Hollywood: Still
Honoring Stalinists
by Allan Ryskind23 Feb 2015Hollywood, CA
The patriotic film The American Sniper was nominated for six
Oscars, astonishing fans and critics alike. But why is it surprising that a
film honoring an American hero would be celebrated in the capital of the
American movie business? The fact is, despite a few recent signs of dawning
good sense—think Zero Dark Thirty, on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and Argo,
about a successful CIA operation—Hollywood still tends to spurn patriotism on
the silver screen and to celebrate truly unsavory characters and ideology, as
long as they’re on the Left.
Would Hollywood deliberately grant awards to fascists or
Nazis or KKK members? Not likely.
Then why does Hollywood continue to lavish First Amendment
honors on Joseph
Stalin’s Fifth Column in America,
including those “Hollywood Ten” members who enthusiastically supported Hitler
during the Hitler-Stalin pact? Why does it so warmly embrace Red screenwriters
who were in the Fuehrer’s corner when he set off World War II by invading Poland, rolling over Western Europe
and unleashing death and destruction on England? (Surely Hollywood has to know
that the Red screenwriters turned against the Nazi warlord solely because
Hitler double-crossed his pal in the Kremlin with a massive invasion.)
In 1997 I went to a well-attended event at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills where Hollywood dished
out First Amendment awards to screenwriters Ring Lardner Jr. and Paul Jarrico,
though both were enthusiastic Stalinists for much of their lives. Meaning, both
embraced a ruthless dictator who crushed the tiniest signs of free speech in
the nations he ruled or conquered.
My TV keeps airing reruns of The Majestic, starring
Jim Carrey. The movie names a wonderfully patriotic town populated with
freedom-loving Americans after—guess who?–John Howard Lawson, who died one of
the Hollywood Ten’s most devoted Stalinists.
This year Hollywood plans to glorify another Hollywood Ten
member and long-time Stalinist, Dalton Trumbo. The ads say that Trumbo, to be
played by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston “stood against the Communist
witch-hunt at the height of the Cold War” and was “punished for his principled
stand for free speech and the Constitution.”
Here is what we absolutely know about Trumbo. He told his
biographer, Bruce Cook, that he joined the Communist party in
1943 and that “I might as well have been a Communist ten years earlier.” After
a prison term for contempt of Congress, he says in his papers, he “reaffiliated
with the party in 1954.” He also told Cook that “I’ve never regretted” joining
the party. Never regretted being a pawn of one of the bloodiest mass killers in
world history? Apparently not.
What Hollywood characterizes as his lifelong battle for
“free speech and the Constitution” led Trumbo, over the course of his lifetime,
to support not only Joseph Stalin but Adolf Hitler and North Korea’s Kim
Il-sung. When Stalin made his pact with Hitler in August 1939, Trumbo dutifully
switched to the pro-Hitler camp, accusing FDR of “treason” and “black treason” for supplying
England with war supplies in its life and death struggle against the Nazi
warlord.
When Communist Party head Earl Browder was ousted in 1945
for saying there could be a peaceful path to socialism, Trumbo claimed that it
“comes down to this, if Lenin was right, then Browder was wrong—and
vice versa. I prefer to believe that Lenin was right.”
Trumbo believed that Lenin was right. And Stalin, too. When North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, Trumbo dutifully
allied himself with the Stalinist aggressor. “This is not by me,” Trumbo
lightheartedly scribbled onto the piece of paper that covers a 145-page screen
treatment in his papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Then he boyishly
confesses: “Ah, yes it is!” Trumbo’s script, titled An American Story, features
a heroine who is said by her ex-husband to be an unfit mother because she
favors Communist North Korea’s swift invasion of South Korea in June 1950. She
insists the invasion is completely justifiable for this is “Korea’s fight for
independence, just as we had to fight for our own independence in 1776.”
Hollywood goes all weepy over the blacklist, but by 1947 the
overwhelming majority of American citizens had come to realize that Joseph
Stalin was a murderer of his own people and a deadly enemy of the West, America
in particular. Even very liberal Americans such as Eleanor Roosevelt backed Americans for Democratic Action, which
barred—or should I say “blacklisted”?—Communist Party members because they were
rightly understood to be agents of a foreign enemy of the U.S. The American
Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.), hardly a Right Wing organization, had also
banned Party members from its governing board and staff. It was no less
reasonable for Hollywood producers to exclude propagandists for Stalin from
writing for the movies.
Why is Hollywood honoring the willing accomplices of
totalitarian dictators? It’s past time they stopped confusing men who were in
Stalin’s hip pocket with principled champions of individual liberty. But the
Hollywood Left just can’t seem to break the habit.
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn
was a co-founder for the Goldwyn
Pictures Corporation.
Note: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Inc. (MGM) is the Successor for
the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.
Jonathan
Glickman is the film division president for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM), and Daniel R. Glickman’s son.
Daniel R.
