Kengor’s strength is research (the book’s introduction alone lists 35 citations), and Dupes authoritatively identifies both dupes and true Communists in Hollywood, documenting them down to their Communist Party USA registration card numbers and how many times they wrote for Communist publications.

Take playwright extraordinaire Arthur Miller, for example. It is widely accepted that “The Crucible” is about McCarthyism. Beyond that, today’s educators have allowed what Senator Joe McCarthy and his “witch hunts” found to blend with the work of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In reality, they were entirely separate.

Kengor points out that the falsely titled “HUAC,” (a recent New Yorker article, which gives a good review of former Communist Elia Kazan, used the “HUAC” abbreviation too) which suggests the committee was the actual un-American organization, was chaired by Democrats for much of its existence, and it was attacked for its work by Communists regardless of who was in charge.

Finally, among the most famous witnesses called by the House Committee on Un-American Activities were the “Hollywood Ten,” a collection of industry workers suspected of being Communists. Claiming they weren’t Communists, these Communist sympathizers and actual Communists convinced liberal actors and actresses to come and defend them in Washington, D.C. Kengor points out, “It is interesting that while many liberals have been concerned about the reputation of Communists…those same Communists had no qualms about tarnishing the reputations of the liberals they preyed upon – even when the liberals were friends and relatives.”

Humphry Bogart was among those who was duped into testifying, and after the testimonies, he was anything but happy about it. The truth is, the Hollywood Ten were not clean. Kengor said in an e-mail, “From the very first day that the main four members of the Hollywood Ten were called to the stand, in October 1947, we’ve known their actual Communist Party numbers, which were published at the time, in all the newspapers, and which I’ve been forced to re-publish in the book – such is our ignorance. John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, Albert Maltz. All were Communists and pro-Soviet patriots, period.”

Few remember the truth of the hearings – only the “horror” that the Hollywood Ten were blacklisted afterward. Perhaps they were blacklisted more for lying to their would-be defenders than they were for being Communists. If someone stabs your back, you generally don’t pat theirs in return.

Director Elia Kazan new the truth. He was once a Communist, but was kicked out of the Party after refusing to follow orders. He testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and was attacked for it. He wrote in his diary, “I’d hated the Communists for many years and didn’t feel right about giving up my career to defend them.” Unfortunately, many in Hollywood held it against him for years.

And Arthur Miller, who portrayed these trials as witch hunts? He applied to join CPUSA, and admitted to helping Communist front groups.

I find it interesting that the left continues to use one of the favorite strategies of Communism – name-calling – on a regular basis. Kengor quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald on this: “The important thing is that you should not argue with [Communists],” Fitzgerald said. “Whatever you say, they have ways of twisting it into shapes which put you in some lower category of mankind, ‘Fascist,’ ‘Liberal,’ ‘Trotskyist,’ and disparage you both intellectually and personally in the process.” Liberals use this strategy today when dealing with social conservatives or with Tea Partiers.

“One of the greatest successes of the left…has been its ability to discredit anti-Communism and anti-Communists,” Kengor said. “They stereotype and broad-bush anti-Communists, trying their best to push every new stalwart anti-Communist into their ever-widening category of ‘another Joe McCarthy,’ of which there were far more than Joe McCarthy. Long before Joe McCarthy, the left was smearing liberals like Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, Alexander Mitchell Palmer, Wilson himself, and Democrats in Congress like Martin Dies, the first head of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, all for the unforgivable sin of strident anti-Communism. Believe me, that’s a short list of the anti-Communists that the left crucified.”

Kengor’s non-partisan approach to looking at Communist influences in America led him to defend many liberals, and also hold conservative-loved dupes accountable. Take Ronald Reagan for instance. He was a duped liberal before he became a staunch anti-Communist and then a conservative.

“Reagan was very candid about this,” Kengor said. “I’ve tried to be honest in this book, highlighting even political heroes of mine – like Reagan – who were once duped. But it was what he learned from that experience that helped convert him into arguably the greatest anti-Communist. He became first a chastened liberal, which was part of a deeper, wider awakening.”

Speaking of Reagan, I asked Kengor about the status of the Reagan film that will be based on his books. “We’re plugging away,” he said. “Ronald Reagan was a great, inspiring historical figure. The man merits a major, serious ‘bio-pic’ that accurately represents what he did and how he helped change the world for the better. This is another area of history that we can’t leave to the extreme left.”

It all started with a memo from Paramount Studios, where the director was currently under contract: “Herewith story and treatment entitled Shane, which we would like you to consider for one of your two remaining pictures. . . This property is now being supervised by one of our studio producers, but no serious problem would be involved in re-assigning it to you, and we are prepared to do so if you like it. . .” Stevens did like it, and soon began reading both the novel and existing script, marking them up with marginal notes that contained the seeds of dialogue and shots that would go on to become immortal.

As packaged, the movie was set to star Alan Ladd, Paramount’s most popular star — only John Wayne eclipsed Ladd’s popularity in moviegoer polls during those heady years. But Stevens initially considered other options. Many of his jotted notes about the character of Shane referenced “Monty,” showing that Stevens was thinking of using Montgomery Clift, the young, tight-jawed brooder then appearing in the director’s tragic love story A Place in the Sun (1951). Gregory Peck was also in the running. Meanwhile, author Jack Schaefer wanted “a dark, deadly person” — someone more like tough-guy gangster actor George Raft — to portray his hero. For the part of Joe Starrett, the homesteader and father of the young boy, names like Broderick Crawford, Burt Lancaster, and William Holden were bandied about.

After a Clift/Holden combo fell through for budget and scheduling reasons, Stevens ended the debate by taking a look at Paramount’s listing of contract players. Within minutes, he chose Ladd for Shane, Oscar-winning character actor Van Heflin for Joe, and Jean Arthur for Marian, Joe’s wife. All three choices were risky for various reasons.

Alan Ladd was a box-office draw, yes, but as a pretty face rather than as a solid actor. Critics judged him as a lightweight, someone more famous for smiling on magazine covers than for sinking his teeth into the meat of a genuinely dramatic role. Known throughout Hollywood for his self-abasing nature, he was hardly the guy one would expect to rise to the occasion of becoming a gunslinging, two-fisted hero for the ages.

Yet Stevens, his ultimate artistic intentions fully in mind, believed Ladd could provide a shining light at the center of the storm. “You know, it’s against the formula,” he said about his choice, “but Ladd seemed to have a decency on the screen even in violent roles like this one. He always seemed to have a large measure of reserve and dignity.” It was that, and not the silky deadliness, that Stevens most wanted to carry over from Schaefer’s novel.

Unlike so many other directors, Stevens even saw Ladd’s diminutive 5’4” stature as a cup half-full. “It was an interesting thing for the picture,” he said, “because he didn’t tower above the others — the mountains did. We kept him as high off the ground as possible so he wouldn’t be dwarfed by people.” With Ladd’s lithe, genial masculinity now defining the role, Stevens changed Shane’s black silk shirt and matching hat from the book into a buckskin outfit that toned down the character’s more sinister overtones.

