01/19/16

Hollywood’s Despicable Hero Dalton Trumbo

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Trumbo

Special Report

From the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism

Cliff Kincaid, director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, interviewed Allan H. Ryskind, author of the book,Hollywood Traitors, and long-time editor of the newspaper Human Events, about the life and beliefs of Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood screenwriter and the subject of the film “Trumbo.” Trumbo supported Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung. He condemned Martin Luther King, Jr., for not being a true revolutionary. Yet, he is depicted in the film as just a family-friendly socialist and defender of the First Amendment in the film.

Ryskind’s father, the famous Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, worked with Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Walt Disney and others against communist domination of Hollywood. Reagan considered Human Events as his favorite newspaper when he was president.

In addition to being honored by Hollywood, Trumbo’s star, Bryan Cranston, and director Jay Roach, were given an “exclusive private tour” of the Newseum, the privately-funded museum in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the First Amendment.

Q: Much of Hollywood has given a major send-off to the movie, “Trumbo,” which celebrates the famous Communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.  Bryan Cranston, who plays Trumbo in the movie, has just been nominated “best actor in a leading role” by the Screen Actors Guild. SAG had even pushed for the entire cast to get an Oscar.  Many Hollywood organizations, like the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, have wholeheartedly embraced the movie’s message of Dalton as a First Amendment hero and Cranston as a best actor nominee. And this is only part of the story. The Hollywood Reporter, the industry’s well-known trade publication, and the SAG’s influential magazine, Written By, have devoted loads of publicity to the supposed importance of the film and the wonders of Dalton himself. You’ve seen the film, so what do you make of it as an accurate picture of the times?

A: Look, if you didn’t know anything about the effort by serious Communists—and Dalton was a very serious Communist—to capture the movie industry for the purpose of serving our deadly enemy, the Soviet Union, you’d think this was a pleasant movie and that Dalton was an avuncular idealist whose guiding political philosophy was not communism but helping the underdog and preserving the First Amendment. He is portrayed as something of a saintly socialist who not only defied the Hollywood blacklist, but defeated it and struck a major blow for freedom and patriotic progressives. To the extent it is conceded that he had some theoretical beliefs that could be considered Marxist, he is depicted as more Pope Francis than Vladimir Lenin.

Q: In what way does the movie hide or gloss over Trumbo’s Red record?

A: All of his heavy-duty propaganda and activities on behalf of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party are omitted. So is his vigorous support of Lenin, Adolph Hitler (during the Hitler-Stalin pact) and North Korea’s Kim Il-sung after his aggressive attack against South Korea in 1950. Even his membership in the American CP, which he eventually bragged about, is ignored. Dalton was on Stalin’s side virtually all of his adult life—in important ways—but those unfamiliar with the titanic battle between the Sovieteers and the anti-Communists in Hollywood wouldn’t have a clue as to what that fight in the movie colony was all about and Trumbo’s deep involvement on the Soviet side.

The villains in the movie, incidentally, are not the party members who worked covertly—and relentlessly—to turn Hollywood over to Moscow but the anti-Communist community who fought the Red conspiracy in the film industry—and won, at least for a time. Columnist Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, labor leader Roy Brewer, the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Motion Picture Alliance and other opponents of the Communists come in for a severe beating. And while the picture blasts the blacklist, which banned Communist Party members from the industry, the average viewer would have virtually no idea as to what it meant to be a party member and why the blacklist was imposed.

Q: How did this movie come about?

A: The film’s screenwriter, John McNamara, who has done a number of TV shows, was inspired by Bruce Cook’s 1977 friendly biography of Trumbo. McNamara, who worked on the script for years, is plainly a big admirer of the screenwriter who wrote a number of excellent movies, including “Spartacus” and “Roman Holiday.” Director Jay Roach, who directed the “Austin Powers” movies, is another Trumbo fan. The star who plays Dalton, Bryan Cranston, the meth dealer in the hit TV show, “Breaking Bad,” has been touring the nation singing the praises of Dalton as a fighter for freedom.

Q: You say he was a “Stalinist” and a member of the Communist Party, facts that you argue are fundamentally ignored by the movie. But how do we know he was a party member?

