Weintraub first managed musical acts ranging from The Four Seasons to The Moody Blues, then promoted artists such as Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Kiss, Aerosmith and Queen. He also promoted the “comeback” tours for Elvis Presley, then Frank Sinatra. Weintraub’s movie producing credits include “Nashville,” “Oh God!,” “Diner,” “Cruising,” “The Karate Kid,” “National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation,” “The Karate Kid” (2010), and the 2001 remake of “Ocean’s Eleven,” as well as “Ocean’s 12″ and “Ocean’s 13.” He appeared in all the “Ocean” films as well as “The Firm.”

“His Way” is the first documentary feature film directed by Douglas McGrath. McGrath is an actor/writer/director whose past directing credits include “Emma,” “Nicholas Nickleby,” “Infamous,” and “I Don’t Know How She Does It.” In my opinion, “His Way” is pound for pound and frame for frame the most entertaining and inspirational documentary of this past year. “His Way” was shot and edited for nearly ten months and culled from approximately seventy hours of interview footage.

KW: You took an autobiography and turned it into a documentary film. That doesn’t seem like it is usually done very often.

DM: It wasn’t quite as direct as that. Graydon Carter [Managing Editor, Vanity Fair] had called me and asked if I was interested in making a film about Jerry and Jerry’s book was not out at that point. So I read Rich Cohen’s piece that he had done for Vanity Fair and said, “Boy, this guy sounds like quite a character.”

I was going out to L.A. and I said to Graydon … I should meet him. I said, “you know, it would be great if I could read it [Jerry’s book] and then we could meet.” But, Jerry always being Jerry, thinking what is the best way for things to work and what is the right order for them to work in… he brought the manuscript to me himself. Meeting him first and hearing his own speaking voice allowed me to read the book in a more informed way. Meaning I could really tell what kind of person it was that was writing that book. So when I was making the film … I wrote out all the kinds of questions I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t really use the book in the way that I’ve had other films of mine and adapted novels for the screen. I used it sort of as a springboard for conversations.

KW: And what was that experience for you, moving from narrative film into documentary for the first time?

DM: Well, I cheated a little bit in that. I kind of knew the structure I wanted. By which I mean I had this idea early on that I would ask everyone early on to finish the sentence, “Jerry Weintraub is…“ And so I wanted to start the movie with a lot of people saying what they thought Jerry Weintraub was. So everybody I interviewed, the Bushes, Brad Pitt, didn’t matter… I said I want you to finish this sentence for me however you can. “Jerry Weintraub is…” and we got a lot of great stuff. I knew I wanted to start that way and then I knew I wanted to get into his personal life, where he was from, what world produced him. I just wanted to kind of follow that arc. So, I just kind of asked questions knowing that was my shape. It wasn’t kind of an outline, but it gave me a general idea. When we were out at his house in Palm Desert, the thing that knocked my socks off were those moving glass doors that open at the beginning of the film.

KW: It’s an amazing shot.

DM: I just thought, “That is how the movie has to start.” Because I noticed that he had all these monograms. And I thought we’ll do a series of monograms and then we’ll end and reveal him at these doors which are opening without his touching them. And which reveal what appears to be the whole world at his feet. I thought that is a good way with just pictures to tell us, that this is a guy if you don’t know him, who might have an interesting story. So in that way, I had that much narration in my head. And then, I knew that people would speak to certain sections of his life.

KW: Were there some particular challenges with this type of story that maybe, you wouldn’t encounter with narrative or even a different type of non-fiction subject?

DM: Well, that’s a very good question. Compared to narrative … with a documentary you have to be careful. Because it’s like quicksand if you’re not careful. You can think deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into a subject depending on what you are writing about. You think of those guys who did that wonderful “Hoop Dreams” or obviously, bigger things like “The Civil War” or “Shoah”… you think, “Oh my God, I know how to get into it, but I don’t know how to get out of it.”  I wanted to tell the story of this guy, whose greatest job of salesmanship was selling himself. And I could see that pattern early in his life. He just talked his way into jobs, he talked his way into relationships. He was successful doing that because he had a very appealing personality and a very astute understanding of other people’s personalities and I saw that there’s a journey there.

He wasn’t poverty-stricken, but he was not wealthy. He started out in a comfortable life, but then only built up from there. And he learned from his Dad. And I thought, I want to trace that journey and then I want to take … what most people knew about him, which was his professional success and I wanted to show how there was an application to his personal life as well. That he had some impossible successes in his professional life and then he managed to do the same thing in his personal life with Jane (his wife) and Suzy (his girlfriend). And you know, I have a section of the film where a lot of other guys go … “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.”

KW: I love the one of Barbara Bush and President Bush. It’s classic…

DM: Barbara Bush is practically the funniest person in the movie.

KW: Really?

DM: Sometimes, when we first showed the film … when it first came out … the line she says, “I’d kill George Bush if he did that” gets possibly the biggest laugh in the entire movie. .

KW: It is a good mix of people and when you go to the Bushes, they are like the grandparents in that situation. I thought it was hilarious too.

DM: I loved having the Bushes in the film and, what I really knew I wanted to do once they had agreed to be in it was… unlike everyone else who I knew I was interviewing as single subjects. I never wanted anybody coupled up because I wanted their individual thoughts about Jerry, except in President and Barbara Bush’s case. They’d been married for 65 years. I knew they would have the give-and-take and the push-and-pull of an old married couple. And by our standards the standards of “His Way”… that’s an action sequence for us. That’s as much explosive power as we’re going to get. And their dynamic between the two of them just killed me.

