The Cold War & Internal Security Collection and Joyner Library Special Collections are hosting a joint exhibit titled “HUAC Goes to Hollywood: Aspects of the Blacklist 70 Years Later.” The exhibit can be found on the first floor of Joyner Library, and will remain up through the end of December. This is the last of four CWIS blog posts that will expand on this exhibit.
Robert Rossen (1908-1966) was a Hollywood film director and former communist party (CPUSA) member, who on two occasions was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His controversial film All the King’s Men, released at the end of 1949, would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is perhaps then, not a surprise that Rossen would be subjected to a strenuous ideological interrogation over the content of his film. Nor is it surprising that the ten “unfriendly” 1947 HUAC witnesses known as the Hollywood Ten would be present at this event. What will likely come as a surprise is that it was not HUAC, but the Hollywood Ten themselves who served as Rossen’s inquisitors.
The Communist Party and Artistic Freedom:
The entertainment industry blacklist imposed on those suspected of CPUSA involvement or sympathies began to fade by the late 1950s, and was all but over by the mid-1960s. Today, the blacklist is justifiably seen as a grave assault on civil liberties and artistic freedom. The specter of a congressional committee working in tandem with private organizations and activists to deny employment to individuals based on their political views is quite disturbing. Those who resisted HUAC and the blacklist are often seen as uncompromising defenders of intellectual freedom, while those who agreed to “name names” are derided as cowards or sellouts.
There is however, a complicating factor involved. Many of those blacklisted, including all the Hollywood Ten, were at some point involved with the CPUSA. The party demanded that its members uphold what was known as the “party line” under all circumstances. Committed to upholding that line, many of them saw artistic freedom and civil liberties as tools to be used only in support of the CPUSA, not against it.The CPUSA forbade its members from reading books that were critical of communism or the USSR, and actively campaigned against films deemed “reactionary.” It demanded intellectual freedom and civil liberties for its supporters, while calling for those same rights to be denied to their opponents. Most infamously, in 1949, the pro-CPUSA actor/singer Paul Robeson spoke at a rally where he denounced the federal government’s prosecution of CPUSA leaders. At the same event, in response to a question, he defended the prosecution of Trotskyists, the CPUSA’s archenemies, under the same statute being used against the communists. Robeson justified his view by comparing Trotskyists to the Klan and argued that “Would you give civil rights to the Ku Klux Klan?” (Quoted in Duberman, Paul Robeson, 382)
Among Hollywood communists, the CPUSA sought to force its members to subordinate their art to the party line. These demands for ideological conformity drove a number of writers and directors to quit the party. Screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg, for example, quit the CPUSA after being pressured to alter his 1940 novel What Makes Sammy Run to suit the dictates of the party. Schulberg’s friend, director Elia Kazan would later leave the party over similar concerns. Both would eventually become “friendly” witnesses before HUAC.
Even the Hollywood Ten themselves were subject to the party’s ideological censorship. Edward Dmytryk, the one member of the Ten who would ultimately become a “friendly” witness, was expelled from the CPUSA in 1945 for refusing to make changes to his film Cornered that the party demanded. Others, such as Albert Maltz, caved in to the party’s dictates. In February 1946, Maltz published an essay in the party literary journal New Masses titled “What Shall We Ask of Writers.” Maltz argues that art should not be seen merely as a vehicle for politics, but should be judged on its own merits. For nearly two months, Maltz was pilloried for this view by his fellow communists. Finally, in April, Maltz gave in and returned to the party fold, publishing a second New Masses piece in which he retracted his earlier views.
Rossen, the Party, and All the King’s Men:
Rossen had joined the CPUSA in 1937, but had become disillusioned by the late 1940s. All the King’s Men, with its strong theme of power corrupting, was deemed antithetical to the party line, possibly a thinly-veiled attack on Stalin himself, something anathema to the CPUSA. Still a party member, Rossen was summoned, ironically, to Albert Maltz’s house, where the Hollywood Ten waited as an ideological board of inquiry. According to Dmytryk, after much heated discussion, Rossen finally told his inquisitors to “Stick the whole party up your ass!” before walking out in disgust. (Quoted in Dmytryk, Odd Man Out, 115) Dmytryk’s account is confirmed by comments made by Ring Lardner, Jr., another of the Ten: “There was a similar discussion…about the movie All the King’s Men, with Robert Rossen…and there again the result of the discussion was to drive Rossen out of the Party.” (Quoted in Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 170; cited in Neve, “Red Hollywood in Transition”, 196)
Rossen would testify twice before HUAC. In 1951, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment, but in 1953, he appeared as a friendly witness. Factors such as financial hardship, career considerations, and personal animus, certainly played a major role in why many “friendly” witnesses chose to name names. However, the belief that the CPUSA itself posed a threat to artistic freedom, and that it did the bidding of a hostile foreign power in the USSR, was also a factor in persuading many such as Rossen to testify.
CWIS Sources:
Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry – Part 3, Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, First Session. 1951. (Joyner Docs CWIS: Y 4.Un 1/2:C 73/21 PT. 3)
-Director Robert Rossen’s first, “unfriendly” appearance before HUAC.
Investigation of Communist Activities in the New York City Area – Part 4. Hearing before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-Third Congress, First Session. 1953. (Joyner Docs CWIS: Y4.Un1/2:C73/38/pt.4)
-Robert Rossen’s second, “friendly” appearance before HUAC.
Other Sources:
Billingsley, Kenneth Lloyd. Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1998. (Joyner Stacks: PN1998.2 .B53 2000)
Casty, Alan. Communism in Hollywood: The Moral Paradoxes of Testimony, Silence, and Betrayal. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009. (Joyner Stacks: PN1993.5 .U6 C347 2009)
Casty, Alan. Robert Rossen: The Films and Politics of a Blacklisted Idealist. Jefferson, NC; London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013. (Joyner Stacks: PN1998.3 .R673 C38 2013)
Dmytryk, Edward. Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten. Carbondale, Il: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. (Joyner Stacks: PN1998.3.D6 A3 1996)
Duberman, Martin Bauml. Paul Robeson. New York: Knopf, 1988. (Joyner Stacks: E185.97.R63 D83 1988)
Maltz, Albert. “What Shall We Ask of Writers,” New Masses, 58 (February 12, 1946). (Joyner Hoover Collection: HX 1 N4)
-Maltz’s first article, in which he argues that writers should be permitted a degree of artistic freedom outside of political ideology.
Maltz, Albert. “Moving Forward,” New Masses, 58 (April 9, 1946). (Joyner Hoover Collection: HX 1 N4)
-Maltz’s second article, written after weeks of vituperative criticism from the communist party, in which he retracted his previous views on artistic freedom.
McGilligan, Patrick, and Paul Buhle. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. (Joyner Stacks: PN1590.B5 M35 1997)
Neve, Brian. “Red Hollywood in Transition: The Case of Robert Rossen.” in “Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era. ed. Frank Krutnik, et. al. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007, 184-197. (Joyner Stacks: PN 1995.9.P6 U5 2007)
Radosh, Ronald, and Allis Radosh. Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005. (Joyner Stacks: PN1998.2 .R33 2006)
Schwartz, Nancy Lynn, and Sheila Schwartz. The Hollywood Writers’ Wars. New York: Knopf, 1982. (Joyner Stacks: PN1993.S295 S3 1982)