Evan “Van” Heflin, like Ladd, was quiet and reserved in real life, a well-read Yale-educated man who shunned parties and kept a low profile away from the silver screen. He was, however, a more respected thespian than Ladd, having won a Best Supporting  Actor academy award for 1942’s Johnny Eager. The two had much in common (both did some growing up in Oklahoma), and soon they became fast friends on the set of Shane. “Alan was a far better actor than he would ever believe himself to be,” Heflin said in an interview many years later. “As with most of us, he needed a director who could bring out the best in him. With George he had it. He was a very sensitive person and he had a terrific inferiority complex. . . Alan later said he thought Shane was a fluke. . . although actors usually go their separate ways after a movie is completed, Alan and I remained very close. God, how I loved that man!”

If hiring Alan Ladd and Van Heflin were gambles — no John Wayne drawls, no lazy cowboy strides, no history of anchoring Western movies — Stevens’ choice of Jean Arthur for the part of Joe Starrett’s pretty, careworn wife bordered on outrageous. She was an actress known primarily for urbane comedies and love stories directed by Frank Capra. Her shyness meant that even in the best of circumstances she could be difficult to work with. “You had to treat her like a child,” Stevens explained, remembering her insecurities. “She was terribly anxious about everything.”

Even more troubling was that her heyday was long behind her. By the time she was considered for Shane Arthur was over fifty years old, her hair completely gray, and she hadn’t acted in a film in years. Why hire someone like that to play a pretty wife and mother figure, when there were many younger actresses from which to choose?

Because “people are always the instrument,” as Stevens was wont to say. “She was interesting,” he believed, “because she seemed to be rising above her personality. Anytime she has a charge to make against someone or a defense of something, it always seemed that she felt herself dangerously exposed, kind of heroic in the most ordinary circumstances — even if she had to put her left hand out in traffic in order to turn.”

It was that delicate brand of heroism that he wanted the character of Marion Starrett to epitomize. With a blond wig and makeup, Stevens believed that Arthur could still pass as an attractive woman in her thirties — after all, as recently as 1950 she had managed to play Peter Pan on Broadway to great acclaim. Thus he lured Arthur out of her self-imposed Hollywood retirement for what would be her last movie (and her only one in color).

Arthur, being the only one of the main actors who had worked with Stevens before, quickly noticed the deep change in the director’s post-war personality. “He was very serious,” she recounted sadly, “No jokes. It was like I never knew him before. He wanted me to look tired and worn. . . I felt kind of sorry for him.”

The last two actors to headline the film were more conventional selections, but no less effective.

Young Brandon de Wilde (pronounced duh-WILL-duh) was the only choice for Joey. He had made his name a year earlier by stealing scenes and charming audiences in a Broadway production of Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding. Hailed as a child prodigy, he soon became the best-regarded boy actor of the period. Alan Ladd’s step-daughter Carol Lee recalls the “infinite patience” Stevens displayed while directing De Wilde, saying that the kid “drove all the actors a little crazy because his idea of fun was jumping up and down in the mud — splashing mud all over everyone. But George Stevens knew how to work with him.”

When famed director (and, to his credit, reformed communist) Elia Kazan directed A Streetcar Named Desire for the stage, he had Marlon Brando playing the part of Stanley Kowalski on Broadway and Anthony Quinn performing the same role in Chicago. The understudy he hired to act as their backup in case of illness was, in Kazan’s opinion, “the most menacing, the most sinister, and the most frightening Stanley Kowalski ever to appear on the stage.”

The man was an ex-coal miner and ex-boxer, tough as nails, muscular and mean-looking. His face was bony and gaunt, marred both by numerous beatings endured in the ring, as well as by reconstructive surgery due to burns received while bailing out of an Air Force training flight during World War II. His name was Jack Palance, and in hindsight, the character of Jack Wilson in Shane was the role he was born to play.

When Stevens hired him, Palance was still largely unknown — Shane was lensed between June and October of 1951, and Palance’s first Oscar nomination for his memorably ominous role in the Joan Crawford noir vehicle Sudden Fear (1952) was still a year away. But such was Palance’s presence that Stevens didn’t need to be told that he was up to the job.

Unlike some of the other actors, Palance came from the then-new and novel Method school of acting. Before each take, he would make the cast and crew wait while he went off into a corner by himself and worked his emotions up to the proper temperature, burrowing deep into the role until the character of a bloodthirsty assassin infused his very being.

Woody Allen, of all people, is a big fan of Shane, and in a New York Times piece a few years back he aptly described Palance’s priceless contribution to the picture: “If any actor has ever created a character who is the personification of evil, it is Jack Palance. . . he’s so poetically evil. He looks like he’d gladly kill the guys who hired him if they looked at him wrong. He’s just bad news. Serpentine. In our minds, he’s set off against Shane, one particularly good, almost too good to be true, and the other is totally evil.” Allen’s right — it’s hard to imagine any other pair of actors pulling off this basic good/evil struggle in such mythic terms.

Of his director on Shane, Alan Ladd said that “I learned more about acting from that man in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then. Stevens is the best in the business. He knows exactly how to handle actors, how to relax them and win their confidence.”

That might sound like typical Hollywood butt-kissing, but go ahead: sit there at your computer and try to say some of Ladd’s now-famous lines with his combination of iron-clad conviction and mannerly grace. Try to mimic Palance’s equally famous lines with his deadly, gleeful hiss of ice-cold menace. Do that, and you’ll begin to understand what amazing acting truly is. The fact is that after Shane, neither Alan Ladd or Jack Palance would ever achieve a more perfectly tuned and modulated performance. Under the patient, guiding hand of George Stevens, the movie represents a high-water mark for the depictions of both implacable good and unfettered evil.

Previous posts in the series “Jack Schaefer, George Stevens, and Shane”

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Woody Allen talks about Shane. The New York Times invited Allen to screen one of his favorite movies with them, and give a running commentary about why he considered it so great. Allen chose Shane, and gave some interesting reasons as to why he skipped all of his favorite foreign films to do so. Well worth a read.

A Short Biography of Van Heflin. A nice rundown of his life and career, showing what made him tick. Hard-working, unpretentious, and good natured, Van Heflin was one of Hollywood’s good guys.  

The “Low-down Yankee Liar” bronze. If you have some serious dough burning a hole in your pocket, you might blow it on this cool bronze statue depicting Jack Palance’s character of Jack Wilson from Shane. Wicked cool.

And while we’re talking Palance, here’s some fun YouTube items related to him.

David Carradine as Shane on TV. I’m not old enough to remember this, but if you were around in the 1960s perhaps you recall this ill-advised attempt to turn the character of Shane into a folk-rock hero. Did they substitute Peter, Paul and Mary for Victor Young on the soundtrack? Needless to say, it didn’t take off.

Two of the world’s greatest theater directors, Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Elia Kazan, seemed almost simultaneously drawn to the Bible in their own personal and/or artistic quests for some meaning to late 1950’s, early 1960’s Man.

