversial matter out into the public in the spirit of eye for eye and tooth for tooth. . . . Hate can only be overcome by love and not with a bullet in the neck." This viewer believed that Monty could have been rehabilitated, if only he had been made aware of the truth: "Monty should have been shown the record of the Jew, his sacrifices at Okinawa, and he would have been ashamed of his behavior." The representation of Samuels in Crossfire provoked similar controversy. Several of the moviegoers applauded Sam Levene's performance. One remarked, "Would have liked to hear more of what Samuels had to say. He was wonderful." A viewer from Los Angeles wrote, "It made me proud to be a Jew. I think it made anyone proud of what they are too." Others, however, objected to Samuel's "goodness." As one viewer commented, "Was it necessary to make Sam so-o perfect? His

21

characterization was not as true as the situation and therefore detracted from the realism of the story." Similarly, one critic on the left noted, "[A] typical pitfall of bourgeois doctrinaire drama is inevitable compromise with idealism. In the end you make Samuels a kosher vet. This is rank deference to romantic tradition. Would it not have been equally despicable to murder a Jew with no service background? The impression on an anti-Semite or potential anti-Semite is that the 'happenstance' of his vet status saves him from being rightfully obliterated." Other responses to Samuels were blatantly anti-Semitic, such as "Jews should correct their obnoxious ways, brazen ideas, etc. if they want to be liked in this world," and "You can't force people to like the Jews. I don't go to the movies to be told what I should like or dislike." Perhaps the most interesting, however, was the comment from the only respondent who had read The Brick Foxhole. This viewer noted, "It seems a shame that censorship and public opinion should force you to change the true character of Samuels, and the reason for his murder. To me, sexual discrimination is worse than all the others put together." For the most part, the preview audiences applauded Crossfire and praised

22

Hollywood for finally taking a stand on America's social problems. One viewer expressed "amazement that Hollywood would have the guts to turn out such a picture." Several hoped that Crossfire would inaugurate a new trend in political filmmaking and suggested other social issues for the film industry to tackle. "At long last Hollywood seems to have become adult enough to face in basic terms those basic problems which still exist," one viewer wrote. "Now if they would do one on anti-Negro discrimination!" James McLean, who included a lengthy letter with his reply card, urged RKO to follow Crossfire with a series of films that show "'anti-Semitism' and 'red-baiting' and race and labor-baiting as the well planned, well thought out means whereby millions of Jews and others have been murdered by the sadistic killers of fascism and imperialist monopoly and that other millions may die unless you and I speak out for truth, democracy and peace in the world for all men of all religion, race and progressive political beliefs." Most significantly, in light of subsequent events, a small but prescient portion of the preview audience predicted a backlash by reactionaries outraged by Crossfire's political message. "Of course you know you are going to get denounced for producing a picture that speaks out on the question of race and religious hate," one viewer wrote, adding, "I and my whole family compliment you on your honesty and courage. We feel that pictures can speak out, deal with so called 'controversial' issues, and still be good entertainment." Another viewer, who felt Crossfire should be "required seeing," predicted, "Every open fascist in America will denounce it as 'Jewish Communist.' . . . Undercover fascists will call it unreal, un-American, and propaganda, and say that it only harms the cause of Jewish people by calling attention to it." Another respondent bluntly warned, "The

23

fascist—the anti-Semites—the race-baiters—and the Thomas Committee won't like it." Significantly, the Los Angeles preview audience was especially cognizant of the

24

pressures on Hollywood from right-wing crusaders, both nationally and locally, and several invoked not only the House Un-American Activities Committee, but also

the

Tenney

Committee—the

California

version

of

HUAC—chaired

by

conservative Jack Tenney. In 1945, Tenney had supported the decision of the Los Angeles Board of Education to allow rabid anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith to speak at a public high school, as several of the audience members were clearly aware. Thus, one wrote, "Jack Tenney and the Los Angeles School Board will raise hell with you to cut out the statement of Robert Young about the persecution of the Irish Catholics not being history as taught in our schools." Some viewers predicted the filmmakers would cave in to public pressure: "Every anti-Semite and fascist will lambast [the] hell out of this picture. If you are subject to such pressure you will run like hell." Others were more supportive, arguing, "We need to counteract all and any such ideas of prejudice in regard to race, color or creed and pictures such as Crossfire are a good means of doing this. You will no doubt get pressure from certain groups to not show this, but please do not listen to them, show it!" James McLean neatly—and accurately—summarized the trajectory of Crossfire's reception: The KKK—fascist, anti-Semites—America-Firsters will denounce you. Call for your investigation by Tenney and Thomas . . . Others not so open will say it's a poor picture, mostly propaganda, hurts the cause of democracy and better race and religious understanding. . . . Anti-fascists will praise it, urge their friends and organizations to see and support it; [the] great majority will see it and discuss it and accept it as good entertainment and a great picture. . . . Then you will: 1) "run for cover," "cut and edit," try to make it OK for both sides, and completely spoil it or, 2) stick by your guns. Advertise it as a great picture carrying a lesson in "American Democracy" and a must for all movie-goers.

The RKO Publicity Campaign Despite the extremely positive response of the preview audiences to Crossfire's political message, the RKO front office remained concerned that the American public would reject the film as "an out-and-out propaganda piece," and therefore decided to downplay Crossfire's political message in marketing the film. According to S. Barret McCormick, head of the advertising and publicity department, "We don't want people to be kept away from the theater because they're given the impression that the film is straight pamphleteering." Instead, as in the case of Cornered, RKO publicity efforts focused on selling Crossfire as a traditional murder mystery. "Besides cleverly working its plea for tolerance into the plot," McCormick continued, "the film is also a fast-moving murder mystery. Patrons will

25

draw their own lessons from the film, once they see it."9 McCormick's comments reveal RKO's strategic campaign to shape the public response

to

Crossfire.

Though

RKO

executives

certainly

expected

26

the

anti–anti-Semitism theme to draw "considerable editorial, radio and magazine comment," the publicity department preferred to wait and see how film critics responded to Crossfire. As Variety reported, "[RKO would] rather have word of its nature spread via this comment than plug it in ads. Hence, the decision to lay off any reference to anti-Semitism in fanfaring the film. As part of the buildup, RKO will invite newspapermen, radio commentators, officials of tolerance groups and other to a series of prelim screenings. Company is counting on a wide word-of-mouth reaction before the pic preems [premieres]."10 Adrian Scott, unhappy with the hush-hush approach in the studio's "teaser"

27

campaign, embarked on his own informal campaign to market Crossfire as a serious, political film. With Schary's help, an excerpt of Finlay's "grandfather" speech was included in the weekly bulletin of the Common Radio Council. Compiled by Jacques Ferrand, president of the Free World Association, the bulletin was distributed to 500 independent and foreign-language broadcasters across the nation. With the help of an old screenwriting partner, Bernard Feins, now an agent with MCA, Scott also worked to get the screenplay of Crossfire published as a book, with the proceeds to be donated to charity. Feins was enthusiastic—"I feel strongly this project is a natural and most important, important"—and offered advice on format, publishers, advertising strategies, and so on. Though Feins suggested they approach Simon and Schuster, which was then handling Gentleman's Agreement, Scott took the project to his friend Bennett Cerf at Random House.11 Scott also gave a number of public talks in which he made a point of discussing the film's political message. In June 1947, he spoke on Crossfire to a group of Jewish students on the Hillel Council at the University of Southern California and to 600 members of the American Veterans Committee (AVC), founded in 1944 as a progressive alternative to such veterans groups as the American Legion. An article in the AVC News brought the lecture to the attention of RKO executives, and Scott soon received an interstudio memo from Leon Bamberger, admonishing him: "If we are going to try to keep these items out of publicity I am sure you will agree that such handling should be started at the studio." Scott fired back his own memo, criticizing the studio's publicity strategy: "It is my opinion that it is impossible to keep the subject of this picture a secret. When the picture is released a number of columnists and commentators will pick it up and discuss the subject. Their comments inevitably will reach a public that is not the usual motion picture-goers. From the comment the picture should benefit incalculably." Scott

28

noted that the AVC audience had been extremely enthusiastic about a film exposing the problem of anti-Semitism, and the AVC leadership—representing 100,000 members nationally—expressed interest in sponsoring the opening of the film. Schary, however, felt this was "not wise," urging instead that they invite "endorsement without our seeking it and this the AVC will give us."12 Scott was also critical of RKO's advertising strategy for Crossfire. Instead of the

29

single national ad campaign, he suggested a more sophisticated marketing approach that recognized regional audience variation: "Where there are groups adult enough to understand and want this sort of picture, I think we should lay it on the line frankly. Where ignorance or indifference prevails I think the teaser approach is the best. I believe we have an untapped public for this picture. . . . I think we ought to get 'em."13 Predictably, RKO ignored Scott's advice and marketed Crossfire as a traditional

30

murder mystery. The studio's publicity campaign covered all major media outlets: radio and print advertisements, promotional materials such as reviews, star biographies, and interviews prepared by RKO publicists, merchandise tie-ins, and a marketing package for exhibitors that included full-size posters and glossy photographs, window cards, lobby cards, slides, and suggestions for in-theater contests and games.14 RKO spent an enormous sum of money advertising Crossfire, blanketing the nation with print ads in a staggered campaign that ran from late June through September. The publicity department developed four different ads, which appeared in major lifestyle slicks such as Look, Life, Collier's, and The Saturday Evening Post; in upscale news magazines such as Time and Newsweek; and in the major fan magazines such as Modern Screen and Screen Romances. RKO even advertised their ad campaign to prospective exhibitors, promising, "Provocative Magazine Ads Such As These—Stimulate Interest in Crossfire, Screen's Most Unusual Story. . . . National Weeklies, Leading Fan Publications, Arouse Expectancy of Picture Patrons Toward Mystery Murder Drama 'That Had to Be Made'!" The full-page ad that kicked off Crossfire's publicity campaign appeared first in Time on June 30, reaching 1,554,323 readers. Running nearly a month before the film officially opened, this ad set the "teaser" tone for the rest of the campaign. The investigative thriller theme was emphasized in the very graphics: a photograph of Robert Young as Finlay fills the top half of the page, dominating the smaller pictures below him. Finlay, looking very serious, dour, and even puzzled, holds his pipe in one hand and a gun in the other as if proffering it to the viewer. The

text

ballooned

off

his

shoulder

refers

only

obliquely

to

the

film's

anti–anti-Semitism theme, quoting a brief passage from Finlay's exhortation speech to Leroy: "Some people carry HATE inside of them like a loaded gun. And

31

if they carry it too long, it goes off AND KILLS . . . the way it killed a stranger last night!" In the bottom half of the page, a cut-out head shot of Robert Mitchum as Keeley looks up at Finlay, inquiringly, as if expecting him to have the answer. The blurb at his shoulder reads ". . . the hero who recovered the rage he thought he lost on the battlefield—to help avenge the killing!" And below Keeley is a column of inset photos with accompanying taglines. At the top is Robert Ryan, glowering below heavy eyebrows, with the descriptor, ". . . the ex-Army sergeant who thought he knew all the answers!" In the middle is Gloria Grahame, provocatively posed with chin on hand, described as ". . . the dance-hall girl who met a lot of men—but how was she to remember all of them!" Below her, anxiously looking off to the side, is Jacqueline White—"The wife who begged an alibi from her rival—to save her husband from the chair!" This, the campaign's most generic ad, was run again on July 26 for the nearly 4 million readers of the Saturday Evening Post, and in the September issues of three major fan magazines, Movie Show, Screenland, and Silver Screen, with a combined circulation of 1,165,227. The second ad ran one week later, in the July 7 edition of Life, and again in Collier's on July 19 (reaching a combined circulation of 9 million readers). This ad epitomized the "whodunit" approach, describing each of the characters as a "type" and offering a number of suspects for murder. Hinting obliquely at the political angle, the ad pitched Crossfire as a thriller with a difference, with a headline reading, "These are the people who tell the screen's most daring story!" The graphics feature head shots of the stars arranged in a checkerboard pattern, with a tagline underneath each photo. In the top row, Finlay with his pipe and fedora looks intense; his blurb reads, "Relentless detective, confronted with the most baffling murder case of his career!" Beside him is Keeley, looking a bit distant, with the tag line: "Cynical and secretive sergeant . . . did he know more than he dared reveal?" And Robert Ryan is glowering, moody, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his brows: "Tough and full of hate . . . but did he have a special reason to kill?" In the next row, George Cooper looks rather greasy and hung over: "Lonely, down in the dumps . . . was he a brutal killer without a memory?" And Gloria Grahame, in the center of the checkerboard, again looks sultry and provocative, her chin resting on her hand and a knowing look on her face: "Many men sought Ginny . . . especially when they were lonely!" In the bottom left corner, below Cooper and oblique to Grahame, is Jacqueline White, her photo a bit askew so that she seems to be looking up at her husband and her rival: "To save her husband, she braved a truth that might cost her marriage!" The romantic triangle and innuendo of marital infidelity are suggested by both the graphic layout and the "loneliness" attributed to Cooper and Grahame's characters. And finally, at the bottom, is a remarkably unflattering shot of Sam Levene, his photo also askew and his head bent down. He appears a bit hunched and his eyebrows dominate his moon-shaped face. With his eyes raised, almost

32

imploring, he bears a striking resemblance to Harpo Marx. His tag line reads: "Just a stranger . . . why did anyone want to kill him?" In the very corner of the ad is a charcoal drawing of a man being strangled. This ad, though introducing the characters in "whodunit" style, hinted at the political message obliquely through the suggestion of a "special" reason to kill in the tagline by Ryan's photo. The third ad, which appeared on July 14 in Newsweek, and again on August 5 in

33

Look (reaching a total readership of over 3 million), used stills from the film rather than head shots of the actors. The headline "Whose were the hands that killed this man . . . What was the motive?" accompanies a cropped still from Crossfire's opening scene: a man in khakis, seen only from the waist down, his hands hanging limply—yet menacingly—over the body of Sam Levene sprawled dead on the floor. In a side bar, three stills feature other "couples" from the film: a photo of Keeley and Mary with the blurb, "Were they the hands of the tough, cynical sergeant, who refused to tell all he knew?" Below that appears a photo of the adulterous couple, Mitch and Ginny; they embrace, looking deeply into each other's eyes, above the line "Were they the hands of the lonely artist whose only alibi was a gin-mill blonde?" Next is a shot of the "deviant" couple, Monty and Floyd, in the scene before Monty kills his "buddy." The tagline to this shot reads, "Were they the hands of the cocksure ex-army sergeant who thought he knew all the answers?" At the very bottom of the page is a photo of Finlay, smoking his pipe and looking thoughtful. This picture stands out from those above it, both because it is a cut-out head shot rather than a still from the film, and because Finlay is the only "solo" character in the ad. The text below Finlay's photograph is the most explicit thus far in the advertising campaign, and its visual link with the character of the detective reinforces the importance of the narrative of investigation. The text, however, emphasizes not the plot, but the political point, albeit obliquely: "This is the story of an outrage . . . the story of how one man's evil hatred led to another man's murder . . . a story that had to be told . . . that took daring and courage to tell . . . that will leave its savage imprint forever in your memory." This is certainly the most "menacing" ad of the series, and the use of stills from the film lends authenticity to the ad copy, particularly to the scene of the murder. Interestingly, Sam Levene appears in only two of the four ads—posed as a dead body on the floor in one of them. The final ad ran in the August 2 edition of Liberty, as well as in the September issues of three other fan magazines, Modern Screen, Screen Romances, and Movieland and Screen Guide. This ad is particularly reminiscent of 1940s pulp fiction paperback covers, with vigorous graphics and a blazing banner headline in the upper left corner that screams "Murder! Manhunt!" A full-figure, "cheesecake" drawing of Gloria Grahame in a sexy pose, feet arranged prettily, one hand on her hips, bisects photo cutouts of the heads of the three Roberts, with Robert Young

34

alone to her right and Mitchum and Ryan grouped together to her left. A drawing of the dead body and the soldier's lower body looms in the lower left-hand corner. Opposite that is a drawing of Monty, trapped in the street, looking for a way out. In small print above Young's head, the "serious" text reads: "Raw-nerve realism and terrific excitement thrill . . . In this high suspense drama of the kind of a killer who makes you mad all over." In addition to the print ads, RKO also prepared a series of one-minute radio spots,

35

notable only for their Hollywood hyperbole. One ad screamed, for example, "Crossfire! A scathing denunciation of hatred within our midst. A picture which tears the pretty language off an ugly outrage. Crossfire! Starring Robert Young, Robert Ryan, and Robert Mitchum, in a terrific drama!" A second ad attempted to implicate the audience into the unnamed problem: "This is your picture . . . It's about a subject you know . . . It's a tale of a murderer you live with . . . It's Crossfire, a stark drama of a senseless hatred. For the first time the screen shows prejudice for what it is. Crossfire . . . blazing, dangerous and tremendous." In-theater advertising was a critical component of the studios' publicity strategy

36

in an era when the average American attended the movies two or three times a week. The RKO publicity department developed an elaborate saturation campaign for use by theater owners. The publicists recommended that exhibitors begin with teaser ads that could be printed in theater programs, used as window signs, or even run in local newspapers. The teasers were simple black-and-white ads, with Crossfire emblazoned across the center and a banner headline above the title. These headlines were, as promised, teasing: "Hate Is Like a Loaded Gun!" and "Its Drama Blisters the Screen!" and "If They Gave Oscars for Courage—This Picture Would Get It!" Space was provided at the bottom to insert the name of the theater and the film's opening date. Exhibitors were instructed to use these ads "as far in advance as your situation warrants." The RKO publicity department also provided "follow-through" ads, a "natural second-step" to the teasers. Exhibitors were instructed to run these ads several weeks before displaying the larger display posters and film stills. These follow-up ads eschewed photographs from the film in favor of lurid graphics reminiscent of pulp fiction paperbacks. Each of the ads featured blazing text and drawings of the disembodied heads of the film's stars—Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, and Gloria Grahame. Two of the ads also featured a line drawing of a body

sprawled

face-down

on

the

ground.

The

headlines

are

strikingly

sensationalistic: "An Outrage!" "It'll Knock You Over!" and "Sensational? No! It's Dynamite!" The most interesting ad includes taglines with the drawings, providing snapshot guidelines to "understanding" each of the characters and constructing the film unmistakably as a traditional Hollywood thriller. Perhaps attempting to

37

create suspense, the tagline below Ryan's picture reads, "Me kill? Why should I kill a stranger?" while the tagline below Mitchum's picture reads, "Sure, I've killed. But I got medals for it!" The third step in the in-theater advertising campaign was full-size movie posters,

38

lobby and window signs, and glossy star photos for lobby display. The posters and signs featured banner headlines screaming the "teaser" themes: "killing without motive," "taboo theme," and "the ultimate victim of prejudice and bigotry." The word "anti-Semitism" never actually appears in any of this material; the farthest these ads were willing to go is to describe the murder as "a killing based on religious bigotry." The most incredible publicity-still, however, is the photo clip from the opening scene, with the unidentifiable killer—seen only from the waist down—standing over Samuels's body. In the wake of the Holocaust, the headline is almost terrorizing to contemplate: "His Only Crime Was Living!" The RKO publicity department also provided clippings of reviews as well as plot

39

summaries, star biographies, and articles for reprint in theater programs. First-run theaters often provided programs for their patrons, mimicking the practice of live stage theaters to lend an air of "class" to the moviegoing experience. The studio offered five different plot summary options, allowing exhibitors to choose the version they felt was most appropriate for their local audience. There is markedly little variation, however, in these summaries. Four of the five don't actually use the term anti-Semitism; instead they simply refer to the "murder of a Jewish ex-serviceman." The fifth is as brave as RKO could get: "The springboard of the story is the murder of a Jewish ex-serviceman for the sole reason that he is a Jew." The star biographies reflected the screen personas so assiduously cultivated by

40

the studios. The biography of Robert Young, for example, while emphasizing a new screen role for him, recapitulates his family-man persona: "Young is a heavy contributor to charity; but he is not charitable toward night clubs, which would go out of existence if dependent on such a home-lover as he." The biography of Robert Mitchum constructs him as a city boy, emphasizing his rebelliousness, his working-class roots, his "regular guy" attitude, and supplying factoids such as "he wears no makeup on the screen," and "just as his approach to life is casual and unconventional so is his dress." Mitchum's own "real life" history was used to advantage by the studio in the project: "There was a long period in his life when lady luck looked the other way. He had odd jobs, on a freighter, as a machinist, factory work. Memories of these years stay with him, and he is determined not to 'go Hollywood.'" The biographical material on Robert Ryan is even more fascinating, constructing

41

him as a thinking man's real man: When one first meets Ryan, it is hard to think of him as an artist, a writer, an actor. Standing 6 ft. 3 inches, and with his 194 pounds packed solidly on a lean frame, he brings to mind a football player, a boxer, a man of action. But beneath his surface hardness there lies a desire to reach for the highest in artistic expression, and the desire is still there in spite of the battering Ryan took during the depression, when he took such odd jobs as sand-hog, seaman, chauffeur, bill-collector and laborer. While in the Marine Corps, with no outlet for his interest in dramatics, Ryan turned to painting, and in his leisure hours dabbed away at canvas with oils.

Ryan's "hobbies"—according to the PR department—are horses, novels, and contemporary politics. He is a family man "with no inclination to gad about in the bright spots," and he does the same chores around the house that "most husbands" do—he mows the lawn, dries the dishes, takes the baby for a stroll. As with Mitchum, the studio worked to cast Ryan's personal history in an "everyman" model: "Considered one of the most promising stars to appear on the Hollywood horizon in many years, and with a salary of four figures a week, Ryan recalls only too clearly the days when living was a day-to-day affair. He acts accordingly, has no airs, no pretensions." The studio publicity machine also made much of Ryan's decision to play the heavy

42

in Crossfire. An article entitled "Despite Baleful Onus Ryan Chose Heavy Role" valorizes Ryan for his bravery in accepting such a part: It isn't every up-and-coming movie star who will take an obnoxious role in a screenplay over the protests of practically all his friends and advisers. Robert Ryan did! . . . "Nobody'll love me after this," said Ryan. "But the problem is one to be dragged into the light. If I can center public contempt of a hateful type, I'll feel I'm doing something worthwhile. So, career or not, I'll chance it!

In contrast, the studio marketing materials did little to pitch Sam Levene to the American public. There are no "star" biographies of Levene, though that may simply reflect that fact that his role was comparatively small. There is no article like that featuring Ryan, however, touting Levene's "courage" in accepting such a controversial role in such a controversial film. Similarly, there is no public exploration of Levene's feelings, as a Jew, about playing the victim of murderous anti-Semitism, no opportunity for him to comment publicly on his own commitment to "dragging this problem into the light." Levene does emerge once, however—and most tellingly—from between the cracks in RKO's monolithic marketing strategy. The program for the Rivoli Theater, which reprinted excerpts from the star biographies of Robert Young and Robert Mitchum, also includes a behind-the-scenes anecodote on the filming of Crossfire:

43

Make-up Man Charles Dudley had a relatively easy time of it during the shooting of Crossfire, for Director Dmytryk is a realist who insists that his male stars use no make-up. In the case of Sam Levene, however, it was different. Since Levene has a scene in which he is a corpse, a problem arose when it was found that the "dead" man was perspiring under the hot incandescents. The result was that Dudley had to apply many coats of heavy, protective powder to absorb the beads of sweat so they would not show on Levene's face.15

Read against the manly biographies and the "realistic" and natural faces of the Gentile stars, this anecdote presents a Sam Levene who is distinctly different and, indeed, Other—a sweaty (dirty?) Jew, a feminized man who must wear makeup while the real men remain "natural." Not surprisingly, Sam Levene is absent from the merchandising tie-ins that played

44

on the actors' screen personas. Apparently, RKO was unable to imagine a product that Levene might help to advertise. A series of "specially posed stills suitable for window displays and counter use" for advertising Old Spice toiletries featured a photo of Robert Ryan, in a suit, smiling and holding a bottle of Old Spice, and one of Jacqueline White, smiling in an off-the-shoulder blouse, dabbing perfume behind her ear. Photos advertising the Sunbeam Shavemaster featured the manly Mitchum and Ryan posed with electric razors. An advertisement for Decca Records played on Mitchum's rebel persona; the photo shows him looking like a real hep cat, snapping his fingers, his hair falling over his forehead. The merchandising tie-ins also played with the images of specific characters in Crossfire. Thus, the photo still for Rowe Vending Cigarette Machines features B-girl Ginny (Gloria Grahame), smiling, leaning into the cigarette machine, in a low-cut black gown, while the photo for Modern Hygiene Vacuum Cleaners features good wife Mary (Jacqueline White) in a house dress and heels next to an easy chair, holding the vacuum hose. And smiling, of course. Box Office Slant, a trade paper for film exhibitors, collaborated with RKO's efforts to manage the marketing of Crossfire. Explaining the film's message to theater owners, the magazine suggested that screening Crossfire was something of a public service: It is the theme of Jew hating, Catholic hating, etc., usually carefully avoided in the film industry up to now, that brings a poisonous thing out into the open and uses the powerful medium of the screen to call a spade a spade and to try to do something about it. This is not a crusade, but it is a powerful argument for the elimination of intolerance, and it is this fact that gives the picture so many angles for an exploitation campaign that can very well be close to a civic enterprise where the film is shown.

However, the magazine also warned theater owners that the film required special

45

marketing strategies: "Handle the intolerance angle with extreme care." Box Office Slant urged that exhibitors follow the guidelines prepared by RKO to avoid "pitfalls," noting that "the controversy can be a weapon in the hands of smart showmen; improperly handled it can be a boomerang." Nonetheless, Box Office Slant also promised a solid return for exhibitors: "The fact that this is the first film which brings intolerance into the open and does it powerfully, opens the gates to extraordinary exploitation possibilities. Good marquee names and a top-notch story, in addition, are certain to make this one of the most talked-about films yet produced, resulting in top box-office potentialities."16 In July 1947, syndicated entertainment columnist Billy Rose took direct aim at

46

RKO's publicity strategy: "I think these ads are pretty stale. They employ such chewed-over phrases as 'It's Sensational! It's Dynamite! It's Coming!' They make it sound like just another cops-and-robbers program picture." Rose believed Crossfire was "much too important a picture to be advertised like a catchpenny potboiler," noting that on "18,000 screens it can do more good than a whole passel of tolerance societies with fancy names on the stationery." Arguing that the advertising strategy would ultimately backfire on RKO, he wrote: I think it sick-making that some Eastern promotion executive hasn't got the moxie to advertise it for what it is. Even in terms of dollars and cents, I think he's a chump. My guess as a showman is that this 'fraidy-cat policy will cost this movie at least a million domestic at the box office. A smart and literate job of pre-selling it would be a cinch to create the kind of talk that fills theaters. And I'd like to see Crossfire play to a lot of people. I think an occasional departure from passion, platitudes and popcorn can only make our screens more interesting. Once a month I think Joe Citizen and his missus should be able to walk into an American movie theater without checking their minds at the door. When you see Crossfire, I think you'll be proud it could have been made in this country. If you're a right guy, you'll be ashamed it had to be.17

Others, however, disagreed with Rose's critique and wrote to Schary to express their approval of RKO's publicity campaign. MGM publicist Bernard Feins enthused,

"To

my

way

of

thinking

it

was

simultaneously

the

most

industry-dignifying, ticket-selling campaign yet to hit this town."18 J. R. Cominsky, of the Saturday Review of Literature, approved of the "thriller" emphasis, arguing, "I think your promotion people are sound in trying to interest the masses in any way that will get them to see the film." However, he also believed that RKO should develop a second ad campaign, to run in major cosmopolitan dailies like the New York Times and the Daily News and aimed at "readers of a higher I.Q.," which would advertise "very frankly and bluntly" that Crossfire's theme was anti-Semitism. Apparently, Cominsky tried this on several of his friends. Though not avid moviegoers, they became eager to see Crossfire

47

once he explained that it was not just another hard-boiled thriller as the ad campaign suggested, but a serious, even highbrow film.19 Schary, defender of the taste of "ordinary" Americans, replied with great diplomacy: "I, too, do not believe with Billy Rose that the campaign was wrong. I think they [RKO's admen] had a difficult job, and I think they handled it very well."20 Perhaps recognizing the inadequacies of RKO's ad campaign, however, Schary

48

also agreed to "star" in a publicity trailer for Crossfire that hinted, albeit very obliquely, at the film's political message. "The basic theme was Schary patting himself on the back for his courage," remembers Leonard Neubauer, head of RKO's trailer department in the 1940s. "This was a political move by Scott and Dmytryk, who wanted to 'butter up' their boss." Written by Scott and Neubauer, and directed by Neubauer while Scott stood behind the camera (perhaps part of his training to direct on his own), the trailer "didn't say 'this is about a Jew hater.' Instead, it was a general tease. This was a purely commercial decision. The goal was to say 'this movie is gonna give you a real wallop,' but not to tell them what the wallop was."21 Presented as a "personal message" from RKO's head of production, the trailer

49

opened with Schary sitting behind his executive desk, explaining to the audience that, while many in the film industry doubted whether moviegoers wanted to see such "outspoken" entertainment, Schary, "remembering the success of films like Grapes of Wrath and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," forged courageously ahead, certain that "audiences still want to see courageous motion pictures." Schary then explained earnestly for the camera and the audience that Crossfire was rushed into completion and tested before "ordinary" Americans, whose response to the film proved the filmmakers right. Thus, Schary, the champion of the taste and integrity of the "little people," continued, Ordinarily we picture-makers use words like sensational, terrific and colossal to describe our product. But this time you, the American picture audience gave us our words and here they are: "Crossfire is one of the best pictures I've seen in years." "At last Hollywood comes of age." "I and my whole family compliment you on your honesty and courage." "Don't cut one frame or one word of Crossfire." "I shall remember Crossfire as

long as I live."22

The Critical Response Crossfire premiered "in a blaze of glory" at RKO's Rivoli Theater in New York on July 22, 1947. According to the Radio Flash, RKO's exhibition newsletter, "[C]rowds started storming the theatre hours before opening, despite rainy weather. Soon after the opening, there were standees in the back of the house . . . [and the] first day's gross was the highest of any RKO picture to play the Rivoli."

