Dark History of Hollywood: A Century of Greed, Corruption and Scandal behind the Movies (Dark Histories)

by Kieron Connolly

  That year a pamphlet called Red Channels was published naming 151 people in film, radio and television, and questioning their loyalty as American citizens. The list included composer Leonard Bernstein, writer Dorothy Parker and actor John Garfield. Studios now consulted Red Channels when deciding whom to hire. ‘There were hundreds and hundreds of people who had done nothing who were blacklisted,’ said Dmytryk. ‘They were the ones who really suffered.’ When Leonard Bernstein applied to renew his passport in 1951, he had to write an affidavit of thousands of words stating that he wasn’t a Communist and explaining all the well-meaning causes he’d supported before a new passport was granted.

  Working under the Blacklist

  Official or not, with the blacklist in place, film-makers had to find ways to cope. Before his prison sentence, Ring Lardner Jr was hired in secret to adapt a John Steinbeck story under a pseudonym. ‘I had to go into a bank in Beverly Hills where Franchot Tone withdrew $10,000 in cash and gave it to me,’ said Lardner Jr. Walter Bernstein was another who found himself blacklisted – from 1950 to 1958. However, he kept working in television by using other writers to front his work. Fronts would put their names on the script, attend script meetings if necessary, and sometimes take a percentage of the money.

  ‘There were hundreds and hundreds of people who had done nothing who were blacklisted,’ said director Edward Dmytryk. ‘They were the ones who really suffered.’

  Writers could be invisible, but actors and directors couldn’t hide behind fronts and pseudonyms. Actor Jeff Corey became an acting coach, while others worked more in the theatre. Paul Henreid, best known as Victor Laszlo, Ingrid Bergman’s on-screen husband in Casablanca, had recently completed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. when he joined the Committee for the First Amendment trip to Washington. Soon he found that he’d been blacklisted. Others on the trip hadn’t, because they had studio contracts. ‘The studios will look after their own, Paul’, Dore Schary at MGM told him. ‘You’ve got no one behind you.’ Henreid worked less and less and in the 1950s developed a new career directing for TV. For Joseph Losey, a move to Britain was necessary, where he directed run-of-the-mill TV shows and commercials before re-establishing himself with features. Jules Dassin successfully relocated to Europe, with his French heist drama Rififi(1955) becoming his best-known film.

  THE FRONT

  TWENTY YEARS AFTER the end of the blacklist, Walter Bernstein wrote The Front (1976), a film about writers and actors facing HUAC. In addition to Bernstein, its director Martin Ritt, star Zero Mostel and many of its actors had all been blacklisted.

  ‘It is our revenge,’ wrote Bernstein, but the movie treats its subject lightly, telling the story of the rise and fall of a small-time bookie and restaurant cashier, played by Woody Allen, who begins fronting the scripts of blacklisted TV writers, and soon finds himself feted as a major writing discovery.

  So why did they make a comedy about such a serious topic? ‘It’s the only way the studio will do a picture about the blacklist,’ explained Bernstein.

  In the comedy The Front (1976), which highlights how ridiculous the witch-hunts could be, Woody Allen plays an apolitical, smalltime bookie and restaurant cashier who agrees to front a blacklisted friend’s TV scripts. Ultimately, HUAC catches up with him.

  In all, many worked less, on thinner material, and for less money than before. When Martin Ritt was first re-employed on being taken off the blacklist in 1957, he was paid $10,000 for 18 months’ work. ‘That’s the going rate for a coffee getter,’ he said. ‘But I was happy to take it.’ For others the consequences were graver. Not a Communist but a supporter of the Committee for the First Amendment, John Garfield was called twice before HUAC. For a year he wasn’t offered work, and, having suffered long-term cardiac problems, in 1952 he died of a heart attack aged 39. Bartley Crum, a lawyer who represented many of the Hollywood Ten, had his phones tapped and his post opened by the FBI throughout the 1950s. Placed under surveillance, he lost most of his clients. ‘Close to bankruptcy and in despair’, as his daughter wrote, he informed on two colleagues who’d already been named. In 1959, he committed suicide.

