biographycinema

McCarthyism

With the term McCarthyism, sometimes replaced by the phrase 'witch hunt' for the evident references to the psychosis that had shaken Puritan America a few centuries earlier (see the play The crucible by playwright Arthur Miller, that of the m. was one of the most illustrious victims), refers to the anti-communist crusade unleashed in the United States in the early 1950s - with devastating effects also in the world of cinema - by the republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1909-1957). McCarthy's personality and work have been and continue to be the object of opposing evaluations at home, from the apology of his former assistant RM Cohn, who called him "brave man who had fought a huge evil" admitting that "he could, at maximum, to have been wrong in some details "(1968, p. 279), to the severe judgment of those who, like FJ Cook, considered him the main responsible for the spread of a dangerous paranoia, for which" the largest country in the world wasted his energies looking for communists hidden under every bed " and "millions of Americans looked fearful behind them, fearing that sooner or later it would be up to them to defend themselves against who knows what in front of threatening inquisitors" (1971, p. 3). Supported by the extreme fringes of his party and, for all his campaigns, by the high spheres of the American Catholic Church (Crosby 1978), McCarthy suffered a rapid and ignominious collapse when - just as he was trying to extend the search for traitors and spies inside of far stronger and more solid institutions in Hollywood, such as the government radio station Voice of America, the libraries of the USIS (United States Information Service) spread across Europe and the country's army itself - his assistant Cohn lobbied the military for obtaining rainfall licenses and favorable conditions for his young collaborator, D. Schine. A formal complaint against McCarthy followed in the Senate, which was opposed only by a small group of twenty-two senators headed by B. Goldwater; R. Nixon himself, his collaborator and supporter, distanced himself from it, praising his "patriotism in the fight against communism" in a speech released by the NBC and CBS television networks, while at the same time deploring their "use of questionable methods" ( Cook 1971, p. 475). The loss of power McCarthy survived only a little over two years, but the consequences of his work, especially towards many of its victims and especially in the field of cinema, they are difficult to quantify: broken or at best interrupted careers, unsigned or signed works by figureheads that only years later critics, scholars and heirs of the victims began to re-examine , returning them where possible to the legitimate authors. Indeed, McCarthy's work, which remains the questionable honor of having given the name to the whole phenomenon, is part of an American history page that began well before the relatively short period of his hegemony (1950-1954), as shown the existence of a House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), founded in 1938 by Texas Senator M. Dies, chaired since 1944 by Senator J. Rankin of Mississippi (as a declaredly anti-Semitic Dies) and since 1947 by J. Parnell Thomas, Republican of New Jersey; preceding the rise of McCarthy had also been the security measures adopted by the Truman administration since 1947 to avoid controversy and accusations of excessive 'left-wing' by the right, the case of A. Hiss (the Foreign Ministry official accused in 1948 to be a Soviet spy), the fiercely anti-communist film series that began in Hollywood in 1947 and the trial of the spouses J. and E. Rosenberg, which then ended with a death sentence in 1951. Close ties were evident since those years - long kept silent or underestimated even by the press and historians - between anti-communism and anti-Semitism, given that as early as November 1947, as reported by VS Navasky (1980, pp. 109 et seq.), Sidney Harmon, a Californian Jewish producer, pointed out to the president of the American Jewish Committee, also citing a testimony from director Billy Wilder, that the accusations against the 'communists' were ominously similar to those addressed by Hitler's Nazism to the Jews, and aimed precisely at targeting co-religionists active in the world of cinema (but the Chairman of the Committee, John B. Slawson, responded by inviting silence, for reasons of 'prudence'). In September 1947, however, an order from Senator Parnell Thomas ordered various more or less well-known figures in the world of American cinema, mostly of Jewish origin or religion, not to leave the country without the authorization of the committee of inquiry. ; and in the October of the same year, the committee chaired by Thomas (of which the future President of the United States Nixon was a member) began hearings aimed at discovering, and possibly eradicating, "subversive influences in the world of cinema", summoning forty-three witnesses, nineteen of whom (twelve screenwriters, five directors, a producer and an actor) contested the authority of the committee a priori and were therefore defined unfriendly witnesses, or 'unfriendly witnesses'. The hearings began at the top with the interrogation of two of the most important Hollywood producers, Jack L. Warner and summoning forty-three witnesses, nineteen of whom (twelve screenwriters, five directors, a producer and an actor) contested the authority of the committee a priori and were therefore defined unfriendly witnesses, or 'unfriendly witnesses'. The hearings began at the top with the interrogation of two of the most important Hollywood producers, Jack L. Warner and summoning forty-three witnesses, nineteen of whom (twelve screenwriters, five directors, a producer and an actor) contested the authority of the committee a priori and were therefore defined unfriendly witnesses, or 'unfriendly witnesses'. The hearings began at the top with the interrogation of two of the most important Hollywood producers, Jack L. Warner andLouis B. Mayer, both highly skilled in responding to accusations in part relating to two films, Michael Curtiz's Mission to Moscow and Gregory Ratoff's Song of Russia, produced by them in 1943 and accused of having spread a favorable image of the then Soviet ally; There is a rich documentation on the hearings of the committee, thanks also to a book by Gordon Kahn, Hollywood on trial, which appeared in the same 1948 (1972²) with a vibrant and courageous preface by Thomas Mann. Some depositions are fun to read: you can remember for example. the sly skill with which Gary Cooper, even if included among the 'friendlies', played the part of the fool and / or the forgetful one to mention no name (pp. 55-59), or that of Bertolt Brecht, who said nothing but he said it to be praised by investigators, who even cited it as an example (pp. 121-29); and the zeal of the writer Ayn Rand, who deplored Song of Russia, argued that it would be better to defeat Nazism without allying with the Soviets, could make you laugh, but also shiver, so much victory was inevitable anyway (pp. 31-33) , or that of Mrs. Lela Rogers, still outraged that her daughter Ginger had been forced to pronounce, in the Edward Dmytryk film Tender comrade (1943; We were so happy), the communist slogan "share and share alike", that is divide and divide in equal parts (pp. 43-45). In November, at the end of the hearings, ten of the 'unfriendly witnesses', guilty of not having collaborated with HUAC and of not having recognized their authority,Edward Dmytryk , screenwriter Alvah Bessie, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner Jr , John Howard Lawson , Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumboand producer Adrian Scott, famous at the time as 'the ten of Hollywood', for whose release personalities from the whole world were mobilized. The same book ends with almost triumphalistic notes, citing articles published in the "The New York Times" and in the "Los Angeles Times" (from which it emerged, among other things, that American public opinion was at least divided on the issue, with 47% of culprits against 39% of innocentists and 14% who refused to answer), the interpellations of various parliamentarians - including H. Gonahan, wife of actor Melvyn Douglas - who demanded the immediate dissolution of the HUAC, and solidarity messages from film personalities such as Gregory Peck, Fredric March, William Wyler, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Van Heflin, Paulette Goddard, Joseph Cotten, Margaret Sullavan, Burt Lancaster, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Ryan and many others. In fact, persecutions and proscriptions had just begun: in a secret meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York (November 26, 1947) the association of the magnates of the film industry decided by majority, albeit with some hesitation on the part of LB Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, Darryl F. Zanuck and Harry Cohn, to fire the ten convicts and to compile a real black list, destined to grow in a short time up to far exceed the quota of one hundred names, thanks also to the rise of McCarthy and to the climate of heated patriotism provoked by the Korean War. In a second round of HUAC investigations, which began in 1951,John Garfield , Gale Sondergaard, Howard Da Silva, directors such as John Berry, Joseph Losey , Bernard Vorhaus, Jules Dassin and Abraham Polonsky , famous writers such as A. Miller, Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman , and again the writers Michael Wilson , Leonardo Bercovici , Walter Bernstein, Carl Foreman , Nedrick Young, Ben Maddow, Donald Ogden Stewart, Paul Jarrico, Waldo Salt; also in this group the majority of those affected were of Jewish origin and / or religion. Then came the terrible and pathetic moment of the collapses, of the reports, of the naming names: among those who decided to collaborate there was also one of the 'ten of Hollywood', the director E. Dmytryk, whose example was soon followed by connects Elia Kazan and actors known as Larry Parks, Sterling Hayden and Lee J. Cobb .

