The following talk by John McManus was given January 17, 1998. discussing the “Hollywood 10”. McManus argues that the Hollywood 10 were members of the Communist Party and that their blacklisting was not the result of Joe McCarthy’s actions.
Thank you to our sponsors
https://connollyandsonsconcrete.com/
https://www.dentistry4health.org
http://www.highercallingfirearms.com
http://www.americanappliancehvac.com
https://insurewithcompass.com/sbarlow.html
I wanted to talk for a little bit about something that is classified under the title the Hollywood 10.
Now, I’ve done a lot of radio shows television shows for the Birch Society. I don’t know, hundreds. I don’t know how many hundreds but I think in the course of all of these years that I’ve been doing this maybe as much as two dozen times the subject of Joe McCarthy has come up and the host of the show or a caller would accuse me of McCarthyism and I would say something like, “Well what do you mean by McCarthyism?”
An out of the two dozen or more times, maybe half of those times, the answer has come back “the Hollywood screenwriters”, “the Hollywood movie producers” and so forth.
And I would at that point quickly point out that the problems that were experienced by the Hollywood movie producers, the Hollywood 10 and so forth, were the work of the House Committee on Un -American Activities in 1947, that Joe McCarthy was a senator, and that he had not even become anti -communist prominent until 1950. So I said, “You’re dead wrong about that now would you try again please tell me who did Joe McCarthy malign?”
I have never gotten anybody to give me an answer, any name whatsoever and the fact of the matter is they can’t.
But what about the Hollywood 10?
The Hollywood branch of the Communist Party was formed in the mid 1930s. And the top red who organized it was John Howard Lawson a determined New York Communist who was a writer for theater productions. He moved to Hollywood, (was probably told to do so by his communist leaders) and began his recruiting. His group began and remained a disciplined agent of Moscow that would change its course on a moment’s notice when ordered to do so by Moscow. They were originally anti -Nazi because Hitler government was perceived to be a threat to Soviet rule, and the group helped to produce films and spread propaganda calling on the Roosevelt administration to aid the victims of Nazi oppression and aggression. And then in 1939 Hitler and Stalin signed their mutual non -aggression pact and the group switched from anti -Nazi to pro -Nazi overnight.
At this point these Reds were even calling on the Roosevelt administration to stay out of the early stages of World War II, much the same as the America First movement. They were perfectly willing to let Stalin and his new ally Hitler chop up Europe. Some of the early members of the Hollywood Communist group left the party in the wake of this obvious hypocrisy. But the hardcore members stayed on. When Hitler attacks Stalin, they reverted to their previous anti -Nazi past.
They also began to write screenplays for some of the famous World War II movies, “30 seconds over Tokyo”, “Action in the North Atlantic”, “Sahara”, “Pride of the Marines”, “Destination Tokyo”, maybe some of you remember those, right? These were movies that cheered the US effort, but the motive behind the men who put them together wasn’t so much patriotism in the face of being attacked at Pearl Harbor and having Germany declare war on us. It was defense of Stalin’s grip on Russia. At the same time, these men gained a virtual stranglehold on Hollywood, such that the production of anti -communist movies was slowed and even stopped.
Some of these men, Dalton Trumbo for one, would later boast that they had successfully prevented the making of a movie based on Arthur Kustler’s famous anti -communist book entitled “The Yogi and the Commissar”.
After the war, Stalin shifted the work of the U .S. Communist Party back to its anti -Western class hatred. The Hollywood communists dutifully followed by attacking U .S. policies and defending or denying Soviet atrocities. They even refused to allow presentation of evidence that the Jews in Russia were being savaged by the Stalin regime. Dalton Trumbo claimed that three and a half million Jews in Russia were living peacefully “Under the protection of laws which ban discrimination of any kind.”
So the House Committee on Un -American Activities started an investigation in Hollywood in 1947. Their focus as they started was on a Soviet KGB agent named Gerhard Eisler, whose brother was involved in movie making only in the field of music. And while they were there in Hollywood, the investigators were approached by many of the anti -communist film writers, producers, movie stars who were victims of the stranglehold the Reds had secured.