50

The program continued, "a glance at the line in front of the theater waiting to buy tickets brought home the fact that here was a true cross-section of all types of people attesting to the GENERAL appeal of this unusual film."23 Despite RKO's best attempts to sell the movie as a conventional murder mystery, film critics across the nation followed Billy Rose's lead in "outing" Crossfire as an exposé of the dangers of anti-Semitism. In the flurry of reviews that followed the film's premiere at the Rivoli, there was widespread consensus that the film was a "first" for Hollywood. Across the board, critics applauded Crossfire's "courageousness" in challenging a long-standing Hollywood taboo and expressed their belief that the film performed an important public service in bringing the problem of American anti-Semitism out into the open. Two of New York's leading cultural arbiters, Archer Winsten, film critic for the New York Post, and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, set the tone for the film's reception. Winsten described Crossfire as "a step into another world of thinking and doing. Here's a picture that recognizes a rotten spot in American democracy, shows what it looks and sounds like, traces a tragic result and states the counterbelief. This is the first time in the movie experience of this writer that anti-Semitism has been handled openly, with complete definition, in the notoriously timid motion picture industry."24 Bosley Crowther crowed, "An unqualified A for effort in bringing to the screen a frank and immediate demonstration of the brutality of religious bigotry as it festers and fires ferocity in certain seemingly normal American minds. . . . For here, without hints or subterfuges, they have come right out and shown that such malice—in this case anti-Jewish—is a dark and explosive sort of hate which, bred of ignorance and intolerance, can lead to extreme violence."25 A week later, Crowther wrote a second review, again praising the film for boldly attacking anti-Semitism, "a canker which festers and poisonously infects the very vitals of American democracy." Pointing to all the timid evasions in films like The House of Rothschild, Disraeli, Zola, Mr. Skeffington, and The Hucksters, he predicted a new wave of political filmmaking in Hollywood, "now that this hard-hitting Crossfire has come right out and said that there is such a thing as intolerance of some people just because of their names or their creeds or their pigmentation—and that such intolerance can lead to violent wrongs."26 Billy Rose, in his syndicated column "Pitching Horseshoes," made the same point in his own more colorful, colloquial style: Around reel two, I realized I was looking at a Hollywood picture which had the guts to be important. Out of the land of flapdoodle and nymphomania had finally come a movie which had something to say and wasn't afraid to say it. And it was saying it with boxing gloves, not dancing pumps. . . . Crossfire is the first Hollywood picture I remember seeing which has had the courage to speak right out about something that 140,000,000 people

51

have been thinking about for a long time—race hatred.27

James Agee, writing for The Nation, was more critical. Though he found the

52

"serious stuff"—the anti-Semitism angle—"very good and very heartening," he was uncomfortable with the very idea of an anti–anti-Semitism film: "In a way it is as embarrassing to see a movie Come Right Out Against Anti-Semitism as it would be to see a movie Come Right Out Against torturing children." Agee was also

quick

to

fearlessness."

deflate Though

the

"bravery"

he

did

not

of

Hollywood,

doubt

the

seeing

good

instead

intentions

of

"safe the

filmmakers—citing only Schary by name—he also noted that "at best, Hollywood's heroism is calculated to land buttered side up. Movies about Anti-Semitism aren't so desperately chancy, after all. Millions of people will look forward to them if only for the questionable excitement of hearing actors throw the word 'Jew' around." Agee also argued that the filmmakers equivocated on the issue of discrimination against African Americans, noting, "They have the sardonic courage to preach the main persuaders to a Southern boy, taking painfully embarrassing care never to mention Negroes; but they lack the courage to make that omission inescapably clear to the audience.28 Interestingly, the most overtly political review appeared, not in the radical press,

53

but in a magazine called Nite-Life: "Anti-Semitism—here in our midst, and not in some far-off land of tyrants—is the theme, and whodunit the style, a combination that packs a mighty wallop, pulls no punches, and defies the audience to sit back for a snooze. If this be propaganda, then perhaps it is what the movie industry has been needing all along." The reviewer, Maxine Garrison, was one of the only commentators to draw explicit parallels between European fascism and American anti-Semitism: History itself has shown too plainly how the small social and economic injustices can be built into mass murder against which a whole nation fails to raise its voice—or has everyone forgotten Nazi Germany and the Jews, and our own hideous record of lynchings, to name just two instances. The individual history of anti-Semitism in Crossfire is violent indeed, but in its violence lies not only the necessary drama for a first film of this kind but also the only-too-logical outcome of the small intolerances carelessly practiced by so many. . . . All Hollywood can be proud of Crossfire, and can hope that it really does herald a new era in which entertainment will not be afraid of the so often disregarded facts of life.29

In contrast, critical commentary in the radical press, though particularly enthusiastic, was barely distinguishable from the mainstream reviews in terms of content. Nevertheless, the Daily Worker's cultural critic, David Platt, virtually served as a one-man publicity unit for Crossfire, writing four articles on the film over the course of the summer. Platt was the first to "expose" the film's

54

anti-Semitism theme in an article on July 11. Though he was not supposed to review the film until it opened later that month, Platt could not contain himself. Taking advantage of his advance access to the screenplay, he printed Finlay's "propaganda" speech to Leroy in its entirety, concluding, "Not since Charlie Chaplin's eloquent six-minute appeal for brotherhood at the end of The Great Dictator in 1940 has anything this powerful come across the screen. Hats off to Crossfire."30 Platt's official review two weeks later urged, "Everyone should see Crossfire [because] it frankly links anti-Semitism with murder, brands the anti-Semite as a dangerous menace to society who must be stopped."31 A later Daily Worker review by John Ross praised Crossfire as "an intelligent film, a film of integrity. . . . Dramatically, this film has all the tension and smoothness of a well-made whodunit, but it has much more—a real ring of authenticity that very few American films attain."32 The Southern edition of The Worker also brought Crossfire to the attention of the masses, printing an article by Robert Ryan entitled, "My Role in Crossfire."33 Cecelia Ager, writing for the Popular Front daily, PM, enthused: "With one clean

55

blow, a long-festering, a sniveling, a contemptible movie taboo is smashed. To Crossfire for shattering it, for naming names, for squaring up, for looking straight at the world we live in—our profound gratitude and deep respect. The movie audience and the industry are in its everlasting debt for being shown that a movie can be both good, and about something." Emphasizing the melding of the political message with a thriller plot, she argued, "The valuable thing about Crossfire is that it's primarily and above all an exciting movie. It's above all a knock-out job of movie-making. It's above all 'entertainment.' For Crossfire is wholly absorbing, virile, direct, dramatic, suspense-packed—as well as extraordinarily articulate." Ager particularly applauded the film's frank language, writing, "It feels fine, hearing at last 'Jew-boy' and 'Jew' and 'Jewish person' from the screen. It's like hard rain after a long-brooding thunderstorm. It clears the air. It brings release. It spreads elation."34 Indeed, one of the reasons Crossfire seemed so refreshingly daring was Monty's overt use of racial slurs. Several other critics were both shocked and exhilarated to hear words that were largely forbidden by the Production Code. The reviewer at Time Magazine found "its accurately ugly talk" especially memorable, and wrote, "It is exciting to hear anti-Semitism discussed openly in a movie."35 Another critic noted, "It comes as something of a shock to hear that word [Jewboy] roll off the soundtrack. I would like to hear it oftener. I would like to hear it so often that it would become obscene, like the words we are not allowed to use in print. Then perhaps, we would begin to regard anti-Semitism as a blight and not as a sociological problem to be discussed in high-academic tones."36 Even the reviewer for the New Yorker, a magazine that rarely found anything praiseworthy

56

in Hollywood films, was struck by the language: If Crossfire . . . didn't have the word 'Jew' on its sound track, it would be a favored candidate for that crowded hamper where hackneyed mystery pictures go. The frankness of its dialogue, however, often makes the piece exciting, which is beyond the power of the plot. There is no attempt to use any euphemisms for that troublesome term 'Jew,' and most of the xenophobic nonsense that one hears so constantly these days is bluntly attacked. There isn't much of a mystery about who did it, but the dialogue frequently has enough shock effect to jolt you out of your indifference.37

Similarly, Robert Ryan's portrayal of Monty struck a chord with almost every

57

reviewer, suggesting a widespread recognition of the truth in his performance. The postwar understanding of the anti-Semitic personality is particularly evident in the emphasis on Monty's "pathology," his "brutishness," indeed, his very Otherness. Thus, for example, the critic for the New York World described Monty as "one of the loud ignorant bullies among whom racial prejudices seem to flourish more readily. . . . Robert Ryan is the vicious braggart, arrogantly proud of his ignorance and glorying in his freedom from both ideas and ideals."38 According to the New York Herald Tribune, "The story's emotional force lies in the supreme hatefulness of a really noxious villain. . . . This killer is an overbearing, ignorant smart aleck. . . . The picture explores the facets of a warped personality through his arrogant conduct in a barroom, his brash and uninvited entry into the home of a chance Jewish acquaintance, and his rising drunken nastiness. . . . Eloquent

close-ups

show

him

airing

his

bigoted

views

with

slack-lipped

certainty."39 The Daily Worker made the connection between the military and the fascist personality, describing Monty as a "regular Army type," a "prejudiced, ignorant, sadistic—the embryo Fascist, in fact,"40 while Bosley Crowther linked him to a wide range of organized protofascist groups: "We clearly recognize his ugly type. Here is the bigot, the fanatic—loud-mouthed, self-assertive, narrow, cruel. Here is the Klansman, the bundist, the lynch mobster—the American fascist in the flesh. And in his solider pals . . . we see a cross-section of the people who tolerate such characters heedlessly. True, the reasons for the hatred which poisons this anti-Semite's mind are not explained in this picture outside of the vague suggestions of ignorance, egoism and fear. That is a limitation of the melodramatic form."41 Perhaps the most eloquent description, however, came from PM's Cecilia Ager: Especially vivid is Robert Ryan as the murderer, for there is time to study him to the last sickening detail. He is ignorant, and he feels his inferiority, but it so happens that he is physically strong and has a certain animal cunning. It follows naturally that he is a bully and a brute and a loud-mouth and a free loader, and that no one chooses to associate with

58

him, and that therefore he strives to crash the company of others by means of a gross charm, and when that fails, as it always must, to batter his way out. It follows naturally that he is a Jew-hater. . . . The basic truths about him are ignorance, inferiority, and so—murdering rage. Ryan's performance of his role is a masterpiece of revelation, as if his contempt for its ugliness drives him to search out its faintest nuance.42

In marked contrast to these lavishly vitriolic descriptions of Monty's authoritarian

59

personality, the critics virtually ignored the film's representation of Jewishness and the character of Samuels. Certainly several reviewers praised Sam Levene's performance as Samuels: Bosley Crowther described him as "affectingly gentle in his brief bit as the Jewish victim," and the Hollywood Reporter commented that the casting of the "able Sam Levene" reflected the filmmakers' sense of the importance of the brief role.43 Only one review went into any detail on the character of Samuels: "The Jew is the only man in sight who understands what ails the sensitive artist. He tries to help him, by inviting him to dinner."44 Significantly, the New Yorker critic, arguing that the performance of [Sam Levene] is as good as you'll come across in a long, long time," privileged geographic over "racial" origins, describing Samuels as "a Jew, who might be anybody, from a Syrian to a Nova Scotian."45 Though this comment might suggest that, despite his screen "history," Sam Levene was not immediately perceived as Jewish, it also may reflect Scott and Paxton's attempts to portray Samuels as an "everyman" whose Americanness superseded his Jewishness. If so, the New Yorker critic was the only one to pick up on it. Despite the heated debate among the Jewish organizations about Crossfire, only a few of the reviewers expressed concern about a possible backlash. Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times merely noted that the film would divide the audience into two camps—those who felt the film was educational and those who believed it "feed[s] a dangerous flame by emphasizing it."46 Archer Winsten of the New York Post noted, "There will always be people who object that public treatment is not the best method for such diseases of society as race prejudice. But others have a strong argument in the fact that most diseases of the mind and body thrive in the darkness and silence of those who try vainly to ignore an enemy out of existence."47 As might be expected, conservative Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had grave concerns about the film, fearing that "there's a possibility that Crossfire may backfire in its intent." Hopper praised the film, noting, "In the very first shot Crossfire grips your interest, because you see a man beaten to death merely because he's a Jew. And he's killed by an Army veteran still wearing his uniform. It's not a pretty sight, but the film has a mighty telling effect." Nevertheless, she argued that "placing emphasis on race" was not the best way to fight intolerance:

60

I believe the subtle and entertaining propaganda Leo McCarey and Bing Crosby put over in Going My Way is more effective. The same thing may be said of The Jolson Story. After seeing the latter picture you don't leave the theater saying 'The film was about a Jewish family.' Rather, you say 'What

a

wonderful

family!'

Christians

won't

love

Jews—or

Jews

Christians—just because a film tells them to. You love people, regardless of race or creed, because they're fine American citizens and because of their contributions to our country and to humanity. And it is on these lines that I believe pictures should place emphasis.48

Though most critics generally agreed that it was high time Hollywood addressed

61

serious social issues, there was extensive debate over Crossfire's representation of

anti-Semitism.

Two

issues

were

particularly

controversial:

Finlay's

"propaganda" speech to Leroy and the film's focus on the "lunatic fringe" rather than "casual" anti-Semitism. Many applauded the speech, seeing not propaganda or preaching, but a stirring message woven into an exciting plot. Noting the rising interest in racial and religious intolerance among "some of the country's top writers in the last year," Liberty Magazine said: "The picture never preaches at the audience as it so easily might have done. For all its moral, it still is a mystery that is as terse as its title, Crossfire."49 Newsweek, describing Crossfire as "one of the year's best films," argued that "[a]lthough Crossfire emphatically bears a message, it is less a preachment than an absorbing, suspenseful melodrama."50 Box Office Digest agreed: "The suspense heightens, the characters grow more vividly real, the 'message' comes when you are yearning for it, and socks home with trip-hammer force. The theme is not injected by the story-teller, it is part and parcel of the fabric."51 Other reviewers were not so complimentary. Life Magazine fired the opening salvo

62

on the other side. Though Life described Crossfire as a "grade-A thriller" and chose the film as its "Movie of the Week" in its July 30 edition, the review was markedly critical of the handling of its "controversial" theme. "By making their murdering sergeant a villain of the deepest dye, the creators of Crossfire discourage the audience from disliking him solely for being a Jew-hater," the Life reviewer argued. "He also becomes unbelievable: a man whose feeling against Jews is so intense that it drives him to murder seems far removed from the problems of a nation whose anti-Semitism is expressed largely in the insidious but less spectacular methods of social discrimination." Finlay's "litany" of intolerances also came in for special criticism: "Crossfire is also marred by the reduction of reasoning to absurdity ('If we hate Jews today, we may hate men who wear striped neckties tomorrow.')"52 Kate Cameron, reviewer for the New York Daily News, agreed with Life's assessment, arguing that the message got confused in the melodrama. Pointing particularly to the "striped necktie" comment, she wrote witheringly that the film's

63

arguments against "the spread of this poisonous hate" are "specious and tend to make the problem, as presented here, ridiculous, rather than a serious threat to peaceful relations between all the peoples that make up our population." Cameron believed that only an "appeal to reason" could combat anti-Semitism. Unable to find that in Crossfire, she looked forward to the release of Gentleman's Agreement, hoping that film would be "less impassioned and more reasonable."53 Though Otis L. Guernsey Jr., writing for the New York Herald Tribune, praised Crossfire as a "savage melodrama" and "as grimly realistic as a brass-knuckled punch in the jaw," he also found Finlay's "harangue" "extraneous, irritating and condescending," since the point had already been made dramatically. Even Archer Winsten, who clearly applauded the film, wrote, "It is too bad that Crossfire's single weakness, a tendency towards diagrammatic simplicity of propaganda, should be as extensive as it is. This brings into question many parts of the picture which should not be questioned at all. It makes some of the speeches sound as if they had been planted for propaganda effect. . . . Crossfire could have been a subtle, brave and great film. It is a right-thinking, brave and worthy film."54 Similarly, a handful of reviewers were critical of the film's focus on the "lunatic

64

fringe" of anti-Semitism. For example, Washington Daily News critic Tom Donnelly tellingly titled his review, "But It's Not About You and Me," and took the film to task for letting the audience off the hook.55 Alton Cook of the New York World, pointing out that in the past Hollywood had shied away from the "explosive" theme of anti-Semitism, argued that Crossfire should not "be blamed for making a slow start." Though he praised the film for dramatizing "the combination of apathy and fear which promote these evil discriminations," he was disappointed that "all these brave ideas are pretty well smothered in the hubbub of a murder story."56 Similarly, the Time Magazine reviewer argued that "chances are that this well-meant film will exasperate at least as many anti-Semites as it dissuades. It is gruesome to watch such a character as that played by Robert Ryan. But his hatred is so extravagant that most semiconscious anti-Semites will just comfortably set themselves apart from him."57 Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times agreed, writing, "The man who kills in the picture harbors hate against the Jewish race. . . . He is the victim of an insane aberration. It is an aberration that might have been stirred up by anti-Semitism or anything else for he is basically a homicidal maniac. So from that standpoint Crossfire can never be regarded as having any great documentary significance, but it is a fascinating picture regardless."58 The Hollywood trade press followed the lead of the film critics. Arguing that Crossfire "sets the standard for frankness, sincerity and thoughtfulness," the Motion Picture Herald proclaimed, "It can be easily predicted that this feature will find no lukewarm reception. Audiences will either be appreciatively for it or

65

violently against it and there will be plenty of discussion."59 Daily Variety reported, "Producer Dore Schary, in association with Adrian Scott, has pulled no punches. There is no skirting such relative fol-de-rol as intermarriage or clubs that exclude Jews. Here is a hard-hitting film whose whodunit aspects are fundamentally incidental to the overall thesis of bigotry and race prejudice. Ryan [is] a commanding personality, in this instance the bigoted soldier-killer, whose sneers and leers about Sam Levene and his tribe are all too obvious." Commending the film's flashback technique and Dmytryk's direction, Variety argued, "It deserves to do well at the box office because of its message. . . . It would be to the demerit of the American film public should Crossfire fail to get [box office] support."60 In fact, Crossfire performed tremendously at the box office. "The size of the box

66

office reception to the daring attraction can be spelled 'smash'," said the Hollywood Reporter. Soon after the New York City premiere at the Rivoli Theater, Hollywood insider Red Kann devoted an entire column to the film, reprinting juicy quotes from the New York film critics and reporting on box-office performance. According to Kann, Crossfire "did better than $8,000 on its opening day, in excess of $7,000 on its second day and was heading toward $7,000 last night." If the trend continued toward the anticipated $55,000 in its first week, he reported, Crossfire would give the Rivoli its biggest week so far in 1947 and take in twice as much as The Farmer's Daughter for the same seven-week run. "Interesting things are already taking place there. On Wednesday evening, for instance, there was one time when the theatre was full and plenty of paying customers had to wait for an hour for seats; they waited, too. Not completely unusual, but unusual enough, was the fact patrons took the trouble to compliment the management of the calibre of the attraction." Once Crossfire shows it can make money, Kann commented, its success would begin to break down "whatever resistance may have reared its head on the part of exhibitors who are speculative about any hard-hitting film concerning itself with subject matter not normally touched upon in Hollywood."61 Daily Worker critic David Platt also weighed in on Crossfire's impressive box-office performance. "'The business being done by the film is unbelievable for mid-summer,'" said Montague Salmon, the Rivoli's managing director, in an interview with Platt. Dore Schary "expressed himself as 'greatly pleased'" with the film's popular and critical reception, while Scott, Paxton, and Dmytryk were reportedly "jubilant." Platt also noted that executives at RKO and other studios were watching Crossfire as a test case on the response of the moviegoing public: "Many had doubts. Now that they have been proven wrong maybe they'll do something about it. That the people are thirsting for something different must be obvious by now to everyone concerned with the making of films."62

67

Both Adrian Scott and Dore Schary certainly shared Platt's sentiments. In the

68

summer of 1947, at a conference titled "Thought Control in America," Scott proclaimed his faith that ordinary American moviegoers wanted to see progressive "message" films like Crossfire: "That tired, dreary ghost who has been haunting our halls, clanking his chains and moaning, 'The people want only entertainment,' can be laid to rest once and for all. The American people have always wanted and more than ever want pictures which touch their lives, illuminate them, bring understanding. If we retreat now, because of our own fears, not only do we do a great disservice to the American audience, but we do a most profound disservice to ourselves."63 At a national conference of theater exhibitors, Schary echoed Scott, touting his own commitment to progressive filmmaking and his belief that "message" movies also could be money-makers. According to Schary, "I contend that motion pictures can be a happy blending of entertainment and education, and that such a compromise is definitely due at this time." Like Scott, Schary was confident that American moviegoers would respond to "adult" films: Audiences must learn and be willing to accept pictures that are about something. Audiences are no longer the babies they were years ago, and producers must not underestimate the intelligence of the men and women they are seeking to attract to the theatre. If they are given more adult fare, they'll thrive on the diet, and so will the exhibitor and the picture maker—and so will the world. Hollywood will not follow any given entertainment pattern in these postwar years, but will explore a variety of story fields never before placed on the screen. There are many intelligent adult subjects not yet touched upon, which writers and directors with imagination will find and develop.64

Inspired by the success of Crossfire, Schary and the RKO front office decided to implement a new B-film unit devoted to low-budget "experimental" films. Adrian Scott was to have a key role in the new B-unit, and he looked forward to repeating his winning formula: low-budget, high-quality films that expressed his Popular Front political vision. Along with left-wing screenwriters Ben Barzman and Alfred Leavitt, Scott had written a screenplay entitled The Boy with Green Hair. The antiwar theme of this full-color fantasy film was inspired by his own experience with his foster son Mike, a British war orphan.65 Scott intended to make the film in 16 mm and Eastman Color to save on costs; a new young director, Joseph Losey, who had been brought to RKO from MGM by Schary, was slated to direct The Boy with Green Hair as his first feature film. Another upcoming Adrian Scott production was Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers, a fanciful Popular Front comedy about a little girl who convinces Abraham Lincoln that he would be more popular if he wore a beard, illustrating that it is the "people's will which directs the action of the chief executive, and not the other way around." Based on a one-act play Scott had written in the early 1940s (which was produced on stage in the spring of 1947 by both the Actor's Lab and a local Los Angeles high school)

69

and expanded into a full-length screenplay by John Paxton, Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers was to be Scott's first opportunity to direct his own film. In addition to his feature-film projects, Scott was developing a series of documentary shorts "for use in combating minority prejudice," and had convinced a number of leading Hollywood talents to donate their services to this educational project.66 Despite their brave words and plans, however, Scott and Schary had badly

70

underestimated the power of the opposition. Perhaps the most telling sign of the impending backlash against Crossfire—indeed, against progressive filmmaking in general—was an informal boycott by the U.S. military. General C. T. Lanham, head of the Troop Information and Education Division of the War Department, had enthusiastically endorsed Crossfire, saying, "It's one of the best pictures I've ever seen. In my opinion, its approach to the anti-Semitic problem is far more effective than the one in Gentleman's Agreement. I think Fox is going to have a helluva time competing with Crossfire."67 Nonetheless, both the Army and the Navy refused to book the film for overseas troops, arguing that it was "not suitable entertainment," particularly since "native employees and friends" as well as military personnel often attended the screenings of Hollywood films.68 Indeed, following World War Two, America's image abroad became increasingly

71

important as the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union increased. To convince the beleaguered Europeans that the future peace and security of the world lay in democratic capitalism rather than in "totalitarian" Communism, the United States embarked on a wide-ranging campaign to export the American Way of Life. In this campaign, cultural diplomacy—particularly in the form of Hollywood films—buttressed the economic diplomacy of the Marshall Plan. Thus, Hollywood, led by MPPA president Eric Johnston, collaborated fully with the State Department to ensure that the films exported to Europe presented the correct image of American abundance and democracy; films that exposed the slippage between rhetoric and reality were deemed unsuitable and refused export licenses.69 Though the first attack on Hollywood's progressive filmmaking agenda would come from the reactionaries in HUAC and from the industry's own Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the cooperation of such corporate liberals as Eric Johnston, concerned about Hollywood's reputation at home and America's reputation abroad, proved critical to the final triumph of anti-Communist Americanism.

Notes Note 1: Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 16–17, 90. Note 2: David Bordwell et al., The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of

72

Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 324. Note 3: Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), especially 69. For an excellent discussion of cultural production and changing American tastes, see Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). Note 4: Scott had his first experience with the "Gallup bunch" during his work on Murder, My Sweet. When audience surveys suggested that a Dick Powell film with Chandler's original title, Farewell, My Lovely, evoked a musical or a romantic comedy, RKO changed the title to Murder, My Sweet. Though the pollsters guaranteed a gross of over $2 million, when the picture came in half a million under their predicted figures, the Gallup pollsters laid the blame on Dick Powell, claiming that the audience didn't expect to see him in that sort of picture, even though Powell had been cast originally—against type—to "help" the picture with his huge fan following. Scott also pointed out that though Gallup pollsters predicted huge success for Sister Kenny and It's a Wonderful Life, both films bombed at the box office. Adrian Scott to Allan Scott, May 28, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 5: "Crossfire: Movie-goers' Reactions to Two Treatments of the Subject Matter," Confidential ARI Report to RKO Executives, April 30, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS. Note 6: Ibid.. Note 7: Nonetheless, some broad generalizations can be made. According to the studio's breakdown, the preview audiences were divided fairly equally by gender. Slightly more than 50 percent were between 18 and 30 years of age, while 25 percent were between 31 and 45, 14 percent were over 45, and 10 percent were under 18. However, because the documents I have used here are not the preview cards themselves, but the studio's breakdown of preview responses, it is unfortunately impossible to correlate the demographic information with the individual responses. My count for the preview responses is based on RKO's own count, which was noted on the front page of each breakdown. Schary's count of 2,200 (cited in his Commentary article) may indeed be correct; however, I only found evidence for about 1,000 respondents. The following analysis and all quotations are drawn from RKO's Breakdown of Preview Cards, which are scattered through the papers of Scott, Schary, and Paxton. Italics in quotations are mine. Note 8: In the Trager-Raths test, over 50 percent of the distributed cards were returned, and the audience response to the film was markedly positive. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the respondents rated the film "pretty good" or "very good" and said that they would recommend it to their friends. Nevertheless, there were significant drawbacks to the "controlled" questions asked by Trager and Raths. For example, audiences gave mixed responses to the question, "What is your opinion of Montgomery's character?" In Denver, 24 percent said they "liked him," as did 17 percent in Boston. In hindsight, Trager and Raths realized that the question did not adequately distinguish between the audiences' perception of the anti-Semite and Robert Ryan's performance in the character of Monty. See Louis E. Raths and Frank N. Trager, "Public Opinion and Crossfire," Journal of Educational Sociology 21:6 (February 1948): 366–367. Note 9: "RKO to Sell Crossfire as Whodunit, Sans Any Anti-Semitism Reference," Variety, June 18, 1947, 2, 55. Note 10: Ibid. Note 11: Jacques Ferrand to Schary, August 26, 1947, and Common Council Radio Bulletin, August 26, 1947, both in Schary Papers, B127-F1, WHS; Feins to Scott, n.d. [1947], in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Though Scott and Cerf first met through their wives and often socialized and vacationed as a foursome, the two men also developed a close friendship of their own. Though Cerf was excited about publishing Crossfire and exchanged a number of letters with Schary about details of the project, it eventually fell through, most

likely a casualty of Scott's indictment for contempt of Congress later that year. In fact, Scott's friendship with Cerf was another casualty of his run-in with HUAC. See chapter 9 for details. Note 12: These concerns of Schary and the RKO publicity department may have been as much about politics as publicity strategy. At this point HUAC investigators were already nosing around Hollywood and had expressed interest in Crossfire; an endorsement by the progressive, outspokenly antisegregationist AVC was likely seen as a hindrance rather than a help to Crossfire's public reception. Note 13: Gloria Reiter, "Studio Producer Hilites Awards Banquet," Student Courier (June 1947), and Scott to Perry Lieber, June 4, 1947, both in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 14: Unless otherwise noted, all information in the following analysis of RKO's publicity and advertising campaign is taken from the Exhibitors Manual for Crossfire, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 15: "Odds and Ends on Crossfire," Rivoli Theater Program, July 22, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 16: "Crossfire," Box Office Slant: Showmen's Trade Review, June 28, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 17: Billy Rose, "Pitching Horseshoes," July 21, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 18: Bernard Feins to Schary, October 14, 1947, in Schary papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 19: J.R. Cominsky to Schary, July 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 20: Schary to J.R. Cominsky, August 5, 1947, in Schary papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 21: Leonard Neubauer, interview with author, April 1999, Los Angeles, CA. Note 22: Crossfire Trailer Cutting Continuity, July 1, 1947, in Crossfire Script Files, B-1, RKO Collection, ALSC–UCLA. Note 23: "Crossfire Takes New York by Storm!" The Radio Flash, July 26, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 24: Archer Winsten, "Crossfire at Rivoli: The Race Hatred Murder," New York Post (July 23, 1947), in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 25: Bosley Crowther, "Crossfire, Study on Tolerance," New York Times, July 23, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 26: Bosley Crowther, "Straight to the Point," New York Times, July 27, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 27: Billy Rose, "Pitching Horseshoes," n.s., July 21, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 28: James Agee, "Films," The Nation, August 2, 1947, 129–130. Note 29: Maxine Garrison, "RKOs Crossfire a Triumph in Human and Dramatic Values," Nite-Life, n.d., in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 30: David Platt, "Crossfire, an Exciting Mystery with a Purpose," Daily Worker, July 11, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 31: David Platt, "Crossfire Hits Target," Daily Worker, July 23, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 32: John Ross, "Murder with a Difference," Daily Worker, January 3, 1948, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 33: Robert Ryan, "My Role in Crossfire," The Worker–Southern Edition 12:29 (July 20, 1947), in Scott Papers, AHC. Interestingly, according to biographer Franklin Jarlett, Ryan was "a bit mystified and amused by the public's enthusiasm over his interpretation of the

loudmouthed bigot, Montgomery, and failed to see the 'bone-chilling evil I presumably project.' He viewed Crossfire as a 'fast murder mystery rather than a social polemic.'" Jarlett, Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography (Jefferson, N C.: McFarland, 1990), 25. In 1947, however, Ryan wrote—or at least lent his name to—a very stirring condemnation of the evils of anti-Semitism and the importance of Crossfire in raising the cry of alarm. Note 34: Cecelia Ager, "Crossfire Names Names, Packs Thrills, Wins Our Deep Gratitude," PM, July 23, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 35: "New Picture," Time, August 4, 1947, in Paxton Bio File, F12-1, AMPAS. Note 36: L.G., "An Oscar for Effort," The Week in Florida and the Caribbean, October 31, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 37: "Anti-Semitism and Advertising," The New Yorker, July 19, 1947, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 38: Alton Cook, "Crossfire Opens Drive Against Anti-Semitism," New York World, July 22, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 39: Otis L. Guernsey Jr., "Crossfire," New York Herald Tribune, July 23, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 40: Ross, "Murder with a Difference." Note 41: Crowther, "Straight to the Point." Note 42: Ager, "Crossfire Names Names." Note 43: Jack D. Grant, "Crossfire Dramatic Smash Indicting Anti-Semitism," The Hollywood Reporter, June 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 44: L.G., "An Oscar for Effort," The Week in Florida and the Caribbean, October 31, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 45: "Anti-Semitism and Advertising," The New Yorker, July 19, 1947, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 46: Edwin Schallert, "Crossfire Controversial, Fascinating," Los Angeles Times, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 47: Archer Winsten, "Crossfire at Rivoli: The Race Hatred Murder," New York Post, July 23, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 48: Hedda Hopper, "Looking at Hollywood," n.d., in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 49: Liberty, September 1947, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 50: "Prejudice Under Fire," Newsweek, July 28, 1947, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 51: "Crossfire," Box Office Digest, n.d., in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 52: "Movie of the Week: Crossfire," Life, July 30, 1947, in Crossfire Production Files, AMPAS. Note 53: Kate Cameron, "Rivoli's Crossfire Deals with Anti-Semitism Problem," Daily News, July 23, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 54: Winsten, "Crossfire at Rivoli." Note 55: Tom Donnelly, "But It's Not About You and Me," Washington Daily News, October 16, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 56: Cook, "Crossfire Opens Drive Against Anti-Semitism." Note 57: "New Picture," Time, August 4, 1947, from Paxton Bio File, AMPAS. Note 58: Schallert, "Crossfire Controversial, Fascinating." Note 59: Ray Lanning, Motion Picture Herald, June 298, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3.

Note 60: Variety, June 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 61: Red Kann, "Insider's Outlook," Motion Picture Daily, n.d., in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 62: David Platt, "Crossfire Box Office Terrific, Says Variety," Daily Worker, August 1, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 63: Adrian Scott, "You Can't Do That," in Thought Control in the U.S.A.: The Collected Proceedings, ed. Harold J. Salemson (Hollywood, Calif.: Progressive Citizens of America, 1947), 330. Note 64: Virginia Wright, Daily News, July 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 65: Scott's wife, Anne Shirley, "found" Mike when they were in England in 1946 filming So Well Remembered. Though she had a daughter, Julie, with her first husband, John Payne, Anne desperately wanted a family with Adrian. She had had several miscarriages over the preceding three years, however, and Mike, an angelically beautiful boy in dire need of care and love, seemed a godsend. British law prevented the Scotts from formally adopting Mike, but they brought him with them when they returned to the United States and raised him as their own. Mike was a deeply disturbed child; in his late teens he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. But in 1947, Scott was certain that Mike's emotional difficulties stemmed largely from the trauma of the war and the loss of his parents. Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999; Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. Note 66: Thomas F. Brady, "Hollywood Buzzes," n.d., in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS; Scott, typescript of "Some of My Worst Friends," in Scott Papers, AHC; Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, March 20, 1948, in Scott Papers, AHC.; Affidavit of Adrian Scott in Opposition to Motion for Summary Judgment, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, Central Division, n.d., in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F11, WHS; Bernard Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 133–134; Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1992), 99. See also Douglas Gomery, "They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray)," in Kings of the Bs: Working within the Hollywood System, ed. Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn (New York: Dutton, 1975), 186–187. Note 67: Fred Herzberg to Dore Schary, August 4, 1947, in Schary Papers, B126-F16, WHS. Note 68: "Anti-Semitism Pic Nixed by Navy," Variety, August 27, 1947, 1, 54. The Navy also declined to show Duel in the Sun or The Outlaw, films it found offensive on sexual rather than political grounds. Note 69: Reinhold Wagnleitner, "The Irony of American Culture Abroad: Austria and the Cold War," in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Lary May (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), especially 293–294; Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 177. For a more comprehensive study of the postwar exportation of American culture to Europe, see also Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War, trans. Diana M. Wolf (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Chapter 9 Americanism on Trial: HUAC, the Hollywood Ten, and the Politics of Anti-Communism In the depression, which our most conservative economists agree is coming, the soil for demagoguery grows rich and fertile. . . . In this [climate], the liberal and progressive, the union man, the people, and anyone who subscribes to full democratic practice are liquidated. Today we see coming true what was said by one of the worst Americans, Huey Long: Fascism will come to America in the guise of Americanism. —Adrian Scott, notes for "You Can't Do That"

In the summer of 1947, following the critical and popular success of Crossfire,

1

thirty-six-year-old Adrian Scott was at the peak of his Hollywood career. Though his creative prospects had never been brighter, Scott's mood, as he and other Hollywood

progressives

contemplated

the

postwar

political

scene,

was

increasingly bleak. In 1947, ominous portents, mirroring the dislocations that had fueled European fascism after World War One, were everywhere: fears of rising inflation and a return of the depression, concerns about the reintegration of war veterans, rising anti-Semitism and racism, and a flurry of antilabor legislation all suggested to them that America was on the road to fascism. Sweeping Republican victories in the 1946 elections, giving conservatives a majority in Congress, fueled significant challenges to the New Deal order—the defeat of the Economic Bill of Rights and passage of the antilabor Taft-Hartley

Act, in

particular—and

exacerbated the emerging Cold War with the Soviet Union. Progressives placed the blame for the rising conservative tide squarely on President Truman, citing a laundry list of political failures: his belligerent mishandling of Stalin at Potsdam; his institutionalization of a hard-line containment policy toward the Soviets in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; his requirement of anti-Communist loyalty oaths for federal employees; his replacement of prominent and effective New Dealers with cronies from his own political machine; his bungling of the postwar economic reconversion; his willingness to use state power against the labor movement during the postwar strike wave, and so on.1 By 1947, it had become abundantly clear that Harry S. Truman was no Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Therefore Scott, like many Hollywood leftists, supported the Progressive Party and Henry A. Wallace in the 1948 presidential election. Wallace, former vice president and a New Dealer par excellence, seemed, far more than Truman, a worthy heir to Roosevelt's legacy. With his vision of a "Century of the Common Man," Wallace revitalized the hopes of the Popular Front. Historian Norman D. Markowitz has commented:

2

Advocating a new international order in which the injustices that had created depression, Fascism, and war would be eliminated, Wallace became the leading wartime defender of what Freda Kirchway, the publisher of the Nation, called a 'New Deal for the world.' . . . [Wallace and] the social liberals believed that the planning and social welfare of the New Deal, institutionalized by a United Nations organization and made workable

by

Soviet-American

cooperation,

could

merge

with

the

revolutionary aspirations of oppressed peoples abroad to create a just and lasting peace. The creation of a world New Deal would in turn help to reinvigorate the New Deal at home.2

Wallace's third-party candidacy, however, was a sign of the growing rift between radicals and liberals. Though his calls to extend the New Deal at home appealed to many liberals, Wallace's insistence that domestic security and economic abundance depended on friendly relations with the Soviet Union proved divisive. Indeed, the issue of domestic anti-Communism and postwar policy toward the Soviet Union became the line in the sand that definitively split the Popular Front. Postwar changes in the Communist Party line significantly exacerbated these

3

tensions. The ouster of "revisionist" Party leader Earl Browder in 1945 marked a return to the more militant, revolutionary stance of the early 1930s. The new Party head, William Z. Foster, revived the CPUSA, which in May 1944 had been dissolved by Browder and replaced with the Communist Political Association; he denounced the Popular Front and "Browderism," arguing, "Comrade Browder denies the class struggle by sowing illusions among the workers of a long postwar period of harmonious class relations with generous-minded employers. . . . Browder's line is a rejection of the Marxian concept of the progressive and revolutionary initiative of the working class and with it, the vanguard role of the Communist Party."3 The "independent" stance of the postwar Party, repudiating Truman and the Democrats and endorsing the pro-Soviet policies of the Progressive Party, alienated its liberal allies and undermined the coalition politics of the Popular Front. By 1947, these simmering tensions fueled a decisive split, as Communists and Wallaceite liberals banded together to form the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA), while anti-Communist liberals created the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). In Hollywood, the liberal-radical split first played itself out on the terrain of union politics, as a series of violent strikes by the militant and democratic Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) in 1945 and 1946, part of the massive postwar strike wave, seriously divided the progressive film community.4 Against this backdrop of a conservative offensive against Communism and a deepening schism between liberals and radicals, the House Un-American Activities Committee turned its attention once more to Hollywood. The twin threats of Jewish domination and Communist infiltration of Hollywood had long preoccupied

4

American conservatives, and the film industry had weathered innumerable attacks by both federal and state investigating committees since the mid-1930s. In 1947, however, the political landscape had considerably altered, and Hollywood was more

vulnerable

than

ever

before

to

charges

of

un-Americanism.

