While it may be difficult to pinpoint a precise moment when Cold War tensions began to ease, it is evident that Gorbachev’s interest in Hollywood helped foster a human connection that advanced negotiations and solidified relations.

By all accounts, Reagan was proud of his Hollywood career, which began on April 20, 1937 the day he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. While political opponents and hostile media personalities have made a sport out of demeaning Reagan’s acting ability, he was actually quite accomplished in his own right and cultivated a strong following.

A good source here is Marc Eliot who authored “Reagan: The Hollywood Years,” a well-researched, highly readable yarn that highlights some of the former president’s best performances on screen and on television. Reagan co-starred alongside some of most talented stars of his era including Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn.

While Reagan may not have achieved lasting fame as a leading man, he did carve out a strong niche as a supporting actor in films that attracted critical attention, as Eliot explained in an interview with Reason TV. He was widely viewed as the reliable “best friend” standing behind
the big names of that time, Eliot notes.

Reagan was very mindful of how supporting roles could enhance and amplify the storyline behind each film. This was most certainly the case in “Knute Rockne, All American” where Reagan played the part of Notre Dame Football great George Gipp.

“Now the Gipper only occupied one reel of the picture, but from an actor’s point of view it was a near perfect part,” Reagan once observed. “A great entrance, action in the middle and a deathbed scene in the grand tradition of Hollywood.”

The phrase “Go out and win one for the Gipper” later figured into Reagan’s political campaigns and is at least partly responsible for the film’s lasting appeal. But there are other noteworthy supporting roles that continue to get overlooked by historians and biographers.

This would include “Dark Victory” (1939) co-starring Davis, Geraldine Fitzgerald, George Brent and Bogart. Here, Reagan was cast as an aloof, but likeable playboy named Alec Hamm who adds levity and cheer to a film that is heavy on drama. The Davis character is a terminally ill woman who decides to live out her few remaining months to the fullest. Reagan does not get the girl; she instead gravitates over to the Bogart character.

Davis was nominated for Best Actress and the film for Best Picture. Even as the top prizes ultimately went to “Gone with the Wind,” “Dark Victory” was widely recognized as a critical success. Reagan’s ability to connect with audiences and co-stars did not go unrecognized as he proceeded to land high-profile roles.

Off screen, Bogart and Reagan developed a lasting friendship. They were ardent patriots who became interested in the political scene.

This is where Hollywood and Cold War politics come full circle. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Reagan and Bogart were both “committed liberals” susceptible to communist operatives, Paul Kengor, a political scientist and author, said in an interview.

Reagan was recruited for the speaking circuit by the “benignly named” American Veterans Committee (AVC), but came to see in his own words that he was “being steered more than a little bit” by a group with its own agenda. The AVC events included “hand-picked audiences and highly skewed speaking material,” Kengor said.

In retrospect, Gorbachev’s interest in Reagan’s films is more than a little ironic; it was the Hollywood experience that first opened Reagan’s eyes to the dangers of communism. Reagan eventually came to see that AVC was a front group for the communist cause as was another “innocent-sounding” organization called the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP).

By 1946, Reagan was a popular after-dinner speaker in Hollywood circles who intermixed politics with entertainment. Reagan also openly confronted communist sympathizers at HICCASP meetings.

Kengor’s book entitled: “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century” describes some of the heated exchanges between Reagan and other leading Hollywood figures who identified with Soviet Union. By this time, Bogart also saw fit to distance himself from any unsavory ties, although he did not move to the right as decisively as Reagan did, Kengor notes.

Before he landed the lead part in “King’s Row,” it appears Reagan was briefly considered for the role of “Rick” in “Casablanca,” which eventually went to Bogart. How serious of a contender Reagan was for Casablanca is not entirely clear, Kengor said. In the end, the final casting worked out for both actors. Reagan considered “Kings Row” to be his best film, as did many critics, and Casablanca helped make Bogart a household name.

“Reagan and Bogart liked each other and respected each other and got along very well,” Kengor said. “Reagan went to Bogart’s funeral and Bogart was also a member of Reagan’s fan club.”

It was common practice for the studios to organize fan clubs and Bogart was one of 15 honorary members of the Ronald Reagan fan club. Bette Davis was also a member of the club.

On Reagan’s Birthday, Let’s Remember the Gipper’s Film Career – Part 2: More meaty roles overlooked by Reagan biographers.

In 103 minutes, this documentary gives Americans, especially young ones like me who know little of Reagan’s presidency, a complete summary of the historic highlights of Reagan’s eight years in office within its national and international context. The film doesn’t shy away from mistakes Reagan may have made. It isn’t overly worshiping. It simply presents Reagan in his own words, honoring a man who changed the world.

The film begins by putting Reagan’s presidency in its historical setting: a nation pulled apart by warring liberals and conservatives; where Vietnam savagely cut America in two, Nixon’s Watergate had tarnished the GOP, and Carter’s foreign policy had left Democrats looking weak. Reagan brought the nation together by giving Americans a mission: to defeat a true opponent – the U.S.S.R.

