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Osborne’s agenda
The Turner Classic Movies all-night movie festival commemorating and decrying the blacklist was shown this evening, October 30, because it is the 60th anniversary of the start of the HUAC hearings about Communist influence in the movie industry. I saw TCM host Robert Osborne’s introduction to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, then I watched that cold, chilly, anti-Cold War movie directed by Martin Ritt and starring a cold, chilly Richard Burton; then I saw Osborne’s introduction to the wartime movie Tender Comrade starring a beautiful, 32-year-old Ginger Rogers, written by Dalton Trumbo (who had a knack for dialog, you have to hand it to him) and directed by Edward Dmytryk, which I watched for while. In his intro to Spy, Osborne spoke of the “infamous anniversary” of the HUAC hearings, of “suspected Communists.” He said it was a “really scary time for everyone in Hollywood,” that “hundreds of writers, producers, and directors didn’t work again,” that people could lose their jobs on the basis of a single uncorroborated story. The purpose of the program, he said, was “to honor the people who were affected by the blacklist.” Well, okay, that is the standard Hollywood line we’ve been hearing at least since the early 1970s when Hollywood honored Lillian Hellman. So, I was not (I hope Mr. Warren will forgive me) instantly highly offended by it. My feeling was perhaps like Mark E.’s: these are Hollywood liberals, this is their thing, I’ll indulge them. But then, when the second movie came on, and Osborne introduced it using similar lines as before, referring again to the “infamous blacklist,” and the fear in the 1950s that maybe “communists” (which he pronounced with a sound of mock fear) had been sneaking their messages into movies, I started to feel he was piling on. If he’s going to introduce every movie with that superior sneer (and with more than a hint of anger underneath it) about the supposedly ridiculous and “infamous” fear of Communism, while never mentioning the fact that there were actual Communist party members—committed supporters of Stalinist totalitarianism and its spread throughout the world—making movies in Hollywood, then that is not right. Also, as far as I remember, Osborne made no reference to the Hollywood Ten. Maybe that was because he knew the Hollywood Ten really were Party members; so instead he just referred to the blacklist in general, because, of course, there were people who were wrongfully blacklisted.
I personally plan to write to TCM (contact information is provided at the end of Mr. Warren’s ACU article) to say that to mock the concern that people at the time had about influential Communists in Hollywood, when in reality there were influential Communists in Hollywood, and not to inform viewers about that central fact of the whole historic episode, is to tell a huge historic lie, and that this is not what a movie channel ought to be about. It doesn’t mean TCM is bad as a whole. But for Osborne to use an entertainment station to advance a dishonest, pro-Communist political agenda (or anti-anti-Communist political agenda, which in many cases comes down to the same thing) is offensive and wrong. Email entry |