A: There is no question about his CP membership. In those famous 1947 hearings, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) submitted material proving beyond a doubt that he was a party member, though Trumbo and nine other screenwriters and directors refused to respond to questions about party membership, accusing HUAC of violating their First Amendment rights. Trumbo and the other nine, soon to be dubbed The Hollywood Ten, served time in prison for contempt of Congress and were blacklisted because the Hollywood studios laid down the rule that no one could work in Hollywood if he or she belonged to the Soviet-controlled Communist Party or refused to tell Congress they were party members. (Each of the Ten, by the way, was a party member and their Communist cards were produced at the ’47 hearings.)

Years later, however, Trumbo finally admitted to his biographer, Bruce Cook, that he joined the party in 1943, and that “I might as well have been a Communist ten years earlier. But I’ve never regretted it. As a matter of fact, it’s possible to say I would have regretted not having done it.”  (Bruce Cook’s Dalton Trumbo, pp. 146-148) No regrets about being a tool of a party controlled by the Caligula in the Kremlin? Apparently not.

In an unpublished memo among his papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison (a copy of which is in my possession), Trumbo writes, after his prison term and a lengthy sojourn to Mexico, that he “re-affiliated with the party in 1954” and that “in the spring of 1956, I left the party for good.” His papers in Madison also revealed he remained a Stalin apologist until Trumbo’s death in 1976, insisting that whatever his defects, the Kremlin dictator’s most important historical contribution was to have advanced the cause of socialism worldwide.

Q: But is it really fair to call him a Stalinistrather than a man who frequently followed the party line?

A: Though he says he joined the party in 1943, Trumbo never publicly deviated from the Stalinist line since the late 1930s and never publicly displayed a bit of remorse for that evil man’s malevolent rule. In a sympathetic portrayal of the Hollywood Communists in their classic [book], The Inquisition in Hollywood, authors Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund ask: “Were the Hollywood Communists ‘Stalinist?’ The initial answer must be ‘yes.’ Communist screenwriters defended the Stalinist regime, accepted the Comintern’s policies and about-faces, and criticized enemies and allies alike with an infuriating self-righteousness, superiority and selective memory, which eventually alienated all but the staunchest fellow travelers.” (p. 239)

“As defenders of the Soviet regime,” they added, “the screen artists Reds became known apologists for crimes of monstrous dimensions, though they claimed to have known nothing about such crimes, and, indeed, shouted down, or ignored those who did.” Ceplair and Englund also stress that they “defended that regime unflinchingly, uncritically, inflexibly—and therefore left themselves open to the justifiable suspicion that they not only approved of everything they were defending, but would themselves act in the same way if they were in the same position.”  (emphasis added) (p. 241)

Trumbo fits that description to a tee.

Q: Both the liberals and the Left continue to say that there never was a genuine Red “threat” in Hollywood to begin with. Yes, there were some folks who might have mouthed the Soviet line once in a while or “flirted with Communist ideas,” as industry representative Jack Valenti put it, but they weren’t really subversive and had no real influence over the movie colony to begin with. So why did HUAC feel compelled to hold those 1947 hearings on the Communist influence in the movie industry?

A: By 1944, a number of important Hollywood writers, directors, labor union officials and studio executives, alarmed by the Red infiltration of the industry, formed the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (the MPA). Among the founders and members were Morrie Ryskind (my dad), Walt Disney, Russian émigré Ayn Rand, labor union officials and executives from various studios. Actors Robert Taylor and John Wayne were leaders in the group, (which, incidentally, is walloped by the Trumbo movie). They were of various political persuasions, but they all despised the Communists, whom they viewed as enemies of America.

The group was formed because in 1944 it looked as if committed Stalinists had taken control of Hollywood. Hard-core party members had major influence in the powerful guilds and unions, with the very influential Screen Writers Guild picking party members Dalton Trumbo and Gordon Kahn in June 1945 to run the guild’s flagship publication, The Screen Writer. Under Trumbo and Kahn, the publication became a tool of the CP, celebrating important screenwriter Reds and advertising lectures on history, economics and foreign policy from a Marxist and Soviet point of view. Trumbo also used it as a platform to attack the Hollywood anti-Communist community. Communist screenwriters, moreover, had major influence on Hollywood scripts and were turning out films hailing the Soviet economic and political system and even the murderous Joseph Stalin himself.

By 1947, you also have to remember, the Cold War, which Stalin had initiated by seizing Eastern Europe and a portion of Central Europe through force and threats of force, was already under way. And the overwhelming majority of Americans had come to realize that Stalin was a deadly enemy. Even the cream of the liberal community, such as FDR’s widow, Eleanor Roosevelt, liberal lawyer Joseph Rauh and union leaders Walter Reuther and David Dubinsky had deliberately split with the Communists, forming in January of 1947 the Americans for Democratic Action which banned, or should I say blacklisted, anyone who was a Communist. But Hollywood Communists, through party fronts, books, essays, movies, political activities and pots full of money, deliberately allied themselves with Moscow against America and the rest of the Free World.