From touching dedications and eulogies to rousing speeches and calls to action, the documentary features footage of Governor Reagan’s GOP convention and presidential nomination acceptance speeches, his national address following the Challenger tragedy and, of course, his demand that the Soviet Union tear down the Berlin Wall.

As a Cold War fanatic, I would have appreciated more coverage of Reagan’s fight against the U.S.S.R. and communism, but segments on presidential debates and the dedication of the Kennedy Library were nice touches and great supplements to the expected footage.

Reagan had a dream of America as a “shining city on a hill,” a phrase borrowed from John Winthrop, who had adapted it from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. And as Reagan left office, he saw that “[America] still stands strong and true … and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.” This film explores America before and after Reagan, concisely capturing the enduring effect that his administration had upon the nation.

As the film nears its conclusion, it focuses on a Reagan quote inscribed in granite at the Reagan Library: “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” Reagan lived his life guided by this belief. His defense of the enslaved people in the Soviet Union, of freedom over tyranny every time, are proof.

Reagan said in his address to the 1984 Republican National Convention, “There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams. … In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America’s is.” On the eve of springtime 2011, the light of Reagan’s legacy is shining more brightly than ever, and this film will help Americans see it for generations to come.

—-

Co-produced by Big Hollywood contributor Larry Schweikart, who first wrote about this issue in his book 7 Events That Made America America, and narrated by Adam Baldwin, Rockin’ the Wall gives viewers an intimate look into life in East Berlin, where citizens were restricted by a literal concrete wall from the same free enterprise and thought that their neighbors in the Western half of the city enjoyed.  Commentators in the film range from bow tie-wearing historians to shaggy-haired rock musicians, with the most interesting tidbits coming from individuals who had lived under Soviet rule in East Berlin (some of whom escaped before the wall fell).  Noting that this was the first time in history where walls were used to keep citizens in rather than invaders out, the film conveys a palpable feeling of the quiet rebellion simmering against a regime so petty as to restrict women from putting their hair in ponytails.

The film’s thesis, that rock and roll music brought down the wall, seems spurious at first.  After its fast-paced introduction, we’re treated to a montage of aged musicians opining on the nature of rock and roll, how it embodies liberty and rebellion, and we’re thinking, “Okay, but how does this relate to–” right as director Marc Leif unleashes a barrage of information that convincingly portrays rock music as the driving force of anti-Communist subversion.  We learn about Radio Free Europe, whose modern music penetrated the wall and was forbidden by the Soviets.  We learn about the black market for Western records, where demand was so high that a single LP could cost 1/10th of a week’s wages.  We learn about the conferences for young people warning them of the physical and mental dangers of rock and roll.

We hear the testimony of artists who lived behind the Wall, how Western music represented the freedom they desired and confirmed the inauthentic nature of state-subsidized music (and therefore, the state itself).  We hear how the messages of social change (sometimes incarnated in the bands themselves, such as the interracial Southern blues-rock group “Mother’s Finest”) resonated deeply with the East Berliners.  Finally, we get the perspective of Western musicians who were able to tour behind the Iron Curtain, including one funny incident involving Mother’s Finest and a policeman fan.  When you think that the film can’t take its argument any further, there’s an anecdote involving Leslie Mandoki, a Hungarian music producer, and Mikhail Gorbachev that lays a triumphant capstone on the wall of evidence that had been previously prevented.

The film is well-produced and chock full of all sorts of modern videography flourishes:  split-screen, shallow focus, re-enactment B-roll footage, and the like.  The split-screen can get a little distracting and displays varying degrees of polish throughout the film’s run-time, but thankfully there’s always a steady shot of the interviewees.  Even when the subject shifts to the depressing conditions of Soviet life, the talking heads keep the tone light-hearted, so the climax of the film, chronicling the fall of the wall, isn’t quite the catharsis it could be, but it’s still poignant if not powerful.  The soundtrack features a nice mix of classic and retro rock that thankfully doesn’t distract from the information being presented.

Rockin' it.

Rockin’ the Wall is not partisan in any way. No mention is made of Democrats or Republicans.  The only dichotomy at play is Freedom and Communism.  Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall” quote gets its due, but the most rousing line comes from the Democrat John F. Kennedy:  ”Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”  If anyone finds the film hyper-partisan, simple-minded, jingoistic– any of the typical leftist canards– that person will never understand the difference between freedom and tyranny or why it’s important to know it.  How anyone can carry water for an ideology that, without exception, has led ruthless violence, and draconian control over the minutiae of personal lives is totally beyond me.

