Hollywood Blacklist
By Wes Vernon

As we watch today’s Hollywood Left bash America, bash the War on Terror, bash this country’s traditions, bash the free enterprise system, bash Christians, bash Western Civilization, bash corporate America, bash traditional marriage, bash anti-communists (of course), and above all, bash conservatives of every stripe---you might conclude that the “Hollywood Ten” of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties and its cheering sections on both coasts were almost civilized by comparison.

But in reality that is an apples and oranges type of comparison.

Part of the problem with trying to figure out the latter-day Hollywood Left (the Michael Moores, Jeanine Garafolos, the Barbara Streisands, and the Martin Sheens) is that you don’t always know where the soft-hearted dimwit syndrome ends and deep-seated anti-Americanism begins.

I actually heard an actor argue in private in the mid-Seventies that Watergate somehow “proved” the anti-Communist drive against the Hollywood Left of the earlier era was nothing but a witch-hunt that violated fundamental rights. The proof? Richard Nixon was a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) in the late Forties when it investigated Hollywood.

During the Emmy Awards of 1975 (which like many such ceremonies, was a radical left-wing propaganda gabfest) speakers openly cheered the upcoming victory of the Communists in Vietnam which everyone knew was just a few days away.

Ronald and Allis Radosh fully explode the myth of the Hollywood spin on the “blacklist” in their recently released book, “Red Star Over Hollywood—The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left.”

This fully documented and heavily footnoted volume clearly shows how the highest echelons of the Soviet Union decided as far back as the late 1920s that they would make the then-burgeoning film capital a prime target. After all, history had repeatedly shown that the best way to undermine any society’s values was not to try directly to influence its leaders (often impossible), but to convey the message to the masses through those who write its entertainment scripts and its songs.

Willi Munzenberg is not a well-known name, but he played a key role in creating what ultimately became the “Hollywood Left.” This German native was tasked by the Soviets to plant the seeds of communism in Hollywood. As the Radoshes point out, “What better place for the Russian Revolution’s promise of a classless society to take hold than in Hollywood, the capital of dreams?”

The book clearly documents chapter and verse the undeniable fact that every single hostile witness in those 1947 congressional hearings was either a hard core member of the Communist Party or hip deep in Communist discipline.

Understand we are not talking about “parlor pinks” here. We are talking about “true believers.” They were members of a group that advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. They were positioned to insert the line of a hostile foreign power into the scripts of movies seen by millions of Americans. Under the First Amendment, any writer has the right to propagandize any way he sees fit. The committee’s point was if they choose to use entertainment to spread propaganda on the behalf of an organization that advocates violence on behalf of a hostile foreign government, the movie-goer has the right to know that he is being lectured in the interest of that agenda, and that this same foreign power had attempted to control the movie industry. Try to imagine what would have happened if some Nazi brown shirts had been found making our movies in those days.

With a lone exception (Edward Dmytryck), the Hollywood Ten retained some semblance of loyalty to the hard-left cause for the rest of their days. They knew what they were doing. In fact, at the 1947 hearings, committee investigator Louis Russell had introduced a Communist Party card for each one of them; each had been solidly identified by more than one witness; and each had a Communist front record as far as the eye could see. They ultimately went to jail for refusing to testify.

Actor James Cagney, according to the Radosh book was warned by Motion Picture mogul Jack Warner that the “tough guy” actor was generating bad publicity by participating in and contributing to Communist front causes. Cagney ignored him. But when HCUA in 1940—then headed by its first chairman, Congressman Martin Dies-- took an interest in Hollywood Reds, that got Cagney’s attention. He appeared before the committee, did a mea culpa, charmed Congressman Dies, and thereafter distanced himself from his hard-left friends.

The husband and wife team of Ronald and Allis Radosh refute the Hollywood spin (propagated through one sappy movie after another) that the film colony was a happy-go-lucky milk-and-honey place until those mean old congressmen came to town and persecuted innocent people for their “political beliefs.” Radosh himself is a former hard leftist, who has seen things from the inside, and he knows better.

There was a so-called “blacklist,” drawn up by entertainment companies, for the most part not to persecute performers for their “political beliefs,” but in response to a perceived lack of box office appeal of those who had joined forces with America’s enemies.

You want to know about “blacklist?” I’ll cite you an example of a real “blacklist” against performers merely for their “political beliefs.”

The movie and recording star Pat Boone last year told me there has in fact been a Hollywood blacklist for years, right up to this day------against conservatives.

“Definitely, I’ve been a victim of it for years,” he told me, “There have been many roles, movie roles and TV things that I was really ripe for. And if I was considered at all, I was immediately shut out because of the liberal mind-set of the guys who hire and fire.”

Not that he’s feeling sorry for himself. Pat Boone’s place in show business history is assured.

For some strange reason, we have not seen any movies about Hollywood’s current-day “blacklist” against conservatives. Gee, I wonder why.

Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.

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