It was the anti -communists who were the victims of blacklisting, not the other way around.
Originally, nineteen unfriendly persons were called before the House committee. And then the number shrank to 10, the famous Hollywood 10. Their names, Alva Desi, Herbert Giberman, Lester Cole, Edward Demitrick, Ringlarner Jr., John Howard Larson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbull.
Those are the ten. These ten defied the committee, insisted that their free speech rights were being abused and spread a great deal of propaganda vilifying the entire anti -communist effort. But the committee produced indisputable proof that each was a member of the Communist Party, subject to discipline. Contrary to the widespread attitude that had been circulated, the House Committee did not blacklist any of these Communist screenwriters. They were barred from their subversive work by motion picture executives who would not hire them. These executives of these studios were the same individuals who had refused to hire pro -nazi writers and producers such as the famous German female Lenny Riefenstahl back in the 1930s.
In other words, the corporate owners of the movie industry were patriots and did not want these communist writing screenplays, screens, scores. The blacklist resulted from a meeting of 50 top officials of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Association of Motion Picture Producers and the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, three different organizations, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York in 1947. Speaking for the industry, A man named Eric Johnson announced on November 26, 1947, this is what he said,
“We will not 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 by any illegal or unconstitutional methods.”
That’s wonderful. So the blacklisting of these communists was not done by the House Committee, was not done by Joe McCarthy, it was done by their own executives in their own industry. The famous ten were all fired from their jobs and some of them went to jail. And there were others who didn’t appear before the House Committee who lost their jobs because they were communists. But all of these individuals managed to survive and even prosper by writing under an assumed name or going abroad to work. They soon returned to Hollywood and have practically been deified by the current Hollywood crowd.
The full truth about these individuals is that they rejected Americanism, favored totalitarianism, even glorified Joseph Stalin, one of the world’s most despicable mass murderers. They also succeeded in barring patriotic writers and producers from the movie industry, mostly by spreading vicious lies about them.
Of the ten, only Edward Demitrick ever expressed any misgivings about what he had been involved in. He wrote a book entitled “Odd Man Out.” Only a few years ago, Dalton Frumbo snickered while admitting that, “Yeah, we were communists, all right, so what?” He would have you think that this never meant anything more than being a civil libertarian. Of his dedication to communism for several decades. He stressed,
“I never regretted it.”
The blacklist against these men was broken in 1960 and the famous ten were welcomed back into the industry under their own names. Years later in 1989 the name of actor Robert Taylor, one of the movie stars who had testified against communism in 1947, his name was removed from a building in a movie lot in Culver City, it. The free speech crowd were deadly silent on that occasion.
Over the years there have been several films produced to show “the Hollywood Ten” as heroes. One is a 1987 documentary entitled “Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist.”
Another is the 1991 film “Guilty by Suspicion,” starring Robert De Niro, full of lies, full of misinformation. At the end of 1997, just a few months ago, the Motion Picture Academy staged a gala event celebrating the 50th anniversary of what they termed was the oppression of gifted screenwriters. Ring Lardner and Dalton Trumbo, two of the original ten, made triumphant appearances during the present of the show. The entire Hollywood ten were described as persecuted heroes and the House Committee investigators were characterized as anti -Semites. The program featured entertainer Billy Crystal, who obviously agreed with giving honors to the unrepentant Reds.
Back in May of last year (1997), a group calling itself the Committee for the First Amendment Blacklist Project put out an appeal for funds to finance the 50th anniversary hands that they were planning. In it, they announced plans to produce, “a work of art to memorialize the victims of the blacklist.”
The appeal letter described the planned memorial and stated, “It is both specific to the devastation caused by McCarthyism and a reminder that witch hunts return in different guises when we are not vigilant.” You see, even they referred to McCarthy, and some of these people probably believed that. But, of course, McCarthy had nothing to do with it.