  Bartley Crum, who represented many of the Hollywood Ten, had his phones tapped and his post opened by the FBI.

  The French crime caper Rififi was directed by Jules Dassin (pictured centre) after the blacklist had forced him to leave America. He was not alone. Others found work in Britain, Switzerland and Italy.

  Actor Larry Parks became the first Hollywood witness to admit that he’d been a member of the Communist Party. Accepting that his movie career was over, he quickly launched a variety act.

  Colder War

  With no evidence found of subversive Communist activities, it might be thought that after the initial HUAC hearings, the fire would have run out of the witch-hunts. In fact, they became more fervent, perhaps because of the international situation. In June 1950, US troops, as part of a UN force, began fighting in the Korean War against Soviet-backed North Korea, while in 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for passing information about the US atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. ‘Generally the whole situation in the country was more tense,’ said Lardner Jr. And with the intensification of the Cold War, HUAC began new hearings.

  In 1951, actor Larry Parks, well known for portraying Al Jolson on screen, became the first Hollywood witness to admit that he’d been a Communist. When asked to name other Party members, Parks pleaded with the committee: ‘You know who the people are. I don’t think this is American justice, to make me choose whether to be in contempt of this Committee or crawl through the mud for no purpose!’ Nevertheless, he named names and on leaving the hearings immediately offered the cancellation of his contract at Columbia, which was accepted. Parks knew that his Hollywood career was over, and, with his wife, singer Betty Garrett, he launched a variety act, only appearing in three more films.

  Co-operating with HUAC

  With HUAC, you could still win favour by ‘naming names’ that were already known to the Committee, as writer Budd Schulberg did – naming 15. ‘Frankly, I thought those people had already become so identified with the Party that I didn’t feel as if I was fingering the criminals,’ he said. Some felt Schulberg was missing the point. ‘The problem you had to face was one of moral honour, rather than giving information,’ said blacklisted writer-director Abraham Polonsky.

  ‘It’s the only thing I’ve ever done in my life for which I’m ashamed,’ said actor Sterling Hayden of his naming names before HUAC in 1951. Although he had briefly been a member of the Communist Party, after testifying he was allowed to maintain his career.

  Actor Sterling Hayden described himself as ‘a romantic Communist – the only person to buy a schooner and join the Communist Party in the same week’. Although not a member for long, when he was called to appear before the Committee in 1951, he named seven names, including Abraham Polonsky ‘whom I knew a bit personally and admired enormously’. The morning after he’d testified, a friend he’d named who wasn’t in the movie business was fired from his job. Hayden never forgave himself and considered himself ‘a rat’, but he received congratulations from the right wing, including Ronald Reagan and the chairman of Paramount Pictures. ‘When a man performs an act of personal betrayal of his friends, he’s regarded as a 100 per cent all-American patriot,’ Hayden said.

  Having served his prison term, Edward Dmytryk named 26 names, telling the congressmen that he’d changed his attitude because of the problematic world situation. ‘It wasn’t enough to say “I’m no longer a member.” You had to do something to prove it, otherwise you were always tarred with the same brush.’ After three years without work, his career resumed apace.

  Hayden had described himself as ‘the only person to buy a schooner and join the Communist Party in the same week’.

  Even if you weren’t on the blacklist, you weren’t safe, because you could be on the grey list. If someone hadn’t been named to Red Channels but its staff were still unconvinced, they
’d advise a studio, ‘we’re not sure about him, so best not to touch him’. As a result of the grey list, director Vincent Sherman didn’t work for three years. When one executive admitted to Sherman why he wasn’t being hired, the executive added: ‘and if you tell anyone what I told you, I’ll deny it.’