Most

importantly, the war years had fueled a new recognition of the power of the screen to shape public opinion. In a nation only too aware of the Nazi uses of mass culture to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Germans, the charges of Communist influence in Hollywood provoked alarm and dismay on both the Right and Left, though for very different reasons. During the war years, "freedom of the screen" was touted as one of the fundamental differences between democracy and fascism; thus, in the contest between HUAC and Hollywood, each side proclaimed the other "un-American." For the conservatives, the evidence of Red propaganda in Hollywood films proved that an international conspiracy of Jews and Communists was undermining American cultural values and democratic traditions. For the Hollywood radicals, the HUAC investigation was a harbinger of fascism in America, the opening salvo in a far-reaching reactionary plan to undermine basic American freedoms and the progress toward social democracy begun by the New Deal.

The Conservative Offensive The postwar leaders of the House Un-American Activities Committee were

5

Mississippi Democrat John E. Rankin and New Jersey Republican J. Parnell Thomas. Well known for their anti-internationalist, anti-New Deal voting records, both subscribed to an anti-Communism that hearkened back to the xenophobic, antimodernist "100 Percent Americanism" of the 1920s. Thomas, who became chair of HUAC in January 1947, had been active on the Committee since its beginnings in the mid-1930s. Long suspicious of the New Deal cultural agenda, he was among the first to call for an investigation of the Federal Theater Project, denouncing it as "a hotbed for Communists" and "one more link in the vast and unparalleled New Deal propaganda machine." In the postwar period, Thomas focused his bile more particularly on the Communist Party, "bombarding" the Attorney General's office with letters "urging him to prosecute the CP for failing to register as a foreign agent and for seeking the violent overthrow of the government," and writing to Truman, "The immunity which this foreign-directed conspiracy has been enjoying for the past fifteen years must cease." Rankin, who had held his heavily poll-taxed congressional seat for over two decades, shared Thomas's anti-Communism but was particularly notorious for his white supremacist views. Frequently proclaiming his desire to "save America for white gentile Americans," he considered the Klan an eminently "American institution" and counted among his supporters such native fascists as Gerald L. K.

6

Smith, Father Charles Coughlin, Gerald P. Winrod, and William Dudley Pelley. The more sordid aspects of his political career were detailed in Introducing . . . Congressman John Elliott Rankin, a pamphlet produced by the Hollywood Popular Front group HICCASP. Pointing out Rankin's consistent support for the racist poll tax, the HICCASP pamphlet noted snidely: "He has established the record of representing the smallest number of actual voters in proportion to the population of the district represented. He has also established the record of getting himself elected the most times with the least number of voters." Rankin was also notorious for his anti-Semitic comments on the floor of the House, particularly his characterization of columnist Walter Winchell as "the communistic little kike." In another widely reported comment, Rankin vilified a group of women who met with him in 1943 to protest his stand against overseas soldiers' voting in the 1944 presidential election: "If I am any judge, they are communists, pure and simple; probably more simple than pure. They looked like foreigners to me. I never saw such a wilderness of noses in my life."5 On July 17, 1945, on the floor of the House, Rankin had denounced the

7

Jewish-Communist conspiracy in Hollywood, proclaiming that "alien-minded communistic enemies of Christianity are trying to take over the motion picture industry and spread their un-American propaganda as well as their loathsome, lying, immoral and anti-Christian filth before the eyes of your children in every community in America." HICCASP accused Rankin, a master of publicity, of targeting the film industry to compensate for bad press following his attempts to block an investigation into conditions in veterans' hospitals.6 Certainly, as the earlier investigations by Dies, Tenney, and others had amply demonstrated, publicity was one of the great enticements of an investigation of Hollywood. In 1947, unlike in earlier investigations, HUAC could count on considerable support from within the film industry, and indeed, had been "invited" to come to Hollywood by the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Founded in February 1944 by a coalition of right-wing Hollywood activists, including actors Robert Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, and Gary Cooper, studio boss Walt Disney, labor leader Roy Brewer, and others, and led by director Sam Wood, the Alliance worked to combat public perceptions of radical influence in Hollywood: " In our special field of motion pictures, we resent the growing impression that this industry is made up of, and dominated by, Communists, radicals and crack-pots. . . . We pledge to fight, with every means at our organized command, any effort of any group or individual, to divert the loyalty of the screen from the free America that gave it birth." Indeed, the public announcement of the Alliance's founding was timed to highlight the Red infiltration of Hollywood: the following night the internationalist Hollywood Free World Association hosted a fundraising dinner where a glittering array of liberal

8

Hollywood stars—Olivia de Havilland, Walter Wanger, Walter Huston, and many others—gathered to hear the featured speaker, then-Vice President Henry Wallace, an outspoken supporter of greater cooperation with the Soviet Union.7 From its inception, the Alliance shrewdly sought support from conservative and

9

patriotic organizations outside the film industry, including the Republican Party, the Knights of Columbus, the American Legion, the Tenney Committee, and, of course, HUAC.8 The Alliance members shared with HUAC two key preoccupations: Communist infiltration of the Hollywood unions, and radical influence on film content. The antilabor thrust of the Alliance was evident from the beginning, and many

of

the

leading

members

were

well

known

for

their

"anti-strike,

pro-management, pro-industrial harmony positions." Several founders of the Alliance, for example, had been active in the Screen Playwrights, the company union founded to challenge the Screen Writers Guild in the 1930s, while Alliance officer Roy Brewer was the head of the conservative craft guild International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), another company union with a long history of Red-baiting, strike-breaking, and general thuggery. According to Brewer, the postwar strikes by the CSU demonstrated that "[t]here has been a real Communist plot to capture our unions in Hollywood, as part of the Communist plan to control the motion-picture industry."9 Similarly, the Alliance believed that the Screen Writers Guild was "lousy with

10

Reds" who used the screen to disseminate un-American ideas and values. Their greatest outrage was directed at the pro-Soviet films produced during the war with the encouragement of the Office of War Information (OWI)—Song of Russia, Mission to Moscow, The North Star—but they also saw evidence of Communist influence in a wide variety of progressive films, including Crossfire, The Farmer's Daughter, and The Best Years of Our Lives. Novelist Ayn Rand articulated the Alliance's version of loyal American film content in Screen Guide for Americans, a 1950 pamphlet that offered such guidelines as "Don't Smear the Free Enterprise System," "Don't Deify the 'Common Man,'" and "Don't Smear Industrialists." The pamphlet was widely distributed by the Alliance and reprinted in a number of leading newspapers, including the front page of the entertainment section of the New York Times. That "Americanism" would form the rhetorical basis of the Alliance's challenge was clear from the inaugural address of its first president, MGM director Sam Wood: "The American motion picture industry is, and will continue to be, held by Americans for the American people, in the interests of America, and dedicated to the preservation and continuance of the American scene and the American way of life."10 HUAC and the Alliance found an unexpected ally in Eric Johnston, who assumed the presidency of the Motion Picture Producers Association (MPPA) in September

11

1945. Though Johnston was far too liberal and cosmopolitan to endorse the xenophobic

Americanism

of

HUAC,

he

shared

their

belief

that

domestic

Communism and Soviet expansionism represented fundamental threats to the American Way of Life. A successful Seattle businessman, Johnston had been president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the early 1940s and had served as Roosevelt's economic liaison in the Soviet Union during the war. In his 1944 bestseller America Unlimited, Johnston argued that the economic productivity and patriotic unity of World War Two had saved the United States from the moral degeneracy of the 1920s and the class conflict of the 1930s. Rejecting the laissez-faire capitalism and militant unionism of the past in favor of a planned economy and labor-management cooperation, Johnston envisioned a grand new postwar order—very similar, in fact, to Henry Luce's vision in The American Century—in which material abundance and political consensus would ensure freedom at home and abroad. For Johnston, Hollywood would play a critical role in disseminating his corporatist, liberal vision of the American Way of Life: [I]t is no exaggeration to say that the modern motion picture industry sets the styles for half the world. There is not one of us who isn't aware that the motion picture industry is the most powerful medium for influencing of people that man has ever built. . . . We can set new styles of living and the doctrine of production must be made completely popular.

Thus Johnston, like HUAC and the Alliance, was deeply concerned that Hollywood films purvey the correct image of American life. America's image abroad was of particular concern, for he firmly believed that movies, in whetting international appetites for the abundance and democracy promised by his liberal Americanism, could help to realize the nation's anti-Soviet foreign policy goals. Thus, soon after taking charge of the MPPA in September 1945, Johnston announced to a meeting of the Screen Writers Guild, "We'll have no more Grapes of Wrath, we'll have no more Tobacco Roads, we'll have no more films that deal with the seamy side of American life. We'll have no more films that treat the banker as a villain."11 Though Johnston was no supporter of Communism—he despised the "pathetic and despicable stooges for foreign dictatorships"—he was determined to avoid the negative publicity that a full-scale investigation by HUAC would bring. In March 1947, when it became clear that the Committee planned to accept the Alliance's invitation, he testified voluntarily before HUAC, along with Red-baiting California Congressman Jack Tenney, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and "patriotic" activist Walter Steele, as an "expert in the containment of Communism." Johnston acknowledged a Red presence in Hollywood but insisted that Communist attempts to influence film content had met with "overwhelming defeat." Intent on protecting the film industry from state intervention or regulation, he argued that efforts to restrict film content would only undermine the ability of the studios to

12

produce the "pro-American" films desired by both HUAC and the industry executives. Unconvinced, HUAC continued to pressure the studios to fire known Communists. Realizing that his testimony had been ineffective, in April, Johnston met privately with J. Parnell Thomas to assure him that the MPPA would cooperate fully with HUAC, and he announced to the press that the studios shared HUAC's desire to "expose any threat to the screen and to the American design of living."12 Though the support of the Alliance and the MPPA was important, the real key to

13

HUAC's success in 1947 was the collusion of the FBI. The FBI had been monitoring the activities of Hollywood Communists, particularly radical infiltration of unions and Popular Front organizations, since the 1930s, though radical influence on film content increasingly became its focus of concern during the war years. However, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had declined to cooperate with previous HUAC investigations of Hollywood, not wanting to compromise ongoing investigations

or,

more

importantly,

undermine

his

organization's

public

reputation for confidentiality and professionalism. Internal FBI correspondence suggests that Hoover was also concerned that opening FBI files to HUAC might expose the wiretaps and break-ins that were the source of much of the FBI's knowledge about Communists in the film industry. Increasingly, however, Hoover's belief that radical influence on film content posed a significant internal security threat dovetailed with the concerns of HUAC. In addition, Hoover was frustrated by the fact that none of the Red activity in Hollywood uncovered by the FBI was illegal: the Hollywood Communists were not involved with espionage or conspiracies to overthrow the U.S. government by force; it was not illegal either to be a member of the Communist Party or to employ a Communist in the film industry. With no avenue to criminal prosecution available and the Attorney General unimpressed with Hoover's "evidence" of subversion in Hollywood, the FBI director began to rethink his policy against sharing confidential Bureau files.13 In April, HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas and chief investigator Robert Stripling arrived in Los Angeles on a "fact-finding" mission, gathering information to determine whether a full investigation was warranted. Setting up shop at the swank Biltmore Hotel, they met in closed session with fourteen "friendly witnesses"—mostly members of the Alliance and a handful of studio executives. Thomas, realizing that they didn't have sufficient information or resources to move forward, asked Richard Hood, Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI's Los Angeles office, to appear before the subcommittee. Hood immediately alerted Hoover and after some negotiations, it was agreed that the FBI would share the names of known Communists and would prepare summaries from its files on a list of nine names submitted by Thomas. Hoover approved this plan, ordering Hood, "Expedite. I want to extend every assistance to this Committee."14

14

At Hoover's direction, surreptitiously funneling information to HUAC became a

15

priority, though that information was carefully screened to make sure that information from illegal or potentially compromising sources—wiretaps, break-ins, informants—was not included. Between May and October, FBI agents prepared "blind" memoranda (typed on plain stationery, with no identifying letterhead or names of sender or recipient) on forty "unfriendly" witnesses under consideration; when these blind memoranda proved inadequate, Hoover relented and ordered Hood to share the photostats of twenty-five membership cards obtained through the FBI break-ins at Party headquarters.15 In September, HUAC issued subpoenas to forty-three members of the film community,

including

nineteen

prominent

progressives

who

16

immediately

announced their intention to challenge the Committee and became known as the "unfriendlies" or the Hollywood Nineteen.16 The logic behind HUAC's choice of these particular nineteen leftists is unclear. Though the men represented a "wide spectrum of success and financial security" in the industry, there was much common ground among them: most were or had been screenwriters and leading players in the SWG; all were visibly active in left-wing causes; and most were or had been members of the Communist Party. Nonetheless, these men—and they were all men—represented only a handful of the fifty or sixty members of the activist core among Hollywood progressives. Certainly there were other equally prominent Hollywood leftists—John Wexley, Ben Barzman, Paul Jarrico, Abraham Polonsky, to name only a few—who escaped HUAC's net in 1947, lending credence to Dalton Trumbo's tongue-in-cheek assertion that the Committee "pulled [the names] out of a hat."17 The names Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk were not, however, pulled out of a hat. In May, as soon as Hoover agreed to provide HUAC with confidential Bureau information,

Congressman

Thomas

submitted

an

initial

list

of

eleven

names—presumably those Hollywood subversives who most concerned him. Both Scott and Dmytryk were included, along with nine leading lights of Hollywood's progressive émigré community, including Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, and Salka Viertel. It is an intriguing list: all European émigrés, mostly Jewish, noted for their antifascist political activism—and then there's Scott and Dmytryk.18 Given the blatant anti-Semitism of key HUAC members and their espousal of the "Jewish-Communist conspiracy" theory, it cannot be a coincidence that the only two Americans on this list were the producer and director of Crossfire, a film exposé of American anti-Semitism and native fascism. Scott and Dmytryk appear to have been specifically targeted by HUAC not because they were Communists—though that certainly didn't help their case—but because of their work on Crossfire, a very dangerous film in the eyes of HUAC.

17

Certainly Scott and Dmytryk both believed, at least in 1947, that this was the

18

reason that they had been targeted by HUAC.19 Both were very aware of the Rankin's virulent anti-Semitism and were particularly swayed by the fact that HUAC investigators, during their visit to RKO that summer, had specifically asked to view Crossfire. Upon receiving their subpoenas, Scott and Dmytryk sent a telegram to HUAC, inviting its members to screen the film to determine for themselves whether Crossfire was an "un-American" document: "Millions of Americans have seen Crossfire, our picture opposing anti-Semitism. We invite you and the entire Committee to a showing to be held at your convenience so that when we appear before your body we may discuss with you what action you propose to take against the un-American doctrine of racism which subverts all constitutional liberties which decent Americans hold sacred." HUAC did not reply, and Scott noted, "We expected them to refuse our invitation . . . to refuse to discuss measures by which the practice of anti-Semitism could be abolished. To do this would be incompatible with the committee's bigoted record and bigoted support."20

Progressive Hollywood Fights Back In their challenge to HUAC and the Alliance, the Hollywood radicals and their

19

liberal allies relied on wartime popular nationalism's rallying cry of "freedom," calling for "freedom of the screen" and condemning the tactics of the Alliance and HUAC as "thought control." In July 1947, months before any subpoenas had been issued, the Progressive Citizens of America and the University of California at Los Angeles sponsored a well-attended conference entitled "Thought Control in America," at which both radicals and liberals discussed the impact of conservative intimidation on a wide range of fields—on the film industry, of course, but also on science and medicine, law, journalism, and radio.21 In a paper entitled "You Can't Do That," Scott used his experience with the production of Crossfire as a window onto issues of "freedom of the screen" and censorship in the film industry. Warning that progressive filmmaking was under assault by the forces of reaction, he urged his audience not to be complacent: "Our fear makes us beautiful targets. . . . We are magnificently adjusted to bans, and ripe for more bans."22 In their writings and speeches, both at the Thought Control conference and into the fall, the Hollywood progressives emphasized three key themes, each powerfully informed by their Popular Front vision: 1) their own Americanism and the historical tradition of radical dissent in the United States; 2) the parallels between the current anti-Communist crusade in America and the rise of European fascism; and 3) the dangers of censorship and its negative impact on Hollywood filmmaking. Historian Norman A. Markowitz sees the postwar reliance on Popular Front analyses and rhetoric as a backward-looking mistake: "On the defensive

20

after 1945, the popular front could only invoke the increasingly hollow slogans of the past, seeking to sustain fears of Fascism in a Hitlerless world."23 In hindsight, of course, Markowitz is quite correct. However, I believe that he underestimates the extent to which, at least in 1947, the slogans of the Popular Front still resonated profoundly, not only for Hollywood progressives, but for a substantial segment of ordinary Americans. As the public response to Crossfire suggests, the Popular Front vision of a pluralist, democratic, tolerant America was widely embraced. In addition, I think that Markowitz's critique fails to recognize the profound importance of fascism in shaping the political perspectives of American radicals—indeed, of the American public as a whole. For most Americans, even in the late 1940s, fascism represented the ideological Other against which they understood and self-consciously constructed their own political culture and imagined community, "their" Americanism. For this generation of American radicals, antifascism was their political raison d'etre; they could not, quite simply, interpret the postwar events in any other way. For them, the slogans of antifascism were not "outworn"—indeed, they had, perhaps, even more emotional resonance when the fascist menace seemed to have infected their America and to threaten them personally. They were, of course, mistaken in their belief that ordinary Americans shared their antifascist fervor. By the 1950s, Communism, equated with fascism under the rubric of totalitarianism, was perceived by most Americans as a profound threat to the American Way of Life, and the wartime antifascist impulse translated only too easily into the postwar anti-Communist crusade.24 In 1947, however, it was not quite so clear which path America would take, and the Hollywood progressives, clearly believing that "good Americans" still could be counted on to rally behind their antifascist Popular Front vision, began to raise the cry of alarm about the un-American danger represented by HUAC. Scott and Dmytryk, along with the other members of the Nineteen, understood HUAC, not as a legitimate arm of the national government, but as a key component in a broad-based reactionary front intent on rolling back the New Deal, containing militant unionism, and crushing the American Left. To them, it was quite clear that the Committee's tactics were both un-American and potentially fascist. Thus, in planning their defense strategy, the Nineteen agreed that they not only wanted to keep their jobs, stay out of jail, and avoid naming names, but also that they wanted to publicly expose HUAC as a tool of reaction. The Nineteen also agreed early on to present a united front in their defense—though they continued to argue among themselves about strategy throughout the hearings and after.25 Though individuals among the ten men who would eventually be called to testify hired separate counsel, the attorneys worked together as a team and represented a broad political spectrum—a miniature Popular Front against fascism. Ben Margolis, Charles Katz, and Martin Popper were all active members of the leftist

21

National Lawyers Guild, with significant civil liberties experience and, probably, ties to the Communist Party. Robert Kenny and Bartley Crum, as liberals with distinguished records of public service, were chosen as the spokesmen for the Nineteen. Kenny, then president of the NLG, had served as California's Attorney General from 1943 to 1947; Crum, a liberal Republican hired by Scott and Dmytryk, had worked as Wendell Wilkie's campaign aide and had recently published a book, Behind the Silken Curtain, about his efforts to open Palestine to Jewish Displaced Persons.26 From the beginning, their attorneys warned the Nineteen that their case could only be won in the Supreme Court and that they should expect to be charged with contempt of Congress and to lose in the lower courts.27 Recognizing that they were waging a war of public relations as well as law, the

22

Nineteen and their attorneys vigorously debated the options open to them. One strategy would have been to simply denounce the Committee as unconstitutional, a tactic sure to cost them public support. Another option was to deny Communist Party membership, but fears of perjury charges led them to reject this strategy. A third tactic, favored by the more militant of the Nineteen, was to proudly acknowledge their political affiliations and activities; this strategy, however, would have legally obligated them to answer HUAC's questions about other Hollywood leftists, which they unequivocally refused to do. A fourth option was to take the Fifth Amendment, which the Nineteen quickly rejected as morally and politically abhorrent. They did not want the American public to think that they had something to hide or that they believed, even implicitly, that membership in the Communist Party was criminal or shameful. Thus the Nineteen ultimately chose to rely on the First Amendment's protection of free speech and free association, a strategy with a noble legal and political history. As Ceplair and Englund explain, Standing on such hallowed ground gave the Nineteen the moral, historical and legal basis they needed to challenge the Committee's jurisdiction without appearing to be captious, self-seeking wreckers of congressional procedures. More fundamentally, the tradition of the First struck a resonant chord in the "unfriendly" witnesses themselves. Both in their public and private statements, they constantly reiterated their regard for their responsibilities as American citizens, defenders of the Constitution, and bearers of the radical tradition of Zenger, Paine, Altgeld, Debs.28

Having agreed on a legal-defense strategy, the Nineteen next discussed its presentation before HUAC—particularly the "degree of politeness to accord the inquisition." Ultimately, they agreed that each would read a personal statement before answering the Committee's questions. To ensure that all points in their anti-HUAC argument would be addressed, the Nineteen worked in concert to prepare their statements for the hearings.29 A number of the group focused on the similarities to European fascism; others focused on the Bill of Rights and the

23

tradition of dissent in American history. Dmytryk explained the un-American workings of the blacklist, while Scott, not surprisingly, focused on the "'cold war' now being waged by the House Un-American Activities Committee against the Jewish and Negro people." Drawing on HICCASP's research on the racist and anti-Semitic views of John Rankin, Scott challenged the Americanism of the Committee itself: "Let the committeeman say he is not anti-Semitic. But the rabble rousing anti-Semitic Gerald L. K. Smith publicly approves and supports him. Let the committeeman say he is not against the colored people. But the anti-Negro Ku Klux Klan and all hate groups love and work for him." In contrast, Scott noted that the nineteen men on trial not only "say they are against minority oppression, they do something about it," listing the antiracist films of the Nineteen: Robert Rossen's They Won't Forget and Body and Soul; Albert Maltz's Pride of the Marines and The House I Live In; Ring Lardner Jr.'s The Brotherhood of Man; Lewis Milestone's Of Mice and Men; Lester Cole's None Shall Escape; as well as his own Crossfire.30 Initially, the response to the Nineteen was quite positive, and the men believed

24

that they had broad support throughout the film community. After HUAC issued its subpoenas, the left-leaning Progressive Citizens of America immediately rallied to the cause, but Hollywood liberals also organized to support the Nineteen. Led by John Huston and William Wyler, they created the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA), the second critically important organization in the anti-HUAC campaign. Abraham Polonsky, representing the radical faction of a largely liberal group, attended the formal founding meeting of the CFA at the home of Ira Gershwin: "You could not get into the place [it was so crowded]. The excitement was intense. The town was full of enthusiasm because they all felt they were going to win. Every star was there." Through radio broadcasts, pamphlets, splashy ads in the trade press, and star appearances, the CFA led the public relations campaign in support of the Nineteen, or more precisely, in defense of the film industry. At this point, prior to the hearings, these two causes appeared identical, and the heady days of the Popular Front seemed revived in the face of the external threat.31 Not surprisingly, the FBI was watching avidly, attending public events, collecting literature, compiling names, and recording it all in their files. And there were other ominous signs on the horizon as well. The CFA leaders, for example, determined to maintain the "purity" of their organization, refused to open its membership to Communists. More troubling by far was the ambivalent position taken by the Screen Writers Guild. Though adamantly opposed to HUAC, the Guild's liberal leadership, concerned with the reputation of their union, saw the hearings as an opportunity to set the record straight and to publicly separate themselves from the radicals. As SWG president Emmet Lavery, who had also

25

been subpoenaed by HUAC (though not as an "unfriendly"), announced prior to the hearings, "[I]n the matter of individual activities of Guild members, either within or outside the industry, the individual defense or individual presentation is a matter for each individual witness. As the chief executive officer of the Guild, it is not my purpose at Washington to act either as 'prosecutor' or 'defending counsel' for individual witnesses before the Committee."32 Nevertheless, on the eve of the hearings, the Nineteen believed that they enjoyed wide support among their colleagues in the industry. Perhaps the high point of the united front against HUAC was a mass rally held on October 15 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. This "Keep America Free!" rally was attended by nearly 7,000 people and featured a wide array of both liberal and radical speakers, who echoed the militant language and analysis of the Nineteen. For example, Robert Ryan read a resolution calling for the immediate dissolution of HUAC: "We protest the threat to personal liberty and the dignity of American citizenship represented by this police Committee of Dies, Wood, Rankin and Thomas. We demand, in the name of all Americans, that the House Committee on Un-American activities be abolished, while there still remains the freedom to abolish it."33 Liberal radio writer Norman Corwin made explicit the parallels with European fascism: "The screen is the most important and far-reaching medium of culture in the world today. And a free culture, by its very existence, is a bulwark against tyranny. That is why Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japs went after culture with guns, nooses, guillotines, and lethal gas." Drawing on the inclusionary logic used by Pastor Neimoller to galvanize antifascist resistance in Germany, Corwin argued: This is my fight just as much as it's the fight of Adrian Scott and Darryl Zanuck and L. B. Mayer and Evelyn Keyes and you and the former vice-president who was denied the right to speak in the Hollywood Bowl, and the Negro who is denied the right to sit on certain seats in a bus, and the group of painters whose canvasses were not permitted to be shown in foreign countries, and the singer who was not permitted to sing in Peoria, and the member of the Anglo-American Commission on Palestine who was not permitted to speak in a town in upstate California, and the accused clerk who is not permitted to face his accuser.34

Republican attorney Bartley Crum, who had been hired by Scott and Dmytryk, spoke on the American ideals held by the Nineteen: "These men know a great deal about Americanism and about the struggles by which it was won. . . . It is my proud privilege to tell you that each and every man we represent has individually determined he will not yield at any point in upholding the constitutional rights of the American people and of the industry of which he is a part."35

26

Members of the Nineteen spoke as well. Director Irving Pichel, noting the long

27

history of reactionary activism among Alliance members and particularly their opposition to the New Deal, insisted that the hearings were a battleground over competing definitions of Americanism and defended the democratic principles for which the Nineteen stood: The American ideals to which I and my colleagues subscribe are those taught to every school child and to every applicant for citizenship. They are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, in the Preamble to the Constitution, in . . . the Bill of Rights. If we are wrong, we must have misread those great promises. We must have misunderstood the intentions of the great founders of this greatest of nations. We must have misunderstood the course and meaning of our whole history.36

Similarly, Albert Maltz attacked the reactionary politics of the Committee

28

members: "And what are their standards of loyalty? Do we find on their lips the words of Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln? No, we find the following from Rankin: 'The Ku Klux Klan is an American institution, its members are Americans.' And we find a Committee on Un-American activities voting 5 to 1 not to investigate the Ku Klux Klan." Maltz, too, represented their fight against HUAC as a battle to define true Americanism: Loyalty to them demands an absolute support of the status quo in American

life.

Price

rigging,

monopoly

profit,

lynching,

inflation,

anti-Semitism—none of these is un-American or requires investigation. But let anyone advocate any social change for the welfare of the people—let him advocate Federal housing or an anti-lynching bill—let him be a supporter of Loyalist Spain or of free suffrage in the South—and these men will list him as a disloyal subversive.

