Poliwood and the Hollywood Blacklist
by Paulette Reynolds, updated November 24, 2019
Originally appeared in Outside Hollywoodland.com * April 21, 2012
by Paulette Reynolds, updated November 24, 2019
Originally appeared in Outside Hollywoodland.com * April 21, 2012
"A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
In Roger Corman’s 1961 classic, The Pit and the Pendulum, Vincent Price spent a great deal of time and energy torturing the hapless John Kerr. He fashioned a curved ax as a pendulum, which gradually descended upon our prone and bound Francis. As the ax slowly inched its way to our poor victim, the whooshing sound of the approaching blade became louder and louder. What an agonizing way to go, right?
Politics in Hollywood is much like that swinging ax, in that whatever political party holds sway in Washington, serves to wreck havoc in Hollywood, often slicing and dicing its victims faster than a Cusinart food processor stuck on hyper-overdrive.
One documentary film serves to highlight Tinsel town’s liberal artists and celebrities as they exercise their political voice and power. Poliwood, directed by Barry Levinson and co-produced by actor Tim Daly, of the progressive Creative Coalition, criss-crosses America during the 2008 presidential campaign. Interviewing Hollywood liberals and mainstream media moguls, Daly hopes the production will underscore the main goal of the Coalition, “bringing issues to the table for national discussion”.
Levinson’s Poliwood ambitiously interweaves several issues that that he sees as important in Hollywood:
*How television has changed the nature of politics
*The development of politicians as “actors” in shaping public opinion
*The increasing political polarization of America.
Instead, Poliwood serves to expose the hypersensitivity of today’s liberal Hollywood creative community – which is understandable - given their experiences at the hands of conservative Hollywood in the past. If the shift sometimes appears unfair, it may depend on who’s looking through the lens of history - and from behind the executioner’s ax.
It probably comes as no shock that most artists are a pretty unconventional crew. This is due in part to their creative nature, after all - the very act of creating art needs a rather imaginative soil to grow and thrive. So, it’s a safe bet that most Hollywood artists are liberal in their thinking and hence, in their politics.
Throughout Hollywood’s cinematic history, liberals in the movie industry have been responsible for producing all of our memorable viewing moments. Taking their skills and melding it with their talents, industry professionals – from actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, to the crew hands - have strived to create films, documentaries, and animated features for our viewing pleasure.
Often, these artists have had to be creative under the swinging ax, so to speak.
Flashback to the 1950’s Communist inquisition in Hollywood...
During the Cold War, Republican Washington needed a guinea pig and the conservative studio bosses needed to break the powerful union movement, led by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). The Right wished to discourage any Hollywood impulse to make films advocating social change at home or critical of foreign policy. *1
A perfect storm of accusations, intimidation, and forced confessions ultimately encircled the film industry, played out under the direction of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC ). The supporting cast of Hollywood’s conservative mainstream media (gossip columnists Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, Walter Winchell, et al), the studio CEOs, and SAG’s cooperation (led by its new president, Ronald Reagan), virtually ensured that the progressive movement in Hollywood would be halted.
Newsreels cranked out images of a cast of characters, either “naming names” or denying they had anything to do with communism. High-profile personalities like Robert Taylor, Reagan, Robert Montgomery, Adolph Menjou, Gary Cooper, played their roles to perfection and as HUAC widened its net, it ensnared notables such as Elia Kazan, Edward Dmytryk, Sterling Hayden, Lee J. Cobb, Budd Schulberg, and others from the entertainment community. Every member of the Hollywood community went under the microscope, yet those who were specifically targeted were active SAG members, anyone left of right-wing politics, and worst of all – communist sympathizers.
There is many a Communist in the union, for the SAG doesn't care what a man's politics are so long as he doesn't bring them into the guild. *2
By 1948 SAG members were forced to sign a loyalty oath that became a standard union policy until 1974. Through it all, the studio brass refused to support their industry workers and before long...