Q:  You say that Trumbo sided with Hitler at one point, but didn’t the Communists in Hollywood lead the fight against fascism and Naziism?

A: Early on, they opposed Hitler, whom they rightly viewed as a major threat to the Soviet Union, the country they had embraced as their own. They formed the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, called on the country to boycott German goods and urged the U.S. to aid the “anti-fascist forces” in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. John Howard Lawson, who became the chief enforcer of the Stalinist line in Hollywood, even wrote a movie, “Blockade, to help persuade FDR to assist the Soviet side.

What is customarily omitted in so much of the “history” is that the Soviet Union and the Communist parties around the globe switched sides on August 23, 1939, when Hitler and Stalin formed the Hitler-Stalin pact. The Hollywood Reds now supported Hitler when he invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939—the immediate cause of World War II—and backed him the next year when he conquered Norway, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg and then put down the Nazi flag in France. Stalin’s key aide, V. Molotov, even sent Hitler a congratulatory note when France fell to German forces. And the Red screenwriters, Trumbo especially, backed Hitler when he began raining death and destruction on London.

Trumbo, in fact, led the fight to ease Hitler’s burden of conquest. He did this by demonizing all of Hitler’s enemies and accusing Great Britain of being deceptive, dishonorable and unworthy of American assistance. England, he noted, was a monarchy, not a democracy, and had declared war against Hitler, not the other way around. He also accused FDR, previously a Communist Party favorite, of being guilty of “treason” and “black treason” for giving weapons to the British in their hour of peril. Trumbo enthusiastically presented his views in speeches and in writing and laid out the case most explicitly in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew.

The Hollywood Communists, including Trumbo, quickly turned against Hitler after the Fuehrer double-crossed Stalin and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941. Then, and only then, did the radical screenwriters switch sides again, now demanding America give major military and economic assistance to Moscow to help it survive the Nazi onslaught. Only after Hitler invaded the USSR did the Red screenwriters become “patriotic,” since they believed U.S. assistance was crucial to the Soviet Union’s survival. Their patriotic feelings were for Stalin’s Russia, not their country of birth.

Q: But was Trumbo a faithful follower of the party line after World War II?

A: Trumbo, as even Larry Ceplair and Dalton’s late son, Christopher, note in their new book on the screenwriter, also called, Dalton Trumbo, accepts that Dalton embraced the Stalinist line for many years after World War II. A number of Soviet experts maintain that Stalin initiated the Cold War in April 1945 when Jacque Duclos, a prominent French Communist, assailed the American party boss, Earl Browder, for saying there could be a peaceful transition to socialism in America and that the United States and the Soviet Union could work together peacefully in the post-World War II period. The American CP, thinking this was a signal from Stalin himself to renew the class warfare rhetoric and paint America as an enemy that needed to be defeated, then booted Browder out of his job and then out of the party. Trumbo was on board, saying: “It comes down to this, if Lenin was right, then Browder was wrong—and vice versa. I prefer to believe Lenin was right.” (Bruce Cook, Dalton Trumbo, p. 163.)

Trumbo then lined up with Stalin against America on all important foreign policy issues: supporting the Soviet seizure of Eastern Europe, backing Stalin’s effort to conquer Western Europe, declaring America “the main enemy,” embracing serious Communist efforts in the United States to penetrate crucial elements in American society, including Hollywood, the unions, the military, the State Department, our atomic energy installations and the White House.

Nothing so underscores his love for Leninism, Stalinism and communism in general than his post-WWII unpublished manuscript discovered in his papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. “This is not by me,” Trumbo lightheartedly scribbles onto a piece of paper covering the 145-page screen treatment dealing with the Korean War. Then he boyishly confesses: “Ah yes it is! For $2,000 I dramatized a local child-custody case for a group composed of Paul Jarrico, Adrian Scott, Herbert Biberman, et al. [Scott and Biberman were two of the Hollywood Ten. Jarrico headed the CP in the 1950s.]  It was naturally never made [into a movie]. Dalton Trumbo.”