It’s ironic how some Westerners labeled rock and roll as degeneracy when it became, in essence, a liberating force for the Soviet world.  It’s a reminder that art and society can interact in extremely unexpected ways.  Whether it’s Chinese musicians risking muggings from the police to play Handel’s Messiah as defiant public worship; whether it’s North Korean peasants discovering that their government’s propaganda is false through old VHS copies of 1980s American soaps; or whether it’s a young man who finds out that Stasi have been in his apartment because his Yes record is scratched; there’s a very clear reason why those who seek to restrict liberty also seek to restrict art.  And as of right now, there’s no reminder of that truth that’s quite as informative and entertaining as Rockin’ the Wall.

—–

Angelina Jolie’s “Salt” might heat up the old Cold War, but “Farewell,” which also opens (in select cities) tomorrow, takes us back to a pivotal moment in the real one:

French director Christian Carion’s real-life espionage thriller “Farewell” is set at what is arguably the era’s turning point: It’s 1981, Ronald Reagan is barely in office, and France’s François Mitterrand presents him with a list of Soviets who’ve infiltrated American government and business. Mr. Mitterrand also offers an extraordinary estimate: 40% of the Soviet budget is being spent on defense, most of it on pilfering technology. The Soviet Union can’t possibly survive, the White House says. Let’s propose a strategic missile-defense initiative and push ‘em over the edge.

Experience tells us that the people who make movies are not very nice, so we should all be nervous about how Ronald Reagan’s portrayed. But in the looks department, Fred Ward’s an inspired piece of casting. There are 17 reviews posted on Rotten Tomatoes for a Fresh Rating of 81%. The Village Voice not liking it might be the best indicator “Farewell” is worth a look.

If you’re looking for a Cold War triple feature tomorrow, “Countdown to Zero,” a documentary featuring Mikhail Gorbachev tracing the history of the atomic bomb also premieres.

Watch the whole thing: you’re sure to enjoy when Andrew discusses that while the New Media may well save the Republic (and perhaps the world), it has already saved him personally.

The Brody File show airs tonight on the CBN Newschannel.

A full profile of Andrew Breitbart will air on The 700 Club show May 13th.

Some highlights/discussion points below:

“I want it to be an international movement. This is the same battle that Ronald Reagan and millions of other people fought in the 20th century; it just has a 21st century New Media battleground. The Cold War is now a New Media War.”

The greatest element — that’s a bold claim, considering the hot competition among the movie’s other collaborators. But in hindsight, few would argue that the marvelous sets, vehicles, and spy gadgets of Goldfinger, masterminded by production designer Ken Adam, are any less iconic than Ian Fleming’s novel, Sean Connery’s performance, or John Barry’s musical score.

Production design is a largely unsung art. Both the script and the need for historical accuracy tend to serve as harsh governors on the dreams and fantasies of the people charged with designing a movie’s sets and props. But the Bond films, Adam says, “are done so loosely that the script isn’t the Bible that it is in most films. It changes all the time, and the whole process of writing is like some democratic debating society.”

When Dr. No went into production in 1961, Adam got a mere 14,000 pounds (out of the movie’s total budget of 350,000) with which to design all of the interior sets for this “tongue-in-cheek spectacular,” including the casino in the opening scene, Bond’s apartments, M’s office, and the sprawling, futuristic lair of the villainous doctor himself. He performed his task in England while the rest of the cast and crew were off filming exteriors in Jamaica, and when they returned they were stunned by what they saw:

Adam, originally a German who fled to England with his family before the War, called on his love of German Expressionism to invent outrageous sets that were, as he called them, “theatrical realism. . . exaggerated practicality. . . hyper-reality by design.” Larger-than-life, yes, but still of life, much like Fleming’s novels themselves. “Nobody could foresee the success of Dr. No,” Adams insists. “What happened was like magic, almost.”

Two years later Adam arrived on the set of his second Bond film, Goldfinger, with a budget many times that of his previous effort. His first task this time out was designing the new car Bond was to use. He settled on the Aston Martin DB5 because, “It was sort of the most prestigious British sports car at the time. We couldn’t have used a Ferrari or something like that, you know.”

An admitted “sports-car freak,” Adam went nuts pimping out Bond’s ride with its now-legendary array of special options, using the rationale that “all the gimmickry and gadgets were just what I would have wanted in my own car.” The entire crew was encouraged to submit their own ideas for upgrades, and by the time he was finished he had spent 25,000 pounds — almost double the total production design budget of Dr. No — on the Aston Martin alone. As it happened the vehicle was only on screen for thirteen minutes, but Adam’s conception of it was so wildly inventive and fun that it became the most famous car in movie history.

The sets for Goldfinger were no less well imagined. Everyone has their own fave: the gorgeous apartment where Bond wakes to find his lover covered in gold paint, the vast Bank of England dining hall — bad brandy, good cigars — where Bond gets the details of his mission, the cavernous laser room where our intrepid hero nearly becomes special agent castratum, the plush confines of the Lockheed jet where Bond meets Pussy Galore and outfoxes the clever peep-holes used by the lovely Mei-Lei.

