BY JOHN BENSON
LOS ANGELES - Elia Kazan was the director of many
films - On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire,
Gentleman's Agreement. He was also a star stool pigeon for the
House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, giving names
of colleagues he claimed had been members of the Communist
Party (CP).
Dozens of screenwriters, playwrights, actors, and directors were blacklisted for years through the HUAC hearings in the late 1940s and early '50s. Ten were imprisoned for refusing to give names to the committee. Even greater numbers of militants were witch-hunted out of the industrial unions.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences plans to give Elia Kazan a Lifetime Achievement Award March 21. This unanimous decision by the 39-member board of governors of the academy, on the proposal of board member Karl Malden, has sparked a debate that reaches far beyond Hollywood.
An ad signed by members of the Academy, blacklisted writers and directors and their relatives will appear in the March 19 issue of Variety, a trade publication, encouraging those attending the award ceremony not to stand and applaud Kazan. At the awards ceremony itself, those protesting the award are planning to sit on their hands in silence rather than applaud when Kazan is presented the "Oscar" statue.
A demonstration across the street from the ceremony has been called by The Committee Against Silence. The committee is co-chaired by Bernard Gordon, a formerly blacklisted screenwriter, and immigration attorney Leone Hankey. The action is being endorsed by other formerly blacklisted writers and numerous political organizations.
Layer of liberals oppose protest
The award is fueling debate, especially among a layer of
liberal and left-wing forces. Many who in the past have spoken
against the witch-hunt have come out in support of the
"lifetime achievement" award for Kazan.
Playwright Arthur Miller, who had also been called before HUAC and refused to give names, said he personally faced "blacklisting not of offensive works but of a person, something that, incidentally, was common Soviet practice," adding a red-baiting note.
Writing in the liberal weekly The Nation, Miller stated, "My feelings toward that terrible era are unchanged, but at the same time history ought not to be rewritten; Elia Kazan did sufficient extraordinary work in theater and film to merit its acknowledgment."
Nation publisher Victor Navasky, author of a book about the witch-hunt in Hollywood titled Naming Names, "acknowledged some ambivalence" about the award, the New York Times reported. Navasky said that "with the passage of time, some of the passions are cooled."
Phoenix Pictures chairman and CEO Mike Medavoy publicly refused to sign the Variety ad protesting the award. "The Academy Awards honor people's art, not politics," he wrote. "I don't agree with [Kazan's] choice of having given names, but it was his choice."
In reply, protest organizer Gordon noted that the Academy did not separate art and politics during the blacklisting.
Gale Anne Hurd, who helped prevent Kazan from being given an American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award a decade ago, said that at that time the arts were under attack from the extreme right wing. But now "Kazan absolutely deserves an honorary Oscar," the March 15 Los Angeles Times quoted her saying.
Two days later, the Los Angeles Times published an Op-Ed column by actor Richard Dreyfuss explaining why he would be "sitting on his hands" if he were in attendance at the Academy Awards. "Elia Kazan is a great director, and he has been amply rewarded for that by the Academy in the past. But if this award becomes something else, if it endorses the idea that it would somehow fulfill a debt that hasn't been paid, then I object.... If we are being asked to say, `Let us forgive it, it was such a long time agó. . . or worse, if we are being asked to say that what was done was morally right, then, no, this is all poppycock."
Kazan has not only never apologized for his testimony, which helped drive people from their jobs. He has vigorously defended it and the anti-communist witch-hunt.
After testifying before HUAC, Kazan took out an ad in the New York Times in which he declared that "liberals must speak out" against the "dangerous and alien conspiracy" of communism. The hero of his 1954 movie On the Waterfront decides to inform on alleged mob control of the union. And in his 1988 memoirs Kazan says that he acted honorably and would testify again.
Writing on the controversy in his February 25 syndicated column, conservative columnist Joseph Sobran declared, "Some of Kazan's defenders argue that he should be `forgiven' for testifying and honored for his artistic achievements. The truth is he should be honored for both.... Kazan helped rid Hollywood of people who were using movies as a vehicle for communist lies. Personally, I'm glad what he done to them."
Witch-hunt was aimed at working class
When Kazan appeared before the HUAC hearings in Los
Angeles on April 10, 1952, he testified that he had briefly
been a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s and named
various of his friends from the Group Theater who he said had
also once been members of the CP.
Kazan's testimony came at the height of the witch-hunt and Sen. Joseph McCarthy was riding high. HUAC had been in Detroit the month before the Los Angeles hearings, witch-hunting for "communists" in Local 600 of the United Automobile Workers, which had a militant local leadership that opposed the red- baiting of UAW president Walter Reuther.
But the red scare and the loyalty program that began during President Harry Truman's first term was aimed at housebreaking the labor movement. On March 21, 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which directed all government departments to set up boards to determine the loyalty of employees. On Nov. 24, 1947, Attorney General Thomas Clark issued a list of organizations deemed subversive as a guide to implement the loyalty program.
Within months this list was used to begin forcing people to quit or be fired from government jobs. HUAC began investigating "communist influence" in the labor movement. In 1948 twelve members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party were indicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to advocate the overthrow the government by force and violence. The CP had earlier supported the jailing of members of the Socialist Workers Party and Teamsters union under this law for their opposition to U.S. imperialism in World War II.
The HUAC hearings on Hollywood were part of this broader attack on democratic rights. The first hearings began Oct. 20, 1947. Nineteen "unfriendly" witnesses were subpoenaed and 10 were forced to appear. All 10 refused to answer questions, citing their rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution, and were imprisoned for contempt of Congress in 1950. Almost immediately after the hearings all 10 were fired and the Hollywood blacklist developed.
This assault on democratic rights coincided with the decision of the Truman administration to break the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union. Washington, confronted with the rising colonial revolution and the 1949 victory of the Chinese revolution, launched the Korean War in 1950. The loyalty program was part of the preparation for war. And the witch-hunt grew out of the loyalty program.
The loyalty program and the witch-hunt were an extension of the assault on democratic rights begun earlier under the Roosevelt administration to prepare for World War II, from the Smith Act indictments to FBI targeting of the NAACP and newspapers read mainly by Blacks that encouraged fighting for equal rights while the war was going on.
As the U.S. rulers depend on greater use of the cops, courts, and government informers against working people today, they have an interest in gaining political acceptance for a star witch-hunter like Kazan.
The debate over the blacklisting, reignited by the Academy Awards, "is not just an issue of historical importance, but one that has its reflection and consequences in today's world," remarked Hollywood director Nick Castle in an interview. "It is part of the continued attacks on democratic rights. It is part of the culture war that's being fought on all kinds of issues. This award can be seen as giving credence to what Kazan did. I intend to join the protest at the academy awards along with those who will be there to oppose the lifetime achievement award being given to Elia Kazan. I encourage others to join us - protest to remember the act and to see that it doesn't happen again."
The picket at the Academy Awards will take place in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 21, at 3:00 p.m. across from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, on Hope St. between First and Temple.