Both productions were compared to one another in Time not in the Arts Section but the U.S. Section … hmmm … and with no name attached to it.

Therefore not merely a review but a Time Magazine pronouncement!

The anonymous editor had this to say in conclusion:

“This flawed ending (of Chayefsky’s Gideon) echoes the flawed conclusion in Broadway’s (and MacLeish’s) J.B. of three years ago; both Playwrights MacLeish and Chayefsky assume that man has somehow outgrown God and must evolve a higher morality. They deny that the end of man is to glorify God and seem to agree that man must express, sanction, and glorify himself.”

This, of course, sets a prophetically New World Order and decidedly Marxist tone for America’s future.

The great surprise for me comes in Time Magazine’s own warning:

Paradoxically, the denial and doubt of God have led not to the affirmation of man but to his greater despair. For it is despair from which such questing morality plays as J.B. and Gideon seem to spring.

Hmmm … Man’s “greater despair” … prompted by his “denial and doubt of God”.

Well?!

Sounds possibly like the fruit of an oil rig disaster to me!

Setting the disputations of Theater’s and Literature’s greater lights aside, I find Time Magazine’s very avuncular cautioning of America, its flashing red lights about “denial and doubt” … utterly unexpected.

Refreshing, actually.

But then again, that was Time almost fifty years ago.

After roughly 100 years of maneuverings by the Progressive Movement, drawing-board-strategies cooked up in Progressivism’s various and sundry fraternities around the world, its indisputable culmination in the radical “transformations of America” by the Obama Nation is now at hand!

And, by God and Henry Kissinger … and/or George Soros … the great divide is finally in our laps!

A virtual Red Sea parts the Enlightened Despots from the Tea Partiers.

Abortion defines the divide most profoundly … but faith in God, as even Time pointed out over forty years ago, is unquestionably the other troublesome matter at hand.

A few, vitally important leaders in the Progressive camp – the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi and Joseph Biden – have repeatedly trotted out their Christian and Catholic credentials.

Unfortunately for them, these declarations of faith grow as spiritually empty and ominous as President Obama’s reluctant estrangement from the likes of Rev. Wright and his legendary damnation of America.

Pro-abortion Catholics?!

Pro-abortion, Progressive Baptists and Presbyterians?!

It takes the patience of Job, indeed, to put up with such shamelessly brazen hypocrisy.

Nothing defies the Golden Rule more profanely than Roe v Wade and the legalization of abortion.

“Do unto gestating infants what you would not want done unto your own gestating infancy.”

That is why what is left of America, after the Progressive Thieves in the Broad Light of Day have virtually used the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for toilet paper – not only in the commodes of the Supreme Court but the Obama Nation’s Justice Department as well – our response to this Progressive Theft is basically the Tea Partiers … and most of Fox News.

Now we must call upon the patience of Job!

Remember the mocking “friends” of Job, rather like Bill Maher, urging our now very American Tea Party heroes and heroines to “curse God and die”?

In the end, of course, Job wins and the Devil loses.

It’s fun now … almost Biblically prescient … to keep a scorecard on Bill Maher.

His increasingly numerous appearances occasionally have a George Will at the table to embarrass the Devil’s barrister about certain realities, such as oil rigs off the shores of George Soros’ much beloved Brazil.

George Soros?!

More than the Devil’s Advocate, I tell you.

America as Job now, the Tea Partiers as Job’s best symbol … and Sarah Palin, I must say, as their Joan of Arc and Maggie Thatcher?

I don’t think the Progressive Movement’s Devils, not any of them, have a chance!

It’s all gone to their heads.

Rather like the Presidency has almost predictably deranged the President.

Reality has him now trying to read signs in the sand.

God abandoned the Progressives 37 years ago.

When the bipartisan Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade.

Now all the Progressives seem able to do is to lead Bill Clinton back into temptation.

With the patience of Job, America will be delivered from the Obama Nation.

Not even Nero fiddled more deviously than our President doodling in the sand, while actually enjoying the fact that America’s economic future is burning away like an oil rig.

Jafar Panahi

“Every possible way has been used for breaking his spirit. He is deprived of his basic and legal rights. Can all of this be called anything but torture? Does a regime have the right to treat one of its artistic elite so shamefully and inhumanely on the basis of a film that has not yet been made?”  -  Taherah Saeedi, wife of renowned Iranian New Wave filmmaker Jafar Panahi, on her husband’s arrest and imprisonment in Tehran.

On September 27, 2009, famed Hollywood film director Roman Polanski was arrested on arrival at Zurich Airport by Swiss authorities on a 31-year-old L.A. warrant for the 1977 drugging and raping of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer, now 45. A huge swath of the liberal leftist Hollywood establishment wasted no time in leaping into action over the Swiss authorities’ dismaying breach of social justice and inhuman treatment vis-a-vis director/child rapist Polanski. Over 100 well-known filmmakers and A-list celebrities signed a petition of outrage demanding Mr. Polanski’s immediate release.

Now, many of we mere mortals may not agree with the leftist Hollywood establishment’s unqualified support of Mr. Polanski given his crimes. Most Americans, and even most French, decidedly did not. The New York Times called the French divided on the issue, as they only supported Mr. Polanski’s extradition by a 70% margin. Larger point being, it is comforting to know that even for admitted child rapists, the leftist Hollywood establishment will always be there to raise a staunch defense of their film industry paisans in the face of rank injustice and gross violations of their basic human rights.

You might think that anyway. Perhaps that’s even what they want you to think. But then there’s the story of Jafar Panahi, the cutting-edge Iranian New Wave film director who has consistently pushed the envelope of Iranian film, all in the face of perhaps the worst censorship on earth as dictated by the Islamist regime’s Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance. And outside of child rape, directors Panahi and Polanski have a lot in common. Both have won the Golden Lion at Venice and the Silver Bear in Berlin, and have been showered with many other international awards and accolades for their cutting-edge films. And both have presided over prestigious international film festival juries.

Yet somehow that keen leftist Hollywood sense of moral outrage regarding the mistreatment of renowned film directors is curiously nonexistent with respect to the nightmarish situation now being endured by director Panahi and his family. The contrast is actually quite stark. As Polanski awaits a decision on his extradition from the luxury of house arrest at his ski chalet in Gstaad (where he was also allowed to wrap post-production on his latest film, The Ghost Writer), his Hollywood friends and admirers like Ewan MacGregor continue to speak out on his behalf, believing the drugging and anal rape of tween Samantha Geimer a bygone best forgotten.

Meanwhile, the 49-year-old Jafar Panahi is imprisoned in Tehran in what can only be called a crypt as the Islamist authorities attempt to break his spirit. Though they may not succeed on that front (and have not to date), they may yet break his body. His health has deteriorated in prison, and he is at great risk of a heart attack and premature death. His crime? Supporting the Green Revolution and planning a film on it. Mr. Panahi was first arrested last July as he and others laid flowers at the graves of Neda Soltan and other victims of the regime’s brutal post-election crackdown. He was released a few hours later, but continued to speak out on behalf of Mousavi and the Greens at great risk to himself. Like a dark Shakespearean tragedy, the outcome was inevitable.