Trumbo titled his script An American Story and the heroine, Catherine Bonham, is said by her ex-husband to be an unfit mother because she favors Communist North Korea’s swift and brutal invasion of South Korea in June 1950. She insists the invasion was completely justifiable, for this is “Korea’s fight for independence, just as we had to fight for our own independence in 1776.” She is hopeful, nay predicts, that “people all over the world” will rise up and create other North Koreas. “Many will suffer and die fighting for this goal,” she tells her children, “but we will win. Never doubt it.”

Q: The Trumbo film also suggests that he was a champion of blacks and the civil rights movement. Is that true?

A: In their new Trumbo biography, Larry Ceplair and the late Christopher Trumbo, Dalton’s son, write that Dalton did not care much for the non-violent civil rights forces. They noted that Dalton was a champion of the Black Panthers and “had come to believe that non-violent resistance had its limitations. When David L. Wolper contacted Trumbo about adapting William Styron’s novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, (about the leader of a bloody slave revolt in Virginia in 1831), Trumbo expressed interest and described Turner as ‘a far more contemporary figure than Martin Luther King…In his resort to violence, Nat Turner is truly a man of the Twentieth Century, which Martin Luther King, unhappily, is not.’” (page 473. Wolper had contacted Trumbo in 1968 after King’s non-violent tactics had proved key to the passage of the sweeping 1964 and 1965 civil rights laws.)

Q: Is Trumbo the first Stalinist screenwriter who has been celebrated by Hollywood since Dalton broke the blacklist in 1960?

A: No. Trumbo is just the latest. Hollywood screenwriters, authors and essayists have been hailing devoted Hollywood Reds for years, especially The Hollywood Ten. In 1997, the 50thanniversary of the blacklist, I attended a gathering of celebrities at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, where Hollywood was honoring several long-time Stalinists, including Hollywood Ten member Ring Lardner, Jr., and the former head of the Communist Party in Hollywood, Paul Jarrico. The Writers Guild of America, West, a successor organization to the powerful Screen Writers Guild, bestowed on them First Amendment awards, no less, for refusing to tell HUAC whether they were party members who were conspiring with the Kremlin leader to impose a Soviet style government in America. Each of the Ten was a committed Red and only one, Edward Dmytryk, broke with the party. Whatever one might think of the blacklist, why in the world would Hollywood award a First Amendment award to anyone who was a Communist, since Communists the world over have never believed in free speech?

The film “The Majestic,” starring Jim Carrey, runs regularly on TV and the authors name a wonderful patriotic town, filled with Middle-American virtues, after John Howard Lawson, an excellent screenwriter, but Hollywood’s veteran CP boss, who died yearning for a Stalinist America. Lawson was the chief enforcer of the party line in the movie colony. Trumbo himself has been honored before in a 2008 documentary by his late son, Christopher, which received a ton of praise from Hollywood actors and reviewers. And the new movie, Trumbo, pays tribute to the Hollywood Ten. The truth is the rewriting of history never quits in Tinseltown.

Note: Director of the AIM Center for investigative Journalism Cliff Kincaid sent a February 6, 2015 letter to Bryan Cranston, informing him that “playing the role of Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo” in the film, “Trumbo,” then in production, could be damaging to his career. Kincaid said, “Since the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany are not widely known, this information may be new to you…We hope you issue a statement clearing up the controversy surrounding your involvement in the ‘Trumbo’ film and your knowledge, or lack thereof, regarding Trumbo’s service to Stalin and Hitler.”

Cranston never responded to the letter.

This is a Special Report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism

11/17/15

Breaking Red: The Truth about Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten

By: Brent Parrish
The Right Planet

Dalton Trumbo (inset: Bryan Cranston)

Dalton Trumbo (inset: Bryan Cranston)

Breaking Red: Bryan Cranston, the lead character from the viral TV series Breaking Bad, sells communism in the new film Trumbo.

Via USA Survival:

Bryan Cranston is famous for his role as meth cook “Walter White” on the AMC drama series, “Breaking Bad.” He is playing the role of Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo in the new film, “Trumbo.” Allan H. Ryskind, author of the book, Hollywood Traitors, says the film “Trumbo” celebrates Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast. Ryskind, the son of famous Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, reports that Trumbo was a full-fledged Stalinist who had the distinction of siding with three of the most barbarous dictators in the 20th century: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and North Korea’s Kim-Il Sung. The film portrays communism, from Trumbo’s viewpoint, as a philosophy of “sharing,” not mass murder. The film also attacks anti-communists in Hollywood such as John Wayne.

