Film Messages

In his Sept. 18 column on Gunter Grass’ recent novel and PC in Germany, William Pfaff makes a shockingly misinformed aside when he asserts that “Fellow-traveling Hollywood writers tried to slip the proletarian message into films of the 1930s and did so easily in the 1940s” and thus later found themselves before the House Un-American Activities Committee. At least if they tried, they were notoriously unsuccessful in expressing such beliefs in films.

That there were leftists (Communists and fellow travelers) in Hollywood is certain, but congressional committees could never find pro-leftist messages in any of their films, beyond the line “share and share alike, that’s America,” a sentiment that seems minimally subversive. There were social message films in those days as there were in the ‘60s and still are from time to time, largely because the studio chiefs (no leftists here) thought there was a profit to be made in such films. And there was the case of “Mission to Moscow,” pushed on Hollywood by the U.S. government.

But those who suffered before the HUAC and the hundreds who did not appear but lost their livelihoods because of the blacklist were victims of a witch hunt that had to do with their beliefs, not their activities. And these beliefs were as likely to be liberal and/or pro-union as they were to be pro-Stalin. That is the shocking part of those events: persecution for beliefs out of sync with those of government officials.

ROBERT A. ROSENSTONE

Professor of History, Caltech