“. . . over 500 people from the entertainment industry were black or gray listed. Appearance on either list could end a career. In as many as five cases, including those of John Garfield, J. Edward Bromberg and Philip Loeb, the stress of being named clearly contributed to their early and tragic deaths.” *3
The Hollywood Blacklist served as a stark reminder to successive generations of Hollywood artists that “studio backing” did not always equal support, and that “liberal” could mean a one-way ticket to permanent summer stock theatre. As the studio system crumbled and stars took back personal control of their careers, the creative atmosphere encouraged a class of films that chronicled the era.
The final chapter occurred during the 1999 Academy Awards, when 75 percent of the academy wordlessly sat on their hands as director and HUAC informant Elia Kazan came onstage to receive a trumped-up “lifetime achievement” award. What was remarkable wasn’t the mass response of the industry, or actor Marlon Brando’s refusal to present him with the statuette, but the sad spectacle of a wheezy old man, standing on the stage, unable to look most of Hollywood in the eye. “Can I go now?” he peevishly snapped at Karl Malden, who had spear-headed the bitter award campaign. Luckily for him, he escaped the stage unscathed and his once legendary talent was immediately forgotten.
The televised HUAC spectacle during the early 1950s was the birth of television’s Machiavellian potential to win hearts and minds for whatever cause – and political party – could pay for it. Poliwood never refers to this shabby time in Hollywood’s grand history, which would have gone far in explaining why today’s Hollywood is so hyper-vigilant in protecting its liberal rights and causes.
Instead, Levinson chose the 1959 Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign to make his point that:
“Television is a medium that lends itself to manipulation, exploitation, and gimmicks. Political campaigns can actually be taken over by the public relation experts who tell the candidate not only how to use television, but what to say, what to stand for, and what kind of person to be.” *4
The movie focuses on some of the Creative Coalition’s more visible members – Tim Daly, Susan Sarandon, Anne Hathaway – as they attend both the Democratic and Republican Conventions during the summer of 2008. Levinson’s camera catches their roller-coaster emotions, from breathless and teary-eyed enthusiasm during the DNC’s homage to candidate Barrack Obama, to their petulant “do-we-have-to-go?” resignation at attending the Republican National Convention.
One revealing scene occurs during an “open dialog session”, facilitated by conservative pollster and communications consultant, Frank Luntz, during the Republican National Convention. He was asked (presumably by the CC) to moderate a discussion between Creative Coalition members and RNC campaigners. Levinson’s camera pans the CC membership, all well-known actors, as the conservative campaigners voiced their concerns on the negative stereotyping that liberal Hollywood practices. Many in the CC entourage became visibly angry, defensive, and hostile. It was left to the more seasoned veteran liberals – Susan Sarandon, Tim Daly, and Ellyn Burstyn – to sooth the hurt feelings all around.
The founder of the Coalition, the late Ron Silver, laments before the camera about the current polarization of the country, (which is now coming from the Trump-led White House). At the time he saw a real danger in the “intolerance on the left”, because they “are unwilling to hear arguments they don’t agree with.” Mr. Silver would be shocked to witness the fascist narrative being spouted by conservatives of all persuasions today.
Along the way, Poliwood is successful in interweaving television’s complicity as a propaganda tool with the political processes of Washington. But a scant decade later social media would outrun the small screen's effectiveness towards changing - and challenging - the hearts and minds of the masses - now armed with their own collective voice.
…In a 1992 letter to the New York Times, screenwriter and playwright Jonathan R. Reynolds laments that “… Hollywood today is as fascistic toward conservatives as the 1940's and 50's were toward liberals … And that goes for the movies and television shows produced.” *5
What then, is the central lesson of Poliwood? Perhaps it’s that in the midst of this repeat performance, the lessons of the Blacklist are being ignored by the very people (and political party) that first instituted the blacklist in 1947. And as with any swinging pendulum, what travels from one point must ultimately travel onward to its opposite end. Ironically, the conservative branch of Hollywood is now reduced to meeting in palatial backrooms to commiserate under the dubious name of The Friends of Abe.