Everything in the film drips with the opulence, style, and color for which the Bond series is known — all of it spawned from the mind of Ken Adam, and laid out in drawings inspired by his life experiences and unique visual sense. “No design is worth doing if you just reproduce reality,” he stresses. “I don’t believe you can get a sense of reality by copying. I think you can get that better by not copying. But you must always be honest. You mustn’t do things just to create chi-chi effects. You must have a reason.”

Take Auric Goldfinger’s breathtaking Kentucky country estate, with its stables and Playboy Mansion-like diversions. Adam remembers that

We called the set where he keeps the harnesses and tack the rumpus room. . . I knew this rumpus room had to convert into a gas chamber, so all the walls were designed to close. Even the big stainless steel fireplace came down so that no fresh air could get in. It was pretty horrifying, actually.

And at the same time the other moving objects, like the billiard table, had a practical purpose by turning round and becoming the briefing model of the raid on Fort Knox. The rotating bar was a little gratuitous, but once I’d started I thought, “I might as well!” So it turned from a rather harmless-looking, luxurious tack room into a combined War Room and gas chamber.

Check out the finished set in the following clip, and as each shot reveals new architectural glories and wonders, keep in mind that this isn’t some real-life room rented from a billionaire’s mansion, it’s a movie set, built from scratch and designed from the ground up by Ken Adam:

Theatergoers in 1964 were dazzled by these ingenious sets, and almost a half-century later they have yet to lose their ability to inspire awe.

This elaborate design came from a deeper place in Adam’s psyche than may at first be apparent. He lived most of his life in England, but he was born Klaus Hugo Adam in 1921 Berlin, emigrating to the UK only when the rise of Hitler threatened his family’s safety. During the war he became the only German-born pilot in the Royal Air Force, serving his adopted country with distinction against the country he was originally from. Twenty years later, during the making of Goldfinger, he still hadn’t got past the dichotomy of his upbringing. “Remember it was the 1960s,” says Adam:

The Second World War was still very much in everybody’s minds. . . I had to keep in mind that all the gangsters are going to be finally poisoned by gas, you see. . . .

When the Germans now write about me, it’s not that they say, “he was affected by the sadistic ideas of the period,” but I grew up with some of these things. So knowingly or not knowingly, I tried to show some of those impressions, my early impressions, in my designs. . . it’s mixing this kind of playful fantasy with the ultimate horror.

Given Adam’s background and influences, it’s not going too far to posit that Goldfinger’s luxurious abode, so wondrous and modern yet laced with a sinister aspect, beggars comparisons to places like The Berghof, Hitler’s “eagle’s nest” hideaway in the Bavarian Alps, where profoundly evil men enjoyed the very best wine, women and song as they poured over intricate maps, scale-models and globes while plotting the assembly-line domination and destruction of whole populations. And the fiendishly clever bit of mechanized death that lies at the heart of Goldfinger’s “rumpus room,” with every avenue of escape clipped off like the tickings of a well-designed watch, evokes painful memories of the meticulously engineered real-life abattoirs of the Holocaust.

“In hindsight,” Adam says, “I think Goldfinger was maybe the best example of a Bond film that I designed, where the settings accentuate the dramatic message of the film. I had a completely free hand.”

The Cold War was a constant presence in the work of Adam throughout the Sixties, not only in the Bond series but in films such as Dr. Strangelove (1964 — where he designed the memorable War Room for Stanley Kubrick, foregoing the chance to work on From Russia, With Love to take the job), as well as more realistic spy films like The Ipcress File (1965) and Funeral in Berlin (1966), both starring Michael Caine. But perhaps his single greatest Cold War set, the one that veers the furthest into cinematic outrageousness while remaining utterly convincing, was the interior of the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox as depicted at the end of Goldfinger.

“I’d seen the vault of the Bank of England,” says Adam, “and you know gold is so heavy, so it’s never stacked more than two foot or two-foot-six high. . . I’m sure the inside of Fort Knox is very dull, with low vaults and a few trolleys traveling around.” But of course, for a Bond movie dull simply won’t do. “The public wanted to see gold!” Adam thought, and so he gave it to them using all of the sumptuous splendor he could muster. “If you go to the biggest gold depository in the world you expect to see gold towering up to the heavens. . . I wanted to build a cathedral of gold, almost forty foot high — completely impractical.”

Adam was aided by the fact that, due to stringent security, virtually no one among the public knew what the interior of the Depository looked like. There were no pictures floating around, no descriptions of any kind:

Remember, the President of the United States wasn’t allowed inside. And I was really rather pleased about that. Because it gave me the opportunity to design it the way I thought it should be designed, with gold stacked up to forty feet in height. I also liked the concept of putting the gold behind bars, you know, spectators being on the other side. I liked playing around with that. . . a surreality, which in fact is accepted by the audience as reality.

