More on Kazan

Regarding the response (Letters, Feb. 11) to Patrick Goldstein’s article, “Why Won’t Hollywood Forgive Elia Kazan?” (Jan. 14): Charlton Heston repeats one of the fundamental canards of the American Right--that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations willingly “lost” China to the Communists, as though it were ever ours to lose. In fact, the actions of President Harry S. Truman and secretaries of state George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson did more to stop Stalinist expansionism in places such as Berlin, Korea and Greece than did 50 years of right-wing saber-rattling, red-baiting and blacklisting.

Bart Paul

Lake View Terrace

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Heston should be ashamed of having compared the Hollywood witch hunts of the 1950s with the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi invaders of France and elsewhere. He owes every survivor of the invasion and Hitler’s concentration camps an apology.

Lloyd E. Flyer

Burbank

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Heston asks us to compare those who were asked to divulge colleagues’ names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities to “a French director” who might have been asked to collaborate with the Nazis. Heston’s logic is flawed. Giving up names of colleagues to HUAC was an act of personal betrayal, but informing on traitors would be an act of national interest.

Burt Wilson

Simi Valley

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If, if Rod Steiger is so appalled by Kazan, why in the world did he appear in the great “On the Waterfront” (1954), in which Kazan made him a star?

R. A. Lee

Los Angeles