On March 2, 2010, Iranian security forces conducted a sweep of Mr. Panahi’s residence in Tehran, arresting Jafar, his wife, his daughter and fifteen dinner guests present at the time. They also ransacked his home and seized many personal belongings.  His wife and family went a month not knowing Jafar’s location or condition. Finally Jafar’s wife, Taherah Saeedi, was allowed to visit him in solitary confinement, where she found Jafar pale and weak. An attending physician told her Jafar had twice experienced severe chest spasms and was at risk of a major heart attack. That is the situation Mr. Panahi and his family endure today. A tragic outcome is all but a foregone conclusion.

Fortunately, many prominent voices in film around the world are speaking out loudly on Mr. Panahi’s behalf, even a few in Hollywood. Veteran actor Brian Cox, to his great credit, has not only signed onto a petition demanding Mr. Panahi’s release, he even added an eloquent statement and the prestige of his C.B.E on Mr. Panahi’s behalf. American filmmakers William Farley, Rob Nilsson, Tristam Powell, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum and countless others from around the world have also signed on, as well as the Sarajevo Film Festival, the European Film Academy, Berlinale, APSA, NetPac and many others. Even fifty Iranian filmmakers have stuck their own necks out in protest. In fact, outside of the United States, unqualified support for Mr. Panahi’s release is near-universal.

And then there’s Hollywood. So where are all the big Tinseltown A-list names who couldn’t rush to Roman Polanski’s defense and sign a petition demanding his release fast enough? The Woody Allens? The Michael Manns? The Taylor Hackfords? The Martin Scorseses? Where is Whoopi Goldberg arguing on The View that laying flowers at the grave of Neda Soltan wasn’t “crime-crime“? Where is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Or even one American film festival?

It’s not like they don’t know. Variety and WSJ entertainment writer Anthony Kaufman blitzed the industry in late March through emails, Twitter and Facebook, and has received only one response and petition signature to date, from writer-producer James Schamus. So here we are, over a month into renowned director Jafar Panahi’s interment in a crypt in Evin prison without charge, and with absolutely no support from the same A-listers who had a petition out on Polanski within 24 hours of his arrest. Mr. Kaufman wishes the industry were less apathetic, but I have a different word in mind.

Disgusting! And if you’re not as disgusted over this pathetic and inexcusable situation as I am yet, it gets a lot worse in Part Two. Keep a barf bag handy. You’re going to need it. In the meantime, please sign on to the petitions for Jafar Panahi’s release at Facebook and Petitions Online. It was concerted voices raised in outrage that freed Tahmineh Milani, Mehrnoushe Solouki and Roxana Saberi. They may yet again. Feel free to give AMPAS a heads up as well. They’ve done this before. And they have a lot to redeem themselves for regarding Iranian film artists. More on that in Part Two.

These days, there is another blacklist taking place, but they’re calling it a graylist because the victims are scriptwriters who made the stupid career decision of allowing themselves to become gray-haired or, in some distinguished cases, even bald. 

Back in 1999, a class action suit was initiated by about 150 of us.  Today, there are over 600 of us who are plaintiffs suing the various studios, networks and major talent agencies, for conspiring to blacklist WGA members on no other basis than their age. 

Some people might find it ironic that Hollywood’s liberals, who are still inflamed over a blacklist that took place 60 years ago, not only condone it in their hometown, but practice it every day of their lives. For those of us involved in the lawsuit, it’s been an interesting decade.  Those among us who don’t play golf find it helps fill the time.  The lawyers on the other side have done everything in their power to delay a court judgment.  The masochists among us particularly enjoyed the interrogatories. Not only did they want us to recall the date of every meeting we ever had with any of the defendants, but what was said, by whom, if we got the assignments and, if so, when was the script shot, when did it air and how much were we paid.  By this time, some of us have a hard time recalling what we had for lunch.           

It’s quite obvious that the defendants figure time is on their side, that all they have to do is wait us out and we’ll start dropping like flies, like very old flies.  Fat chance!  What they haven’t taken into account is that the lawsuit is providing some of us with the will to live that we might not otherwise have.           

Not to sound too cynical, but when I saw Abe Polonsky leading a picket line composed of unrepentant Commies outside the Academy Awards in 1999, and saw Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Nick Nolte, and a few other Tinseltown pinheads, sitting on their hands and sneering when 90-year-old Elia Kazan came on stage to collect his honorary Oscar, it merely reminded me once again how hypocritical, rude and self-righteous the liberals in this town can be.      

In spite of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Boomerang!” “Gentleman’s Agreement,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Viva Zapata,” “East of Eden” and “On the Waterfront,” Hollywood’s political elitists couldn’t get over the fact that 50 years earlier Kazan had, as they say, named names.  What’s more, he made no secret of the fact that he was proud to have named the names of those he regarded as the enemies of his adopted country.           

The truth is that long before the Reds got it in the neck for pledging allegiance to the Soviet Union, conservatives were persona non grata at many of the studios.  In the 60s, I met and interviewed Morrie Ryskind.  For those of you unfamiliar with the name, he had shared the Pulitzer Prize for “Of Thee I Sing,” had been Oscar-nominated for “Stage Door” and “My Man Godfrey,” and had also written “Penny Serenade” and a few of the Marx Brothers movies, including “Animal Crackers” and “A Night at the Opera.”  In spite of having far more impressive credits than any of the pinheads collectively known as the “Hollywood 10,” he had not had a screen credit in several years because he was regarded as a political reactionary.           

The “Hollywood 10” were also known as the Unfriendly 10, which once led my old friend, Billy Wilder, to remark, “Only two of the 10 had talent; the others were just unfriendly.”           

Finally, as we all know, the patron saint of Hollywood, a town dedicated to back-stabbing and betrayal, is Lucretia Borgia, and the fact of the matter is that the bottom feeders have no real objection to naming names.  It’s only when they’re the names of left-wingers that there’s a problem.  Had Kazan named fascists or, better yet, card-carrying Republicans, the motion picture community would have erected a statue of the man at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, and, for good measure, changed the name of its major award from the Oscar to the Elia.

“Termites”  is only available through Amazon or, for an autographed copy, by sending a check or money order for $20 to cover shipping and handling to Scorched Earth Press, 16604 Dearborn Street, North Hills, CA 91343-3604.

“You disrespected me …” says Don Corleone to a favor-seeker.

That’s one of President Obama’s favorite phrases from Marlon Brando’s Godfather.

The, by now very boring, Judeo-Christian civilization has raised us to “disrespect” criminals, bullies who rule the world by force and force alone and cold-blooded killers such as the Islamic Jihad.

Somehow our President is willing to give a pass to Don Corleone because … well … “The Don” is performed by the same actor who portrayed John McCain’s favorite movie hero, Emiliano Zapata.

Marlon Brando.

Hmmm … no wonder so many conservatives don’t entirely trust John McCain.