The final result of his designs inspired veneration in audiences. Film scholar Christopher Frayling, a keen follower of Adam’s career, recalls his first viewing of Goldfinger back in 1964: “The audience erupted with applause — even at a matinée — when Oddjob got his comeuppance by being electrocuted. . . I’d never known a cinema audience to spontaneously applaud like that. But there was something about the way in which the sequence worked; it satisfied everybody.”

The towers of gold, the impregnable bars, the futuristic elevators, Oddjob’s deadly bowler hat, the bomb threatening to make the bullion holdings of the United States radioactive — all of these things were designed by Adam and the rest of Goldfinger’s art department out of whole cloth, following Adam’s crucial decision to go whole-hog and make the Bond series not a humdrum copy of reality but the stuff of which cinematic dreams are made of.

Adam likes telling an apocryphal story “from reliable sources” about how the newly inaugurated Ronald Reagan, upon entering the White House for the first time, demanded to see the War Room from Dr. Strangelove and was dejected when his handlers informed the “amiable dunce” that none in fact existed outside of the film. Liberals have perpetuated the story ad nauseam ever since (usually prefacing it by such well-worn phrasings as “it was said that. . . ,” “I’ve heard that. . . ,” “According to many sources. . . ”) because it fits neatly into their fantasy view of conservatives in general and Reagan in particular. But, although they won’t admit it, many of those same people were themselves taken in by the glittering interior of Fort Knox in Goldfinger. “Everyone is now convinced Fort Knox looks like that,” Adam says, “As a film designer you can create a reality which is more acceptable to the public than the actual thing. . . United Artists got so many letters saying, how were we allowed in when the president wasn’t allowed, and so on. So I consider that a successful design.”

The late critic David Sylvester went much further than that, calling Adam’s sets “probably the most amazing and enthralling pieces of fantastic architecture in the history of talking pictures.” Millions of viewers around the world — from Presidents on down to the poorest kid at the cheapest matinée — would agree.

Next week in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we conclude our pleasure cruise of Goldfinger with a study of the best critical volume written about Bond, wherein a conservative writer defended 007 in the wake of a widespread academic and media backlash against the series.

Previous posts in the series “Ian Fleming, Sean Connery, and Goldfinger”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Three books about Ken Adam. Production design is rarely given full-book treatments, even as other aspects of filmmaking are immortalized in hundreds of volumes of criticism and analysis. The work of two-time Academy Award-winner Ken Adam, however, is featured in no less than three major retrospective editions: Moonraker, Strangelove, and Other Celluloid Dreams: The Visionary Art of Ken Adam by Ken Adam and David Sylvester, Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design by Christopher Frayling, and Ken Adam Designs the Movies: James Bond and Beyond by Adam and Frayling. All are meaty, colorful books filled with drawings and photos illustrating the intricate and inspired work that went into the design of such Bond films as Dr. No, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker, not to mention Dr. Strangelove and the dozens of other movies he worked on throughout his career.

Ken Adam (production designer). This 150-page oral history transcript is housed at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library, and can be accessed and read by any interested scholar in the Los Angeles area. The interviews contained in the transcript were conducted in 2002 by Jennifer Peterson.

Article on Ken Adam in frieze magazine. Frieze bills itself as “the leading magazine of contemporary art and culture.” This piece by Dan Fox, published in Issue 51 for March-April 2000 and now reprinted on the web, is notable for its expert analysis of the artistry underlining Adam’s designs and drawings.

Christopher Frayling discussions with Ken Adam. These candid interviews took place in 2008. The sound on the videos could be a lot better, but if you persevere you will hear some interesting stories about Adam’s work on Dr. No, Dr. Strangelove, Goldfinger, and production design in general.

Ken Adam, designer — Cold War Modern. Here’s an Adam excerpt from a much longer documentary, with more interview material about his life and career.

What makes him a natural for this kind of project is Stone’s admiration for Fidel Castro – his documentary  about the Cuban dictator (shelved by HBO – kudos to them) attempted to “portray the human figure” – and Hugo Chavez (whom he “warmly embraced” when on some kind of fact-finding tour of Latin America).

Do they share a wardrobe?

What is it with Hollywoodites and dictators? Michael Medved tries to explain:

“Many people in the entertainment industry feel guilty about their own wealth. They know that they earned it in an arbitrary way, not because they are so much better than someone who’s still working as a waiter in Beverly Hills, but they earned it out of luck. They believe that all capitalism works that way – that people have goodies showered on them not because of their own hard work or creativity, but because of good fortune and luck. That guilt produces this fascination with socialism.”

Feeling guilty, guys? Why not give that excess money to a worthy charity? Or you could decline the big-buck paychecks and ask for something a little more in keeping with what, say, someone working at a convenience store would earn. But I digress.