Difficult to assess how much this shameful page, which would have closed unofficially in 1957, with an Oscar for the best screenplay awarded, for the Irving Rapper film The brave one (1956; The biggest bullfight) , to a non-existent 'Robert Rich', and officially only in 1975, when the Oscar himself was withdrawn by the real author, D. Trumbo (but already in 1960 the director Otto Preminger had publicly declared that it was Trumbo himself the author of the screenplay of his Exodus); and it is difficult to reconstruct the filmography of directors and screenwriters who had decided to repair in Europe, or in Latin America. In some of the films made in those years in Hollywood, which apparently are genre films (think of a western like High noon, 1952, Noon of Fire, written by C. Foreman and directed by Fred Zinnemann, or in a detective film such as He ran all the way, 1951, I loved an outlaw, directed by J. Berry and starring John Garfield), is felt between the lines a sort of anguished and secret subtext, which alludes, beyond the story depicted, to other fears and other violence. Some of the main protagonists - especially among the victims - told their story: among them D. Trumbo (Additional dialogue: letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1970; trad. It. Letters from the cold war, 1977), L. Hellman (1976) , which alludes, beyond the story represented, to other fears and other violence. Some of the main protagonists - especially among the victims - told their story: among them D. Trumbo (Additional dialogue: letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1970; trad. It. Letters from the cold war, 1977), L. Hellman (1976) , which alludes, beyond the story represented, to other fears and other violence. Some of the main protagonists - especially among the victims - told their story: among them D. Trumbo (Additional dialogue: letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1970; trad. It. Letters from the Cold War, 1977), L. Hellman (1976) ,Howard Koch(1979), co-writer of Casablanca (1942) by Curtiz and writer of Letter from an unknown woman (1948; Letter from an unknown woman) by Max Ophuls, and subsequently W. Bernstein (1996); two historians, P. McGilligan and P. Buhle (1997), are responsible for a large volume of interviews with the main suspects. But there was no lack of rumors, and justifications, of those who had gone to the other side, confessing their faults and denouncing their companions: for example. Dmytryk, who in a disturbing book (1996) claims his reasons and complains of the isolation suffered following his capitulation; and another great director, Kazan, who in the autobiography (1988) describes in shiny and vibrant pages the first signs of the 'purges', when Cecil B. DeMille, Leo McCarey and other right-wing directors sought, at the moment without success, to wrest the director's guild from director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and later the attacks on playwright A. Miller, as well as the painful decision to 'collaborate'; or the actor Marc Lawrence (1991), who recalls in a lighter tone his passing frequenting of leftist circles ("mostly to find you girls"), the confessions to the HUAC of having met five or six colleagues and colleagues already abundantly compromised, and the period of pleasant exile in a Rome now close to the years of the 'dolce vita'.