Comparing HUAC to "a thought police, a Gestapo," Maltz argued, "It proposes to tar and feather any social idea that is liberal or humane, and to slander any artistic work that expresses the concept of human brotherhood. Using the weapons of hysteria, intimidation and political blackmail, it has become a prosecuting committee of hatchet men on behalf of social reaction."37 Adrian Scott also spoke, hitting hard on the issue of freedom of the screen. Gene Kelly, the master of ceremonies for the rally, introduced him as "a producer of a new school," adding, "Mr. Scott has the subversive audacity to believe in the Bill of Rights and simple human dignity, and he believes that the Thomas-Rankin Committee is a patriotic masquerade, and that it's time the masks were removed."38 In Scott's address, entitled "The Real Object of the Investigation," he insisted that the "absurd charges" and "hysterical headlines" were designed not only to smear the Nineteen, but to frighten the studio executives into "lifeless conformity." Pointing out that nothing gets past the front office, that "there is no

29

such thing as a Communist picture," he noted that "there have been pictures calling for a better world, calling for more understanding among people, more tolerance, less lynching and more forthright use of citizenship." For Scott, it was abundantly

clear

that

HUAC

intended

to

censor

such

"un-American"

representations: Ideas unsympathetic to the Un-American Committee or to the [Alliance] will automatically be rejected—or if a few should be a subject of consideration, they will be referred to the fanatic minority within the [Alliance] for approval. . . . This means that this enterprise which subsists on . . . originality and showmanship . . . will turn their sovereign rights over to a minority—a minority within whose ranks is a white supremacy advocate and a leading anti-Semite. This means that ideas—the very life blood of the industry—are shackled and that means, finally, that freedom of the screen will be no more.39

On the eve of the hearings, then, the Nineteen were confident that their cause

30

was just and that they had the support of the industry and even the American people. After the meeting at the Shrine, a friend wrote to Maltz, confessing that the mass singing of "America" had moved him to tears and assuring him that HUAC eventually would be "smashed" by the people: "The goddamned, ornery, pungent, pugnacious, misled, stubborn, god-loving, coke-drinking, movie-going, ass-licking, and a million-to-one-shot liberty-hungry American people are going to do it."40 Scott and Dmytryk were particularly reassured following several conversations with Dore Schary. Scott's notes record that Schary, concerned but supportive at the first meeting, promised that both he and Rathvon were "with him." Schary had already come out publicly in support of "freedom of the screen," arguing before a gathering of film exhibitors, "I believe that all picture personalities, picture makers and organizations must develop in this postwar world a strength of purpose and character that has been lacking. They must refuse to be intimidated by un-Americans who talk about Americanism, and by special groups that have everything to lose by the screen's becoming articulate." Now, he assured Scott that RKO and the entire film industry were "prepared to oppose the committee" and its attack on progressive filmmaking. At this point Schary, though not considered one of the unfriendly Nineteen, was quite concerned about his own position vis-à-vis the Committee. Investigators had visited Schary at the studio and, after screening Crossfire and The Farmer's Daughter, pronounced them "pro-communist." Schary had also contributed to the HICCASP exposé of Rankin, and he feared that this would be used against him during the hearings. During this conversation, Schary assured Scott and Dmytryk that the studio would not—indeed, could not, legally—inquire into their political ideas and that RKO was only interested in the men's talent and productivity. Though Schary advised them

31

to "have good manners" during the hearing, he did not ask what Scott planned to say to the Committee.41 Schary's recollection of their meetings, written long after the fact, was rather

32

different. In his autobiography, he claimed to have been quite surprised that Scott and Dmytryk had been subpoenaed as "unfriendlies," since neither "had been active in any of the groups I had been involved in and as far as I knew had not been part of any activity in left-wing action." Thus, according to Schary, the three joked casually about their summonses: Scott and Dmytryk assured him that they had never been members of the Communist Party, while Schary assured them that he had never been a member of the Nazi Party. For Schary, however, the fun ended when they had lunch with attorney Charlie Katz, whom Schary believed to be a Communist supporter. Katz warned Schary that HUAC would produce Party cards for Scott and Dmytryk, and possibly even for Schary himself. Though he doubted this would happen, Schary replied that "if they did, then the jig was up for everyone in America; if a congressional committee would deliberately make up false membership cards in any party, we were doomed." When Katz asked to see Schary's statement to the Committee, he became suspicious: "I sensed he was attempting to use me and I began to doubt Scott and Dmytryk's personal testimony to me."42 Nonetheless, Scott's personal papers contain a note of encouragement from Schary. Though undated, the note's warm tone suggests Schary wrote it prior to the hearings: Every guy lives his life his way and does his job his way. My one hope is to live and do without hurting and intimidating other guys of good will who I respect and like, such as you and Eddie. We will disagree, in the nature of things, on details, in the future, but I hope and I will try that we never hurt each other. Thanks for your pledge and you know that you have mine.43

Hollywood versus HUAC: Round One Ceplair and Englund describe the hearings in Washington, D.C. as a drama in four acts, carefully orchestrated by the Committee. Act One opened with studio executive Jack Warner, the first witness as the hearings began on October 20, 1947. The Committee was clearly gambling that Warner would again break ranks with the moguls' united front, as he had the previous May in his closed-session testimony. And Warner obliged, proclaiming his own patriotism and his horror of Communism and insisting that he had already identified and fired twelve obviously Red screenwriters, including many of the Nineteen, as well as John Wexley, Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, and even the staunchly anti-Communist Emmet Lavery. Everyone—save the members of HUAC and the Alliance—was horrified by Warner's "craven performance" before the Committee, and Johnston "went out of his way to inform the Nineteen that he and his confreres 'are

33

embarrassed by the fact that Jack Warner . . . made a stupid ass of himself.'"44 The studio executives who testified later, however, did not perform more admirably. As Schary remembered: Some of the witnesses for the producers, coming to boil under the heat of the questioning . . . quickly abandoned their simple statement of independence and went into long protestations about their own patriotism and long harangues on how much they hated Russia and Communism. It was a pitiful spectacle to see men who had given so much of their time and

energy

to

American

institutions

being

dragooned

by

questioning into defending their own loyalty as if it were on trial.45

sharp

Act Two featured the very friendly witnesses, largely Alliance members and

34

sympathizers, including Sam Wood, Walt Disney, IATSE leader Roy M. Brewer (who testified for two hours), Lela Rogers (mother of Ginger), and writer Ayn Rand. Their testimony was not new to the Committee, nor was it much of a surprise to the Hollywood progressives, who were all too familiar with the political views of the industry's right wing. Nevertheless, their testimony in Washington was lengthy and unchallenged, though exceptionally vituperative and largely unsubstantiated. Act Three starred a series of Hollywood's leading men—Gary Cooper,

Robert

Taylor,

Ronald

Reagan,

Adolphe

Menjou,

and

Robert

Montgomery—who clearly were subpoenaed for their ability to generate headlines and attract public attention, rather than for any real expertise on Hollywood Communism. With high-powered stars on hand, the scene was a circus. As Reuters news service reported, "Autograph hunters thronged the corridors . . . [and] an active black market was being organized for seating. Newsreel, broadcasting, television paraphernalia cluttered the floor. . . . Committee members and witnesses were dazzled by the glaring lights."46 Over the weekend "intermission" separating the last of the friendly witnesses and the opening of Act Four, the testimony of the "unfriendlies," the Hollywood progressives kicked off their anti-HUAC publicity campaign. Under Committee on the First Amendment auspices, a planeload of Hollywood luminaries—including John Huston, Gene Kelly, John Garfield, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and most interestingly, Richard Brooks—flew to Washington in a widely publicized show of solidarity. The private plane (chartered at a cut rate from TWA mogul Howard Hughes) touched down several times en route, and the stars were met by throngs of sympathetic reporters and fans. John Huston recalled, "We got the feeling that the country was with us, that the national temper resembled ours—indignant and disapproving of what was going on." "The airport crowds were large and vociferous—cheers went up—God, it was exciting," Lauren Bacall remembered. "I couldn't wait to get to Washington. Wouldn't it be incredible if we really could effect a change—if we could make the Committee stop?"47

35

Defenders of the Nineteen produced a constant barrage of media materials,

36

including a daily newspaper, The Other Side of the Story, that kept Hollywood updated on the hearings and the issues. In addition to the personal appearances of the stars, the Committee for the First Amendment also sponsored two live nationwide radio broadcasts, titled Hollywood Fights Back, on October 26 and November 2.48 A constellation of liberal stars lent their voices to the cause, challenging particularly the Committee's representation of the film community and Hollywood message films as un-American. In the first broadcast, Lauren Bacall defended Crossfire: "This is Bacall. Have you seen Crossfire yet? Good picture? It's against religious discrimination. It is one of the biggest hits in years. The American People have awarded it four stars, but the un-American Committee gave the men who made it three subpoenas." Screenwriter Moss Hart, pointing with pride to his work on Gentleman's Agreement, said, "Now I'm wondering if my employers and I were not fortunate to finish that project before Mr. Thomas began his fantastic hearings, since there seems to be evidence that a motion picture which tells the truth about our country, right or wrong, is considered heresy by the Committee on Un-American Affairs." And Humphrey Bogart reported ominously in the final broadcast: "We sat in the committee room and heard it happen. We saw it and we said to ourselves, 'It can happen here!'"49 On Monday morning, October 27, John Howard Lawson, the "high lama" of the

37

Hollywood Communists, as Dmytryk characterized him, was called to testify first. From the beginning, it was clear that the unfriendlies would be treated very differently from the friendlies. Lawson's request to read his statement into the record—a privilege granted to many of the friendly witnesses—was immediately denied; the Committee clearly had "no intention of providing a soapbox for the radicals' attempt to discredit it." As Lawson parried the Committee's questions and tried to read his statement anyway, Thomas banged his gavel while Robert Stripling, HUAC's lead counsel, demanded repeatedly, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Frustrated, Lawson replied angrily, "It is unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of Americanism," as Thomas, relentlessly pounding his gavel, shouted over him, "That is not the question. That is not the question. Are you now or have you ever been . . . ?" Lawson shouted back, "I am answering in the only way that any American citizen can answer a question that absolutely invades his rights." After half an hour of rancorous battle, Thomas declared Lawson in contempt of Congress and ordered the sergeant at arms to forcibly escort the screenwriter from the chamber.50 Over the next two days, HUAC called ten more unfriendlies to the stand—Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, Alvah Bessie, Samuel Ornitz, Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, Adrian Scott, Ring Lardner Jr., Lester Cole, and Bertolt Brecht—for a

38

replay of the treatment accorded Lawson. Only Maltz was allowed to read his full statement; the others were denied that right or, like Scott, were cut off mid-text.51 Maintaining their united front, each of the men in turn parried questions about their membership in the Party or the Guild, hoping (in vain) that by answering "in their own way" they might avoid contempt citations or at least maintain public sympathy. Though their individual performances varied—some, like Trumbo and Maltz, were bitingly sarcastic, others, like Biberman and Cole, angrily belligerent, and others, like Ornitz and Scott, composed and even civil—each of the men challenged the Committee's right to interrogate private citizens about their political beliefs or affiliations. Dmytryk, for example, stammered, "I have been advised that there is a question of Constitutional rights involved. . . . I think that what organizations I belong to, what I think, and what I say, cannot be questioned by this committee," while Scott quietly insisted, "I believe I should not engage in any conspiracy with you to invade the First Amendment." After each unfriendly witness, save Bertolt Brecht, was cited for contempt and led away, HUAC investigator Lewis J. Russell produced evidence of each man's subversive activity and often, documentation of his membership in the Party.52 When called to the stand, Scott tried to read his statement, which denounced the Committee for its "thought control" tactics, which put America on the road to fascism: By slander, by vilification, this Committee is attempting to frighten and intimidate these men and their employers; to silence those voices which have spoken out for the Jewish and the Negro people and other people. The Committee wants these eloquent voices silenced. This is the cold war now being waged against minorities. The next phase—total war against minorities—needs no elaboration. History has recorded what happened in Nazi Germany. . . . For myself and my colleagues, we will not be intimidated. We will not be frightened. We will not permit our voices to be put into moulds or into concentration camps. We will continue to lend our voices so that fundamental justice will obtain for Jews, Negroes and for all citizens.53

Thomas cut Scott off mid-speech, and after reading through it himself, he refused to allow Scott to continue, announcing, "This may not be the worst statement we have ever received but it is almost the worst." Following Scott's testimony, HUAC investigator Louis J. Russell produced a photostat of a 1945 CPA card, #47200, issued to Scott in the fall of 1944, and a 1946 CPUSA registration card, #35394, issued in the fall of 1945.54 This evidence of Communist ties utterly sabotaged the First Amendment strategy adopted by the Nineteen and fundamentally shifted the public perception of the unfriendly witnesses. Instead of American citizens standing on their constitutional right to freedom of speech and association, the Ten now appeared to be exactly

39

as HUAC and the anti-Communist front described them: duplicitous radicals who tried

to

manipulate

public

opinion

and

undermine

American

ideals

and

institutions. How ironic, then, that the evidence presented against them was itself the product of illegal activity by an arm of the American justice system and was secretly shared with another governmental body for propagandistic purposes. In the eyes of many of the liberal bystanders, however, the behavior of the Ten

40

was far more damaging than the membership cards. Indeed, following the hearings, some in Hollywood implied that the Ten brought their expulsion from the film industry on themselves through their "bad manners" as much as their political commitments. Schary, for example, later argued, The ten "unfriendly witnesses," some of whom I knew as sober and thoughtful men, of considerable talent, also caved under the pressure (whether by design, as some people thought, or by panic, as others maintained—I am not certain) and also lost sight of the issue. . . . The so-called Hollywood Ten hardly contributed anything to the dignity of the occasion. If the intent of the ten witnesses was to provide a solemn forum for presenting the issue to the American public, they failed miserably.

While he supported their reliance on the First Amendment, Schary believed that the unfriendlies should have called a press conference following their testimony before HUAC to "explain why they didn't answer the Committee but add that they had no desire to cover up their identifications." He maintained that since Party membership was legal in America, there was no reason not to "tell the world which ones of the ten were Communists. Such a stand might have clarified the question."55 Nonetheless, Schary's position on the stand was uncompromising: "Up until the time it is proved that a Communist is a man dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force or violence, or by any illegal methods, I cannot make a determination of his employment on any other basis except whether he is qualified best to do the job I want him to do." Schary also vigorously defended Scott and Dmytryk: "At no time in discussions—or films—have I heard these men . . . make any remark or attempt to get anything subversive into the films I have worked on with them. I must say that in honesty."56 Schary's position on the stand was a high point for Hollywood liberals and radicals alike. Director Jules Dassin enthused, "Please let me express my great esteem for you. . . . You were just beautiful on that stand. You made many people very proud." Walter Wanger sent him a telegram on October 29 (the day Schary testified): "Congratulations on your great stand today. . . . You stood out like a sore thumb amongst your colleagues."57

41

The Nineteen and their attorneys fully expected that both Schary and Eric

42

Johnston, though nominally friendly witnesses, would make a strong stand against HUAC. Indeed, before the hearings opened, Johnston, "wearing his liberal cap," met privately with the Nineteen and their attorneys, reassuring them that the MPPA was behind them: "As long as I live I will never be a party to anything as un-American as a blacklist, and any statements purporting to quote me as agreeing to a blacklist is a libel upon me as a good American. . . . Tell the boys not to worry," said Johnston. "There'll never be a blacklist. We're not going to go totalitarian to please this committee."58 Consequently the statement given by Johnston, who followed Lawson to the stand on the first day of the unfriendlies' testimony, provoked alarm and dismay. This was the Nineteen's first inkling that the studios might cave in to HUAC's pressure. Johnston's statement on behalf of the industry executives (later published as a pamphlet by the MPPA) sounds at first like a bold challenge to the premises of the Committee. He roundly criticized the damage done by spurious and unsubstantiated charges against individuals and the film industry as a whole and particularly the Committees' refusal to allow them to refute the charges publicly or cross-examine witnesses. Rallying around the issue of free speech—the "keystone in our freedom arch"—Johnston argued that "intimidation or coercion" were just as effective as legislation in curtailing free speech: "You can't make good and honest motion pictures in an atmosphere of fear." "I intend to use every influence at my command to keep the screen free," he boldly proclaimed. However, he also made very clear that the MPPA and the unfriendlies did not necessarily understand "freedom of the screen" in the same way: "We insist on our right to decide what will or will not go in our pictures. We are deeply conscious of the responsibility this freedom involves but we have no intention to violate this trust by permitting subversive propaganda in our films." Reiterating that "an exposed Communist is an unarmed Communist," Johnston argued that such exposure must be handled responsibly, in the "traditional American manner" of fair play and the rule of law, rather than by "thoughtless smearing by gossip and hearsay." Thus, he challenged the Committee, "Expose Communism, but don't put any American who isn't a Communist in a concentration camp of suspicion. We're not willing to give up our freedoms to save our freedoms."59 Johnston also used his statement to reiterate his liberal corporatist vision, drawing a public distinction between the racist and reactionary Americanism of HUAC and his own internationalist, pluralist, democratic "New Americanism": Communism must have breeding grounds. Men and women who have a reasonable measure of opportunity aren't taken in by the prattle of Communists. Revolutions plotted by frustrated intellectuals at cocktail parties won't get anywhere if we wipe out the potential causes of Communism. The most effective way is to make democracy work—for

43

greater opportunity—for greater participation—for greater security for all people.

For Johnston, democracy, opportunity, participation, security could be summed up in one word: abundance. "Freedoms walk hand in hand with abundance. That's been the history of America. It's been the American story. It turned the eyes of the world on America, because America gave reality to freedom plus abundance when it was still an idle daydream in the rest of the world." Johnston was certain that the promise of abundance could overcome the appeal of Communism: "If we fortify our democracy to lick want, we'll lick Communism—here and abroad. Communists can hang all the iron curtains they like, but they'll never be able to shut out the story of a land where free men walk without fear and live with abundance."60 On October 30, J. Parnell Thomas abruptly and inexplicably declared the hearings

44

closed, without calling the remaining unfriendlies, and the Hollywood Nineteen became the Hollywood Ten. In his closing speech, Thomas warned that "there are many more [witnesses] to be heard," and promised that HUAC's investigation of Hollywood would continue at a later date: Ten prominent figures in Hollywood [against] whom the Committee had evidence were members of the Communist Party were brought before us and refused to deny that they were Communists. It is not necessary for the Chair to emphasize the harm which the motion-picture industry suffers from the presence within its ranks of known Communists who do not have the best interests of the United States at heart. The industry should set about immediately to clear its own house and not wait for public opinion to force it to do so.61

The Road to the Blacklist In hindsight, the fallout from the HUAC hearings—the eventual capitulation of the

45

studio executives to the pressures of HUAC, the imposition of the blacklist, the defection of the Screen Writers Guild and other traditional bastions of liberal support, the slow but inexorable collapse of the Popular Front—appear inevitable. However, historians Ceplair and Englund powerfully argue that a united front among the studio executives, the industry guilds, liberal activists, and the Nineteen might well have prevented that. Certainly, in late October and early November of 1947, it still seemed possible that Hollywood might emerge, as it had from earlier battles with HUAC, a bit bloodied but essentially unbeaten. Perhaps most heartening to Hollywood progressives and moguls alike was the overwhelming evidence that public opinion was running against HUAC. The MPPA, as always assiduous in monitoring the public pulse, compiled nearly two hundred editorials from newspapers across the country that clearly revealed a backlash

46

against the hearings into subversion in Hollywood. Though the national dailies of major cities—as well as a significant number of smaller newspapers—tended to accept the need for such an investigation, given the danger that Communism seemed to present to national security, these opinion-makers also had significant questions about the constitutionality of HUAC's tactics and the impact on civil liberties and First Amendment freedoms. The New York Herald Tribune, for example, argued: There

are,

without

doubt,

circumstances

under

which

such

an

investigation as this one would be proper. If the moving pictures were undermining the American form of government and menacing it by their content, it might become the duty of Congress to ferret out the responsible persons. But clearly this is not the case—not even the committee's own witnesses are willing to make so fantastic a charge. And since no such danger exists, the beliefs of men and women who write for the screen are, like the beliefs of any ordinary men and women, nobody's business but their own, as the Bill of Rights mentions. Neither Mr. Thomas nor the Congress in which he sits is empowered to dictate what Americans shall think.62

Many newspapers, echoing the "freedom of the screen" arguments voiced by

47

Hollywood progressives, argued that the HUAC investigation would have a deleterious effect on film content and might ultimately lead to censorship of the film industry (and possibly other media as well). The New York Times, for example, suggested ominously that the hearings may "succeed in identifying as 'communist' any element of criticism or protest in the films against any aspect of American political, social or economic life; if this happens, and the investigation creates fear in Hollywood, which has often been accused of timidity in dealing with public questions, then the screen is consigned to mere entertainment on the most trifling of premises."63 Others shared the film progressives' belief that HUAC's real target was the movies exposing racism and other social ills. Noting that Hollywood had produced no pro-Soviet movies since the end of the war, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editors warned: But there have been films which pointed out flaws in our political, social and economic system. Is this critical attitude the real target of the House Un-American Activities Committee? If it is, the committee is striking at the fundamental freedom of expression. If the movies are to be called un-American because they dare point out failures to attain the standards set in the Constitution, what will be the next step—censorship of books, plays, press and schools?64

A second area of significant concern was the "un-American" tactics employed by the Committee, which seemed to many to mirror the repressiveness of totalitarianism. The Charleston Post warned, for example, "Let us not sink into a system such as prevails in totalitarian countries in which a man is guilty until he

48

proves his innocence, and where it is a crime to hold views frowned on by the governing regime."65 While recognizing the importance of identifying and tracking Communists in the midst of America, the Louisville Courier-Journal argued that this information should not be gained at the expense of civil liberties: The Soviets regard civil liberties as a mess of pottage; we Americans cherish them as our birthright. On that point rests the most vital difference between the Soviet and the American systems. It would be tragic if America, in fear of Communism, threw away the very treasure which separates and preserves us from the horrors of the police state.66

The editorial boards on newspapers large and small were particularly disturbed by

49

the unequal treatment accorded the friendlies and the unfriendlies. From across the political spectrum, they roundly denounced such tactics as a violation of American civil liberties. The left-liberal editors of PM, outraged by HUAC's "almost complete irresponsibility," argued that the hearings "are obviously being used to air personal feuds that belong inside the industry, trade-union jurisdictional disputes which occur in every industry, personal rivalries and hatreds, as well as clashes of political ideas."67 "In the present state of world affairs, the protection of American security is an important task," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch opined. "But it should not be a witch-hunt. It should not produce occasions when men can get on the witness stand and, with no scintilla of truth, denounce other men as traitors to their country."68 The editors of the Hartford Courant asked despairingly, "By what magic process is the investigating committee going to sift out the truth from the great mass of prejudice, venom, ignorance and misrepresentation . . . ?"69 Even the Hearst-owned New York World-Telegram, which unabashedly proclaimed that "the Communist party in the United States is an arm and agent of Soviet Russia's government, that it is a conspiracy against the American people and a potential fifth column against their national security," argued that procedural reforms of the Thomas Committee were needed to protect the rights of individual citizens.70 Significantly, a handful of newspaper editors used the report of the President's Commission on Civil Rights (released almost simultaneously with the closing of the HUAC investigation of Hollywood) to draw explicit connections between civil rights and civil liberties. Established in 1946 as one of Truman's more noteworthy attempts to extend the New Deal in the postwar period, the Commission uncovered widespread violations of civil rights in the United States. Its report, entitled To Secure These Rights, condemned racism as a burden on the American conscience and called for the elimination of racial barriers in education, housing, and employment, the protection of minority voting rights and the elimination of the poll tax, and other sweeping programs to ensure justice and equality for all.71 For the Louisville Courier-Journal, the findings of the Commission clearly

50

dovetailed with the civil liberties issues raised by HUAC's Hollywood probe, by bringing "into the open the whole immense question of tolerance, justice and the integrity of democratic principle which was raised in the Bill of Rights and never quite satisfactorily answered." The article continued, "The President's Committee seems to agree that we have most to fear prejudice, and the ignorance on which prejudice breeds. It is prejudice and its violent indulgence that endangers the . . . essential rights for which the committee set out to find means of protection."72 The editors of Marion, Ohio's Star saw even more frightening implications in the report: "It could mean that the United States might repeat the ghastly mistake the Germans made during the Red hunt led by Adolf Hitler. They put themselves in chains forged by prejudice and fear. Nothing the Reds can do in this country is half so fearful as the things Americans might do if they lost sight of the vital importance of their civil liberties."73 Interestingly, the Commission's concern for international opinion struck a chord with the editors of the Toronto Globe and Mail, who quoted approvingly the report's contention that "'[t]he United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the democratic ideal is not so inevitable that we can ignore what the world thinks of us and our record.'" The Canadian writers were deeply critical of the HUAC hearings, noting, "We would not want that sort of thing to be done here, and we cannot help wondering if this, being done in a democracy, is not damaging to democracies everywhere." They asked ominously, "What can its effect be on countries opposed to democratic principles?"74 For other newspapers, however, the Committee's tactics represented a danger not

51

to civil liberties per se, but to the anti-Communist cause. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, while concerned that the investigations had "blackened" the reputations of innocent men, was particularly disturbed that the "inquiry may so backfire as to result in a virtual whitewash. Such clearly non-Red newspapers as the New York Times, Boston Herald, Washington Post, and New York Herald Tribune are already viewing the Committee's charges with skepticism and denouncing its methods as a threat to free speech."75 Similarly, the Oregon Journal, while insisting that Communists should be "weeded out of Hollywood and out of America," argued that HUAC would only discredit itself "if it becomes the equivalent of a kangaroo court denying innocence before guilt is proven."76 In sharp contrast to both this high idealism and worried hand-wringing, a significant number of editorials took a more pragmatic and even populist position on the HUAC hearings. These newspapers, particularly in smaller cities and towns across the country, scoffed at the charges of Red infiltration of Hollywood. For example, acknowledging that there were Communists everywhere in America, not just in Hollywood, the Tampa Morning Tribune editors argued that the idea that Reds "control filmland or its output is sheer nonsense." In their opinion the "really important question is not whether there are Communists in Hollywood, but

52

whether they are influencing American motion pictures," a possibility the Tampa opinion-makers found highly dubious, since the studio moguls who controlled film content were "about as left-wing as J. P. Morgan or Alfred P. Sloan."77 Similarly, the editorial board of the Daily Evening Item of Lynn, Massachusetts, proclaimed wittily: It would seem, from the evidence at hand, that the men who actually run the West Coast studios are doing an excellent job of keeping the Communists in line. They cannot prevent their employes [sic] from joining the party or from shedding a tear for the proletariat while they paddle their feet in their private swimming pools. They cannot prevent them from being hypocritical bores and nauseating nuisances. But they can prevent them from preaching communism on the sound tracks, and from undermining the democratic faith of millions of movie-goers every week. And they have done so.78

Indeed, small-town contempt for Hollywood movies and the pretensions of the film colony underlay much of this tendency to dismiss the hearings. Thus, the Greensboro Daily News pooh-poohed the idea of Red infiltration, arguing, "The moving picture industry has the situation so perfectly in hand that, far from propagating Communist ideas, it purveys no ideas of any kind,"79 while the Register of Hudson, New York, wrote dismissively, "American pictures simply are not vehicles of Communist propaganda, as any movie-goer well knows. Hollywood's faults are many and varied, but they are faults of poor taste and commercialism. The Americanism of Hollywood products is almost blatant."80 The newspapers in smaller cities also tended to place greater faith in the taste

53

and political discernment of ordinary Americans. The editors of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, for example, opined, "We doubt if the investigation will find very much evidence of direct attempts to use the . . . industry for the benefit of Communism. . . . Critics and public, for one thing, would be sure to spot this effort no matter how cleverly concealed."81 Similarly the Meriden Journal argued, "Actually, the American public isn't in much danger of having its political beliefs warped by the movies it attends. . . . They are perfectly capable of recognizing propaganda, and if they get too much of it, will simply stay away. Unlike the Russians, we don't have to take the kind of movies we don't want. The test of the box office is the only test of whether or not a picture is reaching its objectives."82 Immediately following the hearings, there was also abundant evidence of industry support for the Ten. For example, Scott's old friend and former screenwriting partner, Bernard Feins, wrote to him on the day of his testimony to report to him that the entire industry was behind him and the other unfriendlies. "[E]verybody is angry. Clean, soft-spoken American anger. And it's a good thing to see, this anger. It's the anger that made this country originally—and it's the anger that is

54

now with you in trying to stop the bastardization of this country." Feins was busy raising money for the Committee on the First Amendment on the MGM lot, and he assured Scott: "With very few exceptions, every producer, director and writer contributed. Even the secretaries volunteered to contribute and they and the messenger girls are pouring in their lunch money." I wanted you to know how everybody realizes you didn't ask for this—but now that you're in it there's the feeling that this is fundamental, this is necessary—this has to be won—and each individual must do something now, or forget forever trying to do anything. And they're getting together and we're all angry and we're moving. . . . We're with you, brother—and we can not be satisfied with a tie.83

Scott also received a number of letters from "ordinary" Americans, applauding his

55

stand against HUAC. One admiring Los Angeles resident wrote, "Without exaggeration, all Americans who love freedom are indebted to you and the others who defied the committee. I trust that the contempt charge trumped up by the committee will collapse just as did the investigation."84 Assuring Scott of his unwavering support for "your efforts to strike back at the fascist-minded Thomas committee," Martin Rotke of San Francisco wrote, "[Y]ou have displayed the courageous characteristics which throughout American history has symbolized our march toward a true democracy. Your stand against those who wish to undermine whatever progress we have made since the American revolution has, I am sure, endeared you in the hearts of millions of our citizens."85 Harry L. Kingman, general secretary of the YMCA, congratulated Scott on the Hollywood Fights Back radio program: "I believe that people all over the nation have been inspired to rally to what Justice Frank Murphy calls 'the finest contribution which America has made to civilization—our loyalty to the idea of civil liberties.'"86 Immediately after the hearings, Scott had a telephone conversation with Schary, who told him to "forget about the hearings and hurry back to make pictures. This [is] our job." Dmytryk, too, panicked by the testimony of Lawson, was reassured when Schary insisted that he had an "iron clad contract." Back in Hollywood, Scott and Dmytryk resumed their work at RKO and hoped for a "return to normalcy." However, it was clear that nothing was normal in the wake of the hearings. As Scott replied to a friend's supportive letter, "The town is quieting down a little bit but underneath there is a minor sort of panic, one which will eventually flare into the open." Several weeks earlier a British friend had written: "If the whole thing was not so unpleasant, it would be a great, hilarious joke that your country—which is the first to publicize alleged lack of freedom of expression among artists in the Soviet Union—should so humiliate themselves in the eyes of the world as to persecute those artists whose ideas and ambitions can rise above the—fortunately dying—myth of anarchy which goes under the name 'Free

56

Enterprise.'" Scott found this observation particularly apt, and he later used it himself to describe the situation in Hollywood following the hearings: "All of this would be ludicrous if it weren't so serious," he wrote to several different people. However, in a more pessimistic mood, he confessed to another friend, "I believe the 19 are expendable; the industry could go on without them. But if they are thrown to the wolves, it is a wide open invitation for the Thomas Committee to come into Hollywood to smear and inevitably destroy the industry."87 Soon after his return to Los Angeles, Scott met with Schary at the studio.

57

According to Scott, Schary was "violent" and outraged by the performance of the friendlies. Incensed that the industry executives had been "chicken hearted," he bitterly complained "that he had been singled out, that he was being made the patsy of the producers; that the position that he had taken in Washington was the position that all the producers were [supposed] to take and which he alone took." With the moguls' resolve crumbling before HUAC's insistence that Communists be purged from the film industry, Schary now feared that a blacklist would be implemented for "certain people," though he thought that it would not be made public—"the studios would just not hire some of the men who had been called to Washington." Denouncing both the blacklist and the secret maneuvering of the studio heads as "rotten," he reiterated his belief that "a man should be judged on his ability."88 Schary himself was taking a great deal of heat for his statement on the stand that

58

he would not fire a Communist or an alleged Communist until it could be proven that he wanted to overthrow the government by force and violence. In addition to personal attacks in the Hearst press, he received a number of angry letters from "ordinary" Americans condemning his position. Stella Lombard, for example, announced, "I shall from this time forth boycott all of your pictures—and moreover will influence everyone I can from going."89 Another, Clarence R. Milligan, described Schary as "a fool, a knave or an ignoramus—or a combination of all." Denouncing the Ten as "cogs in the Russian juggernaut," he ranted, "These men advocate and practice DEATH to all Capitalists—people living under Capitalism. Ignoramuses like you may unwittingly aid this through cupidity or plain ignorance."90 The attacks on Schary were so intense that RKO drafted a form letter, to be signed by RKO Chairman Floyd Odlum and RKO President Peter Rathvon, defending Schary's Americanism and his position on the stand.91 Schary also prepared his own public statement, which he never issued, defending himself against the public's outrage: "I believe in law and order. . . . When law and order ceases, when the will or opinion of a few becomes law and order, then we are drifting dangerously close to a totalitarian state of either Communism or Fascism,

59

both of which, despite what may or may not be differences, I oppose stubbornly." Insisting that the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" could not be compromised, particularly in such a highly charged situation, Schary argued that, until the Ten were proven guilty of treasonous activity or beliefs, he would continue to "hire people on the basis of their ability and on no other basis." This again is law and order, because if we begin to determine a man's employment on the basis of his political standards, the next step is to hire him on the basis of his religion, or his color, or whether he voted with us in the last election. . . . As an executive and as a citizen, I reaffirm the position I took, and I shall maintain it in the face of any hysteria. . . . We may condemn the attitude of some of the witnesses, we may disagree with strategy, we may grant the validity of the Committee's charges, we can argue, discuss, concede, compromise or do anything we wish, but one thing remains hard, fast, and must never waiver in the minds of any of us, and that is the basic principle involved—law and order.92

Though anxious about his own position in the industry, Schary, to his credit, held

60

his ground, refusing to back down, despite the public criticisms, and lobbying continually against a blacklist. In mid-November, Schary remained hopeful. Writing to friend and New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, he said, "I still feel that the picture business will work out some program of long range broad defense that will stop this, and many of us are trying to do something about it now." However, he continued, "These are days of terrible hysteria and I just hope that between all decent people we can create some kind of a program that will not force us to lose things we love under the pretext of fighting things we dislike."93 Schary, however, had badly misread the mood of the other studio executives, particularly Eric Johnston, who had decided, perhaps even before the hearings ended, that the Ten were an unacceptable liability to the film industry. Hoping to contain the damage to Hollywood's reputation and head off further investigation by HUAC, Johnston privately urged the executives to sacrifice the Ten while publicly issuing statements emphasizing the critical differences between the studios and their recalcitrant employees. Though he clearly believed a blacklist was necessary to save Hollywood, Johnston was rather cagey in revealing his new agenda. For example, on November 19, in a widely publicized address to the Picture Pioneers (those who had been in the industry more than twenty-five years), he attempted to appear even-handed and impartial, noting "They [the Ten] may have had a right to challenge the Committee as they did. I don't know. I am not pre-judging. That is something to be tested in the courts. We need a determination on that score in the traditional American way, and after that there can be no argument about it." At the same time, however, he excoriated the Ten's refusal to "stand up and be counted for what they are," claiming that their intransigent behavior in Washington was "a great disservice to the industry,"

61

language that would later be incorporated into the MPPA statement inaugurating the blacklist.94 While his first point seemed to confirm Schary's hopes that the industry would be able to "create some sort of program" that would not undermine civil liberties or endanger men's jobs, Johnston was clearly laying the groundwork for the blacklist. Though Johnston led the charge against the Ten, the studio executives were

62

willing accomplices, particularly the "money men" in the East Coast offices. Soon after the hearings, Adrian Scott had a series of meetings with RKO President Peter Rathvon, which convinced him that a blacklist was inevitable. According to Scott's notes, their discussions focused on two key issues: 1) Scott's political views and activities, and 2) public opinion about the Ten and its possible impact on the film industry as a whole. At their first meeting, around the second week in November, Rathvon asked him "outright about his politics" and suggested that he make a statement to "clear the air." Scott was taken aback, since Schary had assured him that the studio was only interested in the quality of his work: I was startled by the bald approach and a little reluctant to discuss a matter which up to the present had not interested him and which, as a matter of fact, was none of his business. He told me that a man may have been a communist at one time and if he was no longer, that would be fine. It wouldn't be fine for a man to say he was a communist. I asked him if this meant that a man would no longer be able to work and he said, "Yes." We discussed this matter a little further and I felt that he was undertaking to inquire into matters which, since they were not the province of a Congressional Committee or so I hoped to prove in the courts, were no business of his.