An exhaustive list of those blacklisted in the Hollywood industry can be found - and should be remembered - at the end of the citations.
A. QUOTES:
1. Georgakas, D.
2. Thompson, M
3. Ceplair, L.
4. Poliwood, directed by Levinson, B.
5 Quinn, J.
B. RESOURCES:
Andrews, H. (2/2/2007). Conservatives Try to Make Their Voices Heard in Hollywood. Politico.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2932.html
Ceplair, L. (1/1998). SAG and the Motion Picture Blacklist. National Screen Actor.
http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/linkbackups/huac_blacklist.htm
Fagan, A. (7/23/2008). Hollywood’s Conservative Underground. The Washington Times.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/23/hollywoods-conservative-underground/
Farnsworth, E. (10/24/1997). Seeing Red. PBS Newshour
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec97/blacklist_10-24.html
Georgakas, D. (1992). Hollywood Blacklist. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/blacklist.html
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/blacklist.html
Prindle, David F. The Politics of Glamour, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, 274 p.
Schwartz, R.A. (1999). How the Film and Television Blacklists Worked. Florida International University.
http://comptalk.fiu.edu/blacklist.htm
Thompson, M. (4/2/1938). Hollywood Is a Union Town. The Nation. Vol.146, No.14, p.381-383. New Deal Network.
http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na38146p381.htm
Navasky, Victor S. Naming Names: Viking Press, 1980.
Quinn, J. (5/5/2008). Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret. About.com
http://usconservatives.about.com/b/2008/05/05/hollywoods-dirty-little-secret.htm
SAG-AFTRA History. Wikipedia | via Answers.com
http://www.answers.com/topic/screen-actors-guild
Hollywood Blacklist. Wikipedia. 2010 [Complete List]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
In Roger Corman’s 1961 classic, The Pit and the Pendulum, Vincent Price spent a great deal of time and energy torturing the hapless John Kerr. He fashioned a curved ax as a pendulum, which gradually descended upon our prone and bound Francis. As the ax slowly inched its way to our poor victim, the whooshing sound of the approaching blade became louder and louder. What an agonizing way to go, right?
Politics in Hollywood is much like that swinging ax, in that whatever political party holds sway in Washington, serves to wreck havoc in Hollywood, often slicing and dicing its victims faster than a Cusinart food processor stuck on hyper-overdrive.
One documentary film serves to highlight Tinsel town’s liberal artists and celebrities as they exercise their political voice and power. Poliwood, directed by Barry Levinson and co-produced by actor Tim Daly, of the progressive Creative Coalition, criss-crosses America during the 2008 presidential campaign. Interviewing Hollywood liberals and mainstream media moguls, Daly hopes the production will underscore the main goal of the Coalition, “bringing issues to the table for national discussion”.
Levinson’s Poliwood ambitiously interweaves several issues that that he sees as important in Hollywood:
*How television has changed the nature of politics
*The development of politicians as “actors” in shaping public opinion
*The increasing political polarization of America.
Instead, Poliwood serves to expose the hypersensitivity of today’s liberal Hollywood creative community – which is understandable - given their experiences at the hands of conservative Hollywood in the past. If the shift sometimes appears unfair, it may depend on who’s looking through the lens of history - and from behind the executioner’s ax.
It probably comes as no shock that most artists are a pretty unconventional crew. This is due in part to their creative nature, after all - the very act of creating art needs a rather imaginative soil to grow and thrive. So, it’s a safe bet that most Hollywood artists are liberal in their thinking and hence, in their politics.
Throughout Hollywood’s cinematic history, liberals in the movie industry have been responsible for producing all of our memorable viewing moments. Taking their skills and melding it with their talents, industry professionals – from actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, to the crew hands - have strived to create films, documentaries, and animated features for our viewing pleasure.