Stone’s upcoming 10-part miniseries for Showtime, called “Secret History of America”…

…promises to focus on events that ‘at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history of the last 60 years.’ Subjects in ‘History’ include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Of the monsters Stalin and Hitler (and McCarthy!), Stone said,

“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

“Stalin has a complete other story,” Stone said. “Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect … People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII … I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”

Um, I am familiar with the connection between WWI and WWII. Bitter because they lost, bitter because they lost a lot of land, and bitter because they were ordered to pay billions in reparations that took a heavy toll on their economy (they could not afford to pay it all), Germans were ripe for exploitation, and Hitler was the “right man” at the “right time.” Not everyone in America is as in awe of your intellect as you are, Oliver.

I suppose we should have a pity party for Hitler. His dad was abusive, he didn’t do well in school due to his innate laziness, didn’t have lots of friends and he was rejected from art school. He also wasn’t very attractive and had a problem with flatulence, poor guy. Then again, there are plenty of ugly, gassy people whose relationship with their parents wasn’t the greatest who didn’t get into the school of their choice, but not everyone makes up for past failures by coming up with the “Final Solution,” killing six million Jews and other “undesirables,” and inciting a war that involved most of the world’s nations in one way or another and ended with over 70 million dead.

Couldn’t he have just gone on Oprah or Dr. Phil instead?

Some of Hitler’s handiwork

Will Joe Kennedy, patriarch of the “Kennedy Dynasty,” be included in the miniseries as a man who welcomed Hitler because he was a “welcome solution” to the problem of those pesky Jews? Just curious.

We could feel sorry for Stalin too. Imagine being saddled with the birth name Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili! Geez, how do you even say that? But Hollywood stars are in the habit of changing their names too, so maybe that’s one way they can relate. Stalin’s father was a cobbler (shoemaker) and an alcoholic, his mother was a maid, he contracted smallpox and he suffered from the same kind of poverty that most Russian peasants did in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (He earned better grades than Hitler did, though. Snap! Sounds pretty depressing.

But it’s not every pockmarked Russian peasant who can claim to have not only been a part of the group who toppled a royal dynasty, but also engineered a famine in Ukraine that killed some 7 million people because they dared to seek independence from his glorious rule. Gosh, who wouldn’t revel in the government seizure of all privately-owned land and livestock in a predominantly agricultural society?

Victims of Stalin’s famine in Ukraine

And speaking of “context,” had we not dropped the bomb on Japan, the Japanese would have kept on fighting, keeping the war going on for who knows how much longer, until “all Japanese were killed.” And now we’re allies. Who would have predicted that in 1945? The world is a strange and wondrous place.

But fear not, patriotic Americans: Big Hollywood’s Kurt Schlichter has Oliver Stone’s number:

The real “Secret History” that Stone won’t disclose involves the identity of the Americans who actually thought the Nazis had quite a lot to offer with their collectivist, anti-capitalist vision, their refusal to let things like democracy stop their agenda, and their fondness for eugenics.  Here’s a hint:  It starts with a “P” and ends with a “rogressives.”

Hmmm…you mean that Sen. Joe McCarthy was right all along?

I wonder if that’s the kind of context Stone is looking for?

Somehow, I doubt it.

True story:  As a young man just out of law school, I was consumed with politics.  I even went to work on the Hill (Capitol, that is, Washington, DC) and in journalism.  But at some point in the ’90s, my interest faded away.

Francis Fukuyama wrote a then-notorious book called The End of History, published in 1992, shortly after the Soviet Union’s collapse.  He argued that the age-old ideological struggles over what constitutes the best form of government were over, and the undisputed universal champion was Western liberal (in the classic, free-market sense) democracy.

I grew up during the latter stages of the Cold War, when the existential threat of nuclear war hung over and colored almost everything.  It made politics seem vital to one’s very survival.  And I found the debate between capitalism and communism hugely compelling.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the (apparently) decisive victory of free markets over collectivism, politics lost its import and thus its grip on my attention.  But I didn’t miss it at all.  I was perfectly content to retreat to the status of a casual spectator, and to focus on more aesthetic matters.  I wrote screenplays instead of news commentary, gladly.

But Fukuyama and I were wrong.  9/11 proved it.

On that fateful morning, my phone rang a little after 6 AM.  A friend who’d recently moved to Boston insisted that I turn on the TV, despite the early hour.  The second plane had just hit the second tower.  And we were at war with a strange new foe.  (Which turned out to be an age-old foe, but I didn’t know it at the time.)

As for many others, my world changed that day.  I was dragged back, kicking and screaming, into the maelstrom of politics.  History had risen from the dead.

I knew the Internet well, but I’d largely avoided political websites.  That changed on 9/11.  I studied topics I wish I never needed to know about.  I got involved again.

I discovered another book that emerged in the ’90s, in part as a response to Fukuyama’s thesis.  It was called The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel Huntington.  He agreed that the age of ideology was over, but argued that fault lines over culture and religion would deepen and become a greater source of conflict.  And he believed one of the principal fault lines of conflict would lie between Muslim and non-Muslim civilizations.