Scott remained noncommittal, promising only that he would discuss the matter with his attorneys and the rest of the Ten. Pressing Rathvon to clarify the parameters of this potential blacklist, he asked whether a man who was not a Communist, who opposed the overthrow of the government by force and violence, opposed war with Russia and would fight in a war against Russia could continue to work in the industry. Rathvon answered yes. However, when Scott asked whether a man who held the same opinions but was a Communist could continue to work, Rathvon replied no.95 For Rathvon, "all that mattered was public opinion or what he construed public opinion to be." He was deeply concerned that public disapproval of the Ten might lead to a full-scale boycott of Hollywood films. At this point, no formal poll of public opinion had been taken, but Rathvon cited the opposition of other studio executives and one American Legion Post, as well as attacks by conservative newspapers

on

specific

films,

particularly

Scott

and

Dmytryk's

So

Well

Remembered, finally released in late October 1947. Notorious right-wing

63

columnist Hedda Hopper savaged the film in a brief review tellingly titled "Exhibit A." "If there were a command performance in Moscow," she wrote archly, "I don't believe the boys would find a picture made under the banner of democratic freedom more to their liking than So Well Remembered. While there is not a single mention of Communism in the film, not one suggestion of the hammer and sickle, capitalism is represented as decaying, corrupt, perverted, unfeeling." Hopper concluded her review by urging her readers to see the film: "Then judge for yourself whether or not Hollywood is capable of inserting lefty propaganda in its films."96 Though Scott pointed out that the liberal press, particularly the major New York dailies, and the trade press in Hollywood had praised the film effusively, and Bosley Crowther, film critic for the New York Times, wrote a column lambasting Hopper and the "lunatic fringe,"97 Rathvon believed that ordinary Americans would be more influenced by Hopper's sensationalist charges.98 Thus, Rathvon was deeply concerned that other films by the Ten also would be

64

seen as "guilty by association"—particularly Scott's upcoming antiwar project, The Boy with Green Hair. Scott agreed, speculating that "the Hearst press might possibly attack this picture since they were now engaged in trying to put over a military preparedness program." Though Rathvon felt there was "nothing subversive" in the script, he promised to review it, which indicated to Scott that "no longer could a script's value be determined by former standards. It now had to be viewed in the light of the prescriptions of the Thomas Committee." Even Rathvon admitted that "our freedom was not what it used to be. That, quite frankly, we'd all have to lay low for a while."99 Following his conversation with Rathvon, Scott met with his attorneys and several other members of the Ten to discuss the possibility of issuing a statement in order to keep his job. They advised him that he could do what he wanted in the matter, but also reminded him that if he did decide to make a statement, it would be "a victory for the Thomas Committee" and "no longer . . . would my private life, my conscience be my own." Though he considered this advice "sound," Scott still hoped to finesse the situation with a statement proclaiming his Americanism: I had been a loyal American citizen, ever since childhood when I was taught to salute the flag. I still was and am. I was willing to say this. I was willing to express my loyalty to the constitution and to our democratic institutions and was prepared at all times against their violent overthrow. I was against intolerance and prejudice (I had said so by originating and participating in Crossfire). I was opposed to slums and diphtheria and political crookedness (I had said so by participating in So Well Remembered). I was opposed to fascism (I had said so by participating in Cornered). I was prepared to make a statement concerning the above matters, but not on matters which I considered a violation of my rights, nor on matters which pretended relevance but

65

actually were wholly irrelevant to the issues facing—and by hysteria engulfing—the country.

Scott called Dmytryk to discuss the possibility of a joint statement along these lines and together they met with Schary. Scott explained that he would be willing to make a statement asserting his loyalty "to the Constitution and institutions of the country," and asserting that he would fight to defend against the "overthrow of the government by force and violence." Schary thought this might be an "acceptable formulation" and immediately telephoned Rathvon, who "turned it down flat."100 Realizing that their jobs were in serious jeopardy and hoping perhaps to

66

intimidate Rathvon, Scott and Dmytryk brought Robert Kenny, former California attorney general and one of the attorneys for the Ten, to their final negotiation. Insisting that the fundamental issue was not Communism but freedom of the screen, Kenny reiterated the Ten's position that the industry should not "knuckle under" to HUAC. Rathvon was critical of this advice, calling Scott and Dmytryk "suckers and if not that, martyrs enjoying a martyr's complex." The meeting resulted in a stalemate: We went over the ground again—on matters of freedom of the screen, submission to the inroads of the Thomas Committee, and Rathvon replied that only "public opinion" was the important matter. It was generally held by the public that communists were agents of a foreign power—whether this was true he was in no position to say—but public opinion must be satisfied. The fact that public opinion had been provoked by the lunatic press and by the Peglers and the Mortimers and the Hedda Hoppers was a matter of complete indifference to him. The only way to resolve his dilemma was for me to make a public statement which with the principles involved I refused to do."101

On November 24, 1947, the pincer movement closed on Scott, Dmytryk and the rest of the Ten: in Washington, the House of Representatives met to consider the contempt citations that HUAC had voted against the unfriendlies. Only a few congressmen spoke in support of the Ten, and the vote against them carried overwhelmingly. On the same day, at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City, the studio executives and senior producers gathered to decide the industry's formal position on the Ten. Johnston presented the industry heads with two alternatives: either issue a statement of solidarity with the Ten (along with a promise to keep the screen free of subversive material) or cut them loose and draw the line there. He clearly favored the second option, citing the threat of boycotts by the American Legion and smaller local organizations in California and the Midwest, the stoning of a movie screen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, during a showing of a film featuring CFA supporter Katherine Hepburn, rumors that Spain, Chile, and Argentina (all, not incidentally, fascist countries) would boycott all films produced

67

by studios that employed the Ten, and the negative shift in the tone of newspaper editorials. Johnston's trump card, however, was the fact that the New York heads of RKO and Twentieth Century–Fox had already decided to fire Scott, Dmytryk, and Lardner on the grounds that they had violated the "morals clause" in their contracts. The moguls quickly capitulated to Johnson's bullying, with only a handful of executives protesting the dangers of a blacklist. As Schary described the scene: The air was heavy with smoke and contradictions. At the time, newspaper sentiment on the issue was split. Some of us at the meeting felt that no action on the ten should be made until they had been tried on the contempt proceedings. We admitted that perhaps it was old fashioned to believe someone was innocent until he was proven guilty but we believed that the meeting should take that point of view. "We" included, at that time, Samuel Goldwyn, Eddie Mannix, and Walter Wanger. But the arguments soon lost a calm tone and deteriorated into a series of hysterical speeches and again long protestations and all "we" were able to salvage was the dubious concession that "the ten" would be discharged or "suspended."102

A committee composed of studio moguls L. B. Mayer (MGM) and Joseph Schenck (Twentieth Century–Fox), producer Walter Wanger, Dore Schary, and attorney Mendel Silberberg was appointed to draft a joint statement of industry policy. Schary resisted the assignment, but Silberberg urged him to take it in order to represent the "opposition," and Samuel Goldwyn whispered to him, "Do it—maybe they won't go crazy."103 Schary's presence on the committee, however, did little to temper the intransigent tone of the Waldorf Statement, which placed full blame for the blacklist on the Ten: "Their actions have been a disservice to their employers and have impaired their usefulness to the industry." The Waldorf Statement baldly announced the terms of the blacklist: the studios would not only fire and refuse to reemploy any member of the Hollywood Ten "until such a time that he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist," but also would refuse to "knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or any illegal or unconstitutional methods." Nonetheless, the statement implied that the studios would draw the line at the firing of the Ten, rather hypocritically insisting that, "In pursuing this policy, we are not going to be swayed by hysteria or intimidation from any source." At Schary's instigation, in hopes of "creating a defense barrier to prevent wholesale firings and investigations," the statement invited the Guilds to work with the studios to "eliminate any subversives; to protect the innocent; and to safeguard free speech and a free screen wherever threatened."104 Though MPPA general

68

counsel James Byrne warned the executives that they would have to act individually to avoid the impression (and, indeed, charges) of a criminal conspiracy, the result of the Waldorf meeting cannot be construed any other way. The leaders of the film industry clearly worked in concert to formulate their strategy and collaborated in its execution.105 To his credit, Schary refused to participate in the firing of Scott and Dmytryk, and

69

RKO chairman Floyd Odlum assigned the task to Rathvon. On November 26, the day before Thanksgiving, Rathvon called Scott and Dmytryk into his office and asked them to accept a voluntary suspension, with the understanding that if they were acquitted of the contempt charges, they could return to work. However, he also presented them each with a letter, essentially a loyalty oath stating that they had never been members of the Communist Party, which was also a condition of their eventual reinstatement. They asked for time to consult with their attorneys, but Rathvon insisted that the letters had to be signed at that moment. When Scott and Dmytryk refused, Rathvon handed them their final paychecks and dismissal notices, which read in part: By your conduct . . . and by your actions, attitude, associations, public statements and general conduct before, at and since that time [of the HUAC hearings] you have brought yourself into disrepute with a large section of the public, have offended the community, have prejudiced this corporation as your employer and the motion picture industry in general, have lessened your capacity fully to comply with your employment agreement, and have otherwise violated the provisions of article 16 [the morals clause] of your employment agreement with us.106

Rathvon later told journalist Lillian Ross: "I sure hated to lose those boys. . . . Brilliant craftsmen, both of them. It's just that their usefulness to the studio is at an end."107 Soon after they were dismissed by RKO, Scott and Dmytryk wrote a public statement reaffirming their position before the Committee and reiterating their belief that the members of HUAC, not the Ten, were the real un-Americans: As a footnote to the perversion of justice, history will record the temporary triumph of John Rankin of Mississippi, who in the halls of Congress brought the citation debate to an end with a calculated anti-Semitic reference. History will further record that a great many members

of

Congress,

to

their

everlasting

shame,

laughed

and

applauded. We, the producer and director of Crossfire, a picture which opposes the degrading practice of anti-Semitism, feel that Crossfire will stand as a testament of our Americanism long after Rankin and Thomas are dead.108

Privately, however, Scott seemed rather stunned by the whole thing: "It is quite

70

clear that something . . . extraordinary has happened when a studio will forgo the services of employees who engineered an enormous gross from a small investment. The ideological patterns of studio owners have now taken precedence over profits." Indeed, RKO's anticipated gross for Crossfire was between $2,000,000 and $2,400,000 in domestic distribution alone, quite an achievement considering the picture's cost. Scott still insisted that the public embrace of the film indicated that many Americans shared his democratic, pluralist vision, rather than the xenophobic conservatism of HUAC: "We felt good about Crossfire. We felt pride and warmth toward each other for pulling it off and we thought we were pretty good Americans. Evidently the box office, responding generously to the picture, thought so, and the overwhelming majority of the American press concurred." For Scott, the ideological capitulation of the studios was a harbinger of things to come: In microcosm, I believe this represents the issue which is about to tear the country into shreds. It won't be for a while, perhaps not even before the 1948 elections, but soon thereafter. It is of course the pattern of fascism. We saw it in Germany when the Tyssens financed Hitler only to be swallowed by Hitler and Goering and Co. It is both frightening and hopeful. There is an enormous wave of disgust and disorganized activity in Hollywood at our firings, especially on top of Crossfire . . . but whether or not this activity can be effectively organized in time to combat the awful fear and hysteria before people submit completely is a question that only history can answer.109

Scott was heartened, however, by expressions of support from outside the film industry. Bergen Evans, a newspaper columnist and radio commentator as well as professor of English at Northwestern University, offered to donate to the Ten's defense fund and to publicize their cause in his American Mercury column. "I am confident that the Supreme Court will refute the charge against you and in so doing will free us from the growing menace of this sort of tyranny," he wrote to Scott. "It's a god-damned serious business and the most serious thing about it is the lack of seriousness with which most of the country takes it. There are millions behind you, though, and they are those you want behind you and there are many signs that they at least are aware of the danger."110 Similarly, Curtis Canfield, Scott's former drama professor at Amherst, wrote supportively: There is no question about the disastrous effect of the Congressional investigations on free speech and free thought in this country. The abject way in which the producers have met the crisis is a sorry spectacle indeed. On the other hand, I am very pleased to notice artists and writers everywhere are rallying to the defense of you and the nine other men who were summoned before the Committee. I have enough faith in the American people to believe that they will reject in toto the kind of muzzling the Committee is imposing on our citizens. So keep up the fight.111

71

Scott was also perversely pleased to learn that Dore Schary was devastated by

72

the capitulation of his fellow executives. "He seems completely aware of the situation in its fullest implications. He acts dazed and looks sick," director Joe Losey reported to Scott after meeting with Schary a few days after the firings. Though Schary agreed that the "bad manners" of the Ten were the "chief cause of the present difficulties," he believed that Scott and Dmytryk had conducted themselves well before the Committee and that their "right to refuse to answer is indisputable." Indeed, Schary regretted that "no defense was made of the rights of citizens to be communists." However, he also still hoped that Scott and Dmytryk would publicly "express regrets at the mistaken behavior of the Ten and then . . . state that there is a constitutional issue at stake and that [they would] announce [their] positions as soon as that issue is settled in the final court." Losey countered that "no man could live with himself if he in any way betrayed the whole group which in [his] opinion had given a world demonstration of courage and brotherhood." He also pointed out to Schary that "many of the group would have liked to be more outspoken, not before the committee, but outside of it; but that the right to work of the whole group would then have been prejudiced." At this point, Schary still hoped that he might be able to convince Scott and Dmytryk to issue a statement so that they could return to their jobs. And, though "he had lost virtually every battle with the producers," he also believed that "he had won an agreement and a plan to fight any further inroads from or appeasements to the committee or any other source of attack." Losey, however, gave little credence to Schary's brave words. For him, a more telling indicator of industry trends was the fact that Scott's film, The Boy with Green Hair (which Losey was slated to direct), had been put on hold, though Schary "wanted to do it and saw no ideological objection to it." Ultimately, Losey was quite sympathetic to Schary's position: "I think if he doesn't get out and yell soon, he will die in himself. I think he knows it. I am fond of him and deeply sorry for him. He is no fool and no coward. I do not understand what confusion or conflict it is that stifles him."112 However, radical screenwriter Paul Jarrico, another close friend of Scott's, was less generous (though his comments were made long after the fact): I'd have developed ambivalent feelings toward Schary, I think, even if he hadn't played such a shabby role during the blacklist period. I was not the kind of radical who despises liberals. And Schary, I felt, was a sincere liberal, with genuine sympathy for the poor, the victims of discrimination, and so on. But he was also a classic opportunist, the kind who keeps telling himself, 'If I make this compromise now, I'll be able to do much more for what I believe.' And winds up on top, totally comprised. Do I still feel some sympathy for him? Yes.113

In fact, Jarrico's assessment is borne out by Schary's own explanation of the

73

"confusion or conflict" that stifled him in the political clutch. In his autobiography, Schary blamed HUAC, the studio executives, and the Ten for putting him in an impossible situation: "There were those who thought that as a matter of principle, I should resign. I mulled that over and came to the conclusion that it would be more helpful to remain in the business and fight against the blacklisting; also, since the waters had been muddied by HUAC, the Hollywood Ten, and the producers, my resignation would in no way clarify the issue." Or, as he explained more bluntly, and perhaps more honestly, in early 1948: "I was faced with the alternative of supporting the stand taken by my company or of quitting my job. . . . I like making pictures. I want to stay in the industry."114

"What the Public Thinks" Peter Rathvon's overriding concern with public opinion was widely shared by the other studio executives. However, the press response to the Waldorf Statement was not quite what they, or Eric Johnston, had hoped for. Certainly, there were shrill anti-Communist editorials supporting the investigation and the industry crackdown on the Ten, but at least in late 1947, it appears that Johnston overstated his claim that newspaper coverage was turning against the film industry.115 The Washington Post, for example, describing the decision to fire the Ten as "ill advised," ran an editorial lambasting Johnston and the MPPA for capitulating to pressure from the Thomas Committee: "Mr. Johns[t]on may believe that he is not yielding to intimidation on the part of Mr. Thomas. But he is certainly not uninfluenced by the publicity which Mr. Thomas was able to direct at him and his clients."116 Even more provocatively, on November 25, 1947, the day after the House vote on contempt citations for the Ten, an anti-HUAC editorial in the New York Post opened with a quote from Adolph Hitler: "The great strength of a totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it." The Post editors argued forcefully, "If we are to save the very freedom which the actions of certain minorities oppose, we must be vigilant to see that we are as firm in applying democratic principles to those we oppose as to those we admire. One of the most serious threats to freedom in this country is the House Un-American Affairs Committee." In an unequivocal defense of the Ten, the editorial noted, It is fundamental that citizens of this country—as distinct from those of any

totalitarian

state—have

the

absolute

right

to

think

as

they

please—whether 'dangerously' or benignly. Every citizen has the absolute right to give expression to his opinion. He also has the right to keep it to himself. It might well be said that in this very fact lies the essence of our freedom and liberty of conscience.117

Even the Christian Science Monitor, while insisting that the movie studios had "the right and duty to take whatever steps are necessary to keep clearly subversive propaganda out of its products," warned that "the utmost degree of

74

freedom of expression compatible with national security is the most precious heritage of free Americans."118 The studio executives, however, were far more concerned with the opinions of

75

ordinary Americans—the kind of people who belonged to the American Legion or the PTA and would support a boycott of Hollywood films, perhaps—than with the pronouncements of the press.119 Difficult as it is to pinpoint such attitudes, there are a number of suggestive clues. The papers of Dore Schary, for example, contain a handful of letters from concerned moviegoing citizens, the bulk of which were highly critical of RKO's decision to fire Scott and Dmytryk. Helen Clare Nelson of Beverly Hills wrote to chide Schary on the "brazen effrontery" of the dismissal of Scott and Dmytryk. Warning that the public is "becoming increasingly sick of the stereotyped bilge endlessly repeated . . . upon the screens of America," she called for "better pictures: pictures which mirror the lives people actually live; pictures which can only be written, produced, directed and acted by writers, producers, directors and actors who have a progressive attitude toward the world . . . ; people who have self-respect and will not be gagged by their employers and told what to say in public or in private." "What significant irony it is," Ms. Nelson crowed, "that the only films doing 'smash' business at the box-office today are either those with which the 'Unfriendly Nineteen' are identified, or which challenge the very basis of the Thomas Committee and its ideology: Crossfire, So Well Remembered, Forever Amber, Monsieur Verdoux, Gentleman's Agreement, Body and Soul!"120 Eugene B. Lehrman of Los Angeles wrote, "I think no one knows of any un-American activities of these men, because their disloyalty exists only in the perverted imagination of a few bigots like J. Parnell Thomas and John Rankin." Referencing Crossfire, he continued, Someday in the future, perhaps another film company will make another picture. This picture won't deal with the senseless killing of a Jew by an anti-semite, but with the planned persecution of ten men, not because of their religion, but because of their courage, moral integrity, and most of all because of their love of democracy. A love so great that they are giving their livelyhoods, and perhaps their freedom, to try to prevent its destruction by a handful of would-be American Inquisitors.121

Another concerned citizen, Mrs. H. Fine from Pittsburgh, wrote that she was "bewildered and confused" to hear on the radio that the makers of Crossfire—a "timely and patriotic film"—had been fired. "Is this picture un-American? Is this picture Communistic? I just can't understand all this."122 Others letters, however, seem to have been written by cranks or provocateurs. Warwick M. Tompkins of Los Angeles, for example, lambasted Schary personally: I consider that you are a moral coward, a Judas, and I must make known

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to you my pledge to boycott every wishy-washy, empty, lying film your studio is now preparing to produce. Nothing that meets the approval of the Un-American Activities Committee merits my support. I am not a Jew, and I can probably escape the American-made Dachuas and Maideneks which you have now helped to prepare. You, a rich and cowardly Jew, will not be able to avoid the gas chambers! That is a lesson of history written in blood!123

In contrast, Ralph R. Pottle, head of the Department of Fine Arts at Southeastern Louisiana College, wrote to congratulate Schary personally on the firing of Scott and Dmytryk. "By their brazen action in placing themselves in contempt of our national Congress, they would have encouraged every Communist in America to fasten their tentacles even more quickly on a gullible America." He suggested that Hollywood movies should show people who don't drink, commit adultery, become murderers or holdup men, or have foreign accents, people "who believe America is a good place to be, who earn their living honestly and seem happy in AMERICA." According to Mr. Pottle, immoral representations enable Communists to "lead our people into a state of further immorality, disloyalty, dissatisfaction, rebellion, and finally chaos, on which Communism thrives."124 More useful, perhaps, in uncovering public opinion, is the Gallup poll titled

77

"Congressional Investigation of Communism in Hollywood: What the Public Thinks." Significantly, this poll was commissioned by the MPPA in December 1947, several weeks after the wide-ranging criticisms of the Waldorf Statement and the firing of the Ten, suggesting that the executives realized belatedly that they might need to justify their actions in the event that members of the Ten decided to sue for wrongful termination (which they ultimately did). In their December 17 report, Gallup's pollsters summarized a series of national surveys, with fascinating results. Though 80 percent of the Americans surveyed "had read or heard something in the newspapers or on the radio," only 50 percent "had followed the investigation carefully enough to have a reasonably accurate idea of what it was all about." Significantly, of that 50 percent of "aware" Americans, as many disapproved (36 percent) as approved of the hearings (37 percent), while 27 percent had no opinion. And a significant portion of those who disapproved of the hearings regarded the investigation as nothing more than a "political publicity stunt." Though 39 percent of the respondents felt that the "unfriendly" witnesses should not be punished, only a small percentage more—47 percent—felt that they should be punished, while 14 percent had no opinion. Interestingly, among the respondents who had never attended college, the breakdown was 53 percent in favor of punishment and 30 percent against, while the

breakdown

among

college-educated

respondents

was

almost

directly

converse, with 34 percent in favor of punishment and 54 percent against. Surveys

78

taken while the Hollywood hearings were in process revealed that "little more than half of the people" believed that there were "at least some Communists in Hollywood," while only 10 percent thought there were "many"—a significantly smaller percentage than were believed to exist in the labor movement or in the United States as a whole. Nevertheless, Gallup was quick to point out that "10% represents

a

substantial

segment

of

the

public

and

warrants

serious

consideration." In surveys taken after the Hollywood hearings had ended, the percentage of Americans who believed that there were many Communists in Hollywood remained at 10 percent, while the percentage believing that there are "at least some" Communists in Hollywood rose from 55 percent to 61 percent, not surprising given the widespread press and radio coverage of the hearings. Significantly, even before the executives fired the Ten, only 13 percent of respondents believed that the film industry "wants to shield the Communists." And only 3 percent thought "it was because the leaders in the industry, themselves, favored Communism," while the other 10 percent believed that the industry "wanted to shield the Communists because of fear of bad publicity or some other reason." Perhaps most significantly in terms of social problem films like Crossfire, the Gallup poll found that the American public identified "Communist" propaganda only with films specifically about Russia, such as Mission

to

Moscow,

Ninotchka,

and

Song

of

Russia,

rather

than

films

"lampooning" specifically American groups or institutions. Thus, the pollsters agreed, that "unless a picture carries a large Russian label it is not likely to be thought of as containing Communist propaganda." And perhaps most significant for the Ten, while 76 percent of Americans were aware that some witnesses had refused to testify before HUAC, only 13 percent could actually name any of those witnesses correctly, while a confused 10 percent named Adolph Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, and Humphrey Bogart as "unfriendlies." Since the raw data seems to suggest that the executives' concerns about a public backlash were exaggerated, the conclusions drawn by Gallup are revealing. Gallup himself believed that, though the investigation had had "some adverse effect" on Hollywood's public image, "it would be easy to overestimate the extent of the harm done to date" and that the investigation would have "little immediate effect on the box office." Indeed, the "most harmful effect" had been among "strongly anti-Communist" citizens over 30 years of age—a group that happened to include the greatest number of "non-moviegoers" and "infrequent moviegoers." One might think that this would have been reassuring to the executives. However, as Gallup pointed out, this group of 40 million Americans "offers the greatest opportunity for increasing domestic revenue." And when he did the math, the results were enticing: "Suppose the industry could induce persons in this age group to go to the movies once a week, on the average. The increased revenue which would be paid into theater box-offices would, at present prices, amount to

79

nearly $500,000,000 annually." Thus, Gallup concluded that serious harm had indeed been done to Hollywood by giving this group "one more reason for staying away from the movies."125 Particularly interesting in light of Johnston's concern for America's reputation

80

abroad are the European reviews of Crossfire, which was released in Britain and France in 1948, after Scott and Dmytryk had been cited for contempt and fired by RKO. Not surprisingly, the European reviewers found this evidence of political repression at odds with the American rhetoric of freedom. Though not blind to intolerance in the U.K. (and several of the reviews are rife with casually anti-Semitic comments), the British reviewers tended to agree that Crossfire was a peculiarly American film, both aesthetically and politically. As Elspeth Grant pointed out in the Daily Graphic: Do not think I underestimate the difficulties. America is a country where the most extravagant extremes of hatred and prejudice can get a nightmare hold. Primitive fear lurks at the bottom of all racial hatred, and there are Americans who can still lynch a negro or bait a Jew with all the panic energy that ever led them to persecute a Catholic or burn a witch. And they are Americans who pay good money to go to the movies. How, then, to make a film to discuss the dangers of Jew-hatred? How avoid offending the Jew-haters? How avoid offending the Jews? How avoid being suspected of Communism? Oh dear . . . it makes one's head ache even to think of it.126

The French reviews, however, were particularly scathing in their attack on American political hypocrisy. "Truman's America is no longer the America of Roosevelt," the film critic for Marseillaise noted sadly, adding (incorrectly) "It is for this reason that Crossfire was prohibited in the U.S.A."127 Raymond Barkan, of Midy-Soir, found Crossfire a terrifying example of the fascist potential in America: "It is not so far from the instinctive racism of the brute in Crossfire to the 'doctrinal' racism of the S.S. Nazi." He continued: Less conformist than The Best Years of Our Lives and incomparably more direct and more violent, Crossfire furnishes us with staggering evidence about the atmosphere of demoralization which has spread through the U.S. where too many people seem to live in a disquieting stultification, an atmosphere which seems an ideal terrain for the growth of all venomous by-products of fascism. . . . It is not surprising that in atomic, Trumanian and Marshallesque U.S.A. Crossfire was prohibited from being shown to the Navy and was declared un-American by the famous committee which undertook by the most ignoble means to purge Hollywood of every democratic "germ."128

To refurbish the tarnished public image of the film industry, the MPPA embarked on a public relations campaign, tirelessly spearheaded by Eric Johnston. In his

81

opening salvo, the public announcement of the Waldorf decision, made on December 3, 1947, Johnston vigorously excoriated the Ten while articulating the MPPA's post-hearing fantasy of Hollywood as a bastion of democracy and creative freedom. Reiterating the studios' insistence that the behavior of the Ten "hurt the cause of democracy immeasurably," he proclaimed, "There is no place in Hollywood for anyone who is subversive or disloyal to this country. I believe they played into the hands of extremists who are all too willing to confuse the honest progressive with the dishonest red. And they fed fuel to the fires of hysteria." Insisting that the film industry would not succumb to that hysteria, Johnston reiterated his (utterly hypocritical) defense of "freedom of the screen": "Freedom of speech is not a selective phrase. We can't shut free speech into compartments. It's either free speech for all American institutions and individuals or it's freedom for none—and nobody."129 Even more ironically, perhaps, on December 4, Johnston, on behalf of Dore Schary, accepted the 1947 Humanitarian Award of the Golden Slipper Square Club for Crossfire. In his acceptance speech—in which he fulsomely praised Schary's contributions to the production, but made no mention at all of Scott and Dmytryk—Johnston addressed intolerance in a "hard-boiled" way, arguing that the evils of intolerance were not moral or political, but economic: "Discrimination, which is the offspring and handmaiden of intolerance, holds down the incomes of minority groups, curtails their purchasing power and, of course, contributes to economic waste." For Johnston, the corporate liberal, intolerance was "a species of boycott, and in any business or job boycott is a cancer in the economic body of the nation." Thus, he pointed with pride to the broadmindedness of the film industry, noting "Hollywood has held open the door of opportunity to every man and woman who could meet its technical and artistic standards, regardless of racial

background

or

religious

belief"130though

not,

apparently,

political

background or radical belief.