Glickman is Jonathan Glickman’s
father, a director, Congressional Program for the Aspen Institute (think tank), was a trustee at the American Film Institute, the chairman
& CEO for the Motion Picture
Association of America, and a senior adviser for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think
tank), the Roosevelt Institute, the
Natural Resources Defense Council,
and the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and is Jonathan Soros’s father.
Christopher J.
Dodd is a trustee at the American
Film Institute, the chairman for the Motion
Picture Association of America, and Thomas
J. Dodd’s son.
Thomas
J. Dodd was Christopher J. Dodd’s
father, and the prosecutor for the International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
Francis B. Biddle
was the judge for the International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration,
and Schuyler G. Chapin was his uncle
& best man.
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was the
president of the Franklin Delano
Roosevelt administration, married to Eleanor
Roosevelt, Laura Delano Roosevelt’s
grandfather, James Roosevelt’s son,
and attended the Yalta Conference.
Laura Delano
Roosevelt is Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s granddaughter, and a governor for the Roosevelt Institute.
Jonathan
Soros is a senior fellow at the Roosevelt
Institute, and George Soros’s
son.
Schuyler G.
Chapin was Francis B. Biddle’s uncle
& best man, and a governor for the Roosevelt
Institute.
James
Roosevelt was Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s (FDR) son, and Anna
Eleanor Roosevelt’s father.
Anna Eleanor
Roosevelt was James Roosevelt’s
daughter, the chair for the Roosevelt
Institute, and an advisory board member for the Wheelchair Foundation.
Mikhail Gorbachev
is an advisory board member for the Wheelchair
Foundation, the founder of the Green
Cross International, was the general secretary for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Global Green USA
is a US affiliate of Green Cross
International.
Leonardo DiCaprio
was a board member for Global Green USA,
and is a trustee at the Natural
Resources Defense Council.
Robert
Redford is an honorary board member
for Green Cross International, and a trustee at the Natural Resources
Defense Council.
Green Cross International
Robert Redford
is an honorary board member for Green Cross International.
Joseph
Stalin was the premier for the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and attended the Yalta Conference.
Yalta Conference
was a 1945 meeting of Allied leaders, addressing postwar a Major event of World War II.
Alger
Hiss attended the Yalta Conference
with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR),
Whittaker Chambers accused him of espionage,
and was the president of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank).
Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think
tank) was a funder for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank).
Ted
Turner is a co-chairman for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank), an honorary
board member for Green Cross International, and the founder of CNN.
Green Cross International
Ted Turner is an honorary board member for Green
Cross International.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank),
the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank),
a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), and a
2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with
Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans for population
control by involving the United
States in war)
James F. Collins
is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), and was a senior advisor at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP.
Daniel R.
Glickman was a senior adviser for Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, a trustee at the American Film Institute, the chairman & CEO for the Motion Picture Association of America,
is Jonathan Glickman’s father, and a
director, Congressional Program for the Aspen
Institute (think tank).
Christopher J.
Dodd is a trustee at the American
Film Institute, the chairman for the Motion
Picture Association of America, and Thomas
J. Dodd’s son.
Thomas
J. Dodd was Christopher J. Dodd’s
father, and the prosecutor for the International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
Jonathan
Glickman is and Daniel R. Glickman’s
son, and the film division president for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM).
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Inc. (MGM) is the Successor for
the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.
Samuel Goldwyn
was a co-founder for the Goldwyn
Pictures Corporation.
Walter
Isaacson is the president & CEO for the Aspen Institute (think tank), and was the chairman & CEO for CNN.
James S.
Crown is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), a member of
the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the president of the Henry Crown and Company.
Lester Crown
was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), is a member
of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the chairman for Henry Crown and Company.
Henry
Crown and Company is an investor in the Chicago Bulls.
Dennis Rodman was
a player for the Chicago Bulls, and met with Kim Jong Un in 2013.
Kim
Jong Un met with Dennis Rodman
in 2013, and is the leader of North Korea.
John
Brademas was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen
Institute (think tank), and is a governor for the Roosevelt Institute.
Jonathan
Soros is a senior fellow at the Roosevelt
Institute, and George Soros’s
son.
Schuyler G.
Chapin was a governor for the Roosevelt
Institute, and Francis B. Biddle’s
uncle & best man.
Francis B. Biddle
was Schuyler G. Chapin was his uncle
& best man, the attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, and the judge for the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg.
Thomas
J. Dodd was the prosecutor for the International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and Christopher
J. Dodd’s father.
Christopher J.
Dodd is Thomas J. Dodd’s son, a
trustee at the American Film Institute,
and the chairman for the Motion Picture
Association of America.
Daniel R.
Glickman was a trustee at the American
Film Institute, the chairman & CEO for the Motion Picture Association of America, a senior adviser for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP,
is a director, Congressional Program for the Aspen Institute (think tank), and Jonathan Glickman’s father.
Jonathan
Glickman is Daniel R. Glickman’s
son, and the film division president for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM).
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Inc. (MGM) is the Successor for
the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.
Samuel Goldwyn
was a co-founder for the Goldwyn
Pictures Corporation.
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