The hidden part of Senator McCain is Progressive, a movement that grows increasingly revolutionary.

However, that was all part of a good revolution, the Mexican one, right? It had a whole cast of “good guys” like Pancho Villa, correct?

So if McCain can admire Pancho Villa and Zapata, what’s wrong with the Czars of the Obama administration admiring Che Guevera and Mao Zedong?

Both McCain and Obama obviously admire Marlon Brando. He’s The Star of their favorite movies.

Besides, candidate Obama promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”.

That’s revolutionary, isn’t it?

Hollywood pictures and two-party politicians are a revealing combination, aren’t they?

Therefore we have Worldwide Progressive Production Company’s film version of a story entitled Destiny of Mankind, and they’re shooting it out of a movie studio called United Nations.

A bit like United Artists … but … well, United Nations creates only documentary films and the UN scriptwriters have never been busier nor more successful!

With Obama in the White House “stepping on the gas” so to speak, the United Nations domination of the United States, if you’ll forgive the allusion, looks like a “downtown” from Obama’s favorite “corner” of not a basketball court but of his “Todlin’ Town”.

In other words, The Chicago Way!

Now America comes to what amounts to President Obama’s version of a Brando/Pacino-like, Chicago Don and elects him to help America out of trouble.

It is not entirely a coincidence that the German Communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht, set two of his major plays, In The Jungle of Cities and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in Chicago.

That American city’s legendary reputation as a gangster’s heaven obviously struck Brecht as the best metaphor for his own Europe, struggling between not “two men”, as the subtitle of Jungle describes it, but between the increasingly influential lies and blackmail of both Nazism and Brecht’s beloved Communism.

In The Jungle of Cities is a love story presented in the metaphors of boxing.

The love-hate between dueling ambitions.

In light of that, America’s and Chicago’s First Lady Michelle Obama seemed to be saying, in “love-hate”, that after having endured such “disrespect” from the United States, she and possibly her husband didn’t have to respect America until, of course, her husband was then chosen as America’s own Godfather.

Even then respect isn’t necessary for a Constitution they both have felt is so limited and limiting when put in relation to their bottomless, Brechtian ambitions.

It is payback time!

No, the payback isn’t racist.

It is Marxist!!

A kind of Rainbow Revenge.

As someone might have advised the Obamas, “Vengeance is best served up cold … with a smile”.

Such strategies are taught at the President’s alma mater of Harvard by the Progressive likes of Professor Henry Kissinger – the tireless salesman of a New World Order – seconded by Rhodes Scholars such as William Clinton and, of course, heavily funded by Obama’s own personal Godfather, George Soros.

Paul Volcker has written of George Soros:

“George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’ open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.”

So far, at least from my own “different mode of thinking”, the most belligerent of these “emerging nations” Soros is lecturing to, with the invaluable help of his ideological Godson, President Barack Obama, is America.

The Obama Nation is helping America to emerge as just another corner of the Marxist New World Order.

Ironically Marlon Brando, although surrounded in his life by Marxists and, as a favorite actor of both Obama and McCain, a legendary, bipartisan favorite, was mainly concerned about only helping America’s First Nations become the priority among “emerging nations”.

However, Jihadist Islam, at least for myself at any rate, has obviously become the angriest and most impatient corner of an emerging, would-be nation.

Muslim Jihadists’ dedication to the virtual destruction and permanent end of Israel is where Mr. Brando would have to part company with the Progressives and their non-combative policy toward Ahmadinejad’s Iran

Despite the seemingly anti-Semitic remarks offered by Marlon Brando, the actor had unswervingly supported Israel’s sovereignty.

One thing Obama and McCain must agree upon is the main common denominator of the films Godfather and Viva Zapata, and that is Marlon Brando.

However, without Elia Kazan as his own, artistic Godfather, Marlon Brando would have been without Viva Zapata and On The Waterfront.

The “Mob” that Kazan demonized in On The Waterfront is made up of the very Union Bosses that traipse in and out of Godfather Obama’s White House regularly.

If you want to get a profoundly good look at President Obama’s brand of Union leader, see On The Waterfront again. Concentrate on the brilliant performances by Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger.

Johnny Friendly, and that mob boss’ lawyer, Charley Malloy, and the thugs surrounding them are the real stuff of Godfather Obama’s SEIU friends, ACORN, his Czardom and the true architects of his “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”.

They are Johnny and Charley with Ivy League degrees.

That description, indeed, is Al Pacino’s version of a Godfather, Michael Corleone, a graduate of Dartmouth.

As a graduate of Dartmouth myself, I learned that in Soviet Russia the Politburo is actually a modern version of an old-fashioned oligarchy.

Since then, and because of performing repeatedly in the creations of Bertolt Brecht, I’ve discovered that a Politburo is the traditionally Soviet word for a Communist Cosa Nostra.

However, the American Politburo, that ruling elite which is now led by Godfather Obama, instead of admiring Stalin, as you would expect?

They all look up to Mao Zedong.

Mao has ultimately become the greatest inspiration for the American Progressive Movement.

Mao is The Godfather of all Godfathers!

Surely Hollywood and its tortured geniuses would have eventually cast Marlon Brando as Mao, don’t you think?

After performing Emiliano Zapata, Napoleon Bonaparte and Don Corleone, the only challenge remaining for Marlon Brando, the ultimate fulfillment of his symbolic ascendancy as the Left’s Greatest Screen Star would have been to portray the indisputable and now increasingly popular Communist Emperor, Mao Zedong.

Please think about that till I get back to you with Part Two of Marlon’s Mao.

A few quick items in response to that piece.  First, it was not about “bad directors” (although some were plain bad, including Aronofsky), but about overrated directors.  Alfred Hitchcock is nowhere near the worst director ever (I was probably too harsh to label him “slightly better than mediocre”), but it is a travesty to label him the greatest director of all time, as so many have.  The same holds true for David Lean (I appreciate Great Expectations, Brief Encounter, and swaths of Bridge Over the River Kwai, I just think he doesn’t deserve to make the top 20 list). Second, I neglected three directors who clearly should have made the list: Roman Polanski (somebody stop the Chinatown cult!), Spike Lee (how can he make race relations this dull?), and Tim Burton (damn you for ruining Sweeney Todd).  Third, two corrections:

(1) Rebecca and Suspicion are the same film, not Notorious and Rebecca; (2) the Orlando Bloom reference was to Black Hawk Down, not G.I. Jane, and I apologize for the obvious mix-up. 

Now, to the real question: the top-ten greatest directors of all time.  This is truly a rough decision – there are at least two score great directors who could make this list.  Here is my one basic criteria: directors who provide me the most viewing pleasure over the course of their career.  That means telling a great story in the best possible way.  Subjective?  Sure.  Deal with it.  I’ll admit that this list skews toward older directors, not because older movies are generally better than newer movies (though I think they are), but because directors in the period 1920-1960 generally made more movies, which means more opportunities for directors to shine. 

I’ll start by explaining why certain directors are not in the top ten. 