Notes Note 1: On the postwar political situation, see Alonzo Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973); Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (New York: Free Press, 1973); and Mary Sperling McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947–1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978). Note 2: Norman D. Markowitz, "A View from the Left: From the Popular Front to Cold War Liberalism," in The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism, ed. Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976), 96. For a more detailed study of Wallace's career, see Markowitz, Rise and Fall of the People's Century. Note 3: William Z. Foster, "Marxism-Leninism vs. Revisionism," in Communism in America: A History in Documents, ed. Albert Fried (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997),

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346–347. Note 4: Markowitz, Rise and Fall of the People's Century, 220–226, and McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left, 2–8. On the CSU strike and the labor movement in Hollywood, see Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980); Mike Nielsen and Gene Mailes, Hollywood's Other Blacklist: Union Struggles in the Studio System (London: British Film Institute, 1995); and especially Gerald Horne, Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001). Note 5: John Rankin, quoted in Introducing . . . Representative John Elliott Rankin (Hollywood: HICCASP, n.d. [June 1945]), in Scott Papers, AHC; David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 88–91; Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 2–23. Note 6: Introducing . . . Representative John Elliott Rankin, 7, 12. Note 7: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 210–212. Note 8: The Alliance first invited HUAC to investigate subversion in the film industry in March 1944; within a month, HUAC investigators arrived in Hollywood. Though nothing substantive came of this wartime investigation, the Alliance continued to agitate against Red influence, both on film content and within the industry's labor unions, and to urge outside intervention. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 211–215. Note 9: Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1991), 130–131; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 212–213; Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 318. Note 10: Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War; 130–131; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 212–213; Friedrich, City of Nets, 318. Note 11: Johnston also worked closely with the State Department to deny export licenses to unacceptable films. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 205; Lary May, "Making the American Consensus: The Narrative of Conversion and Subversion in World War II Films," in The War in American Culture: Society and Culture during World War II, Lewis A. and Susan E. Hirsch, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 71–72; Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 175–177. Note 12: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 258; May, The Big Tomorrow, 177. Note 13: In October 1944, J. Edgar Hoover brought his concerns about Communist influence in Hollywood to the attention of Attorney General Francis Biddle. Though he was careful to say that the FBI had not undertaken a "direct investigation" (since its tactics had indeed been indirect—as well as illegal), Hoover reminded Biddle of the power of Hollywood to sway the hearts and minds of Americans. Though Biddle did not respond to Hoover's briefing report, the FBI director was not dissuaded from his campaign. Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 156–163. Note 14: Theoharis, Chasing Spies, 158–159. Note 15: Theoharis, Chasing Spies, 159, 162–163; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 256–8. Note 16: The original Nineteen were Scott and Dmytryk, as well as directors Herbert Biberman, Lewis Milestone, Irving Pichel, and Robert Rossen; screenwriters John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, Alvah Bessie, Samuel Ornitz, Ring Lardner Jr., Lester

Cole, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Collins, Gordon Kahn, Howard Koch, and Waldo Salt; and actor Larry Parks. Only Scott, Dmytryk, Biberman, Lawson, Trumbo, Maltz, Bessie, Ornitz, Lardner, Cole, and Brecht were called by HUAC to testify in 1947. Those men, with the exception of Brecht, were all charged with contempt of Congress and became known as the Hollywood Ten. Note 17: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 261–263; Dalton Trumbo, quoted in the 1976 documentary film Hollywood on Trial, dir. David Helpern, prod. James Gutman (Cinema Associates, 1976; MPI Home Video, 1994). Note 18: Richard Hood to J. Edgar Hoover, May 14, 1947, copies in FBI files on both Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk. On the copy in Dmytryk's file, all names are redacted except for Dmytryk's. Note 19: Indeed, Gordon Kahn, one of the Nineteen, finds the fact that at one point during Scott's testimony, HUAC investigator Robert Stripling referred to Scott as "Mr. Dmytryk" very telling: "Supposedly called before the Committee as separate and unrelated individuals, the link between these two gentleman in the corporate mind of the Committee was made amply clear by Mr. Stripling's slip of the tongue. Scott and Dmytryk were subpoenaed because they produced and directed Crossfire." Gordon Kahn, Hollywood on Trial: The Story of the Ten Who Were Indicted (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1948), 105. Note 20: Typescript of telegram from Scott and Dmytryk to J. Parnell Thomas, October 18, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS; Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, 106. Note 21: The "thought control" metaphor had wide currency during this period. Henry Wallace, for example, argued, "Unless they are stopped, the present methods of fighting communism and socialism by whipping up hysteria and invoking systems of thought control will give us a police state here. We cannot preserve and improve our system of democratic capitalism by undermining our high standard for human rights and civil liberties. . . . The time has come to strike back in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison when they led the people against the Federalists who were trying to use the Alien and Sedition Acts to get us into war with Jacobin France." Henry Wallace, "The Attack on Human Rights," New Republic (August 11, 1947): 14–15. Ousted as Secretary of Commerce following his criticisms of Truman's anti-Soviet policies and, particularly, Truman's resistance to the international control of nuclear technology through the United Nations, Wallace assumed leadership of the New Republic and used the liberal journal to publicize his alternative vision. Markowitz, Rise and Fall of the People's Century, especially 212–213. Note 22: Scott, "You Can't Do That;" in Thought Control in the U.S.A.: The Collected Proceedings, ed. Harold J. Salemson (Hollywood, Calif.: Progressive Citizens of America, 1947); Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, especially 367; Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Penguin Books, 1980). Note 23: Markowitz, "A View from the Left," 105. Note 24: On the rhetoric of totalitarianism, see Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Patterson, "Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s–1950s," American Historical Review 75, no. 4 (April 1970):1046-1064; and Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951; New York: Harvest Books, 1973). Note 25: On the internal discussions and disagreements over strategy among the Nineteen, see Patricia Bosworth, Anything Your Little Heart Desires: An American Family Story (New York: Touchstone Books, 1997), especially chapters 19 and 20, and Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, chapter 8. Note 26: Bosworth, Anything Your Little Heart Desires, 16, 227. Note 27: Together the Nineteen hired a team of attorneys, led by progressives Ben Margolis

and Charles Katz, both founding members of the National Lawyers Guild and key players in a number of civil liberties cases in California. To broaden the public appeal of their representation, former judge and California Attorney General Robert Kenny, and Bartley Crum, a corporate attorney who had represented both William Randolph Hearst and Harry Bridges, also joined the team. To handle legal matters that arose on the East Coast, New York–based Sam Rosenwein (also with the National Lawyers Guild) and Washington, D.C.–based Martin Popper (counsel for the leftist Civil Rights Congress) were also brought on board. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 263–264. Note 28: Ibid., 264–268. Note 29: This collaboration was cited later by Dmytryk as evidence that the Nineteen's entire defense strategy was a Communist (and indeed, criminal) conspiracy. See below. Note 30: Scott, typescript of HUAC statement, n.d. [October 1947], in Scott Papers, AHC. His statement is also reprinted in Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, 106–109. Note 31: Cecelia Ager, "Movie Colony's Free Speech Group Practices What It Preaches," no publisher, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 273–277. Note 32: Ibid., 273–279. Note 33: Scott, typescript of resolution, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 34: Norman Corwin, typescript of "Keep America Free!" speech, October 15, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B6-F2, WHS. Note 35: Bartley Crum, typescript of "Keep America Free!" speech, October 15, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 36: Irving Pichel, typescript of "Keep America Free!" speech, October 15, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 37: Albert Maltz, "The Function of the Thomas Committee," typescript of "Keep America Free!" speech, October 15, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 38: Typescript notes from "Keep America Free!" rally, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B6-F2, WHS. Note 39: Scott, typescript of speech, "The Real Object of the Investigation," October 15, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. For the FBI's impression of this rally, see FBI memo, Los Angeles office report/update, June 29, 1949, in Adrian Scott FBI File. Note 40: Mike [no last name] to Albert Maltz, October 4, 1947, in Albert Maltz Papers, SHSW. Note 41: Scott, typed notes on conversations with Schary, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC; Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, July 25, 1947, in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 42: Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 159. I find it very difficult to believe that Schary was so oblivious to Scott and Dmytryk's politics. If their work on Crossfire was not sufficient indication to him, surely he might have had some glimmer from his daily interactions with the two men. Scott certainly felt comfortable enough with Schary to make Commie jokes with him. For example, in a postscript to a memo to Schary, he wrote, "The fact that this memo is written in red is purely coincidental owing to the fact that the Kremlin ran out of black" (Scott, memo to Schary, June 9, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC). In addition, Schary's claim that they did not belong to the same organizations is simply nonsense. Both he and Scott, for example, were members of the Hollywood Democratic Committee and the Anti-Nazi League. In this context, the fact that Schary was active in the Democratic Party, while Scott and Dmytryk were not, surely should have told him something. However, Schary's "recollection" in his 1979 autobiography enables him to assert that he, like so many honest liberals, was duped by Communist prevarication. This is evident as early as 1951: in an interview with the FBI, Schary is very

careful to show that he disagreed with Lawson's performance at the hearings and to construct himself as someone who realized early on the dangers of being duped by Communists. Significantly, in this interview Schary fails to mention his support for the Ten and his position against a blacklist during the hearings (Memo/report—Los Angeles SAC to Director, FBI, January 2, 1951, in Dore Schary Papers, WHS.) However, what I find particularly intriguing—and troubling—is Schary's claim that Katz warned him that the HUAC would produce Party cards; how could Katz have known beforehand that the FBI had broken into Party headquarters, copied the membership cards, and shared them with the HUAC, or that the cards would be presented into evidence at the hearings? Note 43: Handwritten note, Schary to Scott, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 44: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 279–280. Inquisition in Hollywood remains, for me, the definitive account of the 1947 Hollywood hearings, but also useful are Gordon Kahn's unabashedly partisan Hollywood on Trial and Otto Friedrich's gossipy City of Nets. Note 45: Unsigned [Schary] typescript, n.d. [1950s?], in Schary Papers, B100-F1, WHS. Note 46: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 281; Friedrich, City of Nets, 311–320; Caute, The Great Fear, 492. Note 47: Friedrich, City of Nets, 321. Note 48: The first broadcast featured Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Gene Kelly, Lauren Bacall, Joseph Cotton, Peter Lorre, June Havoc, John Huston, Danny Kaye, Marsha Hunt, William Wanger, Melvin Douglas, Evelyn Keyes, Burt Lancaster, Paul Henried, William Holden, Myrna Loy, Margaret Sullavan, Van Heflin, Ethel Barrymore, Humphrey Bogart, Paulette Goddard, Sylvia Sydney, Audie Murphy, Edward G. Robinson, Lucille Ball, William Wyler, Judy Garland, Vincent Price, and Frederic March, among others, broadcasting from Hollywood. John Garfield and Frank Sinatra joined the program from New York, while Archibald MacLeish spoke from Washington, D.C. The second broadcast, on November 2, included many of the original cast, as well as Rita Hayworth, Geraldine Brooks, Jane Wyatt, George S. Kaufman, Leonard Bernstein, Bennett Cerf, Dana Andrews, and Gregory Peck. See Kenny-Morris Papers, B6-F13, WHS. Note 49: Typescript materials on Hollywood Fights Back; radio spots, November 11, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B6-F13, WHS. Note 50: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 282–283; Hollywood on Trial, prod. James Gutman. Note 51: Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, 105. Note 52: Only Bertolt Brecht, desperate to return to Europe and fearful that the State Department might withhold his travel visa, cooperated with the Committee, claiming that he had never been a Communist. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 285–287; Hollywood on Trial, prod. James Gutman; Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 57–71. Note 53: Scott, typescript of HUAC statement, n.d. [October 1947], in Scott Papers, AHC. His statement is also reprinted in Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, 106–109. Note 54: Report from Los Angeles office, June 29, 1949, Adrian Scott FBI File. Note 55: Unsigned typescript, n.d., in Schary Papers, B100-F1, WHS. Significantly, a number of historians subsequently have echoed this assessment. Robert Carr laments that the Ten got more public sympathy than they deserved because the press coverage did not adequately convey their "raucous and arrogant manner." David Caute writes, "The Ten did themselves little credit, rolling in the mud with the Committee, kicking and biting. They shouted and railed and visualized themselves as Dimitrov confronting a rising American Fascism. But Dimitrov was proud to call himself a Communist." Robert Carr, The House

Un-American Activities Committee, 1945–1952 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952), 383; Caute, The Great Fear, 495. Note 56: HICCASP Pamphlet, Inquisition: The Case of the Hollywood Ten, n.d. [1948], in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 57: Jules Dassin to Schary, November 6, 1947, and Walter Wanger to Schary, October 29, 1947, both in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 58: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 282; Friedrich, City of Nets, 310. Note 59: Eric Johnston, The Hollywood Hearings (Washington, D.C.: Motion Picture Association of America, Inc., 1947), in Kenny-Morris Papers, B14-F1, WHS. Note 60: Ibid. Note 61: Kahn, Hollywood on Trial, 132. Note 62: "Hollywood in Washington," New York Herald Tribune, October 22, 1947. Note: Quotations from this editorial, and from those cited hereafter, were taken from the Motion Picture Producers Association compilation, "Representative Editorials from the Press of the Nation Relating to Hearing between October 20 and October 30 in Washington, D.C., Held by the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities into Charges of Alleged Communism in Hollywood," n.d. [November 1947], in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 63: "Congress and Hollywood," New York Times, October 23, 1947. Note 64: "After Hollywood, What?" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 23, 1947. Note 65: "Time for Reform," Charleston (S.C.) Post, October 28, 1947. Note 66: "The Hollywood Probe: What Did It Accomplish," Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, November 1, 1947. Note 67: "The Muzzling of the Movies," PM, October 22, 1947. Note 68: "A Cheap Melodrama," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 22, 1947. Note 69: "Ex Parte Judgment," Hartford (Conn.) Courant, October 26, 1947. Note 70: "Better Rules Needed," New York World-Telegram, October 28, 1947. Note 71: John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941–1960 (New York: Norton, 1989), 121. Quotes from the report taken from "On Un-American Attitudes," Globe and Mail (Toronto), November 1, 1947. Note 72: "The Issues of Freedom Are Aired in the Forum," Louisville Courier-Journal, October 30, 1947. Note 73: "Who's Next?" Marion (Ohio) Star, October 30, 1947. Note 74: "On Un-American Attitudes," Globe and Mail, November 1, 1947. Note 75: "Spotlight on Hollywood," Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 1947. Note 76: "Kangaroo Court?" Oregon Journal (Portland), October 29, 1947. Note 77: "Reds in Hollywood," Tampa Morning Tribune, October 23, 1947. Note 78: "Beware of Shackles," (Lynn, Mass.) Daily Evening Item October 28, 1947. Note 79: "Let's Thank Our Stars," (Greensboro, N.C.) Daily News, October 27, 1947. Note 80: "Hollywood and Reds," Hudson (N.Y.) Register, October 9, 1947. Note 81: "Let's Be Sensible," Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, October 24, 1947. Note 82: "Witch Hunt Tactics," Meriden (Conn.) Journal, October 21, 1947. Note 83: Bernard Feins to Scott, October 29, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. By the end of November, the Committee for the First Amendment had collected over 100 petition signatures and donations ranging from $1 to $1,000 from over 250 people. Typewritten CFA

tally sheet, November 28, 1947, in Hollywood Democratic Committee Papers, SHSW. Note 84: Joseph Schulter to Scott, October 31, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Note 85: Martin N. Rotke to Scott, November 3, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Note 86: Harry L. Kingman to Scott, November 3, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Note 87: Edward Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 73. Letter to Scott, October 24, 1947 from unreadable signature; Scott to Harry Miller, November 12, 1947; Scott to Charlotte Weber [Jewish Telegraphic Agency], November 12, 1947; all in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 88: Adrian Scott, notes on conversations with Schary, n.d.; Scott to Charles Katz, n.d.—notes in preparation for civil suits, both in Scott Papers, AHC. A lengthy list of excerpts from the hearings, compiled by the Ten's attorney for use in the civil suits, shows that HUAC members repeatedly berated the studio executives for allowing known Communists to work in the film industry. See "The Committee's Demand that these Particular Men Be Discharged from Their Present Employment and Be Denied Future Employment in Private Motion Picture Industry," n.d., in Kenny-Morris Papers, B1-F7, WHS. Note 89: Stella Lombard to Schary, n.d. [November 1947], in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 90: Clarence R. Milligan to Schary, October 30, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 91: Typescript of RKO statement, n.d. [November 1947], in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 92: Schary, typescript of public statement, November 15, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 93: Schary to Bosley Crowther, November 17, 1947, in Schary Papers, B99-F12, WHS. Note 94: Affidavit of Robert Kenny in Scott v. RKO Pictures, n.d., in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F11, WHS; editorials on Picture Pioneers speech, summarized in MPA Weekly Digest of Press Opinion, December 6, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 95: Scott, typed notes on conversations; Scott to Charles Katz, typed notes in preparation for civil suits, n.d., both in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 96: Hedda Hopper, "Looking at Hollywood," Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1947, in So Well Remembered Production File, AMPAS. Note 97: See, for example, Irving Hoffman, "N.Y. Critics Heap Praise on So Well Remembered," The Hollywood Reporter, November 7, 1947, in So Well Remembered Production File, AMPAS; and Bosley Crowther, "Sounding Alarm: A Note on a Brand of Thinking about 'Subversive' Stuff in Films," New York Times, n.d. [November 1947], in Schary Papers, B99-F12, WHS. Note 98: Scott to Charles Katz, typed notes in preparation for civil suits, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Novelist James Hilton was stunned by the attacks on his work: "I never thought I would live to see a story of mine in favor of slum clearance and better working conditions attacked as 'subversive.' If the lines are to be drawn that far God knows what else I shall live to see." Hilton to Scott, November 14, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Note 99: Scott to Charles Katz, typed notes in preparation for civil suits, n.d.; Scott, typed notes

on

conversations,

contemptuous

of

n.d.,

Rathvon's

in

Scott

contention

both

that

Papers,

AHC.

"Hollywood's

Scott

was

treatment

particularly of

business

men—including William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives—was 40 years behind the time. Hollywood knew nothing of business management. Business men were not villains as so easily portrayed in Hollywood pictures: they were men of foresight and culture and they made decisions on the basis of merit." The irony of this statement was not lost on Scott. Note 100: Scott to Charles Katz, typed notes in prep for civil suits, n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 101: Ibid. Note 102: Unsigned typescript, n.d., in Schary Papers, B100-F1, WHS. Note 103: Schary, Heyday, 165. Note 104: Schary, Heyday, 166; "Statement of Policy Adopted at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Meeting on November 26, 1947, by Motion Picture Producers," in Kenny-Morris Papers, B14-F1, WHS. Note 105: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 329. Note 106: Scott, typed notes on conversations, n.d., and Scott to Charles Katz, typed notes in preparation for civil suits, n.d., both in Scott Papers, AHC; typescript of Scott's termination letter, November 26, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F6, WHS; Schary, Heyday, 166. Note 107: Caute, The Great Fear, 500. Note 108: Typescript of statement by Scott and Dmytryk, n.d. [November-December 1947], Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F4, WHS. Note 109: Scott to Charles Katz, typed notes in preparation for civil suits, n.d.; Scott to Bill [last name unknown], December 3, 1947; Scott to George Elvin, December 11, 1947, all in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 110: Bergen Evans to Scott, December 13, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 111: F. C. Canfield to Scott, December 17, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 112: Losey to Scott, November 28, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 113: Paul Jarrico, interview with Patrick McGilligan, in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 329. Note 114: Schary, Heyday, 166–167; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 340. In 1948, Schary left RKO after repeated clashes with the new studio owner, Howard Hughes. Moving back to MGM as head of production, he also clashed repeatedly with the very paternalistic Louis B. Mayer. Ironically, perhaps, Schary was ousted from MGM in 1956 for his outspoken support for Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign. Returning to New York, he wrote the play Sunrise at Campobello, which won five Tony awards. A moving tribute to FDR's struggle to rebuild his life and career after being stricken with polio, Sunrise at Campobello is also a metaphor for Schary's faith that the Democratic Party, too, would recover from the debilitating effects of McCarthyism. Schary, Heyday. Note 115: Nonetheless, the more virulently anti-Communist editorials were collected by the MPPA for use in Scott's civil suit for wrongful termination. See Appellee's Brief in Scott v. RKO, U.S. Court of Appeals, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 116: Quoted in Daily Variety, December 1, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 117: Untitled editorial, New York Post, November 25, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 118: Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 1947, excerpted in the typed MPPA's "Weekly Digest of Press Opinion," in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 119: Significantly, in Scott's civil suit against RKO, Mendel Silberberg and the other attorneys for the MPPA also planned to depose 21 members of the American Legion,

Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic War Veterans, and the Daughters of the American Revolution to provide "expert" testimony. See Motion of Taking Depositions, Scott v. RKO, U.S. District Court, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F1, WHS. Note 120: Helen Clare Nelson to Schary, November 27, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 121: Eugene B. Lehrman to Schary, November 27, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 122: Mrs. H. Fine to Schary, November 26, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 123: Warwick M. Tompkins to Schary, December 7, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 124: Ralph R. Pottle to Schary, November 29, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 125: Audience Research, Inc., "Congressional Investigation of Communism in Hollywood: What the Public Thinks," December 17, 1947, in Schary Papers, B100-F2, WHS. Note 126: Elspeth Grant, "Film on the Crest of a Crime Wave," Daily Graphic (London), January 2, 1948. Other British reviews noting the strongly American character of the film include "That Villain Montgomery," Evening News (London), January 1, 1948, and Margaret Lane, "Hollywood 'Nerves,'" Evening Standard (London), January 2, 1948; in Schary Papers, B127-F3, WHS. Note 127: Jean-Louis Maret, review of Crossfire, Marseillaise, August 20, 1948, in American Jewish Committee (AJC) Papers, G10, B7-F1, YIVO. Note 128: Raymond Barkan, Crossfire, Midy-Soir, August 20, 1948, in AJC Papers, Gen 10, B7-F1, YIVO. Crossfire, along with Gentleman's Agreement, continued to be a thorn in the side of those concerned with America's image overseas. Though Daily Variety reported that the Motion Picture Export Association (unofficially) declined to distribute Crossfire abroad on the grounds that it would give foreigners the wrong impression of the United States, the film was widely screened internationally throughout 1948. Outraged that both films exposed the practice of American anti-Semitism and made a mockery of American "tolerance," the AJC, not surprisingly, anxiously monitored the international press and even contacted the State Department for help in their campaign to ban the films overseas. See miscellaneous correspondence in AJC Papers, G10, B7-F2, YIVO. Note 129: Press release, Studio Publicity Directors Committee [of MPPA], November 20, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B14-F1, WHS. Note 130: Address by Eric Johnston, December 4, 1947, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B14-F1, WHS.

Chapter 10 The Triumph of Anti-Communist Americanism: The Blacklist and Beyond In their legal and ideological battles to defend themselves and their alternative

1

vision of Americanism, Adrian Scott and the other members of the Hollywood Ten believed that they were fighting the good fight and would be vindicated in the end. Their faith in the American people and the institutions of democracy was such that they simply could not imagine that, in the United States of America, they would be jailed for their ideas, ideas that they believed were so fundamentally rooted in American traditions of democracy and dissent. However, the Ten, their attorneys, and their supporters consistently underestimated the opposition—particularly its willingness to fight dirty. In hindsight, it seems clear that from the very beginning the First Amendment defense strategy was doomed, undermined first by the black-bag tricks of the FBI, and then by the collusion between the FBI and HUAC and the Justice Department. As Athan Theoharis points out, "In mounting a First Amendment defense, first at the HUAC hearings and then in their legal challenge to both the contempt citations and their firings by the studios, the Hollywood Ten assumed that their Communist party membership and their trial and public relations strategies would remain confidential." This proved to be a naïve assumption. After the Ten were charged with contempt of Congress, FBI surveillance of the Ten, their attorneys, and their supporters moved to a whole new level, well beyond reading Daily Variety or sending agents to monitor public rallies. For six months, the FBI illegally wiretapped three of the Ten's attorneys, including Martin Popper, whose office served, Theoharis notes, as the "clearinghouse for communications among the various attorneys handling aspects of the Ten's defense." These wiretaps, which violated both the 1934 Communications Act, Supreme Court rulings, and the attorney-client privileges of the Ten, revealed not only the details of the Ten's legal defense but also their public relations strategy—a critical component of such a controversial and ideologically tinged case. Most troubling, J. Edgar Hoover shared this illegally obtained intelligence with Justice Department officials, claiming that his information came from "a highly confidential source." This claim was not investigated by Attorney General Tom Clark or Assistant Attorney General T. Vincent Quinn, who headed the Justice Department's Criminal Division and supervised the government's prosecution of the Hollywood Ten. This was a disturbing breach of legal ethics, as Theoharis suggests: "The obviously confidential nature of the reported information confirmed that the FBI either had an informer on the defense team or had obtained this information from an illegal wiretap or bug. Clark's and Quinn's indifference allowed them to avoid notifying

2

the court of this intelligence-gathering operation while they benefited from the information." However, inquiring too deeply would have led in all likelihood to dismissal of the charges against the Ten, since the illegal wiretaps violated Supreme Court rulings that "the ban on wiretaps applied to federal agents, and, then, that any indictment based on an illegal wiretap was tainted."1 The political pressure to win this case was enormous, however, and in their desire to defend America against Communist subversion, Hoover, Clark, and other representatives of American justice and law enforcement willingly subverted the laws of the United States and the ideals of Americanism. The ensuing legal defeats of the Hollywood Ten gave credence to the ideological

3

charges against them and bolstered public concerns that Communists posed a danger to national security and the American Way of Life. In Hollywood, the blacklisting of the Ten definitively split the Popular Front, leaving both radicals and liberals vulnerable when HUAC returned to Hollywood for a second round of hearings in the early 1950s. Well aware of the fate of the Ten, many in the film industry—liberals as well as radicals—were forced to make hard choices, choices that often had devastating consequences, personally, morally, and especially politically. In 1947, the future of America and the world seemed to hang in the balance, as competing visions for the postwar world vied for hegemony. The 1947 HUAC hearings into Hollywood subversion played a key role in tipping that balance away from the progressive Americanism envisioned by the Ten and their cohort,

and

by

the

early

1950s,

anti-Communist

Americanism

reigned

triumphant—in Hollywood, throughout the nation, and around the world.

From the Blacklist to Prison In the wake of the hearings and the Waldorf Statement, the Ten and their supporters

initiated

a

wide-ranging

public

relations

campaign,

using

the

coalition-organizing tactics and publicity techniques honed over the past decade. From the beginning, the progressives' PR efforts were closely linked to the Ten's legal battle against HUAC. After being formally indicted for contempt of Congress in early December 1947, the Ten asked for a collective trial, but the request initially was denied, forcing each of them to undertake the expense of a separate trial. As in the hearings, John Howard Lawson went first. His trial began in April 1948, and within a week he was found guilty of contempt of Congress; a guilty verdict for Trumbo quickly followed on May 5. Once both Lawson and Trumbo were convicted, however, the prosecution and defense agreed that the other eight men would accept the final verdict of the appeals court in the Lawson and Trumbo cases. Though this enabled them to cut costs, their legal expenses were still staggering, and fundraising was a key component of the Ten's public relations campaign. Ultimately approximately $150,000 was raised through a national

4

speaking tour, the sale of pamphlets and books, and a series of fundraising events in Hollywood, including "New Year's Eve with the Hollywood Ten" at Lucey's Restaurant, "Election Night with the Ten" at the home of Hugo and Jean Butler, and "A Thanksgiving Meeting with the Ten" at the El Patio Theater.2 As late as the fall of 1948, the Ten still counted on support from a wide range of

5

liberal luminaries. Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and E. B. White publicly urged national organizations to submit amicus curiae briefs supporting the Ten or to sign the brief written by Carey McWilliams and Alexander Meicklejohn. Liberal writers such as Arthur Miller and Marc Connelly responded to the call, as did a handful of leftist organizations: the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, and the American Jewish Congress (though neither the Anti-Defamation League nor the American Jewish Committee responded), as well as eight CIO unions (which were soon to be expelled from the CIO for their Communist leanings). However, the traditional pillars of left-wing support for Hollywood politicos were overwhelmed with other issues—the Communist Party was fighting its own legal battle against HUAC, defending its national leaders in their Smith Act trials, while the Progressive Citizens of America was occupied with Wallace's presidential campaign. The Hollywood branch of the PCA, however, did organize the Freedom from Fear Committee which, along with the Committee to Free the Hollywood Ten, spearheaded the Ten's public relations campaign.3 The publicity efforts of the Ten did not translate, however, into a broad-based movement that could effectively challenge the anti-Communist juggernaut. Indeed, liberal support within the film industry—which might have influenced the studio executives and prevented the blacklist—quickly faded in the wake of the hearings. The Committee for the First Amendment was the first to capitulate. During the House debate on the Ten's contempt citations, Rankin ostentatiously unfurled a CFA petition in support of the Ten and began to read, a performance intended to raise once more the specter of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy in Hollywood and to warn the recalcitrant CFA members that they could be tarred with the same Red brush as the Ten: I want to read you some of these names. One of the names is June Havoc. We found . . . that her real name is June Hovick. Another one is Danny Kaye, and we found out that his real name [is] David Daniel Kamirsky. . . . Another one is Eddie Cantor, whose real name is Edward Iskowitz. There is one who calls himself Edward Robinson. His real name is Emmanuel Goldenberg. There is another here who calls himself Melvyn Douglas, whose real name is Melvyn Hesselberg.4

Rankin's xenophobia was the stick that convinced the movie stars to accept the carrot of Johnston's more palatable liberal anti-Communism. Though William Wyler and Phillip Dunne tried to keep the CFA alive as the Committee of One

6

Thousand, for the most part the movie stars quickly repudiated their activist pasts. Some capitulated publicly, as in the case of Humphrey Bogart, who admitted he had been a "dope" in an article, "I'm No Communist," in Photoplay. Others simply drifted away quietly, no longer willing to add the glamour of their names and faces to Popular Front causes, nor indeed to almost any political activity.5 Perhaps most significant, however, was the repudiation of the Ten by their

7

unions, the Screen Writers Guild and the Directors Guild. While publicly proclaiming their hatred of HUAC and the blacklist, the liberal Guild leaders insisted that the Ten had been discharged for their activities as Communists rather than as screenwriters or directors—though HUAC had made it abundantly clear that the Ten were targeted as Communists whose work as screenwriters and directors posed an internal security threat. Nonetheless, this hair-splitting enabled the Guild liberals to argue that the union had no obligation to support the Ten or fight to protect their rights as union members. Not coincidentally, the internal crisis over the Ten also created a welcome opportunity for the liberals to purge radical members from leadership positions, a move that effectively ended the Popular Front in Hollywood. Ceplair and Englund are deeply critical of the liberals' failure to honor their principles: The liberals of the late forties and early fifties who opposed the blacklist and supported the First Amendment yet ignored the Ten, and then the dozens,

and

finally

the

thousands

of

blacklistees

because

they

disapproved of communism simply provided themselves with a ready excuse for their fear before HUAC. The liberals ended up halting far short of the actions which a real commitment to liberalism would have entailed: unflinching

defense Communists.6

of

the

constitutional

rights

of

flesh-and-blood

In the absence of a militant unified front of Hollywood liberals and radicals, the blacklist was implemented quickly and thoroughly. Soon after Scott was fired, his agent David Diamond contacted the major studios, but was advised that his client "could not be employed in motion pictures unless and until he was purged of contempt by the court and until he made [an] oath that he was not a member of the Communist Party."7 Though Scott himself was anathema, the studio clearly believed that his creative work would still prove both popular and profitable. Indeed, soon after Scott was fired, a "fan" wrote to tell him that at a recent screening of Crossfire, an "impulsive and rising applause burst forth from the audience" when Scott and Dmytryk's names appeared in the credits. Most ironically perhaps, Crossfire had grossed nearly $3 million domestically by the end of 1948 and continued to win awards even after Scott and Dmytryk were blacklisted. In addition to being nominated for five Academy Awards (including Best Picture), Crossfire was named "Best Social Picture" at the Cannes Film

8

Festival in 1947, and was honored by the Inter-racial Unity Committee, Ebony Magazine, and the Mystery Writers of America, while Schary was honored for his role as executive producer by the Council against Intolerance in America, the Golden Slipper Club of Philadelphia, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Look Magazine, and the One World Committee.8 In addition, since both Crossfire and So Well Remembered continued to perform

9

well at the box office, RKO decided to move forward with the two projects Scott had been working on before he was fired: the hold on The Boy with Green Hair was lifted,9 and John Paxton was promoted to the position of producer and assigned to fill in for Scott on Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers. That project was never completed, however, as Paxton left RKO soon after his friend was fired and later moved to France, where he lived from 1950 to 1951. Though Sarah Jane Paxton, who married John in the late 1940s, insists that he had fallen in love with Paris on an earlier visit and wanted to live there again, Norma Barzman believes that he was "greylisted" for his association with Scott and Dmytryk.10 It quickly became clear that the repercussions of the hearings extended beyond

10

the film industry. In mid-December, Scott's agent learned that plans to publish a book version of Scott's play Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers were jeopardized by his political notoriety. The publisher had received "indications" that the book "will be turned down flat by the schools," their major market. Scholastic Magazine, for example, to whom the book had been submitted for first serial rights, declined to publish the play now that Scott had been publicly "linked, fairly or not, with Communist activity." Though Scholastic's editor-in-chief found nothing "the least subversive about the play," he did not want "our classroom publications in the public schools to be subjected to the sort of attack that might well develop." Though the book itself was then being bound and a number of ads already had been released, the publisher decided that the "wisest and most realistic course" was to postpone the formal release of the book until the fall of 1948. At that point, he suggested, "the whole excitement might well have blown over, and the incident forgotten. Or it might even be that the boys will be vindicated."11 Shut out of the studios, Scott and Dmytryk teamed up to form an independent production company, tellingly named Sentinel Productions. In March 1948, in Virginia Wright's Daily News column, they announced that their first film would be an adaptation of Millen Brand's novel Albert Sears. Ben Barzman had agreed to write the screenplay about "a normal community whose latent prejudices can be transformed into violent action" when a black family moves into their white neighborhood. In addition to exploring the issue of race prejudice, Albert Sears was a morality play with clear parallels to Scott and Dmytryk's recent experience with HUAC. According to Wright, although Sears is "a man with a strict sense of

11

honesty and fair play he doesn't want the Negroes there. As a property owner he sides with those who argue that real estate values will decline. But as a man of justice he is compelled to fight on the side of the Negroes against the terrorization tactics of the 'committee.'" Scott and Dmytryk claimed that they did not foresee any problems with distributing the film, once completed. Though they hoped to interest a major studio in Albert Sears, they were confident that they could arrange an independent distribution deal.12 This confidence, however, was mere bravado, a show of strength for the

12

naysayers in the industry. Behind the scenes, Scott was having difficulties arranging both financing and distribution for the proposed film. His pitch memo to Sidney Cohen and Edward Kook, who had agreed to help broker the project, suggests that he was as yet unaware or perhaps unwilling to acknowledge how thoroughly and effectively the blacklist had cut off his access to the sources of power in Hollywood. Thus, he bravely claimed that he was not going through mainstream fundraising sources because the "usual channels are very often to blame for the emptiness of the content of Hollywood pictures." Pointing to his track record with Crossfire, he assured Cohen and Kook that Albert Sears "lends itself to efficient planning and production; it is new and original motion picture material. We feel strongly that the eloquence and dignity with which Millen Brand has treated Negro-White friendship in the book can be transformed to the screen." In addition, he and Dmytryk had agreed to work without salary until the investors recouped their funds, while the actors would work wholly on percentage. Thus, Scott argued that Albert Sears could be another Crossfire—a breakout popular and critical success despite its low budget.13 Though he might have been able to arrange independent financing for the film, the problem of distribution remained insoluble. In February 1948, for example, Scott approached George Bagnall of United Artists about releasing Albert Sears independently. Bagnall told him that this "would be difficult because the United Artists product played in theatres controlled by the majors and they would not permit a picture by Adrian Scott to be shown in such theatres."14 Not surprisingly, Albert Sears was never produced, and Scott's early hopes of beating the studio system were dashed. By 1948, the radical exodus from Hollywood had begun, as members of the Ten left for New York, Mexico, and Europe in search of film work. Dmytryk, with his new wife, Jean Porter,15 left that year for England, where he directed two films: The Hidden Room, for an independent British production company, and Christ in Concrete, for Eagle-Lion. Both projects were fraught with difficulties, more financial and artistic than political. At one point, though Arthur Rank had stepped in to finance and distribute the film, it appeared as though Christ in Concrete, an adaptation of a story about Italian immigrants written by Brooklyn bricklayer Pietro Donatelli, might be cancelled for lack of a decent script. In desperation,

13

Dmytryk contacted Ben Barzman, with whom he had worked on the John Wayne war vehicle Back to Bataan (1945). Though Dmytryk remembers that Barzman was "blacklisted and available" to work on Christ in Concrete, Norma Barzman is certain that when Dmytryk approached him in November 1948, Barzman was at MGM working on Wild Country. Barzman was reluctant to take on additional work, but Dmytryk insisted that he "owed" him, so Barzman wrote the screenplay at night and on weekends. In February 1949, Rank greenlighted the film, but wanted Barzman on the set in London for rewrites. Both their personal loyalty to Dmytryk and their sense that the American blacklist would eventually catch up with them—perhaps sooner than later—convinced Ben and Norma Barzman that the time was right to leave Hollywood for Europe.16 Adrian Scott remained in Hollywood a while longer, still hoping to make

14

something happen at home. Certainly there were positive signs. In 1949, director Gabriel Pascal approached Scott to work with him on a production of Candida for MGM—a prospect that sent Scott's "spirit soaring." However, his elation was soon replaced by despair as he realized that his hiring would have to be approved by Louis B. Mayer, a prospect Scott could not tolerate. "I believe when you see Mayer or some other production head that he will shake his head and say something to the effect of how wonderful it would be if Scott were to work with you. Solemn abjuration, shame, and misery will accompany this reaction. 'If only Scott could,' he will add; and then promptly make a decision which will prevent this." Scott refused to give Mayer that power: My position has been simple: Neither a committee of Congress nor a group of business executives have the right to deny a man the right to work. . . . No discussion of this matter is allowable. Talent and ideas [are] the sole arbiters. . . . You may think that my decision is foolish when I respectfully decline now the opportunity of working on Candida so long as L. B. Mayer shall be the arbiter. Even if he were to say I could, I must respectfully decline. I can no longer allow him to make this decision, a decision he has already taken and for which, if his private utterances are to be believed, he has a profound shame.17

Realizing that his prospects in Hollywood were extremely limited, in February 1949 Scott began negotiating with Marian Avery, a friend in the British film industry, to set up a film project in London. Apparently there was a possibility that he might even break into directing, as his letter to her suggests: "I was about to establish my own unit at RKO and had signed a contract specifically guaranteeing the writing, producing and directing of my own pictures when . . . the axe fell." Scott tried to reassure her that he was up to the job: I am familiar with a producer's wariness at the idea of breaking in a new director. I have been faced with such decisions myself. It is of no concern or fear to me. I had made, before I left RKO, all the essential preparations

15

for directing—had made tests, had dealt with temper and temperament; had examined my talent and humility in terms of the director's problems; and discovered most importantly that I was enormously enthusiastic about taking on the direction of a picture. . . . Yes, I have every confidence in the world that I can direct.18

A week later, Avery wrote that she had a prospect for him, but that Scott's political "condition" complicated matters for the unnamed backer of the project. "He is wary of your personal situation because speaking purely coldly, he says there is always the possibility that you will lose your case and then where would he be?" She continued, "I'm sure that as an artist he doesn't care a tupence whether you're a Communist or not. For myself, I certainly do. I haven't seen you in years but I don't believe that you're with some of the gang I know personally out there . . . in that quite simply it's a religion with them, in lieu of none other."19 Despite such ominous signs, Scott was buoyed by the foreign successes of other

16

blacklistees and persuaded by the "grandiloquent and exciting" promises of work in Europe made by independent producer Rod Geiger and others.20 In the spring of 1949, Scott finagled a five-month visa from the State Department and followed the Barzmans, Dmytryk, and other blacklisted film workers abroad. He settled first in London with his wife Anne Shirley and their adopted son, Mike. On April 17, 1949, they celebrated Anne's 31st birthday with a trip to Paris, accompanied by the Barzmans and Rod Geiger and his wife, fashion designer Katya, of Sweden. Norma Barzman remembers that they arrived after all the restaurants were closed, but Norma, who was fluent in French and had lived in Paris before, took them to a restaurant she loved and convinced the chef to cook them a fabulous meal. There was still strict rationing in Britain at this time and none of them had eaten an egg in six months, so they were in "absolute heaven." According to Norma, Adrian and Anne were together and happy at this time. Within a few months, however, their marriage was over. Anne, who had little interest in her husband's political commitments, was simply unable to accept the radical change in his fortunes. She had married a successful, popular Hollywood producer and was appalled to find herself shackled to a blacklisted, bankrupt, and rather desperate man. Returning with her daughter Julie to the United States, she left behind their adopted son Mike and a note for Adrian, asking him to forward her trunks from London and explaining, "I cannot live without Beverly Drive."21 Left alone in Paris with his troubled young son, Scott struggled to keep his head above water, both emotionally and financially. In mid-August 1949, Adrian wrote to Anne about the final divorce arrangements, a warm, lighthearted letter that barely masks his sadness and dislocation. In discussing the grounds for the divorce, for example, he disguises his pain with humor:

17

I have no objection at all to incompatibility. Indeed, I like it and approve, it's a harmless enough sounding word and seems moreover to apply, but is that all? No cruelty? Anguish? Or hardening of the arteries or other incredible verbiage that abound in divorces? I was in fact a little disturbed because it seemed so easy, and because it seemed so easy I wondered about the validity and finality of the divorce.