Finally, to remember that at m. and theatrical works have been dedicated to HUAC investigations, indirectly as in A. Miller's The Crucible (1953), and directly, as in M. Kemble's Names (1997), and in Are you now or have you ever been (1972) by E. Bentley, whose title derives from the formula with which investigators asked the defendants if they were or had ever been communists; as well as documentary films, such as Christopher Koch's Blacklist: Hollywood on trial (1955); real subject films, such as the popular and appreciated The front (1976; The figurehead) by Martin Ritt, written by the blacklisted W. Bernstein and starring, among others, by the blacklisted Zero Mostel and Guilty by suspicion (1991; offense) by Irwin Winkler with Robert De Niro; finally also TV series, such as Blacklist (1964), episode written by Ernest Kinoy and directed by Stuart Rosenberg of The defenders, a series focused on the story of a couple of lawyers, father and son (Edward G. Marshall and Robert Reed, the first of whom, interpreter on Broadway of the Miller Crucible, had been in turn included in the notorious 'black lists'). An examination of all these works, and also of others in which the theme is touched upon or addressed only indirectly, appears in the book written by B. Murphy (1999).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RM Cohn , McCarthy , New York 1968.

FJ Cook , The nightmare lapses: the life and times of senator Joe McCarthy , New York 1971.

L. Hellman , Scoundrel time , Boston 1976.

DF Crosby , God, Church and flag: senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church , 1950-57, Chapel Hill 1978.

H. Koch , As time goes by: memoirs of a writer , New York 1979.

VS Navasky , Naming names , New York 1980.

E. Kazan , A life , New York 1988.

M. Lawrence , Long time no see: confessions of a Hollywood gangster , Palm Springs 1991.

W. Bernstein , Inside out: a memoir of the blacklist , New York 1996.

E. Dmytryk , Odd man out: a memoir of the Hollywood Ten , Carbondale (IL) 1996.

P. McGilligan , P. Buhle , Tender comrades: a backstory of the Hollywood blacklist , New York 1997.

Th.C. Reeves , The life and times of Joe McCarthy: a biography , Lanham (MD) 1997.

B. Murphy , Congressional theater: dramatizing McCarthyism on stage, film, and television , Cambridge-New York 1999.

G. Muscio , Cinema and cold war, 1946-56 , in History of world cinema , edited by GP Brunetta, 2nd vol., The United States , t. 2, Turin 2000, pp. 1437-61.

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