Francis Ford Coppola:  He had a period of unbelievable creative magic.  Within a ten year period, he made Finian’s Rainbow (1968), a charming musical; The Godfather (1972), which requires no commentary; The Conversation (1974), perhaps the creepiest movie ever made; The Godfather: Part II (1974), which matches its predecessor in quality; and Apocalypse Now (1979), a mad journey into the heart of darkness.  Then he was done.  How this talented filmmaker went from The Godfather to the atrocity that was Jack (1996) is utterly bewildering.  It was tough to keep him off the top ten list. It was even harder to boot someone from that list to make room for him. 

Peter Jackson:  I believe Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to be the finest directorial effort of all time, surpassing even Citizen Kane.  That said, Jackson hasn’t done anything else.  King Kong was overlong and CGI-obsessed.  He has shown that he can produce with the best of them – District 9 is brilliant – but he needs to direct more great movies before he belongs in the top ten. 

Christopher Nolan: I believe Nolan will one day make the top-ten list.  He’s that talented.  Watch one of his early efforts, Following (1998) if you don’t believe me – on a budget of $6,000, he creates a taut thriller.  His last five movies have all been terrific: Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight. He is one of the few modern directors for whom I check the IMDB calendar to see when his next movie comes out.  I look forward to Inception with bated breath.  For now, however, it’s too early to chart his trajectory with certainty. 

Orson Welles:  Citizen Kane requires no explication – it is justifiably seen by many as the greatest directorial job ever.  His Othello is similarly creative and inspired.  The Magnificent Ambersons follows the pattern.  But Welles destroyed himself and his career, and the fates should never forgive him for wasting his unparalleled talent. 

Peter Weir:  I love Weir.  He is always creative and interesting.  Although I didn’t enjoy Master and Commander as much as others, The Truman Show, Fearless, and Gallipoli are all minor masterpieces.  As far as the top ten, my heart says maybe, my brain says no. 

Stanley Kubrick:  Overrated.  Yes, he directed the wonderful Paths of Glory, Spartacus, and Dr. Strangelove, but 2001: A Space Odyssey is an abomination, A Clockwork Orange doesn’t hold up, The Shining is made a parody by Jack Nicholson’s scenery-chewing. He’s inconsistent, and that’s what knocks him off the list, as it should. 

Vincente Minnelli:  The best director of musicals of all time came close to making the list, too.  Meet Me in St. Louis is delightful.  An American in Paris is a joy for the senses. The Band Wagon is the best parody of Broadway ever made; Brigadoon is pretty if unfaithful to the source material (they cut a couple of the best songs from the Broadway version); Gigi is gorgeous; Lust for Life is well-done.  Few directors have Minneli’s grasp of the music that film can be, the vibrancy that film can create.  Again, this is just a case of ten being too few to fit him. 

Fritz Lang:  M is the best foreign language film ever made.  Period.  It is tight and tense and incredibly driving.  Metropolis is fantastic too.  Perhaps if I’d seen more Lang, I’d put him up in the top ten (the only other films I’ve seen of his are Fury and The Big Heat), so I’ll claim ignorance here. 

Fred Zinneman: Perhaps the best conventional director of all time – a man who simply puts on camera what needs to be there.  He’s not the artist that any of the top ten are, but he did create The Day of the Jackal, A Man for All Seasons, Oklahoma!, From Here to Eternity, and High Noon, a list to be reckoned with. 

Victor Fleming:  How hard was it to come up with this list?  I had to leave off the guy who directed Captains Courageous, The Good Earth, The Wizard of Oz, some of Gone with the Wind, A Guy Named Joe, and Treasure Island.  He also directed lots of films that ain’t quite as great, so his percentage is what keeps him off the list. 

Stanley Donen: Stylistically, Donen was tops.  He directed On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain, Charade, Damn Yankees!, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Two for the Road.  The pure fun that is Seven Brides could put him on the top ten list.  But Donen just can’t knock anyone else off. 

Robert Rossen: His resume is simply too short.  Three fantastic movies: Body and Soul, All the King’s Men, The Hustler.  A great career.  Not a top ten one. 

John Huston: The best adventure director of all time, responsible for The Man Who Would Be King, Moby Dick, The African Queen, and The Maltese Falcon.  Again, not enough versatility to put him over the top. 

George Stevens:  Tough to keep off the list, tough to make room.  The Diary of Anne Frank, Shane, A Place in the Sun, I Remember Mama, Gunga Din – versatility, certainly, brilliance, certainly, sweetness, certainly.  Off the list?  Hesitantly, yes. 

The Top Ten Greatest Directors of All Time

10.  Steven Spielberg:  This will be the most controversial pick on the list, to be sure.  He’s got big hits, and he’s got big misses.  His hits are clearly terrific – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler’s List, Jaws, Saving Private Ryan.  His misses are pure awfulness – A.I., 1941, The Terminal, and the misery that was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Of late, far more misses than hits.  Still, that early canon of films, plus Schindler’s and Saving Private Ryan puts him over the top.  No better popcorn filmmaker has ever been born.  Yes, I hate his politics.  But his artistry, when he’s at the top of his game and when he’s comfortable with the script, is unmistakable.  Watch this scene again: 

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Nobody – nobody – directs action better.  And Schindler’s List proved he can do drama, too.  Is he the deepest guy on the list?  Nope.  Does he belong here?  I say, yes.  

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9.  Michael Curtiz:  How can I possibly put the man who directed the monstrous farce that is Mission to Moscow on this list?  Because he also directed Casablanca, the best movie of all time; White Christmas and Yankee Doodle Dandy, two of the best musicals; The Adventures of Robin Hood, one of the best adventure movies; Mildred Pierce, one of the best melodramas.  Other films: The Sea Wolf, Angels with Dirty Faces, and Captain Blood.  Renting his film canon, Mission to Moscow aside, is almost entirely wonderful. 

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8.  Ingmar Bergman:  No one made images like Bergman.  The Seventh Seal is easily the darkest movie ever made, and it’s got some of the most stirring pictures ever put on screen.  His version of The Magic Flute is a delight.  Then there are his others, like Fanny and Alexander, Through a Glass Darkly, The Virgin Spring.  Do you watch Bergman for a laugh?  Not unless by laughter you mean suicidal depression.  But no finer image-maker has ever stood behind a camera. 

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7.  Billy Wilder: Nobody ever mixed drama and comedy like Wilder.  And he was a master at getting great performances from his actors.  Jack Lemmon was his muse, and he used him to the fullest: he made the ultimate Matthau/Lemmon comedy in The Fortune Cookie, the ultimate Lemmon comedy, Some Like It Hot, and the beautifully understated The Apartment.  If Lemmon wasn’t his muse, William Holden was – and he’s got masterpieces like Sunset Blvd. and Stalag 17 to prove it.  Or maybe it was Audrey Hepburn – Sabrina, and Love in the Afternoon.  And that isn’t even looking at Witness for the Prosecution and Double Indemnity. The guy was a classics factory.  And all of them are fast-moving and fun to watch. 