Often, these artists have had to be creative under the swinging ax, so to speak.
Flashback to the 1950’s Communist inquisition in Hollywood...
During the Cold War, Republican Washington needed a guinea pig and the conservative studio bosses needed to break the powerful union movement, led by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). The Right wished to discourage any Hollywood impulse to make films advocating social change at home or critical of foreign policy. *1
A perfect storm of accusations, intimidation, and forced confessions ultimately encircled the film industry, played out under the direction of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC ). The supporting cast of Hollywood’s conservative mainstream media (gossip columnists Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, Walter Winchell, et al), the studio CEOs, and SAG’s cooperation (led by its new president, Ronald Reagan), virtually ensured that the progressive movement in Hollywood would be halted.
Newsreels cranked out images of a cast of characters, either “naming names” or denying they had anything to do with communism. High-profile personalities like Robert Taylor, Reagan, Robert Montgomery, Adolph Menjou, Gary Cooper, played their roles to perfection and as HUAC widened its net, it ensnared notables such as Elia Kazan, Edward Dmytryk, Sterling Hayden, Lee J. Cobb, Budd Schulberg, and others from the entertainment community. Every member of the Hollywood community went under the microscope, yet those who were specifically targeted were active SAG members, anyone left of right-wing politics, and worst of all – communist sympathizers.
There is many a Communist in the union, for the SAG doesn't care what a man's politics are so long as he doesn't bring them into the guild. *2
By 1948 SAG members were forced to sign a loyalty oath that became a standard union policy until 1974. Through it all, the studio brass refused to support their industry workers and before long...
“. . . over 500 people from the entertainment industry were black or gray listed. Appearance on either list could end a career. In as many as five cases, including those of John Garfield, J. Edward Bromberg and Philip Loeb, the stress of being named clearly contributed to their early and tragic deaths.” *3
The Hollywood Blacklist served as a stark reminder to successive generations of Hollywood artists that “studio backing” did not always equal support, and that “liberal” could mean a one-way ticket to permanent summer stock theatre. As the studio system crumbled and stars took back personal control of their careers, the creative atmosphere encouraged a class of films that chronicled the era.
The final chapter occurred during the 1999 Academy Awards, when 75 percent of the academy wordlessly sat on their hands as director and HUAC informant Elia Kazan came onstage to receive a trumped-up “lifetime achievement” award. What was remarkable wasn’t the mass response of the industry, or actor Marlon Brando’s refusal to present him with the statuette, but the sad spectacle of a wheezy old man, standing on the stage, unable to look most of Hollywood in the eye. “Can I go now?” he peevishly snapped at Karl Malden, who had spear-headed the bitter award campaign. Luckily for him, he escaped the stage unscathed and his once legendary talent was immediately forgotten.
The televised HUAC spectacle during the early 1950s was the birth of television’s Machiavellian potential to win hearts and minds for whatever cause – and political party – could pay for it. Poliwood never refers to this shabby time in Hollywood’s grand history, which would have gone far in explaining why today’s Hollywood is so hyper-vigilant in protecting its liberal rights and causes.
Instead, Levinson chose the 1959 Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign to make his point that:
“Television is a medium that lends itself to manipulation, exploitation, and gimmicks. Political campaigns can actually be taken over by the public relation experts who tell the candidate not only how to use television, but what to say, what to stand for, and what kind of person to be.” *4
The movie focuses on some of the Creative Coalition’s more visible members – Tim Daly, Susan Sarandon, Anne Hathaway – as they attend both the Democratic and Republican Conventions during the summer of 2008. Levinson’s camera catches their roller-coaster emotions, from breathless and teary-eyed enthusiasm during the DNC’s homage to candidate Barrack Obama, to their petulant “do-we-have-to-go?” resignation at attending the Republican National Convention.