He continues, as if to convince himself, "This is my real preference. To get . . . matters done quickly and quietly—no ragged ends, no dragging [things] on, one clean, sharp break. Finis." Scott was particularly concerned with the effect of the divorce on Mike, who blamed himself for the breakup of his family. Feeling that his son's problems were "far too complex for me," he took Mike to a child analyst and was hopeful that therapy would help him. Most pressing, however, was their financial situation. As he explained to Anne, though there had been a "flurry of offers," including one for John Paxton, none of the French or British producers had "come up with contracts or money." Nevertheless, in the financial settlement, Scott was concerned for Anne as well as for himself and Mike. He suggested that in dividing their assets, Anne would keep the house on Beverly Drive and $25,000, while he asked to keep $1,500 she had recently wired to him to pay for tickets home, as well as bonds worth $5,000 (which were already in his name), explaining. "This will be money to support Mike and me here if everything blows up (which I doubt) or money to live on when we return to America or money for him to live on in case it is necessary for me to go to prison."22 Though things did not "blow up" for Scott and the other blacklistees in Europe,

18

neither did they turn out as hoped. Dmytryk was able to make only two movies in England before his passport expired in August 1949, and he was forced to return to the United States. At about the same time, just as Scott was in the process of putting together a film project, his passport also expired and the State Department refused to grant him an extension. Indeed, French police confiscated his passport and gave him two days to leave the country. With his trial for contempt looming large, Scott toyed with the idea of defying the authorities and remaining in Europe: "I had friends in England and France who said I was foolish to go back then, because I knew by this time I was going back to stand trial for Contempt of Congress. . . . They said they'd hide me out and then fix it up with the government. I was tempted. It could have been arranged. But nine of us couldn't go into court with the tenth on the lam. That would have made it impossible for the rest who were left." He counseled the Barzmans, however, to stay in France, and he helped connect them to left-friendly producers.23 Scott became deeply depressed upon his return to the United States. As he explained in a 1949 article in the progressive journal Film Sense, "I associated freely in Europe. I had no fear that I would be hounded from my job if I

19

expressed any view, dissent or otherwise. I began to breathe again. This was the atmosphere that was pre–witch hunt America, that stimulated the free circulation of ideas, that was conducive to good picture making." The situation in America could not have been more different: "I have returned now—to Peekskill, to Foley Square, to Chambers and Hiss, to the Trenton Six, to the Bridges perjury trial and to the case of the Ten now pending before the Supreme Court." Noting that the Europeans were outraged by the American violation of civil liberties, he warned: "They are waiting to see if the United States is prepared to jail men for their ideas. They, better than we, know what the jailing of an idea means. Fascism and war are the ugly testaments."24 As it turned out, the United States was prepared to jail men for their ideas. On

20

June 13, 1949, the Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the contempt citations in the Lawson and Trumbo cases. In his ruling against the Ten, Chief Justice Bennett C. Clark made little attempt to disguise the blatantly political nature of the decision: "No one can doubt in these chaotic times that the destiny of all nations hangs in the balance in the current ideological struggle between communistic-thinking and democratic-thinking peoples of the world. Neither Congress nor any court is required to disregard the impact of world events, however impartially or dispassionately they view them." Noting that Hollywood films were "a potent medium of propaganda dissemination which may influence the minds of millions of American people," Justice Clark argued that it was "absurd" for the Ten to maintain that their political affiliations were not "pertinent questions," since as filmmakers they "vitally influence[d]" film content. "Indeed," he sniffed, "it is hard to envisage how there could be any more pertinent question."25 The attorneys for the Ten had expected such defeats in the lower courts, and from the beginning had anticipated taking their case to the Supreme Court, banking on its liberal majority to hand them a victory there. However, in mid-1949, two of the liberal justices—Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge—died and were replaced by Attorney General Tom Clark (who had secured the federal contempt indictments against the Ten) and Indiana senator Sherman Minton. In April 1950, with only Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas dissenting, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeals of Trumbo and Lawson. The Ten were not surprised by this decision. As Scott wrote to George Bernard Shaw, "[It] simply proves that the Court in times of crisis votes with property interests—as it did in the Dred Scott decision, as it did against Jefferson, Jackson and as it did against Roosevelt." On June 11, Trumbo and Lawson entered federal prison, followed within weeks by the remaining men save Scott, who was recovering from intestinal surgery. On September 27, 1950, he was finally sentenced to a year in prison, and soon joined Trumbo and Lawson at the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky.26

21

In his last public speech before entering prison, Scott spoke eloquently on the

22

American tradition of dissent, an address redolent with the sentiments of the Popular Front and with John Dos Passos's observation, "In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across a scary present."27 Lauding the radical Americanism of Jefferson, Paine, Emerson, Lincoln, and others in the Popular Front pantheon, he argued that though the dissenting ideas of the Ten were unpopular with the reactionary minority, they were shared by most Americans. Thus, he believed the Ten would be vindicated by history: They are in a notable tradition. For this country was born in a spirit of dissent against royalist repression. We now revere the dissenters to the policies of the British kind and for their establishment of the first modern democracy. . . . All through our history we have honored the dissenter though rarely at the crucial period in which he lived.

Emphasizing that such heroic dissenters did not act alone, Scott extolled his audience and the power of the people: "[F]or every dissenter there is an idea needing expression and behind the dissenter and the idea are countless thousands and millions ready to support both. . . . There was a role for everyone, then, because the idea was good: freedom, equality." He also reiterated his faith in history as an inexorable and natural story of democratic progress, from barbarism to civilization, from slavery to freedom, from class oppression to the New Deal and social democracy: The Revolution begun in 1776 was extended in 1860 and that very same Revolution is demanding extension today. This revolution means a great share in the needs of life: oranges for a child in a Chicago slum, in a Harlem ghetto, in a sharecropper's shanty. Clothes for the ill clad; homes for the ill-housed. Full equality for minorities whether racial or political. The right to speak. The right to work; the absence of fear and terror. Peace. These are good ideas, powerful ideas. They cannot be denied any more than independence could be denied in 1776 or the abolition of slavery in 1860 or the humanitarian legislation of the New Deal in 1932. Lincoln would approve them. Jefferson would lend his sage advice to them. Tom Paine would write an eloquent pamphlet in support of them.28

Scott found nothing particularly romantic or revolutionary, however, in his experience at the federal penitentiary at Ashland, Kentucky. The most difficult aspect of prison life was the monotony, though he tried to keep busy, working in the prison library by day and teaching his fellow inmates (mostly illiterate young Appalachian men incarcerated for moonshining) to read at night.29 Almost as soon as he entered prison, Scott and his attorneys, particularly Robert Kenny, began work on his parole application. Professors F. Curtis Canfield and Bergen

23

Evans, producer William Wyler, novelist and screenwriter Ira Wolfert, and others responded to Kenny's request for supporting letters with glowing testimonials to Scott's talent, character, and Americanism. The crux of Scott's own petition for release, however, was his desperate concern for his foster son, Mike, who was then only seven years old. Scott had tried to explain to Mike "where I was going and why, and out of fear that I could not clarify for him what could not be clarified for many adult contemporaries, I chose finally not to tell him. Instead, I invented a serial story several months before I left for jail. When I was gone, I told him, I would continue telling the story in letters." The story revolved around the adventures of Cowboy Jim and Sunbeam, a cowboy and Indian who were spies for Lincoln during the Civil War. Though Mike delighted in the stories, the prison authorities did not approve, and Scott was forced to cut short the narrative that helped him maintain contact with his troubled son.30 Mike's emotional problems, particularly his profound fear of abandonment, had been exacerbated by Adrian and

Anne's

divorce,

and

now,

with

Scott's

imprisonment,

had

become

overwhelming. Though Mike received special attention and care as a boarding student at the Chadwick School in Rolling Hills, California, the headmistress reported to Scott that Mike was a "a baffling problem" whose troubles included bedwetting, violent confrontations with the other students, and an inability to read or retain basic information or skills. Scott was very worried about his foster son, as he wrote to the parole board: "Mike needs help, possibly psychoanalytic help. Mostly he needs my help. Our relationship of genuine love and trust can grow and flourish only with our being together."31 In March 1951, Scott's request for parole was denied. Though he had fully

24

expected it, he was nonetheless depressed by the verdict and raged impotently against the injustice that Japanese prisoners of war and Nazi war criminals were allowed to go free, while American political prisoners remained behind bars. However, at that point, he had already served six months in prison, and he was hopeful that he might be released early for good behavior. In addition, his health was improving, he had regained much of the weight he had lost, and his spirits picked up as his physical weakness and exhaustion lessened. Though he was troubled by the continuing problems with Mike and by ominous political news from the outside, he was buoyed by a recent court ruling against the University of California, which had fired some thirty professors for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. Seeing the parallels to his own dismissal and believing that the tide was finally turning, Scott was hopeful that his civil case against RKO would be successful. On July 28, 1951, after serving ten months of his sentence, Scott was released from prison. From Cincinnati, during a layover in his flight to Los Angeles, he sent Robert Kenny a telegram reading simply: "Free."32 By the time Adrian Scott was released from prison in the summer of 1951, the

25

national and international tensions of the Cold War had turned hot. Against the backdrop of American troops fighting and dying in Korea, the "loss" of China to the Communists, and the Soviet explosion of an atomic bomb, the widely publicized spy trials of Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Judith Coplon, and others

dramatically

raised the stakes

in the battle

against

international

Communism and heightened the anti-Communist paranoia at home. At the same time, the American Left was in abysmal disarray. Wallace's ignominious defeat in the 1948 presidential election—and the Communists' single-minded support for his third-party candidacy—split the labor movement (already reeling from the Taft-Hartley Act) and paved the way for the purge of individual Communists and entire unions from the CIO. In June 1951, the Supreme Court upheld the conspiracy convictions of national Communist leaders under the Smith Act; panicked, the Party sent hundreds of mid-level functionaries underground to wait out the Cold War.33 Against this volatile backdrop, HUAC announced a new round of investigations into subversion in Hollywood, spurred by the voluntary testimony in 1950 of Edward G. Robinson, Leo Townsend, Richard Collins, and Sterling Hayden. Sylvia Jarrico recalled, "We were planning a large welcome home demonstration for the eight [members of the Ten upon their release from prison]. We thought our fight to rehabilitate their reputations was going pretty well and that they would come out of jail heroes. Then the subpoenas hit. HUAC's timing couldn't have been more perfect." Still scarred from the 1947 investigation, the film industry made little effort to challenge the Committee. The studio executives, having capitulated in 1947, quickly realized that there was no ground for protest or retreat when the Committee returned after a four-year hiatus. This time there were no public rallies; there was no united front, no Committee for the First Amendment or even Freedom from Fear Committee to defend the industry from further encroachment. Once they had been named by their erstwhile comrades, the film radicals who had escaped HUAC's net in 1947 were quickly rounded up. Schooled by the bitter defeat of the Ten, those who defied the Committee in the 1950s relied on the Fifth Amendment rather than the First. Though this tactic surely saved them from prison, it also contributed to the now-hegemonic public perception

that

membership in the Party was both criminal and shameful. At this point, too, both the blacklist and the "clearance" mechanisms, tested in 1947 with the Ten, were firmly in place, and no grand public statements were required to justify the industry's anti-Communist policy. As Scott had presciently declared in the summer of 1947, "Our fear makes us beautiful targets. . . . We are magnificently adjusted to bans, and ripe for more bans."34

Dore Schary and the Crisis of Hollywood Liberalism

26

Dore Schary's struggle to reconcile his personal integrity with the shifting political

27

realities between 1947 and the early 1950s captures the dilemma faced by Hollywood liberals. In 1947, Schary stood out among the studio executives for his principled stand in his testimony before HUAC, his resistance to the imposition of a blacklist, and his refusal to participate in the firing of Scott and Dmytryk. Despite his clear outrage at the situation, after much soul searching, Schary decided that Hollywood liberalism was better served by his remaining in the industry, where he would be able to resist the blacklist and continue making socially relevant films.35 In 1948, Schary left RKO after repeated clashes with the new studio owner, Howard Hughes, and returned to MGM as head of production, where his attempts to streamline MGM's bloated production process led to repeated clashes with studio founder Louis B. Mayer. In 1951, following the controversial ousting of Mayer, Schary replaced him as MGM president—the top position in the biggest studio in Hollywood.36 By 1951, however, the position taken by Schary at the 1947 hearings—that

28

employment at his studio would be based on ability rather than political affiliation—was unthinkable. And by 1951, a man like Schary—a staunch, outspoken liberal with a long history of political activism and membership in "front" organizations such as the Hollywood Writers Mobilization or the Civic Unity Council—was himself extremely vulnerable. Ultimately, Schary found that he could not remain in his position in the industry without making significant concessions to the forces of reaction. One measure of the slippery slope of liberal anti-Communism was Schary's

29

participation in the Motion Picture Industry Council (MPIC). Founded in March 1949 by Roy Brewer, the MPIC was an umbrella group that represented Hollywood unions, guilds, and producer groups that worked to publicize studio efforts against the "Communist problem" and to "clear" the repentant Reds and fellow travelers, a booming business after HUAC investigators returned to Hollywood in March 1951. Schary played a leading role in the MPIC, serving as its president in the early 1950s, but the success of his efforts to temper the effects of the blacklist by cooperating with the mechanisms of enforcement remains in doubt.37 Reading between the lines of the FBI's file on Schary, one sees his attempts to finesse this new political situation on two key issues: the "fair" enforcement of the blacklist, and clearing himself of any Red taint. In early 1951, under pressure from the American Legion to clear the remaining Reds out of the industry and aware that HUAC was gearing up for another investigation of Hollywood subversion, Schary sought the counsel of the FBI. Meeting with Richard Hood, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office, Schary "advised at the outset that MGM at this time is very concerned that they do not hire any

30

members of the Communist Party or Communist sympathizers in connection with any film production." However, he explained, it was difficult for studio executives to sort out the legitimate charges from the spurious accusations of Communist ties. Books like Myron Fagan's Red Treason in Hollywood, which sported a picture of J. Edgar Hoover on the inside cover and appeared to be endorsed by the FBI, indiscriminately smeared the reputations of prominent film figures such as Danny Kaye, who had no connections whatsoever to Communism. Schary's frustration was evident, and he clearly hoped that the FBI would open its files to the studio executives, but Hood demurred, disingenuously citing the confidential nature of FBI investigations.38 Later that year, Schary's encounters with the FBI focused on protecting his own

31

reputation from the Red-baiters. In November Schary had hoped to meet personally with J. Edgar Hoover but was deflected onto Assistant Director Louis Nichols. In his conversation with Nichols, Schary asked "what steps he could take to once and for all let everyone know that he had no affinity for anything for which the Communist Party stood, or fellow travelers, or for those who espoused the Party line." Nichols explained that it was "rather simple": [Schary], of course, knew what organizations he had associated with, what causes he had made contributions to, which later turned out to be of a Communist nature and all he needed to do was to get the record straight, namely of repudiating top front organizations and others which he had either joined or made contributions to and stating that he now refused to have anything further to do with the Communist Party members or fellow travelers.39

Schary assured Nichols that that was "exactly what he wanted to do, that he wanted to work out a program"; and in a follow-up note thanking Nichols for the meeting, Schary shared his plans to write an article entitled "Liberal Case History," which he hoped to publish in one of the top national magazines so that a "record of what I feel and what I stand for and what I've done would be there for everyone to see."40 The tone of this correspondence is quite cordial, even jocular, and apparently Schary had been cultivating a relationship with Nichols for some time. "Schary has gone out of his way to curry favor during the past year," Nichols reported in his memo to Clyde Tolson, associate director of the FBI, about Schary. He continued: On two occasions he killed pictures which MGM no doubt had put out a great deal of money in the development of the script, namely, the civil rights story which was based upon a novel by the well known Mississippi author, William Faulkner, and the story of a defected Satellite diplomat, merely because we told him that the stories weren't too hot from our

32

standpoint. In another instance he was on the verge of buying a story last April, he called me on the phone, I told him it didn't sound good, and that was the end of it.41

Whether Schary's motivation in vetting scripts through Nichols was to protect the interests of MGM or to convince the FBI of his own loyalty is unclear. What is abundantly clear, however, is that through the cooperation of concerned liberals like Schary, the FBI was acting as a de facto censorship body, influencing film content and quashing projects that dealt with liberal social or political themes. Ironically, Schary's cooperation with the FBI did not necessarily convince them of

33

either his personal integrity or his political correctness. Agent M. A. Jones was skeptical of Schary's sincerity, noting, "Schary's record quite clearly indicates that he is one of the politically immature 'intellectuals' in the 'arts' who was captured by the Communists assigned to developing just such recruits and he apparently aligned himself with the Communists as long as ten years ago." He added, "Our information fails to indicate definitely whether he has reformed or whether he has merely been kicked into a semblance of anti-Communism by the exigencies of the movie business in the light of current anti-Communist trends."42 J. Edgar Hoover apparently shared Jones's skepticism, scrawling on the bottom of the memo: "Schary in my estimation is another 'Johnny come lately.'"43

The Defection of Edward Dmytryk If a committed liberal and powerful studio head like Schary was vulnerable

34

vis-à-vis HUAC, the FBI, and the enforcement mechanisms of anti-Communism, a repentant radical like Edward Dmytryk was in desperate straits. In the HUAC hearings of the early 1950s, "friendly" witnesses again played a vital role in delineating the Red menace in Hollywood; this time, however, the friendlies were drawn not from the ranks of the reactionaries, but from among the former radicals themselves. In 1951, Dmytryk led the pack of ex-Communists clamoring to testify, an enormous coup for HUAC and a staggering blow to the Ten.44 As in the case of Schary, reading between the lines of the FBI's file on Dmytryk—and particularly reading the "private" confessions in his FBI file against his very public performance before HUAC and in the media—enables one to see Dmytryk's attempts

to

finesse

the

situation

and

to

maintain

some

semblance

of

integrity—and the utter futility of those efforts. According to his autobiography Odd Man Out, Dmytryk had decided quite early—certainly before he went to prison—to repudiate the Party and disentangle himself from the Ten. Even during the hearings, apparently he disapproved of the behavior of his erstwhile comrades and believed that their collective defense strategy was a mistake. He remembers that he and Scott wanted to make a

35

statement that they were no longer Communists but were voted down by the totalitarian majority. At that point, however, he went along with the Ten because he still agreed that HUAC represented a danger to American civil liberties: "I was blinded by my hatred for HUAC, and dispassionate awareness came slowly." For fear of being labeled a coward or a traitor, he even went to prison for a cause he no longer believed in. However, two months after he entered the federal penitentiary at Mill Point, West Virginia, to serve his six-month sentence, he saw the light: [I]t became obvious the Ten had been sacrificed to the Party's purpose as a pipeline for the Comintern's propaganda. If it so pleased them, the other nine could wear hair shirts, but if I were going to be a martyr, I wanted the privilege of choosing my martyrdom, and making my family suffer to protect the American representatives of a foreign agency would certainly not be it. I wanted out!—certainly not out of jail . . . but out of my real imprisonment, my association with the Communist Party.45

In September 1950, Dmytryk began taking steps to "clear" himself. With the help

36

of his attorney Bartley Crum, he wrote a brief loyalty statement, arguing that the "troubled state of current world affairs" had helped him to see his duty "to declare without equivocation where I stand towards my own country." Clearly hoping to make an end run around the issue of his previous membership in the Communist Party, Dmytryk swore, "I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not now nor was I at the time of the hearings, a member of the Communist Party, that I am not a Communist sympathizer, and that I recognize the United States of American as the only country to which I owe allegiance and loyalty."46 Albert Maltz, who had been sentenced to the same federal prison as Dmytryk, was completely blindsided by the announcement of Dmytryk's statement and confronted him angrily. According to Maltz, Dmytryk assured him that neither his politics nor his commitment to the Ten had changed; his statement was merely a ploy to enable him to work in Hollywood after his release.47 If Dmytryk believed that this prison statement would be sufficient to clear him, he was sadly mistaken.48 Within months of his release in November 1950, it was clear that, in order to return to work in Hollywood, more would be required of him. In January 1951, he began meeting with a "rehabilitation" committee, composed of Ronald Reagan (then president of the Screen Actors Guild), Roy Brewer (still president of the anti-Communist, mob-connected union IATSE), and four others from the Motion Picture Industry Council.49 The clearance committee suggested that Dmytryk make a statement to the FBI, which they felt "would be an indication to prospective employers that he was cooperative with the government." On February 7, a representative from the Independent Motion Picture Producers Association telephoned Richard Hood, head of the Los Angeles

37

office of the FBI, to arrange an appointment for Dmytryk. Attempting perhaps to maintain the fiction that the FBI was not in collusion with HUAC and the studios, Hood agreed to the meeting but warned that at no time could the FBI "give Dmytryk a clearance either orally or in writing even though he did disclose fully his past activities," nor would the FBI "publicly acknowledge any info Dmytryk may furnish."50 In his initial interview with Hood and another agent, Dmytryk—who came alone,

38

without the support of counsel or a representative from the industry—walked a fine line between the need to cooperate, to "voluntarily furnish . . . [the FBI] with any information in his possession," and his desire to defend his earlier political commitments. Adroitly handled by the FBI agents, Dmytryk does not "name names" in this first encounter; instead, he identifies members of the Nineteen that he is sure were NOT members of the Communist Party—director Irving Pichel, writer Howard Koch—and points to such men in his defense of groups like HICCASP as an example of "a broad progressive movement headed by what he thought were strong progressives." In other instances, Dmytryk presented himself as a classic dupe: he didn't know what the American Youth for Democracy was all about, that it was a Communist front; he thought the group was helping the wives of war veterans. Simultaneously apologizing for and defending his role in the HUAC hearings and as a member of the Hollywood Ten, Dmytryk insisted that "he would never have gone along and followed the legal advice of [redacted] had he foreseen the consequences of his act, for he certainly never intended to become so involved in a legal fight and be threatened with and subsequently serve a jail sentence. He says he believed that legally they were right. . . . He indicated that he still believed had Justices Murphy and Rutledge been on the Supreme Court his position would have been upheld." Before leaving, Dmytryk offered up the names (redacted from the file) of two former Party members who might be "in such a frame of mind that they would be willing to talk to the FBI."51 If Dmytryk left this interview feeling that his cooperation with the FBI would be sufficient to clear him for work in Hollywood, he was, again, sadly mistaken. Hoover was delighted that Dmytryk had crossed over, and when Hood asked for authority to "make additional contacts," Hoover replied, in a cable marked "urgent," "You should immediately contact Dmytryk and interview in detail for all information his possession re: Communist activities."52 On March 6, 1951, two agents met Dmytryk at his Hollywood home for a follow-up interview. The arrival of guests, however, forced the agents to return the next day for a third interview to "fill in certain details." On the evening of March 6, following the FBI interview and apparently after the departure of his guests, Dmytryk was "contacted personally at his home by representatives of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and interviewed by them."53

39

Over the course of these three meetings with the FBI and HUAC, Dmytryk

40

eventually laid out in exhaustive detail his own history with the Communist Party and his experiences in different groups the FBI and HUAC considered to be Communist fronts. Though Dmytryk was remarkably forthcoming with details, including when he joined, how many meetings he attended, what was discussed, and who else attended, he also consistently tried to challenge the demonization of "Red" activities or to at least make his motivations understood. For example, in discussing his participation in a 1943 Writers Congress sponsored by UCLA and the Hollywood Writers' Mobilization (an organization the Right considered a Communist front), Dmytryk tried to walk a line between defending his participation and the mission of the Popular Front and demonstrating his repentance. Arguing that his participation involved nothing more than delivering a lecture on technical aspects of film editing, Dmytryk still maintained that "the idea of the Writers Congress was a very good thing" and that "he would like to see an annual congress of writers the same way members of the medical profession or any other professional groups get together in conventions and congresses periodically." At the same time, Special Agent Hood further reported, "he states he had no idea that it might have been influenced or controlled by Communist elements. However, as he looks back on it now after having been affiliated with the Party since then, he strongly suspects that Communists did have a great deal to do with that Congress." Dmytryk took essentially the same position on his participation in the People's Educational Committee (PEC), for which he had taught courses on technical aspects of filmmaking that had nothing to do with politics; he added that he continued to teach for the PEC even after he left the Party simply because he liked the work. Nonetheless, Dmytryk admitted that these early experiences "constituted a gradual build up for his eventually becoming actually affiliated with the Communist Party itself." Citing a number of reasons he had been drawn into the Party—intellectual curiosity, personal relationships, bourgeois guilt at his privilege as a film director—Dmytryk also reminded the FBI agents that he had joined during the Popular Front, when the Party had reinvented itself as the Communist Political Association and was preaching "enlightened capitalism" and collaboration with liberalism. He thinks his case is similar to that of a great many so-called intellectuals who joined the Party in that they become interested in things which they feel have a good purpose or goal, and they suddenly find or are led to believe that the Communists have a great deal to do with these things. At any rate, the Communists seem to be the ones who organize and do the work in such organizations which no one else desires to do. In other words, the idea which brings intellectuals in in many cases is the fact that the Communists are doing the work in these things which appear to be good, therefore, the Communists themselves must not be bad.54

Dmytryk argued that in his experience with Hollywood Communists, the vast

41

majority would "drop away from it and be completely loyal to the Government if a war should develop between this country and the Soviet Union."55 However, Dmytryk was careful to add that he now realized "that the Communist Party is a bad thing, and that if it ever got into power, many of the things which it claims to champion would be done away with." As a result of Dmytryk's conversations with the FBI and his evident sincerity in repudiating Communism, the FBI cancelled his Security Index Card: "It does not appear that he is currently in sympathy with the Communist Party or would be dangerous to the internal security of this country."56 At this point, even Dmytryk—who naïvely seemed to believe that each step on the

42

tortuous road to clearance would be his last—undoubtedly realized that he could not escape testifying before HUAC, though he hoped he could be questioned in executive session rather than having to appear at a public hearing.57 That, however, would defeat the point of "naming names." It was not the names HUAC was after—thanks to the FBI files, HUAC was well apprised of the names of the Hollywood Communists; it was the public ritual of atonement and abasement, a required "performance" of Americanism, that was important. And certainly the recantation of a member of the notorious Hollywood Ten was too good to keep under wraps.58 Thus, on April 25, 1951, Dmytryk appeared again before HUAC, this time as a friendly witness, naming the names of two dozen former comrades, including Adrian Scott.59 The media, especially the local and trade papers, had a field day with Dmytryk's appearance, transforming his generally measured testimony into lurid headlines and purple prose worthy of a pulp novel by Mickey Spillane. According to the Los Angeles Times, HUAC "found in Edward Dmytryk, once a recalcitrant, its best witness to date on the subject of Communism in Hollywood." Acknowledging that Dmytryk's testimony added little to the knowledge gleaned from "informed outsiders," the Times nonetheless crowed, "Here was an insider laying the facts on the line." Indeed, the testimony of the ex-Communists worked to validate the reactionary fantasy of a Red octopus whose tentacles reached into every corner of the film industry. In an article headlined "Dmytryk Bares Giant Red Plot to Control Screen and Unions," the Hollywood Reporter described "'Operation Hollywood,' a gigantic conspiracy through which the communists sought to get control of the guilds and unions to eventually swing them into the CIO . . . and then influence the

content

of

motion

pictures."

Thus,

Dmytryk's

testimony

seemed

to

corroborate right-wing charges that Communist influence lay behind the CSU strikes of the mid-1940s and that the Party's main strategy was to take over the unions and guilds in order to pressure and ultimately control the studio executives and thereby influence film content.

43

Communists

always

recognized

the

importance

of

controlling

the

communications media for propaganda and education purposes. They realized, he went on, that to achieve this end they must control the studio executives, and to do this "must get a stranglehold" on them through control of the guilds and union. The only way to control film content . . . would be to get a "chain of communists from beginning to end"—all the way up to the executive producer.

To demonstrate "how the Communists tried to put propaganda in a picture he directed," he recounted for the Committee his experience on Cornered.60 Not coincidentally, this enabled him to claim an early break with the Party, furthering the impression that his position was sincere: he may have been a premature antifascist, but at least he was also a premature anti-Communist. Even this, however, is questionable, as other members of the Ten clearly believed that Dmytryk was still a member of the Party during their ordeal with HUAC and included him as such in their strategy meetings.61 In his now-friendly testimony, Dmytryk also "explained" the inner workings of the

44

Party, particularly its sneaky fundraising techniques and its secret infiltration of liberal

organizations—turning

them

into

insidious

"fronts."