Dalton Trumbo was a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940s who was a Soviet, Stalinist sympathizer, and a hardcore Communist. Trumbo is listed as one of the “Hollywood Ten,” along with nine other screenwriters, producers and directors.

John Howard Lawson (1894 - 1977)

John Howard Lawson (1894 – 1977)

It was John Howard Lawson who, in the mid-1930s, organized the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. Lawson was a determined New York Communist and a writer for theater productions. He moved to Hollywood and began his recruiting efforts under the aegis of Moscow.

Prior to 1939, the Hollywood Communists, along with Communist Party members worldwide, were vehemently anti-fascist and anti-Nazi. But, following the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact (i.e. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) by Hitler and Stalin in 1939, the group switched their stance—literally overnight—from anti-Nazi to pro-Nazi. This sudden switch in position was ordered by Josef Stalin. Some Communists did, in fact, leave the Party as a result of the abrupt switch in position. But most members of the Communist International (i.e. Comintern) dutifully obeyed.

Dalton Trumbo did not leave the Party following the Kremlin’s reversal on fascism and Nazism. Instead, Trumbo publicly voiced his support for fascism and Nazism for two years. While the Hollywood Communists had urged assistance and aid for the victims of fascist and Nazi aggression prior to the Non-Aggression Pact, afterwards the group urged the FDR administration to stay out of World War Two. They were more than happy to allow Hitler and Stalin to carve up Europe as they saw fit.

When Hitler’s armies attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the group quickly reverted back to their anti-fascist and anti-Nazi stance. After World War Two, Stalin reverted back to anti-western class warfare.

During the war, the Hollywood Communists began to write screenplays for a raft of movies with a patriotic theme, such as 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, Action in the North Atlantic, Sahara, Pride of the Marines, Destination Tokyo, etc. These were movies that cheered the U.S. war efforts. But the motive driving the men who produced these films wasn’t meant to promote U.S. patriotism, but rather in defense of Stalin’s grip on Russia, since the U.S. and Soviet Russia now had a common enemy in the Nazis. The pro-U.S. stance during the war was only to bolster support for the Soviet Union as an ally against Hitler.

Howard E. Koch (1901 - 1995)

Howard E. Koch (1901 – 1995)

The Hollywood Communists literally gained a stranglehold on the production of any anti-communist movies to the point that they were slowed, and even stopped. The scholar Kenneth Billingsley discovered Dalton Trumbo wrote in the communist publication The Daily Worker about films which he said communist influence in Hollywood had prevented from being made, such as the proposed adaptations of Arthur Koestler’s anti-totalitarian works Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar, which described the rise of communism in Russia.

American playwright and screenwriter Howard E. Koch was able to convince a Hollywood studio to pay for a “Soviet advisor” to assist him in writing the script for Mission to Moscow, a 1943 film directed by Michael Curtiz, based on the 1941 book by the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies. The movie was produced in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A scene from the 1943 movie Mission to Moscow.

A scene from the 1943 movie Mission to Moscow.

“I believe, sir, that history will record you as a great builder for the benefit of mankind.”

—Ambassador Joseph E. Davies to Josef Stalin

Koch’s hand-picked Soviet advisor was a KGB agent whose job was to make sure the script was current with the Party line. At a time of famine, the first thing the principals encounter at the Moscow rail station is a throng of happy food vendors selling everything from bread to smoked salmon. Stalin’s show trials are explained as a rooting out of Nazi spies. The Finns are shown attacking the USSR. And this was a Hollywood movie!

After the WWII, the Hollywood Communists dutifully followed Stalin’s lead and began attacking U.S. policies, and denying Soviet atrocities. They even refused to allow the presentation of evidence that the Jews in Russia were being ruthlessly and brutally persecuted by the Stalin regime. Dalton Trumbo audaciously claimed three-and-a-half million Jews were living peacefully in Soviet Russia “under the protection of the laws that ban discrimination of any kind.”

In 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) launched an investigation in Hollywood into the communist influence within the U.S. film industry. The focus of the investigation initially started with a German Communist, Gerhart Eisler, whose brother was involved with movie-making.

Gerhart Eisler, Brunhilda Eisler and Eisler's attorney Carol Weiss King in February, 1952.

Gerhart Eisler, Brunhilda Eisler and Eisler’s attorney Carol Weiss King in February, 1952.