  The Slave Rebellion

  The story of the making of Spartacus (1960) illustrates many aspects of the blacklist. Dalton Trumbo had been one of the highest-paid screenwriters during the 1940s, but once blacklisted, he couldn’t get work in California and moved his family to Mexico City. From there he managed to work under pseudonyms or fronts, on films including Gun Crazy and Roman Holiday, although the money wasn’t as good. At his pre-blacklist peak, Trumbo had been earning $3000 a week at MGM, now he was being paid $2500 for a whole script.

  Although by 1959, with the blacklist weakening, Trumbo could admit that he was the writer of 1956’s The Brave One, Kirk Douglas still hired him in secret to write the screenplay for Spartacus. When using pseudonyms, Trumbo would pick a different one for each production to lessen the fall-out if one was traced to him, and would then be paid through a system of aliases. In this way, there would be no paper trail linking his producers to the name Dalton Trumbo. Using the name ‘Sam Jackson’ in all his correspondence with Douglas, it was agreed that for publicity purposes, producer Edward Lewis would be named as the writer while they were setting up the film.

  Crediting Trumbo

  However, as the film neared release, Douglas was uncertain whom to credit as screenwriter. Edward Lewis refused to have his name on a script he hadn’t written, and if they used Sam Jackson they’d have to fabricate some lies about this mysterious new writer of a major Hollywood film.

  Director Vincent Sherman felt the grey list was harder to manage than the blacklist, ‘because you were fighting shadows.’

  At this point the director of Spartacus, Stanley Kubrick, suggested they use his name, which ‘horrified’ Douglas and Lewis. Douglas asked Kubrick if he wouldn’t be embarrassed putting his name on a script someone else had written. ‘He looked at me as if I didn’t know what I was talking about. “No.” He would have been delighted to take the credit.’

  Spartacus was a product of the blacklist: it is based on a novel written by a blacklisted writer, was adapted by a blacklisted screenwriter and it tells the story of a rebellion against oppression.

  That night Douglas decided that he’d openly break the blacklist and credit Trumbo as the film’s writer. ‘All my friends told me I was being stupid, throwing my career away,’ wrote Douglas in his autobiography. But for the first time in ten years, Trumbo was able to walk on to a studio lot. Douglas admitted that he wasn’t trying to be a hero. ‘I was just thinking, how unfair for someone to say, “Put my name on it. Let me get the credit for someone else’s work.”’ So it seems Stanley Kubrick’s ego in wanting to unfairly promote his own name inadvertently played a small role in helping end the blacklist.

  …in 1958 an established publishing house re-issued the book, breaking the blacklist and signifying its waning.

  For Trumbo, Spartacus was a turning point. Before it was released, producer-director Otto Preminger announced that Dalton Trumbo would be the screenwriter of his next film, Exodus, although it wouldn’t be until the late 1970s that Trumbo would be recognized as the real Oscar-winning writer of Roman Holiday and The Brave One.

  Actually, it wasn’t only the making of Spartacus that tells us about the blacklist. The novel on which the film is based was itself a product of the blacklist. When author Howard Fast went to prison for three months for refusing to name those who’d donated to a fund for the orphans of American veterans in the Spanish Civil War, he began to write the novel Spartacus, a story of a thwarted slave rebellion against the Roman Republic. But as publishing was also subject to the blacklist, Fast was forced to self-publish the book in 1951. It was a hit and in 1958 an established publishing house re-issued the book, breaking the blacklist and signifying its waning. The following year, Douglas bought the film rights.

  Many regard On The Waterfront (1954), in which a New York longshoreman testifies against his corrupt union, as screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s and director Elia Kazan’s defence for having named names to HUAC.

  On the film’s release, the American Legion, the world’s largest veterans’ organization, sent a letter to its 17,000 members telling them not to see it because of Trumbo’s involvement, while Hedda Hopper wrote in her LA Times column that Spartacus ‘was sold to Universal from a book written by a Commie and the screen script was written by a Commie, so don’t go see it’. The film, however, was a box office hit. Today Spartacus is considered a classic; the phrase, ‘I’m Spartacus’, is shorthand for solidarity and for not denouncing others in defiance of corrupt authority, just as the Hollywood Ten had stood firm against HUAC and not named names.

