This month TCM is running a fascinating series, Shadows of Russia, a history of Russia and the Soviet Union as seen through Hollywood’s lens. If you care about movies and politics, you should check out these movies.

The idea for this series originated with the fine film blogger Self-Styled Siren and the New York Post’s Lou Lumenick. Self-Styled Siren explains how it came about here.

Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlett Empress, 1934.

First up, Josef von Sternberg’s—real name Jonas Sternberg—The Scarlett Empress, 1934, starring Marlene Dietrich as Catherine The Great. Catherine was born to an obscure noblemen of the tiny and dirt poor realm of Anhalt-Zerbst. She was brilliant, precocious and, ah, not too attractive.

Hollywood being Hollywood—thank heavens—rewrites and recasts history in a big way. Marlene Dietrich first appears as an innocent young girl, all blond ringlets—very Shirley Temple. It’s great seeing Dietrich do a virgin: she pouts and poses, melding innocence and nymphomania. (more…)

Fifty years ago, Lorraine Hansberry became the first African-American woman to produce a Broadway play, with her timeless and iconic A Raisin in the Sun. Theatergoers at the Ethel Barrymore were shocked, as the New York Times put it on March 12, 1959, by the play’s “vigor as well as veracity,” raving that Hansberry’s masterpiece was “likely to destroy the complacency of anyone who sees it.” Generations since have been stirred by the profundity with which Hansberry detailed the trials and triumphs inherent in the human condition and the strength of character, resiliency, and unbreakable spirit that define the American dream for even the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Yet there is one clear message that has been forgotten over the last half-century, as we are faced with a poverty much greater than Hansberry’s cast of characters could have ever imagined: the ravages of government-subsidized abortion has brought upon a decimated Black community.

Lorraine Hansberry

Recently the Secretary of State appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and confirmed it is the Administration’s goal of including abortion as an integral element of “reproductive health care” provided by the United States. In this context, I had the opportunity to raise concerns about her words of praise for Margaret Sanger, the notorious American racist who founded Planned Parenthood and advocated tirelessly for eugenic policies to eliminate persons she deemed inferior and unworthy to live.

Today, when twice as many Black children are eliminated through abortion than are born, Lena Younger’s stern words to her son, “We a people who give children life, not who destroys them,” evoke the strength, pride, and hope that characterized the soaring spirit of the civil rights movement. Her words should be lifted on billboards and sung through every corner of the world, but little mention is made of her stirring affirmation of life. (more…)