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6.  Charlie Chaplin:  It would be a crime to leave Chaplin off this list.  Watch him toss around the globe as Hitler in The Great Dictator and tell me who you’d put in his place.  The Kid is as affecting as any movie ever made.  Modern Times is chock full of amazing sequences, and so are Modern Times, The Gold Rush, and many of his others.  The silent movie era was never so magnificent. 

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5.  Frank Capra:  In my review of the top ten most overrated directors of all time, I wrote this about Martin Scorsese: “In the musical Damn Yankees, a group of hapless baseball players sing the following lyric: ‘You’ve gotta have heart / All you really need is heart!’  Martin Scorsese never saw that musical.  His films are entirely devoid of anything resembling likable characters.  They are cold and calculating and ruthless – and boring.”  If Scorsese is the epitome of the heartless director, Capra is the embodiment of heart on screen.  It’s a Wonderful Life is simply the most heartfelt movie ever made (and it’s Jimmy Stewart’s best performance).  From It Happened One Night to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Meet John Doe to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, nobody made movie magic like Capra.  If you can sit through all his films without crying and smiling simultaneously, I’m betting there’s something wrong with your tear ducts or your cheek muscles. 

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4.  Elia Kazan:  Reviled by the Hollywood left, Kazan was also one of Hollywood’s greatest directors.  His IMDB reads like a top ten list of films: A Face in the Crowd, East of Eden, On the Waterfront, Viva Zapata!, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gentleman’s Agreement, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  The performances Kazan elicited from his actors are groundbreaking and astonishing.  Unlike some others on this list, Kazan’s films do not date (other than Gentleman’s Agreement, perhaps) – they remain timely and prescient.  And they’re quick-moving and entertaining, which is tough to do with heavy drama.  He does it with ease. 

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3.  John Ford:  The man revolutionized movie making, and is worshipped widely for all the right reasons.  First off, the Western is the American genre, and Ford was the best.  Name the best Westerns of all time, and you’ll be sure to come up with Stagecoach, The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  The Informer is an early masterpiece, and there’s no movie more fun than The Quiet Man (plus, the cinematography is enough to bring a tear to your eye).  Mister Roberts is a chock full of great performances (Lemmon and Cagney stand out, of course).  How Green Was My Valley is a beautiful film.  The Grapes of Wrath and Young Mr. Lincoln are rightly credited with making Henry Fonda the quintessential American actor. 

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2.  Akira Kurosawa:  Nobody plumbed the depths of human emotion like Kurosawa.  Ikiru is known by few outside the film buff community, but it is a masterful expression of human hope and tragedy.  Ran is exciting and thrilling and brilliant.  Throne of Blood is a wonderful adaptation of Macbeth.  The Seven Samurai is tremendous, an adventurous expose of the best and worst mankind has to offer.  Rashomon is a groundbreaking exploration of perspective.  I could keep going, but there’s no point – few will argue with Kurosawa’s placement on this list.

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1.  William Wyler:  Underrated beyond all rationality, Wyler was a master of all genres.  He covered gothic romance (Wuthering Heights), period pieces (Jezebel) light comedy (How to Steal a Million and Roman Holiday), film noir (The Desperate Hours and Detective Story), epic (Ben Hur), morality tale (Friendly Persuasion), horror (The Collector), western (The Westerner) and wartime drama (Mrs. Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives).  His first tier films are unmatched (Dodsworth, Ben Hur, and The Best Years of Our Lives deserve to make anyone’s top ten list), and his second tier films (The Big Country, The Heiress) are better than most first-rate directors’ first-tier films.  If you don’t believe Wyler’s range, watch these three scenes back to back:

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That’s not even the best scene from The Best Years of Our Lives (the movie contains perhaps the most beautiful love scene in screen history, between Harold Russell and Cathy O’Donnell – and, in a lesson to Aronofsky and Lynch, he didn’t need to show T&A to do it).

Whom would you put on the list?

“Do I really want that face I see in the rushes  … the one that looks an awful lot like me … do I want it running around the movie houses of the world?”

By then, of course, it was too late. I’d already signed a contract.

Director Elia Kazan accepts an honorary Oscar (1999)

I’ve already said yes to Andrew Breitbart … and though I’ve been writing editorials on enterstageright.com for more than a few years … this actual return to Hollywood … uh … Big Hollywood, no less … is as disturbing as those memories of My Old Man’s Place.

What does Big Hollywood mean?

Is it a tribute or in-house sarcasm?

So far I only know Big Hollywood’s politics as counter-revolutionary conservative – and if I’m wrong, Andrew and John, please correct me … and that’s why I’m here … as a pro-life libertarian … a category I’ve been in long before I even heard of the name Glenn Beck.

I’m here to try stemming the Revolutionary Tide that has been rising in larger and larger waves from the shores of 18th Century France when the guillotine gave its deadly review to the court of Louis XVI; and subsequently the communes of Paris eventually threaded their legendary grand guignol through the minds of Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilytch Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung.

So here I am … in Big Hollywood … clutching my memories of the American Declaration of Independence and its words: “All men are created equal.”

No, my dear Progressives, Americans were not intended to be gestated as possible candidates for abortion … despite what Chris Matthews of MSNBC infers.

Recently, in the best French Revolutionary tradition, that enlightened despot rode roughshod over a rather royal member of the Catholic Church who was defending Rome’s decision to excommunicate a Kennedy for supporting abortion.

Hmmm … Mr. Matthews kept hammering the poor Roman Prince over what the penalties would be for abortion … should Roe v Wade be overturned … with the inferential reminders of Catholic Inquisitional sadism … and the “Robe” took the bait and folded.

I conclude that the penalties for abortion should be “probational,” periods of close observation on all three corners involved: the mother, the father and the doctor/abortionist. If abortions become chronic with these citizens under close observation … perhaps jail time would be the only effective deterrent.

If such clear messages regarding the blazing immorality of legalized murder are not imposed, then the worldwide, pro-abortion policies will descend into stricter and stricter “population-control policies” such as those in tyrannically Red China.

In the 1940’s, the possible jail penalties certainly didn’t keep my parents, a surgeon and his alcoholic wife, from having two illegal abortions, cardinal illegalities.

I was informed of those facts at the rather dumbfounded age of 10.

“My parents had two of my siblings murdered?!”

No one was arrested … because no one knew … except for my equally stunned sister and myself.

Divorces are a war zone, of course … but divorce after two abortions … for the surviving children … is a Holocaust zone.

With an actual lifetime of survivor’s guilt … ranking second only to the Irish predisposition for alcoholism … I’m surprised I’ve done as well as I have … thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous … and the words, “Let go, let God!”

Now here I am back in not just Hollywood but Big Hollywood!

What a journey!

My old dust-up with Attorney General Janet Reno and all my libertarian declarations for enterstageright.com seem to have been mere warm-ups for the Breitbart Taking Back of Hollywood.

I had a small taste of the “Grand Old Hollywood” when I worked with Arthur Kennedy in Glory Boy. By then, I must say, Mr. Kennedy had the despairing look of a man who knew the old Hollywood days, with sidekicks such as Jimmy Stewart, were over.