Huntington was remarkably prescient.  But I would add this:  I don’t think the struggle over ideology is over.

The collectivists are by no means through.  As wrong as they are, their message is too seductive to die forever.  They will always be around, in one form or another.  And I see them now joining forces, dangerously, with some of the West’s cultural adversaries.

History will never end.  We were fools ever to think so.  One evil perishes; another rises in its place.  That’s what 9/11 taught me.

One of my artistic heroes is J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I believe has much to say, albeit obliquely, about our present state.  I close with a quote from one of his letters that I oddly find somehow comforting:

“Actually, I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ – though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”

That’s why my blood went to full boil a couple of days before he died when I glanced at the TV in a rural Bates motel — been staying in a lot of those lately — and saw Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz laud the youngest Camelotian as the greatest Senator and humanitarian of all time from the deck of Geraldo Rivera’s berthed yacht in Martha’s Vineyard. Dershowitz went on to tell the FOX mustachioed-one how he had rushed to Teddy’s aid with expert legal skills “in his hour of need” after Kennedy had left his date, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die in a Chappaquiddick Island tidal pond during the summer of 1969. Dershowitz’ considerable skills aside, the fact that full media attention was diverted from Kennedy by the coming Moon landing and walk to take place two days later probably helped the Kennedy fixers regroup and save his political hide.

I don’t say that based on the accounts of others. Since I was working at WSAR radio in Fall River, a town about 30 miles from the demi isle de riche crime scene on Martha’s Vineyard, I saw the Kennedy fixers do their work personally. To save space, I’m going to assume everyone reading this knows the Chappaquiddick narrative by heart — click here if you don’t — since it is so well known and what implausible parts of Kennedy’s story the fixers needed to fix. To say they succeeded is an understatement.

While America’s eyeballs and attention were diverted to Neil Armstrong’s step onto the Moon, the fixers hustled the five remaining unmarried women from that initial gathering of six married men away from investigators and reporters and then started throwing the weight of the Kennedy political machine around.

Despite the testimony of the diver that pulled Mary Joe Kopechne’s body from Kennedy’s car that it appeared to him she died of asphyxiation while gasping for oxygen in an air pocket, the local coroner refused to perform an autopsy, ruled her death an accidental drowning and released her corpse for burial in another state. Later attempts to exhume Kopechne’s remains for autopsy were successfully fought by the Kopechne family which had received about $150,000 dollars from Kennedy that we know of.

The official inquest into Kopechne’s death was done in secret one year after the incident on orders from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Was Kopechne’s death really a tragic accident? Was it a murder? Did Kennedy have a motive to kill her? We’ll  never know for sure now, but based on what I and WSAR News Director Mike Cabral learned at the time about Kennedy goon threats, payoffs and political favor swapping, put me down as a believer that Kopechne was pregnant with a child of Teddy’s she did not want to abort and that he had to do something drastic to make that situation go away for the sake of his political career and that was all that mattered. It’s all that ever mattered, which is why Ted Kennedy was willing to engage in treason for political gain.

In a stunning Forbes article, Peter Robinson, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, quotes from a Soviet memorandum discovered by London Times reporter Tim Sebastian. The note was written by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, and was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

“On 9-10 May of this year, Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney [Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California] was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”

Robinson writes:

Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.

Bad as that is, Kennedy’s actions prior to approaching Andropov indicate Teddy knew he was engaging in treason writes James Simpson:

What is not generally known is that Kennedy collaborated with the Soviets well before Reagan was elected, and had a direct hand in crafting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As a result of his efforts — which appear in retrospect to have been crafted to prevent detection of his seditious activities — the FBI was prevented from accessing critical intelligence that could have warned of 9-11. This story has been brought to light in an article, Treason and Ted Kennedy: The Story the Media Won’t Tell by Herb Romerstein, a veteran investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers. First, he offered to visit Moscow notes Robinson:

The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.

Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Kennedy then offered to grease the skids for Andropov to be favorably interviewed on American television:

A direct appeal … to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time–and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,” the memorandum continued. “Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president.”

Is the word treason ringing in your head too? How about the phrase “honest journalism?” But Robinson notes more:

In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian’s story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. “The media,” Kengor says, “ignored the revelation.”

Teddy Kennedy offered to collude with America’s arch enemy and our media ignored the revelation? Can’t claim a Moon walk diversion for slacking that story.

Does that make you wonder how many other treasonous Washington Teddys our constitutionally protected Fourth Estate may be ignoring?

Me too.

It is chilling to witness, in the United States of America of all places. Civil political discourse is a thing of the past. You cannot oppose ObamaCare without being a swastika-waving corporate Nazi stooge. Never mind the fact that no one will tell us exactly where all the hospitals, doctors, and nurses to treat 50 million new patients will magically materialize from, or how it will all be paid for.