One revealing scene occurs during an “open dialog session”, facilitated by conservative pollster and communications consultant, Frank Luntz, during the Republican National Convention. He was asked (presumably by the CC) to moderate a discussion between Creative Coalition members and RNC campaigners. Levinson’s camera pans the CC membership, all well-known actors, as the conservative campaigners voiced their concerns on the negative stereotyping that liberal Hollywood practices. Many in the CC entourage became visibly angry, defensive, and hostile. It was left to the more seasoned veteran liberals – Susan Sarandon, Tim Daly, and Ellyn Burstyn – to sooth the hurt feelings all around.
The founder of the Coalition, the late Ron Silver, laments before the camera about the current polarization of the country, (which is now coming from the Trump-led White House). At the time he saw a real danger in the “intolerance on the left”, because they “are unwilling to hear arguments they don’t agree with.” Mr. Silver would be shocked to witness the fascist narrative being spouted by conservatives of all persuasions today.
Along the way, Poliwood is successful in interweaving television’s complicity as a propaganda tool with the political processes of Washington. But a scant decade later social media would outrun the small screen's effectiveness towards changing - and challenging - the hearts and minds of the masses - now armed with their own collective voice.
…In a 1992 letter to the New York Times, screenwriter and playwright Jonathan R. Reynolds laments that “… Hollywood today is as fascistic toward conservatives as the 1940's and 50's were toward liberals … And that goes for the movies and television shows produced.” *5
What then, is the central lesson of Poliwood? Perhaps it’s that in the midst of this repeat performance, the lessons of the Blacklist are being ignored by the very people (and political party) that first instituted the blacklist in 1947. And as with any swinging pendulum, what travels from one point must ultimately travel onward to its opposite end. Ironically, the conservative branch of Hollywood is now reduced to meeting in palatial backrooms to commiserate under the dubious name of The Friends of Abe.
An exhaustive list of those blacklisted in the Hollywood industry can be found - and should be remembered - at the end of the citations.
A. QUOTES:
1. Georgakas, D.
2. Thompson, M
3. Ceplair, L.
4. Poliwood, directed by Levinson, B.
5 Quinn, J.
B. RESOURCES:
Andrews, H. (2/2/2007). Conservatives Try to Make Their Voices Heard in Hollywood. Politico.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2932.html
Ceplair, L. (1/1998). SAG and the Motion Picture Blacklist. National Screen Actor.
http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/linkbackups/huac_blacklist.htm
Fagan, A. (7/23/2008). Hollywood’s Conservative Underground. The Washington Times.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/23/hollywoods-conservative-underground/
Farnsworth, E. (10/24/1997). Seeing Red. PBS Newshour
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec97/blacklist_10-24.html
Georgakas, D. (1992). Hollywood Blacklist. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/blacklist.html
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/blacklist.html
Prindle, David F. The Politics of Glamour, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, 274 p.
Schwartz, R.A. (1999). How the Film and Television Blacklists Worked. Florida International University.
http://comptalk.fiu.edu/blacklist.htm
Thompson, M. (4/2/1938). Hollywood Is a Union Town. The Nation. Vol.146, No.14, p.381-383. New Deal Network.
http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na38146p381.htm
Navasky, Victor S. Naming Names: Viking Press, 1980.
Quinn, J. (5/5/2008). Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret. About.com
http://usconservatives.about.com/b/2008/05/05/hollywoods-dirty-little-secret.htm
SAG-AFTRA History. Wikipedia | via Answers.com
http://www.answers.com/topic/screen-actors-guild
Hollywood Blacklist. Wikipedia. 2010 [Complete List]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
COPYRIGHT 2012/2019. Paulette Reynolds. All CineMata Movie Madness blog articles, reviews, faux interviews, commentary, and the Cine Mata character are under the sole ownership of Paulette Reynolds. All intellectual and creative rights reserved.
