Let’s Review the Evidence

Given that it’s now marking its 50th anniversary, it’s not surprising that a body of conventional wisdom has grown up around the Hollywood blacklist in general and the first 10 filmmakers called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in particular.

This group of suspected communists, known alternately as the Hollywood Ten and the Unfriendly Ten, was tartly characterized by director Billy Wilder when he said, “Of the 10, two had talent, the others were just unfriendly.” And the conventional wisdom about the stigmatized filmmakers in fact says that: a) their political actions and convictions were more memorable than their films, and b) with obvious exceptions like “Mission to Moscow,” which treated Joseph Stalin like the Jolly Postman, they were unable to get much political content into their work.

With this as backdrop, it’s especially bracing to dip into the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art film series, “Red Hollywood,” and the documentary with the same name (shown free with museum admission) that opens the five-week program Friday night and sets its tone. You may not come away totally convinced, but you won’t be so quick to accept those facile generalizations either.

Written and directed by Thom Andersen (who will introduce the film) and Noel Burch, “Red Hollywood” starts with the straightforward premise that while the blacklist’s victims “have been canonized as martyrs, their film work in Hollywood is still largely denigrated or ignored. ‘Red Hollywood’ considers this work to demonstrate how the communists of Hollywood were sometimes able to express their ideas in the films they wrote and directed.”

Plowing industriously through a wealth of obscure material by writers and directors who were either party members or sympathizers, the makers of “Red Hollywood” include clips from more than 50 films, many of them close to unknown today. Even with familiar pictures, the intent here is to show them in a new, provocative and, yes, subversive light.

‘Red Hollywood” opens, for instance, with a scene from Nicholas Ray’s delirious western “Johnny Guitar.” While an earlier documentary, “The Celluloid Closet,” detailed the effect of Joan Crawford in her black shirt on a generation of gays, “Red Hollywood” offers clips that underline the importance of the film’s blacklist subtext about the perils of “naming names.”

Broken up into categories like war, class, sexes and hate, “Red Hollywood” makes the case for how adroit writers could be at getting their progressive messages into films. The war section, for instance, shows Henry Fonda giving a passionate pro-Spanish Republic speech (written by John Howard Lawson)in 1938’s “Blockade.” And it demonstrates how isolationist screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. undercut the internationalism of Katharine Hepburn’s character with the lines given to her co-star Spencer Tracy in “Woman of the Year.”

The film also brings to light the fascinating ideological battles that took place within the party. Critic V.J. Jerome, for instance, is quoted attacking “Intruder in the Dust,” written by Ben Maddow from the William Faulkner novel and generally applauded for its groundbreaking portrait of a strong, dignified African American character. Jerome, however, felt that the film’s emphasis on the importance of whites in saving the day denied the reality of racism. So much for solidarity forever.

Aside from “Johnny Guitar,” which plays in its entirety along with the little-seen “Try and Get Me!” on a program entitled “The Mob Mentality,” which closes the series Dec. 20, several other familiar films are shown in unfamiliar contexts.

The always-welcome “Sweet Smell of Success,” written by Clifford Odets and starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, is here because it illustrates how the fear and blackmail that characterized the blacklist era operated in the world of daily journalism. And who could pass up the opportunity to program the classic John Garfield-starring double bill, “Body and Soul” (directed by Robert Rossen and written by Abraham Polonsky) and “Force of Evil” (directed and co-written by Polonsky). Socially committed filmmaking doesn’t get any better than this.

“Red Hollywood” also offers an opportunity for viewing some classics of progressive film that are discussed more often than they are seen. Witness the Dec. 6 double bill of “Native Land,” a docudrama about violations of the Bill of Rights most notable for its Paul Strand cinematography, and “Salt of the Earth.” A passionate defense of workers’ right to strike, this 1954 film, all but unseeable in the years after its release, has been accurately called “the grandfather of independent filmmaking” by the late producer Paul Jarrico.

Also little seen but noteworthy are double bills that showcase films by blacklisted directors. Both shot in London, Jules Dassin’s “Night and the City” appears with Edward Dmytryk’s “Give Us This Day,” a picture so rare it does not even appear in Leonard Maltin’s authoritative movie and video guide. And Joseph Losey’s two 1951 features, “The Prowler” and “The Big Night,” are unsettling and cinematic enough to make his exile in Europe especially regrettable.

As always with a series like this, “Red Hollywood” also offers the opportunity to experience semi-obscure gems that likely have not been near a big screen in years. A prime example is “Marked Woman,” a crackling 1937 melodrama that has district attorney Humphrey Bogart creating feminine camaraderie among magnetic dance-hall hostess Bette Davis and four of her pals, including Bogart’s third wife, Mayo Methot.

Two other surprising films dealing with what the series calls “The Feminist Agenda” are double-billed Nov. 28. “Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman,” released in 1947, stars a vibrant Susan Hayward as a woman who finds out what a terrible mistake it can be to give up a career for husband and family. And 1941’s “Tom, Dick and Harry” uses Ginger Rogers to have pointed fun at the expense of the cliches of movie romances.

Most determined in their attack on the Wall Street system are “Ruthless” and “Quicksand,” on a Dec. 19 double bill. The former, sometimes referred to as B-picture guru Edgar G. Ulmer’s “Citizen Kane,” details the rise of a, yes, ruthless tycoon. The latter stars Mickey Rooney in a “Les Miserables” story of a well-meaning auto mechanic who lifts a few dollars to impress a date and gets caught in the coils of unsparing capitalism. Even Karl Marx would have been impressed.

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* The “Red Hollywood” schedule: Friday, “The Hollywood Ten,” “Red Hollywood”; Saturday, “Sweet of Success,” “The Front”; Nov. 28, “Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman,” “Tom, Dick and Harry”; Nov. 29, “Night and the City,” “Give Us This Day”; Dec. 5, “Body and Soul,” “Force of Evil”; Dec. 6, “Salt of the Earth,” “Native Land”; Dec. 12, “So Young, So Bad,” “Marked Woman”; Dec. 13, “The Prowler,” “The Big Night”;Dec. 19, “Ruthless,” “Quicksand”;Dec. 20, “Johnny Guitar,” “Try and Get Me!” All screenings are at 7:30 p.m. at the Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. $4-$6, except for a free 5:30 p.m. showing of “Point of Order” on Dec. 6. (213) 857-6010.