Via Spartacus Educational:

Louis Budenz told the HUAC that Eisler’s role in the Communist Party of the United States was to lay down Comintern discipline to “straying functionaries”. However, the most powerful evidence against Eisler came from his sister, Ruth Fischer. She described her brother as “the perfect terrorist type”. Fischer had not been on speaking terms with her brother since she was expelled from the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1926 after attacking the policies of Joseph Stalin…. She told the HUAC that Eisler had carried out purges in China in 1930 and had been involved in the deaths of numerous comrades, including Nikolay Bukharin.

Time Magazine reported: “One of the witnesses who denounced him was his sister, sharp-chinned, black-haired ex-German Communist Ruth Fischer, the person who hates him most. In the beginning, as children of a poverty-stricken Viennese scholar, they had adored each other. Ruth, the older, became a Communist first. Gerhart, who won five decorations as an officer of the Austrian Army in World War I, joined the party in the fevered days of 1918. They worked together. When Ruth, then a bundle of sex appeal and intellectual fire, went to Berlin, Gerhart followed. She became a leader of the German Communist Party, and a member of the Reichstag. But Gerhart took a different ideological tack, began to covet power for himself. He applauded when Ruth was banished from the party by the Stalinist clique.”

The HUAC investigators were approached by a number of anti-communist screenwriters, producers and movie stars who were victims of the Hollywood Communists’ stranglehold on the American film industry. It was the anti-communists who were the victims of blacklisting, not the other way around.

Originally, 19 unfriendly people were called before the House committee, before being whittled down to ten. The list of the “Hollywood Ten” includes Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo. The ten remained uncooperative throughout the entire HUAC investigation. But the House committee produced indisputable proof that each was a member of the Communist Party.

Contrary to the well-established myth that it was HUAC who blacklisted the Hollywood Ten and barred them from work within the film industry, it was, in fact, the motion picture executives at the time who banned the Hollywood Ten. The blacklist resulted from a meeting of fifty top officials with the Motion Picture Association of America, the Association of Motion Picture Producers and the Society of Motion Picture Producers held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, in 1947.

Eric Johntson, who was head of the Motion Picture Producers Association at the time, spoke on behalf of the industry, stating, “We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force of by any illegal or unconstitutional methods.”

On June 5, 1947, while speaking to the Screen Writers Guild, Johnston went on to say:

“I don’t like American Communists. Bluntly, I think they are treasonable and subversive. They are potential foreign agents — they are dopes and suckers for the 14 men who sit in the Kremlin and pull the strings which make Communists toe the party line everywhere. Let me make it clear that I do not mean to imply that an American citizen has no right to advocate a collectivist form of society in America if he so desires. That’s his privilege under the Constitution. But there is no Constitutional immunity for sedition, subversion or treason. I want to see it become a joke to be a Communist in America. I want it to be fashionable to radiate conviction and pride in our democratic capitalism.

“We ought to ridicule the so-called intellectuals who have made a good living denouncing those who believe in the American system as having economic halitosis and political b.o. [i.e. ‘body oder’] Hollywood can take the lead.”

Another common myth associated with the blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten is that it was perpetrated by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Joe McCarthy was not part of the House committee. McCarthy’s committee ran from 1953 to 1954. Besides, he was a senator. McCarthy was chairman of the Senate Internal Security Committee. He had nothing to do with investigating Communists in Hollywood. The blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten was not done by HUAC, or Sen. Joseph McCarthy, but by executives within their own industry!

Many of the Hollywood Communists lost their jobs, or were sent to jail. But many continued to their work under an assumed name, or going abroad to work. They eventually returned to Hollywood, and have practically been deified by the Hollywood set. Of the ten, only Edward Dmytryk expressed any misgivings. He wrote a big book about his experience entitled Odd Man Out.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

(Credit: Amazon.com)

In the 1990s, Dalton Trumbo snickered, “Yeah, we were Communists … so what?” He never regretted his rejection of Americanism, or his support for totalitarianism, or his glorification of Josef Stalin.

The blacklist was broken in the 1960s. The Hollywood Ten started to use their real names. In the 80s and 90s several films were produced—such as Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist (1987) and Guilt by Suspicion (1991)—glorifying the Hollywood Ten, and portraying them as virtual “heroes.”