Noting

that

Communists were "clever enough to do the kind of work which would appeal to patriotic people," he revealed that the Party "tapped their members for a percentage of their salaries" and also "took advantage of every opportunity to hold affairs under the auspices of 'front' organizations," thus receiving "sizeable donations" from unsuspecting liberals. Dmytryk described two kinds of fronts: "One kind is organized by the communists, while the other 'starts out as an ordinary, liberal, progressive organization and is infiltrated. The communists are tireless workers, and one can take over control.'" Indeed, he said ominously, "I have seen communist fronts with as few as one communist in them."62 For the Los Angeles Times, Dmytryk's testimony confirmed the fundamental difference

between

the

Communist

Party

and

"our"

American

45

political

parties—"free associations of individuals having beliefs more or less in common but differing among themselves in many particulars." Dmytryk's revelations depicted the Communist Party as a "secret society whose members are forbidden to think for themselves but are required instead to follow a 'party line' established in Moscow and handed down from Moscow." Noting that the penalty for not following the party line was expulsion, excommunication, and sometimes even death, the Times intoned, "No, the Communist Party is not a political party; it is a subversive conspiracy."63 The real triumph of anti-Communist Americanism, however, lay not in Dmytryk's exposure of the inner working of the Party, but in the political meanings ascribed

46

to his "personal tragedy." In May 1951, "What Makes a Hollywood Communist?" appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, interpreting the Communist experience for the middlebrow reading public. Dmytryk's conversion narrative, redolent of the postwar therapeutic culture, charted his trajectory from "immature" idealism to "mature" patriotism: "I thought this was the best country in the world, but that we could still do better. I know it sounds unrealistic—and is. . . ." Recounting Dmytryk's immigrant background, his unhappy childhood and his rags-to-riches rise to success in Hollywood, the article portrays Dmytryk as an ordinary American. Referencing his manly athleticism (he lettered in football, basketball, track, and baseball at Cal Tech and currently lifts weights—"140-pound presses"—to keep his "husky" body in shape); his heterosexuality (the presence of his infant son and lovely blonde wife with a "childlike" voice); his intelligence (he earned the highest score ever on the prison I.Q. test); even his safely cosmopolitan taste (the rice-cloth walls, books, and jazz records in his "cluttered" living room), "What Makes a Hollywood Communist?" suggests that Dmytryk is, indeed, "just like us"—and is thus a reminder of the need for eternal vigilance against the lure of Communism. Happily however, because he is one of us, at heart a good American, Dmytryk "saw the light" and repudiated his radical past for the good of his country.64 Dmytryk's conversion narrative was echoed by other Hollywood ex-Communists such as Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg: their youthful idealism betrayed by the cynical, self-serving, and conspiratorial Party, they now understood that it was their moral and political duty to share with the world their inside knowledge of the menace of Communism. Thus, Dmytryk elaborated on the "troubled state of world affairs" that had prompted his recantation: There is a great deal of difference between the communist party in 1947 and 1951. In 1947 the cold war hadn't yet gone below the freezing point. I believed Russia wanted peace, and I didn't believe the communist party in this country was a serious menace. I believed sincerely that this committee was invading a field it could not properly invade. . . . On those grounds I refused to testify. Great changes have taken place. . . . Before 1947 I never heard anyone say he would not fight in a war against Russia. . . . The development of the spy trials—Hiss, Coplon, Greenglass, Fuchs—revealed the Russians were using spies. . . . This is treason . . . and it means the party is committing treason. For this reason, I am willing to talk today.65

Ironically, and even perhaps tragically, in claiming the moral high ground of patriotic duty, Dmytryk and the other ex-Communist informers legitimized, as only they could, the anti-Communist crusade led by the cynical, self-serving, and conspiratorial House Un-American Activities Committee.

47

Scott, apparently, was not particularly surprised by Dmytryk's recantation.

48

Several months after Dmytryk's testimony, Albert Maltz wrote to Scott, remembering that years earlier, in 1948, Scott had warned the other members of the Ten that Dmytryk was not to be trusted: "I never forgot that warning, but I must confess that he fooled me. Until the last phase of his stay in prison, when cracks in his fortitude and principle began to appear, it seemed to me that you had underestimated him. How sadly right you were." By this time, the Ten's capacity for outrage had largely dissipated, and Maltz simply wondered whether Dmytryk "has achieved all that he wanted personally by his cynical betrayal. I heard a rumor down here that he was engaged to prepare and direct an anti-Communist film for Dore Schary. Do you know anything about it?"66 At the time, Dmytryk consistently denied that he had testified in order to save his

49

career or that the industry had applied "pressure in any other way." Though he admitted that he had hopes of making films again in Hollywood, he insisted, "I can always make them in England." Nonetheless, in return for his cooperation, Dmytryk was soon at work again in the film industry. After directing a quick B picture for the King brothers, by early 1952 Dmytryk had signed a four-picture contract with Stanley Kramer's unit at Columbia. Over the next two decades, he directed more than two dozen films. Though most are forgettable, some—The Caine Mutiny (1954), Raintree County (1957), The Young Lions (1958)—are considered

minor

classics.

In

1947,

Dmytryk

was

a

promising

young

director—"Mr. RKO"—with a series of exciting and critically acclaimed films to his credit. By the end of his career, Bernard Dick suggests, Dmytryk's contempt for his material, his characters, and perhaps even himself was evident in his work: "As America moved to the right, so did Dmytryk; politically, it was easy after his recantation; professionally, it was easier because there was no alternative."67

Adrian Scott: Living on the Blacklist For Adrian Scott, too, there was no alternative, and because he refused to recant, nothing was easy. Money was a constant worry, as his "earning capacity diminished to almost nil. Some years: zero." As he recalled later, "All seasons during this period were dominated by the question: How to eat? How to live?" Scott's personal papers contain a number of awkward, reluctant, clearly humiliating letters, written in 1952 and 1953, asking to borrow money from friends and supporters. Some stalwarts came through for him (most often in untraceable cash), but just as often Scott's pleas were refused or simply unacknowledged.68 In 1955, his situation had not improved dramatically, as he explained to his father (who had, ironically, written to ask him for money): As you know, I'm blacklisted. I am unable to work publicly in the motion picture industry or radio or television. Lately I have been trying to work

50

through intermediaries and though it is extremely difficult, eventually I expect some success. I live on borrowed money and am now heavily in debt. . . . Mike and I live on $170 a month. Rent is $75, including all utilities, lights, water, gas, phone. We spend $2 a day on food—and although we do not eat like royalty, we eat satisfactorily. What remains goes for gas and oil and for clothes when hand-me-downs don't stretch far enough. Medical expenses are at a minimum and for the most part are donated by doctors who oppose blacklisting with more than words.69

The devastation of the blacklist was more than financial, however. "I was cut off

51

completely from the Hollywood community. A great many people were afraid to speak to me," Scott said in a 1958 interview, trying to convey the emotional impact of being blacklisted and imprisoned: "You have a way of life and suddenly it's snatched away from you. You become something of a pariah—and automatically it makes changes in you. You've achieved a certain level and it's smashed. Your whole world falls into a jumbled heap, like a construction of wooden blocks knocked down before your shocked eyes. It left me trembling and lonely." Looking for a bright side to his experience, however, he argued that the blacklistees had become both better writers and stronger people for their experience: "Those who remained firm, who believed in the eventual triumph of justice, these were pines who have grown into oaks." And, in a reminder of the importance of empathy and solidarity that underlay Scott's Popular Front politics, he added, "Being persecuted, I could understand what others had to contend with." Anti-semitism became something real, a vivid actual thing, a frightening reality, instead of being . . . just on an intellectual plane, as it had been. I understood Jim Crow better, too. When I saw a Negro walking down the street I knew what it was like to have people look at you, watch what you're doing, watch close if you 'overstep' the line. And I came to know, deep down in the innards of my belly, how people feel, any people, anywhere, when they wait for the knock on the door that may take them from their homes and their loved ones.70

There were, however, highs as well as lows. One of the highest points came in 1952, when Scott joined with Herbert Biberman, Paul Jarrico, and other blacklistees to form Independent Productions Incorporated. The company's goals were ambitious: to provide jobs for the two hundred cultural workers "liberated" by HUAC and to provide the American public with films (ten a year, they hoped!) that would revitalize democratic culture: This company intends to put a new kind of American hero and heroine upon the screen—people involved in pursuit of good, satisfying democratic living, capable of fighting to get it, and of resisting evil forces, believing in and making decency appetizing and contagious, not only for themselves but for people like them all over the entire globe.

52

The blacklistees had a number of projects in the works, projects that reflected their Popular Front vision: a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo about a woman who loses custody of her children because she is a Communist; a dramatic play by Paul Jarrico about the dangers of atomic weapons; a dramatization of the Scottsboro Boys case; and a "warm, gay, amusing . . . people's love story" about a Latina whose feminist consciousness develops during a strike. The blacklistees also reached out to local unions for support, and Scott visited Harry Bridges and the leaders of the International Longshoremens Union (ILU) in San Francisco; they were so impressed with the company's plans, they offered $100,000 for them to produce a film for the union. Though the ILU envisioned a documentary, Scott and Biberman quickly talked them into a feature film about "working people—and their unions—and the great gift to American decency and democracy which real rank and file unions represent." Ultimately, only one of these projects came to fruition: the "people's love story," which was transformed from a "warm, gay, amusing" story into a profound testament to the filmmakers' radically democratic vision—Salt of the Earth. Written by Mike Wilson and directed by Biberman, the pro-labor, pro-feminist, antiracist Salt of the Earth proved so controversial and "un-American" that the filmmakers were unable to find theaters willing to screen it.71 In the end, of course, the IPI was a failure. For a brief shining moment, however, it gave the blacklistees hope for the future and an opportunity to join in solidarity on projects they believed truly mattered. In the long term, Scott's life also was transformed—both personally and professionally—by his relationship with Joan La Cour. Though a decade younger than Scott, Joan shared his radical politics. She had been active in the Young Communist League at Los Angeles Community College and in her mid-20s was recruited into the Party by George Pepper, director of the Popular Front group HICCASP. Joan worked for HICCASP, first as a volunteer and later as a staff member, in the late 1940s, and first met Scott at a rally for the Hollywood Ten. Their paths crossed again after Scott was released from prison. At that point, HICCASP had dissolved and Joan was working for Morris Cohn, Robert Kenny's law partner and one of the attorneys representing Scott in his civil case against RKO. Though they often ran into each other at Cohn's office, Joan credits Paul Jarrico, who promised to introduce Adrian to "the most beautiful and talented girl in Hollywood," with bringing them together. When Adrian asked her out to dinner, however, she had reservations, worrying to her psychiatrist, Dr. Isadore Zifferstein (who also happened to be Adrian's psychiatrist), that Scott "was a very Hollywood kind of guy." Zifferstein, perhaps playing matchmaker, urged her to have dinner with Scott, reminding her, "He's been in prison. Maybe he's different now." As Joan recalled, We started dating and going to rallies together, and, of course, every

53

head would turn, and you could hear the voices in the stands: "Adrian Scott! It's Adrian Scott!" They would be straining to look. I felt shy and self-conscious, but I also felt ten feet tall! I think I sort of sustained him during the first years out of jail, while he had no work, no prospects, and he helped me feel more confident and worthwhile as a person.

In 1955, after dating for three years, Adrian and Joan were married. The ceremony took place at Dalton Trumbo's home, and Paul and Sylvia Jarrico gave them their wedding party. Scott's foster son Mike, then twelve, was still deeply troubled, and Scott often joked with Joan that their marriage was like "two social workers on a bad case living together."72 Nonetheless, Scott's marriage to Joan radically expanded his professional horizons

54

when she began to serve as his "front." Ring Lardner first helped Scott get a writing job for the television show Robin Hood, whose left-friendly producer, Hannah Weinstein, deliberately reached out to blacklisted writers. Robin Hood helped open doors for Scott, but he needed a trustworthy front for other shows. As Joan recalled, "[S]ome fronts were great and asked for nothing. Some of them, however, rooked you completely, shamelessly." Joan, though blacklisted herself, was unknown in the industry, and she seemed the ideal candidate. Working under the name Joanne Court, Joan fronted for Adrian first on Lassie, and then on the other shows for which he eventually wrote: Meet McGraw, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside Six. When Joan appeared at story conferences with scripts written by Adrian in "this wonderfully old-fashioned studio tough-guy dialogue," producers constantly remarked to her, "'My God, you write like a man!'" Eventually, Joan began to carve out her own career in television, writing independently for Lassie, Have Gun Will Travel, and eventually, a cartoon biography of Beethoven for Walt Disney. By 1958, Scott reported to Mike Wilson, "Joan is working on TV stuff and I have reached that happy or (unhappy) pinnacle where now I have to beat TV producers off. I'm something of an inspired hack, I find, and I can't decide whether I like it or not. At least the grocery bills no longer frighten me."73 Still, Scott did not particularly enjoy writing for television; he had great difficulty adapting himself to the format and he resented having to work behind a front. Thus, in 1961, when an old friend from Amherst asked him to come to London as a production assistant at MGM, he leapt at the chance. Nevertheless, the prospect of the move terrified him: "He had violent nightmares about people coming in the window after him. To escape the U.S., to have a chance to work in England, to be free of Mike and not have anything to fear—it was so exhilarating and yet it panicked him. Adrian almost self-destructed about 'the escape.'" Joan, however, remembers their years in London as one of the happiest times of her life:

55

We had this wonderful life in London. We went to the theater and concerts and museums. We traveled all over Europe and went back and forth to New York and California a couple of times a year. We made wonderful new friends and had old friends among some of the Americans there who had fled the witch-hunts and were now bona fide residents of the U.K.

For Scott, after sixteen years on the blacklist, the position at MGM was both a personal and political triumph. In a 1967 interview, C. Robert Jennings asked if he was bitter, and Scott wryly replied, "Only for sixteen years." In a more serious vein, he continued, "I would be less than frank if I said that I can see those sixteen years with the clarity I would like. Some moments were abysmal; others were hilariously funny; there was tragedy too, though it did not touch me personally."74 John Paxton, however, believed that the blacklist and the year in jail destroyed

56

his old friend. All of the Ten were emotionally damaged by the "degrading, terrible, terrible experience" of prison, he felt, and "[n]one of them came out the same man that went in." Scott was "so stunned that he never really recovered, either emotionally or physically." The blacklist, too, was particularly hard on Scott because he was unable to work as a producer, the job in which he had truly found his métier, though he was eventually able to make a living writing. Still, Paxton argued, "His heart was never really in it. We were finally able to work together again in the sixties . . . but it was never the same. His spirit and his health were broken."75 The Barzmans, too, were deeply saddened by the changes in their dear friend. Norma remembers, "Seeing Adrian made Ben very upset. He was so broken, so much less himself."76 The position at MGM-London proved a particular disappointment for Scott. He had

57

hoped that it would lead to producing his own films, but most of his projects fell through. He spent over a year, for example, working on a project with Warren Beatty, a film adaptation of Gavin Lyall's bestselling novel The Most Dangerous Game.77 Scott was very excited about the project, as it brought together two of his old friends and colleagues: John Paxton had written the screenplay, while Joe Losey was slated to direct. The film was to be shot in Helsinki and Finnish Lapland, and Joan and Adrian went on a reconnaissance mission together to scout locations. However, there was a conflict between Paxton and Losey over the script, and MGM "fought over everything" on the film. Ultimately, the project fell through, and Scott left MGM (though not London). Working once more as a freelance screenwriter, he was again disappointed that he did not receive screen credit for his films, including the 1964 psychological thriller Night Must Fall.78 In 1968, Universal Studios in Hollywood offered Scott a two-year contract to produce films under his own name. Though Joan was distraught about leaving

58

London, Adrian was thrilled: he was back in Hollywood and working in the open. It was a disastrous move, however. Joan recalls that his boss, Sid Scheinberg—a "junior shit"—vetoed all of Scott's projects at Universal: "Adrian was now 59 and all of his ideas were being shot down by a kid. It enraged him." Then, without warning, Universal discharged him after a year and bought out the second year of his contract. Scott was deeply depressed, withdrawn and unable to write. Joan suggests that Scott's time had passed, that his creative style and political vision—so powerful and influential in the heyday of the Popular Front and the studio system—was out of step in the New Hollywood: "Adrian was a writer from another era, the thirties and forties. He still wrote marvelous dialogue, dialogue that nobody in real life actually spoke, of course. But I could see that Adrian wasn't writing modern film scripts. Now he had nowhere to go with his marvelous talent."79 Though Scott did have one success during this period, it was a project from his past: a television version of Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers. This time John Paxton was the driving force behind the project, wheedling and cajoling Adrian's participation. Together they revised Scott's play, now retitled The Great Man's Whiskers, for television, casting "every blacklisted actor within reach." However, Scott did not live to see his play aired. In the early fall of 1972, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Following surgery, he spent three months in the hospital, first at Cedars of Lebanon and then St. Joseph's in Burbank, before Joan brought him home to die. She believes that her husband, bitter and defeated, "willed himself to die. Life had gotten too painful." Nonetheless, his final conscious thoughts were about politics. As Joan recalls, "He was a bit delirious as he was on morphine for the pain, and he kept talking about a peace march he thought he was supposed to speak at. He asked me to send his apologies: he really wanted to be there, but thought he was just too weak to make it." On February 13, 1973, six weeks after Scott's death, The Great Man's Whiskers, Scott's paean to American democracy and the power of the "little people," written at the height of the Popular Front that had shaped his political vision, finally aired. The credits read, "Produced by Adrian Scott."80

Notes Note 1: Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 164–167. Note 2: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 342–345; Report from L.A. office, September 15, 1949, p. 14, in Edward Dmytryk FBI File. Note 3: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 347. Note 4: Ibid., 289. Note 5: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 291; Lary May, "Movie Star Politics:

59

The Screen Actors' Guild, Cultural Conversion, and the Hollywood Red Scare," in Recasting America: Cultural Politics in the Age of the Cold War, ed. Lary May (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 125-153. Note 6: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 292. Note 7: Typescript of Scott's employment history, n.d. [1948], in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F7, WHS. Note 8: Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, March 9, 1948, in Crossfire Production File, AMPAS; "Fox and RKO in Oscar Lead," Daily Variety, February 16, 1948, in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS; Edward Sullivan, Mystery Writers of America, to Scott, November 20, 1948; Marguerite Shalett Herman to Scott, December 4, 1947; and Maurice Kann, Quigley Publishing, to Scott, December 10, 1948, all in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 9: According to Norma Barzman, Scott continued to work surreptitiously on The Boy with Green Hair, meeting every evening with Ben Barzman to go over the script and issues that had arisen at the studio. Barzman, interview with author, July 2004. Note 10: Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, March 20, 1948, in Scott Papers, AHC; Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Sarah Jane Paxton, interview with author, April 1999. Though Paxton returned to Hollywood in the early 1950s, his later career was not quite so prolific, though he did script a number of excellent, well-received films: The Wild One (1954), The Cobweb (1955), On the Beach (1959), and Kotch (1971). Note 11: Joe [last name unknown] of Greenberg Publishers to David Diamond, December 19, 1947, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 12: Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News, March 20, 1948, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 13: Scott to Edward Kook and Sidney Cohen, n.d. [1948], in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 14: Typescript of Scott's employment history, n.d. [1948], in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F7, WHS. Note 15: Dmytryk met Jean Porter, a young actress, in 1946 on the set of Till the End of Time, and according to him, it was love at first sight. In the summer of 1947, after a dozen stormy years of marriage, Dmytryk and his first wife, Madeleine, decided to divorce. At that point, Dmytryk was riding high on the success of Crossfire and agreed to a very generous settlement. Madeleine received the apartment complex in Beverly Hills, a minimum of $25,000 a year in alimony, and additional child support for their son Michael. Dmytryk married Jean on May 12, 1948, several days after his divorce became final. Fellow blacklistee Albert Maltz served as his best man. Dmytryk soon came to regret his generosity to his ex-wife. In 1947, he had earned over $100,000, but within a year, he was nearly bankrupt and petitioned for a reduction in his alimony payments. Throughout 1949, Dmytryk and his ex-wife slugged it out in the courts, a battle that was widely covered by the Los Angeles press. Edward Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 93–94. See also press clippings in Dmytryk Bio File, AMPAS. Note 16: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 97–110; Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. Note 17: Scott to "Gabby" [Gabriel Pascal], n.d., in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 18: Scott to Marian Avery, February 13, 1949, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 19: Avery to Scott, February 20, 1949, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 20: A former artist and wheeler-dealer par excellence, Rod Geiger had met filmmaker Roberto Rossellini after the American invasion of Italy in World War Two. Stealing scrap film stock from the Army Signal Corps (to which he was assigned to produce anti-V.D. posters), Geiger passed it on to Rossellini, who used it to film his neorealist classic Open City (1946). Geiger received a coproducer credit for his unusual contribution and parlayed that into a career. He played a key role in arranging the financing for Christ in Concrete and in

convincing Dmytryk to direct the film, and he worked exhaustively to finagle European projects for American blacklistees. Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 97–98; Scott to Anne Shirley, August 16, 1949, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 21: Barzman, interview with author, April 1999. According to Joan Scott, Anne told Adrian that he should either raise Mike himself or return him to the orphanage. Indeed, Sarah Jane Paxton suggests that Mike's emotional problems, rather than Scott's political misfortunes, were the root cause of the divorce. Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999. Note 22: Scott also asked for a $5,000 trust fund for Mike's education, assuring her that "under no circumstances is this money available to me." Scott to Anne Shirley, August 16, 1949, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 23: Adrian Scott, quoted in Bruce Cook, Dalton Trumbo (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1977): 282; Norma Barzman, interview with author, April 1999; Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999; Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 109–110. Note 24: Scott, "Europe Recognizes the Symptoms," Film Sense 1:3 (n.d. [Fall 1949]): 3, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 25: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 348. Note 26: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 348–356; Scott to George Bernard Shaw, August 25, 1950, in Scott Papers, AHC. Scott's health problems—ulcerative colitis and chronic sinusitis—deeply concerned Robert Kenny, who feared that he might be sent to a prison hospital. After Scott was sentenced, Kenny wrote to the director of the Bureau of Prisons to plead Scott's case: "As the medical history will show, Mr. Scott is a person of an extremely sensitive, nervous disposition. The feeling is that he would adjust himself more readily if surrounded by well and normal people than by the inmates of a prison hospital." Kenny to James V. Bennett, October 5, 1950, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F5, WHS. For a graphic description of Scott's health problems, see also Scott to Kenny, n.d. [1950], in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F5, WHS. Note 27: Quoted in David Minter, A Cultural History of the American Novel: Henry James to William Faulkner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 153–154. Note 28: Scott, "Address at Meeting in Honor of Howard Fast and Adrian Scott," September 13, 1950, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 29: In August 1950, as he faced the prospect of prison, Scott had written to George Bernard Shaw to request the film rights to Arms and the Man. He planned to use the enforced "leisure" of his year in prison to adapt Shaw's antiwar drama into a screenplay, which he would produce in Europe once he had served his time. However, there is no evidence that Shaw replied to Scott's request, or that Scott worked on this project while he was in prison. See Scott to George Bernard Shaw, August 25, 1950, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 30: The "overly political" adventures of Cowboy Jim and Sunbeam are classic Popular Front Americanism: "They would slip in and out of Washington, secretly meet with President Lincoln ('call me Abe') at the back of the White House and receive instructions to go behind Southern lines, get information and bring it back to him. All the great battles of the Civil War were fought in their presence. . . . En route to their missions, they blew up munitions trains, caused southern soldiers to desert on ideological grounds, [and] met with General Ulysses S. Grant." In addition, among the heroics of the cowboy and the Indian story, Scott inserted some documents of the war: the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and so on. See Scott, typescript draft of Cowboy Jim and Sunbeam, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 31: Scott to Kenny, November 6, 1950, and Scott to Kenny, March 29, 1951, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 32: Scott to Kenny, November 25, 1950; Scott to Kenny, March 3, 1951; Scott to

Kenny, April 1951; Scott to Kenny, July 28, 1951, all in Kenny-Morris Papers, B10-F5, WHS. For details of the University of California case, see Ellen W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 116–125. Note 33: David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 54–69; Dorothy Ray Healey and Maurice Isserman, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 105–123; James R. Green, The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 196–203. Note 34: Scott, "You Can't Do That," in Thought Control in the U.S.A.: The Collected Proceedings, ed. Harold J. Salemson (Hollywood, Calif.: Progressive Citizens of America, 1947); Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, especially 367; Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Penguin Books, 1980). Note 35: Dore Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 166–167; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 340. Note 36: Ironically, perhaps, Schary himself was ousted from MGM in 1956 for his outspoken support for Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign. Returning to New York, he wrote the play Sunrise at Campobello, which won five Tony awards. A moving tribute to FDR's struggle to rebuild his life and career after being stricken with polio, Sunrise at Campobello is also a metaphor for Schary's faith that the Democratic Party, too, would recover from the debilitating effects of McCarthyism. Schary, Heyday. Note 37: "One of Hollywood Ten Denies Red Ties," Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1950, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B4-F8, WHS; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 359. Note 38: SAC L.A. to Director, FBI, January 2, 1951, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 39: M. A. Jones to Mr. [Lou] Nichols, October 21, 1951, with addendum by Nichols, dated October 31, 1951, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 40: Schary to Lou Nichols, December 3, 1951, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 41: M. A. Jones to Mr. Nichols, October 21, 1951, with addendum by Nichols, dated October 31, 1951, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 42: M. A. Jones to Mr. Nichols, October 21, 1951, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 43: M. A. Jones to Lou Nichols, April 19, 1955, in Dore Schary FBI File. Note 44: Perhaps even more bitter to the Ten than his testimony before HUAC was Dmytryk's testimony in federal court on February 6, 1952, as a witness for the defense in Scott and Lardner's civil suits against the studios for wrongful termination. In his testimony, Dmytryk "confirmed" that the Ten and their attorneys had acted conspiratorially, both in preparing their defense and in writing their statements to the Committee—a position the studios hoped would nullify their own conspiracy in firing the Ten. Nonetheless, in April 1952, Scott's civil suit against RKO won at the trial level, and the jury awarded Scott $84,300 in damages. However, the federal judge, Ben Harrison, overturned the jury's verdict and ordered a new trial on the grounds that the jury "failed to appreciate the whole picture of the situation." See "Dmytryk Gives Inside Story of Plans by Hollywood '19'," Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, February 7, 1952, in Scott Papers, AHC; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 351. Note 45: Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, especially 92, 144. Note 46: Edward Dmytryk affidavit, September 9, 1950, copy in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 47: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 358–359. Note 48: In his autobiography, Dmytryk implies that he would not have had to testify before HUAC had it not been for the treachery of Herbert Biberman. According to Dmytryk, Biberman approached him soon after they were released from prison to write letters in

support of the parole applications of the members of the Ten who were still in jail. Though he was reluctant to have anything to do with the Party or the Ten, Dmytryk was still smarting from his own prison experience and agreed to help, on the condition that Biberman kept quiet about his participation. Two days later, splashy headlines in the trade press announced Dmytryk's continuing support for Hollywood Communists, and his pending deal with Columbia fell through, "forcing" him to testify before HUAC in order to clear himself for work (Odd Man Out, 150–151). While Biberman may well have betrayed Dmytryk to the press in order to punish him for his capitulation, it is utterly absurd for Dmytryk to claim that he could have avoided prostrating himself before HUAC even if Biberman had said nothing. By 1951, "naming names" before HUAC was an inescapable ritual. One simply could not work in Hollywood without performing the role of "patriotic" informant, as the radical cultural workers quickly learned. Note 49: "One of Hollywood Ten Denies Red Ties," Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1950, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B4-F8, WHS; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 359. Note 50: L.A. Office to Director, FBI, February 7, 1951, in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 51: SAC to Director, FBI, February 13, 1951, in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 52: Hoover to SAC, Los Angeles, March 1, 1951, in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 53: Memo/report—Los Angeles SAC to Director, FBI, March 10, 1951, in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 54: Ibid. Note 55: Ibid. Note 56: Memo, Los Angeles SAC to Director, FBI, April 17, 1951, in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 57: Memo/report—Los Angeles SAC to Director, FBI, March 10, 1951, in Dmytryk FBI File. Note 58: On "naming names" as a public ritual of atonement and repentance for past political "sins," see especially Navasky, Naming Names. Note 59: Dmytryk also named several others of the Ten, including Lawson, Biberman, Maltz, Cole, and Bessie, as well as directors Frank Tuttle, Jack Berry, Bernard Vorhaus, Jules Dassin, and Michael Gordon; screenwriters Gordon Kahn, John Wexley, Paul Trivers, and Richard Collins, and writers Michael Uris, Leonard Bercovici, Francis Faragoh, Elizabeth Faragoh, George Corey, and Arnold Manoff. "Dmytryk Bares Giant Red Plot to Control Screen and Unions," The Hollywood Reporter, April 26, 1951, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 60: "The Case of Edward Dmytryk," Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1951; "Dmytryk Bares Giant Red Plot," The Hollywood Reporter, April 26, 1951, both in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 61: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 358. Note 62: "Dmytryk Bares Giant Red Plot," in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 63: "The Case of Edward Dmytryk," in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 64: Richard English, "What Makes a Hollywood Communist?" Saturday Evening Post, May 19, 1951, in Kenny-Morris Papers, B4-F8, WHS Note 65: "Dmytryk Bares Giant Red Plot," in Scott Papers, AHC. On the "conversion narratives" of other Hollywood ex-Communists, see Navasky, Naming Names, 199–313, and Elia Kazan, A Life (New York: Da Capo, 1997), 448–476. Note 66: Albert Maltz to Scott, September 3, 1951, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 67: "Dmytryk Bares Giant Red Plot," in Scott Papers, AHC; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 358–359; Bernard Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 165. Note 68: Perhaps the most painful rejection came from his old friend Bennett Cerf. Cerf had

strongly disapproved of Scott's refusal to cooperate with HUAC in 1947; in 1948, when Scott approached him with an outline of Gordon Kahn's Hollywood on Trial, Cerf rejected it with a stinging rebuke of its partisan politics. However, Cerf continued to support Scott personally: in 1950 he offered to write a letter to the parole board, saying "I think your character is as admirable as your politics are deplorable. Wrong as Phyllis and I think you have been in this whole 'unfriendly ten' business, we cannot help but admire your courage in fighting for what you believe in regardless of the costs. We consider you our good and lifelong friend." However, two years later, in response to Scott's request for money, Cerf wrote: "[Y]ou must go for the funds you need to somebody who is more in sympathy with what we still believe to be your current opinions and philosophy." Though he insisted that he was still "mighty fond" of Scott, Cerf could not tolerate "the kind of people with whom you have insisted on throwing in your lot." In his mind "those people . . . have made the task of American Liberals" terribly difficult; even worse, Communists "have used Liberals shamelessly in the past—and laughed at them behind their backs while they were doing it." Scott was outraged and deeply hurt by Cerf's rejection. Though he drafted a lengthy, painstaking reply, the scribbled marginalia and x'ed out lines somehow make me think that he never mailed it. In any event, it is the last evidence of correspondence between Scott and Cerf. See Cerf to Scott, October 3, 1950, and December 2, 1952; Scott to Cerf, n.d. [December 1947]; "Outline of Book on Hearings," n.d., all in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 69: Scott to C. Robert Jennings, June 27, 1967; Scott to his father, May 19, 1955, both in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 70: Ralph Friedman, "Someday We'll Uphold the Right to Have Ideas, Says Adrian Scott," Labor's Daily, February 11, 1958, 5–6, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 71: "'Blacklist' 200 Form Film Firm," (Hollywood) Citizen-News May 5, 1952, and typescript minutes from IPI meetings, n.d. [1952], both in Scott Papers, AHC. For excellent discussions of the difficulties in the production and distribution of Salt of the Earth, see Michael Wilson and Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt, Salt of the Earth (New York: The Feminist Press, 1978) and especially James L. Lorence, The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1999). Note 72: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999; Joan Scott, interview with Paul Buhle, in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 590–593. Note 73: Scott also served informally as Joan's producer, coaching her through the maze of industry politics and expectations. His advice to her, as she prepared for the first screening of the Beethoven biography, resonates with Scott's own experience as a filmmaker: "'You're going to hate the film. But then you'll grow to love it. Like a parent with a deformed child. They're going to have things in there that you didn't write, and they will have taken out your favorite scenes.'" Joan Scott, interview in Tender Comrades, 595–599, 601; Adrian Scott to Mike [Wilson], October 28, 1958, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 74: Scott to C. Robert Jennings, June 27, 1967, in Scott Papers, AHC. Note 75: Paxton to Kelly and Steinman, n.d. [July 1977], in Paxton Bio File, AMPAS; J. D. Marshall, "The Greeks Had Another Word for It, Meaning—Exaltation—John Paxton" [interview with Paxton], in J. D. Marshall, Blueprint in Babylon (Tempe, Ariz.: Phoenix House, 1978), 265. Note 76: Norma Barzman, interview with author, July 2004. Note 77: He inscribed a copy of the novel to Joan: "To my darling without whom even the least dangerous game would be impossible. Love—A." From Joan Scott's personal copy of The Most Dangerous Game. Note 78: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999; Adrian Scott to C. Robert Jennings,

June 27, 1967, in Scott Papers, AHC; Joan Scott, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 603–604. Note 79: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999; Joan Scott, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 605–606. Note 80: Joan Scott, interview with author, April 1999; Joan Scott, interview in McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades, 605.

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