The thing then, the fund appeal then proudly noted, “All donations are fully tax deductible. Small donations will be tripled by funds from a matching foundation grant.” I don’t know what foundation it was, but I can imagine.
A few months back I received a package from a good friend, Dr. Ted Baer, who publishes the Movie Guide and leads the Christian Film and Television Commission. Ted Baer is doing his utmost to force a patriotic and Christian outlook on Hollywood. He’s got an uphill climb there. He wrote to tell me about a book that has been written detailing the history of the subversion carried on by the film industry. The author of the book, I still don’t know the book’s name, the author is a man named John Cones, C -O -N -E -S, who has spent a lifetime as an attorney in the entertainment industry and included with Ted Baer’s letter to me was a full 90 -page chapter four in galley format detailing the real victims of Hollywood black lasting. There have been numerous individuals who tried to break into this industry and who were thwarted at every turn by powerful leftist interests that maintain their grip right up until the present time.
That book provides stunning background about the early attempts but eventual failures at movie making by men termed “the outsiders”. And these included some surprising names to me because, you see, I’m just a young man. The names he told of the how early experiences of DW Griffith, other movie makers, Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the man who became president, William Randolph Hearst tried to get into the movie industry, Orson Welles, Howard Hughes, Kirk Kirkorian and a British genius in the filmmaking industry called David Putnam. All of these men have failed because the leftist influences in Hollywood have maintained their grip. But each of them made some movies and attempted to make more and were hounded out of the industry, usually taking a terrible financial beating in the process.
It is fascinating reading that one chapter, heavily documented, will prove to be of help in demonstrating the ironclad grip on Hollywood possessed by people who do not exude patriotism and decency. I hope it’s soon published. If it is, we’ll all hear about it. Generally speaking, Hollywood is in the enemy’s camp.
While an occasional movie like Braveheart or something like it can be produced, much of what shows up on the big screen is politically subversive, morally repugnant and culturally demeaning.
Perhaps some of you saw a listing of Hollywood personalities who were early contributors to the Clinton or Dole campaigns in 1996. I have a list here and it was early in the year. There were 50 names of people who had contributed to the Clinton campaign. There were three who contributed to Dole.
The only thing positive to say about the three is that they didn’t donate to Clinton .
Steve Allen, Tom Arnold, Peter Benchley, Peter Berg, Michael Bolton, Victor Borger, Lloyd Bridges, Kate Capsure, Chevy Chase, Ted Danson, Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfus, Michael Eisner, Peter Falk. A lot of these names are known to you. Big contributors to Clinton.
Billy Joel, Quincy Jones, Lawrence Kasdan, Joanna Kearns, Larry King, Allie McGraw, Gary Marshall, Penny Marshall, Mary Stewart, Masterson, James Michener, Donna Mills, Leslie Moonvis, I never heard of him, Alan Pakula, Paula Poundstone, Bill Pullman, Rob Reiner, Linda Ronstadt, Renee Russo, Carly Simon, Neil Simon, Mary Steenberg and Daniel Stern, Martha Stewart, Barbara Streisand, no surprise there. Marlo Thomas, Grant Tinker, Kathleen Turner, Henry Winkler, Dweezel Zappa.
Who were the three that supported Dole? Pat Boone, Bob Hope, and Pat Sajak. Pat Sajak, the Jeopardy, what is it? No, Wheel of Fortune. Well, it’s interesting to know. I mean, this is this is the Hollywood crowd.
And there were only two donors. These were to the specific campaign the individuals running, but there were only two donors to the Republican Party listed among many many who were listed for Clinton and the two donors to the Republican Party were Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Hampton, which was nice to see. Among the patriotic Hollywood personalities of the 1947 period were Marie Riskind and Adolf Manjou.
It is they and men like them who suffered from being blacklisted by the pro -communists.
So if anybody ever says to you the poor Hollywood 10 maybe now you can say you got it all backwards right the good guys were the ones blacklisted and Joe McCarthy had nothing to say about it thank you.