Likewise, you cannot oppose the draconian Cap-and-Tax bill without being a Global Warming heretic on the order of a Holocaust denier. Never mind the frost and record summer lows in my home state of New Hampshire or record cold temperatures worldwide. And you can’t oppose any of President Obama’s policies without being a racist. In short, every political issue these days is being taken far too personally by the petty tyrants of the Left, and made into ideological battlefields against any and all American citizens who stand in the way.

Also greatly disturbing are statements from our new FCC ‘Diversity’ Chief Mark Lloyd, a black radical Communist who has been caught on film praising Hugo Chavez’ stifling clampdown on Venezuela TV and radio stations as effective government media regulation policy. Mr. Lloyd also seeks to fine broadcasters 100% of their operating budget if they don’t meet certain “diversity” criteria, in effect instantly bankrupting them. One way of putting conservative talk radio out of business, I guess.

Worst of all is the double standard on Brownshirt-like violence and intimidation. You could start with the vague Republican platform-covering DHS report of April 14th (just in time for the Teabagger Parties), which even DHS civil liberties lawyers opposed. You could then move on to the three racist Black Panther Party poll watcher thugs in Philly who committed what Bartle Bull, a Jim Crow South poll observer, called in his affidavit “the worst voter intimidation I’ve ever seen” receive Get-Out-of Terrorizing-White-Voters-Free cards, courtesy of Obama’s and Eric Holder’s Injustice Department.

Then you could wrap it all up with the racial slandering and beating of Kenneth Gladney, which the SEIU thugs who beat him and their bosses tried to turn around and blame on him, despite damning video of the event. For the icing on the ideological cake, a young Democratic activist smashes up the windows of a Democratic Party office in Denver to the tune of $11,000.00, yet that damage is still being blamed by Democrats on ObamaCare protesters despite the facts even they know to be true.

I am a service veteran of the Cold War. I remember very distinctly what it was we were fighting vis-a-vis the Soviets: a power-mad totalitarian state based on a rigid ideology that crushed its own people underfoot, branded any and all dissenters as counter-revolutionaries, and used the propaganda machinery of PRAVDA and TASS to make sure the enemies of the state knew exactly who they were. As I’m sure many CIA career employees are feeling right now, given the Left’s and the Injustice Department’s political persecution of them of late. I guess ACLU papparazzi outing agents to Gitmo terrorists ain’t no big deal like Valerie Plame, huh? Since their cause is so just?

When a Lefty pundit like Chris Matthews talks about using sodium pentothal to get to the truth on an ideological matter from Obama’s political opponents, I’d normally consider that pure Lefty insanity. But given all the other factors in play, I have to wonder: just how serious is he being? Then there’s the President’s plan to created a new civilian national defense army as powerful as our military. For what purpose? Who will lead that army? The New Black Panther Party, given the bangup job they did at the polls in Philly last year? And for which they’ve been cleared to provide “security” for again? Or the SEIU Purpleshirts, who have already proven they can handle reprobate ObamaCare protesters?

Scary stuff, people. Lefties may have howled during the Bushitler years, but never did the Bush government, or any other for that matter, take such an active role in demonizing the minority party, or actively work to suppress freedom of speech and expression through intimidation as ours is today. Michael Moore and Al Franken were free to rant to the skies. Randy Rhodes of Air America even simulated Bush’s assassination on the air. Yet Rush Limbaugh says he wants Obama’s policies to fail, and liberal Democrats in Congress start a petition against him.

Even worse, Obama himself establishes a political campaign against Rush, a private citizen, from within the Oval Office itself, with the full resources, power and authority of the White House. Lastly, you have Patrick Courrielche informing us of the NEA co-opting artists to promote controversial Obama legislation and policies through the arts, courtesy of we taxpayers who fund NEA. Had Mr. Courrielche not blown the whistle on that situation here at Big Hollywood, who would know about it? It begs the question: What else don’t we know about that’s going on behind our backs?

Given all that has transpired since President Obama’s and the Left’s ascendancy to supreme power in America, I’ll dare say it. I’m with Rush. If these are all what Obama’s policies are, I want them to fail, too. Miserably. I also have a name for what the Left is doing in all the above: un-American. I don’t know about you people, but I’m going to keep my eyes wide open for as long as the Left is running the show. Goes back to that eternal vigilance being the price of liberty thing.

As I stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway twenty-five years ago, I was fully aware of the enemy we had been confronting since the end of WWII. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be fighting a Cold War at home a quarter-century later, and against that very same rigid Marxist ideology. But that is where we find ourselves today. And our Cold War at home must be fought as the old one was: tooth and nail. Go to your town halls and Tea Parties in force. Sign petitions. Speak out when you see something amiss. Evil flourishes when good men do nothing. And I see far too many evils flourishing today to sit silently on the sidelines.

Our very democracy and way of life is at stake here. Is there any greater battle worth fighting?