Related:

Hollywood-Trumbo-726x1024

hollywood-traitors-ryskind

h/t: Trevor Loudon

11/16/15

Breaking Red: Bryan Cranston Sells Communism in”Trumbo”

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

Bryan Cranston is famous for his role as meth cook “Walter White” on the AMC drama series, “Breaking Bad.” He is playing the role of Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo in the new film, “Trumbo.” Allan H. Ryskind, author of the book, Hollywood Traitors, says the film “Trumbo” celebrates Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast. Ryskind, the son of famous Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, reports that Trumbo was a full-fledged Stalinist who had the distinction of siding with three of the most barbarous dictators in the 20th century: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and North Korea’s Kim-Il Sung. The film portrays communism, from Trumbo’s viewpoint, as a philosophy of “sharing,” not mass murder. The film also attacks anti-communists in Hollywood such as John Wayne.

Trumbo

Hollywood Traitors

02/22/15

“America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now” – UPDATED

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival


Actor Bryan Cranston (right) plays Soviet/Nazi agent
of influence Dalton Trumbo in the upcoming film “Trumbo

A press conference on “America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now” will be held on February 24 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to offer commentary on the direction of the Academy Awards and the politics of Hollywood.

Sponsored by America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), a public policy organization, the event will also explore whether Congress should reinstate a committee on un-American activities and internal security – the same kind that led to the exposure and “blacklist” of Stalinist Communists in Hollywood. Copies of the new book, Blood on His Hands: The True Story of Edward Snowden, will be available. The book analyzes the Snowden espionage operation and how Hollywood is working to glorify the illegal leaker and traitor.

Other topics will include:

  • How the Muslim Brotherhood lobby and Arab/Muslim money interests have been manipulating Hollywood.
  • The federal lawsuit against the Edward Snowden film, “Citizenfour,” and whether the film was even eligible for an Oscar at the Academy Awards.

Date: February 24, 2015 (two days after the Oscars are announced).

Location: Zenger Room, National Press Club,
529 14th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.

Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Open to the press and the public.

Hosted by Cliff Kincaid, President, America’s Survival, Inc., the event is free and open to the public and will feature:

  • Allan H. Ryskind, author, Hollywood Traitors; editor-at-large, Human Events. Allan Ryskind is the son of Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who co-wrote many screenplays on the Marx Brothers and many Broadway musicals. His father, along with Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Walt Disney, and many others, led the charge against the Communist movement in Hollywood.
  • Trevor Loudon, author, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress. Loudon has called for Congressional hearings into internal subversive activities.
  • Deborah Weiss, Esq. is a contributing author to the book, Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network, and is the primary writer and researcher for the book, Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Lawfare and Intimidation.

Copies of the new book, Hollywood Traitors, will be available for signing by the author. For more information, please go to: www.usasurvival.org 443-964-8208

02/18/15

Reds in Hollywood Making a Comeback

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Bryan Cranston is famous for his role as meth cook “Walter White” on the AMC drama series, “Breaking Bad.” He may become infamous for something else later this year. He is playing the role of Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo in the new film, “Trumbo.”

The film is said to be in its “post-production” phase, and Cranston may not have known what he was getting into. It’s hard to believe he would have played this role had he known the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Once the facts get out, his role could derail what looked like a promising career.

Allan H. Ryskind, author of the new book, Hollywood Traitors, anticipates that the film “Trumbo” will be “celebrating Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast…” He notes that the advance publicity for the film says that Trumbo bravely took a “stand 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.”

Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that Trumbo and all other members of the “Hollywood Ten were innocent victims of a ‘blacklist.’” The facts show something very different. Trumbo was in fact a Soviet/Nazi agent of influence in Hollywood. All of the “Ten” were communists but Trumbo was one of the worst.

Ryskind, the son of famous Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, reports that “Trumbo, in truth, was a full-fledged Stalinist who had the distinction of siding with three of the most barbarous dictators in the 20th century: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and North Korea’s Kim-Il Sung.”

Ryskind, a long-time editor of the newspaper Human Events, worked on this book for many years and combed through Trumbo’s papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. He goes on to write, “Like so many of his comrades, he [Trumbo] became a Hitler apologist after Stalin joined Hitler in that 1939 pact. In order to poison the well against Hitler’s enemies, he demonized the Fuehrer’s foes. England was no democracy, he argued in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew, because it had a ‘king.’ FDR was guilty of ‘treason’ and ‘black treason’ for his pro-England policy. No drop of American blood should be risked or spilled for the selfish and deceitful British.”

On the matter of Trumbo’s support for the communist North Korean regime, Ryskind notes, “When North Korea waged war against South Korea in 1950, where did Dalton stand? In an unpublished movie script dedicated to several Hollywood Ten figures, he has the heroine declare that North Korea’s invasion was perfectly justifiable, for this is “Korea’s fight for independence, just as we had to fight for our own independence in 1776.”