In Glory Boy (where did they ever come up with that title) we were doing an anti-war and, by comparison to Oliver Stone’s undeniably anti-American Platoon, a mildly anti-American film about Vietnam War veterans … perhaps the first of its kind.

Hmmm … I had one of the worst times of my life on that film … and vowed never to work in Hollywood again.

Yeah, right.

If my stay with Big Hollywood is half as long as my wonderfully enjoyable forays into conservative thought with enterstageright.com, we might have a decent President of the United States by then.

From the Bush years … of both father and son … bookending the Clinton years … capped by the virtual Obama Nation … the Progressive White House has been putting its bipartisan and Progressive “Changes” on display. They certainly headlined their bright idea of opening up the housing industry with looser and looser loan requirements. Now they are loading the North and South lawns of the White House with massively un-payable debt … and then trying to downplay predictable disasters like that of terrorism at Fort Hood. They sell it as simultaneous serial killings by a deranged loose cannon … who just happened to be a “soldier of Allah.”

Hmmm, indeed … about as convincing as the recent cover-ups for Climategate.

What are my plans with the coming articles?

To track my personal experience with the former Soviet Russia’s undeniable strategy, its unrelenting efforts to Communize all of theater and film in the United States. Let me –most briefly and in light of further, more detailed editorials – state my case.

According to the personal techniques outlined in the book Shostakovich and Stalin by Solomon Volkov, Joseph Stalin’s personal credo might have read something like this: “If a ruler could control and dominate the artists of his nation, then he could control and dominate all of that nation’s citizens, every one of them!”

Hmmm …

One of these Stalinist techniques ironically was mentioned by a White House Czar, that technique of “nudging” America into what is advertised as “Change” but will inevitably flower like poison ivy into a totalitarian state.

As an example, I have no doubt, unless New York’s Governor Paterson increases his recent show of independence from Washington, D.C., that New York will soon follow California into its present state of bankruptcy. President Obama obviously enjoys our growing dependence upon Red China. Let the United States’ growing dependence upon the federal government be increasingly complete with the bankruptcy of all the states; then the message of America’s shrinking importance within the New World Order will be written in universally painful granite.

My coming editorials will sit in the very agony displayed at the Academy Awards when Elia Kazan was handed a well deserved “Gold” for his lifetime achievement. Many in the audience were deliberately and rather boldly “sitting on their hands,” refusing to applaud the director of Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront and East of Eden. That “agony” defines the very political divide that has now grown in Hollywood to oceanic proportions.

A majority of Hollywood is still sitting on its hands in raging resentment of those who refuse to toe the Leftist Line.

I will only depart from writing about Hollywood’s love affair with the Communist Revolution to pay tribute to the true heart of an American Hollywood … those artists deserving of our gratitude for not buckling under the fists and serpentine peer pressure of America’s enlightened despots.

As a precursor to the French Revolution, François-Marie Arouet, better known by the pen name Voltaire, dubbed the revolutionary know-it-alls “enlightened despots.”

When Hollywood’s artists will be revealed as still in touch with a passion we call love, but which self-proclaimed revolutionaries, such as Vanessa Redgrave, call “sentimental rubbish” (that’s what she had to say about a script based on Thomas Wolf’s novel Web and The Rock) … hmmm …  then the Golden Age of Hollywood will return.

From Communism’s seduction of American intellectuals to the beginning of the “nudges” coming out of the Group Theater and its legendary tribute to union unrest … hmmm … in Waiting For Lefty, this most fashionable revolt in American theater urged all young people in the performing arts to go to Hollywood and do the same.

Therefore this literally Stalinist plan to conquer America by conquering its artists has been working.

So, to further inflame my critics, I will add Elia Kazan’s genius to the undeniable brilliance of the occasionally teary-eyed Glenn Beck and watch the asphalt boil on the bankrupt, palm bedecked avenues of the confused and over-extended revolutionaries in California.

To welcome new friends to both my work in Big Hollywood and enterstageright.com, I offer a most heartfelt tribute to the growing Breitbart enterprises and trust that our combined efforts will indeed help to pull us all up … and out of the post-Reagan quicksands we are now drowning in.

Finally, we are actually choking in the debt-ridden quagmires placed under us so that Lenin and Stalin … and Castro and Chavez… and Mao and Pol Pot … and Osama bin Laden can all see their evil vindicated by history and Hollywood … highlighted to eternity by the fall of the United States to world Communism … our nation’s suicidal, deaf and dumbly naïve surrender to the Red/Islamic game plan now being heralded in Hollywood, Chicago, New York and Washington D. C. … yet smugly bandied about in White House dinner parties as the “Progressive World Government.”

In Hollywood there’s something worse than being a communist (or a child rapist) and that’s being an anti-communist. Kazan, a former member of the Communist Party of America, died a die-hard liberal but once he came to understand the crimes against humanity committed under Stalin he left the communist party and eventually went before HUAC where he named Stalinists, not innocent liberals. He also never apologized:

“I’d had every good reason to believe the party should be driven out of its many hiding places and into the light of scrutiny, but I’d never said anything because it would be called ‘red-baiting.’ [. . .] The `horrible, immoral thing’ that I did I did out of my own true self.”

In 1999, the director of more classic films than I can list was awarded a long overdue honorary Oscar, and this was how the Hollywood elite greeted this fellow artist: 

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In 2003 Roman Polanski, a then 25-year fugitive for the crime of raping a 13 year-old girl won the Oscar for Best Director. Here’s how the Hollywood elite greeted that fellow artist:

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“Artist” has got nothing to do with it.

Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime achievement award to writer-director Elia Kazan, who directed Malden in perhaps his best and most memorable role, that of Father Berry in “On the Waterfront.”

Kazan had been an outcast in Hollywood for several decades before the 1999 award, because of his opposition to communism. Malden’s support of him carried a great risk of ostracism by Hollywood’s political correctness police.

A measure of Malden’s integrity is that he was married to the same woman for seventy years and was surrounded by family members when he died.

By no means handsome or dashing, Malden was seen by critics as an Everyman type, but he did not settle for allowing his characters to be ordinary or dull. Having grown up in no privileged environment, he knew just how much strength it often took for ordinary people just to survive. Thus he invested his characters with real strength, regardless of whether the person was basically good or not. He succeeded purely on the strength of his acting ability and the availability of roles playing real adult human beings in real, dramatic stories.

Malden clearly made an effort to understand why his characters did what they did, and as a result his performances emphasize the characters’ freedom of moral choice and consequent moral responsibility for their actions. Thus his performances worked against the prevailing cultural notion that our actions are determined by our circumstances.

Malden had numerous memorable film roles, including Gen. Omar Bradley in “Patton,” the complex sheriff and former bank robber Dad Longworth in “One-Eyed Jacks,” the cuckolded husband in “Baby Doll,” the domineering father in “Fear Strikes Out” (an awful film), and of course as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s TV series “The Streets of San Francisco.”