  ‘I’m Spartacus’, is now shorthand for solidarity and for not denouncing others in defiance of corrupt authority.

  On The Waterfront

  If Spartacus is an example of the blacklist, what about a film from those who named names? When director Elia Kazan was called to testify before the House Committee, he was highly successful on both Broadway and in Hollywood, having directed Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman on stage as well as both the stage and screen versions of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Kazan appeared twice before the Committee in 1952, supplying it with the names of eight former members of the Group Theater and other Party members. All the names were already known to the Committee.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1953. Although he is the name most closely associated with the witch-hunts, McCarthy wasn’t directly involved in investigating Hollywood. His bullying and unsubstantiated claims ultimately undermined his efforts and discredited the blacklist.

  SINATRA EXECUTES PRIVATE SLOVIK

  IN 1960, FRANK Sinatra announced that he’d hired blacklisted Albert Maltz to write a screenplay for The Execution of Private Slovik (the true story of an American soldier executed in World War II for desertion – the only such case since the Civil War). The Hearst press attacked Sinatra for hiring Maltz, as did the American Legion, and disc jockeys were pressed not to play his records. At the time, Sinatra was supporting John F. Kennedy’s election campaign and Sinatra (pictured, below right, with Kennedy) soon found himself under pressure from the campaign manager. Feeling the heat, he quickly had second thoughts about hiring a blacklisted writer, fired Maltz and sold on the rights to the book.

  In naming names, Kazan destroyed many of his friendships, including that with Arthur Miller. His excuse was that he’d resigned from the Communist Party in the 1930s when it put him on trial for not following its instructions in how he ran the apolitical Group Theater. But, of course, in testifying, he also managed to keep his successful career going, making major movies throughout the blacklist and beyond.

  One of them was On The Waterfront (1954), on which he worked with screenwriter Budd Schulberg. The film, loosely based on fact, tells the story of a New York longshoreman, played by Marlon Brando, who witnesses the corruption of his union and risks his life in testifying against it at a Crime Commission. Many regard the film as Schulberg and Kazan’s defence for co-operating with HUAC. The film was a commercial and critical hit, winning eight Oscars, including those for Brando, Schulberg, Kazan and producer Sam Spiegel.

  Kazan went on to other successes with films such as East of Eden and Splendor in the Grass, but many in Hollywood never forgave him. When he was honoured at the 1998 Academy Awards, many of the members of the Academy refused to give him a standing ovation.

  End of the Blacklist

  In 1954, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who, although he didn’t investigate Hollywood, is the man most associated with the anti-Communist witch-hunts, was censured by the Senate. His tirades, bullying and unsubstantiated claims about Communists working in the Government had begun to win him more enemies than friends both in Washington and the country as a
whole. It was the beginning of the end for McCarthy, but although the hearings stopped, the black and grey lists were still in place. It wasn’t until 1965 that Ring Lardner Jr received his first credit after the blacklist with The Cincinnati Kid and that Abraham Polonsky could begin to work openly again. But Lionel Stander was still blacklisted.

  Loosely based on fact, On The Waterfront tells the story of a New York longshoreman who witnesses the corruption of his union and risks his life in testifying against it.

  Hollywood films have in the main always been politically conservative or simply escapist. If a few films addressing contemporary issues were made in the 1930s and 1940s, fewer were shot once the fear of the blacklist was in place.

  So, were any of their movies made prior to the blacklist subversive? Hollywood films have in the main always been politically conservative or simply escapist. If a few films addressing contemporary issues were made in the 1930s and 1940s, fewer were shot once the fear of the blacklist was in place, either because the film-makers who might make them weren’t able to work or because others weren’t prepared to risk doing anything that could be interpreted as subversive.