Ryskind provides more details in a special report that accompanies the release of his book. He says, “Communist Dalton Trumbo, a prominent screenwriter, a Hollywood Ten figure and a Hollywood icon, led the fight in America to ease Hitler’s burden of conquest. He did this by demonizing Hitler’s enemies, assailing Great Britain as deceptive and dishonorable and suggesting it was unworthy of assistance because it was a monarchy not a democracy. England, he also noted, had declared war against Hitler, not the other way around, and he accused FDR, previously a Communist Party favorite, of being guilty of ‘treason’ and ‘black treason’ for giving England military assistance. Trumbo vigorously presented his views in speeches and in writing, and laid out his case most explicitly in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew.”

The rest of the story is also provided by Ryskind: “The Hollywood Communist contingent, including Trumbo, quickly turned against Hitler after the Fuehrer betrayed Stalin in June of 1941, launching a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. Then, and only then, did the radical screenwriters switch sides again, now demanding America give massive assistance to the Soviet Union to combat fascism and help it survive the Nazi onslaught. Only after Hitler invaded the USSR did the Communist screenwriters become ‘patriotic,’ since they believed US assistance was crucial to the Soviet Union’s survival.”

After examining the historical record, including Trumbo’s papers, Ryskind concludes, “…I’ve never found a paragraph, or even a phrase, where he ever publicly or privately condemns Stalin’s Soviet Union in a meaningful way, certainly not when the Caligula in the Kremlin was dispatching his own citizens by the millions, egging Hitler on as he invaded the Western democracies, cheering Goering’s air force as it rained death and destruction on London and eagerly devouring Eastern Europe in the post-World War II era. Not a peep of protest or regret from a man whom Hollywood longs to lionize.”

It may be the case that Cranston was not aware of the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany. That is why I recently sent him a letter setting forth the facts contained in this column. If he was deceived about Trumbo’s true character, he has the right to raise hell.

Whatever the ultimate fate of the film and Cranston’s role in it, Ryskind’s book about the days when communists were trying to dominate Hollywood has suddenly taken on more importance.

02/10/15

“America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now”

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

A press conference on “America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now” will be held on February 24 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to offer commentary on the direction of the Academy Awards and the politics of Hollywood.


Actor Bryan Cranston (right) plays Soviet/Nazi agent
of influence Dalton Trumbo in the upcoming film “Trumbo

Sponsored by America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), a public policy organization, the event will also explore whether Congress should reinstate a committee on un-American activities and internal security – the same kind that led to the exposure and “blacklist” of Stalinist Communists in Hollywood. The news conference will examine how the Muslim Brotherhood lobby has been manipulating Hollywood’s portrayal of Islamic terrorism in recent years.

Date: February 24, 2015 (two days after the Oscars are announced).

Location: Zenger Room, National Press Club,
529 14th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.

Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Open to the press and the public.

Hosted by Cliff Kincaid, President, America’s Survival, Inc., the event will feature:

  • Allan H. Ryskind, author, Hollywood Traitors; editor-at-large, Human Events. Allan Ryskind is the son of Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who co-wrote many screenplays on the Marx Brothers and many Broadway musicals. His father, along with Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Walt Disney, and many others, led the charge against the Communist movement in Hollywood.
  • Trevor Loudon, author, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress. Loudon has called for Congressional hearings into internal subversive activities.
  • Deborah Weiss, Esq. is a contributing author to the book, Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network, and is the primary writer and researcher for the book, Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Lawfare and Intimidation.

Copies of the new book, Hollywood Traitors, will be available for signing by the author. For more information, please go to: www.usasurvival.org 443-964-8208

02/1/15

“Hollywood Traitors” TV show. Watch now

America’s Survival

The Allan H. Ryskind book “Hollywood Traitors” (available at Amazon.com) documents how the House Committee on Un-American Activities uncovered Stalinist infiltration of Hollywood and forced the studios to clean house. Ryskind, the son of famous Hollywood screen writer Morrie Ryskind, “names names” and identifies pro-Soviet movies. Ryskind, who discusses such figures as Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller, will be appearing at a February 24, 2015, press conference on “America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The news conference will examine how the Muslim Brotherhood lobby has been manipulating Hollywood’s portrayal of Islamic terrorism in recent years. It will also urge Congress to bring back a committee on internal security. Go to www.usasurvival.org.