Stay tuned for Part II, in which Douglas talks about the rest of the film, including the amazing segments on Jerry’s experiences with Elvis Presley, Colonel Tom Parker, and Frank Sinatra.

Now, the star of “Die Hard” and “License to Kill” is using his pipes for a very good cause.

Davi’s newest song, a re-imagined version of the Christmas classic song, “Mistletoe and Holly,” will soon be available via iTunes and Amazon.com. All the profits from the song, which goes on sale Dec. 13 for $.99, will go to help The Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign. The annual drive provides emergency assistance to millions of families in need around the holiday.

“Music has always been a big part of The Salvation Army, especially at Christmas, so partnering with a singer like Robert Davi is a great and natural fit,” said Major George Hood, national community relations and development secretary for The Salvation Army.

Donations will help raise money for the distribution of food, toys, coats, rental and utility assistance, and many other social services provided by The Salvation Army during the Christmas season and throughout the remainder of the year.

Davi can sing, period. And he shows off his pipes in the new CD “Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance.” The album is already getting raves from music critics. Now, Davi is sharing his songs and memories of Ol’ Blue Eyes on SiriusXM.

Davi recorded a program for the satellite radio network called “Playing Favorites with Robert Davi,” set for rebroadcast at 9 p.m. EST tonight, as well as 9 a.m. EST Thursday (Nov. 17) and 3 p.m. EST Saturday (Nov. 19).

Here’s the skinny on the hour-long program:

Robert Davi grew up listening to our music. His dream has been to sing it. Now, he’s finally released an album Davi Sings Sinatra, and it’s getting acclaim all across America. We asked Robert to stop in and play tracks from his album as well as pick an hour of music he loves best. No surprise, most of it is by Frank, whom he loves so dearly.

The same holds true for singing, says actor turned singer Robert Davi.

“I was either cursed or blessed with a blending of the masculine and feminine… it gives you a certain kind of interpretive swagger that you get over the years,” says Davi, whose recording debut, ‘Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance,’ pays homage to the performing legend. “To sing these songs, you gotta live.”

And Davi has done just that for decades, forging a respected acting career in films like ‘Die Hard,’ ‘The Goonies,’ and ‘License to Kill’ while his considerable singing chops waited for the right time to be embraced.

‘Davi Sings Sinatra,’ produced by the legendary Phil Ramone and mixed by engineer Al Schmitt, marks just such an occasion. The album’s 12 tracks, including Sinatra staples like ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ and ‘Summer Wind,’ reveal Davi as a serious musician with a voice well suited for Sinatra’s romantic ballads. Even critics who might otherwise carp on an actor attempting a musical career are singing the album’s praises.

The actor isn’t simply attempting a career change. He studied music long before becoming one of Hollywood’s more respected performers.

Davi always envisioned himself forging a dual career like his idol, New Jersey’s own Francis Albert Sinatra. Davi studied opera as a young man, but his acting career took off first, eventually landing him parts in blockbuster feature films, working with the likes of Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood and Marlon Brando.

But the urge to sing never really went away.

Enter ‘The Dukes,’ Davi’s 2007 labor of love which he co-wrote, directed and starred as a former doo-wop singer struggling to make ends meet. The film proved he could make a movie, but it also reignited his passion for singing.

“I knew I’d come back into it,” he says. “Everything is aligning — my own development as a human being, an actor and an artist. I need to communicate through song. Before, there may have been some fear holding me back.”

He sees ‘Davi Sings Sinatra’ as more than just a musical tribute. Davi may excel at being a tough guy on screen, but his debut disc reveals a more vulnerable side. The 12 songs touch on the depths of love, from “settling into it to starting to fall out of love and the despair” that follows. And, of course, the eventual re-awakening of the next romance, he says.

And the love in question isn’t necessarily for a woman, he says.

“We have to re-ignite that love of America … the hope and optimism immigrants came to America for,” he says, the kind Sinatra stoked during the tumultuous years around World War II.

Today’s music often targets specific demographics, while chapters from the Great American Songbook brought people of all ages together. Davi is seeing that for himself with his initial forays into live performing.

“I’m getting kids [in the crowd], people from 10 to 80,” he says, adding patrons from different countries are also dropping by to see his live act. “This music translates all over the place.”

Davi isn’t giving up on his other career. He recently wrapped shooting on ‘The Chameleon,’ a comedy co-starring Stacy Keach. And he just inked a deal to write and star in ‘The Voice,’ a film centering, in part, on a Sinatra fanatic.

Davi’s Sinatra connection isn’t simply that of an unabashed fan. Sinatra personally selected him to play Mickey Sinardos in the 1977 NBC television drama ‘Contract on Cherry Street.’

“There are a million things you’d like to sit down and talk to him about, but at that point in my life I was a pretty shy kid. I didn’t want to invade,” he says of his time on the set with Sinatra. So the young actor observed his idol up close. He saw a man who trained with the best coaches possible, not relying solely on his musical gifts. And he marveled at the fact that Sinatra possessed a massive trove of classical music. In conversation, it’s immediately clear Davi possesses an encyclopedia of knowledge on all things Sinatra.

Davi isn’t one to mock today’s music no matter how much enthusiasm he shares for the Sinatra songbook of yore. But he’s keenly aware that the disposable pop ditties of today are no match, in the long term, for the songs Sinatra cradled in his inimitable voice.

“A great piece of music is something that lasts,” he says.

Don Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and William Shatner are just a few big name stars stung by reporters for daring to add the word “singer” to their résumés. But music critics are lining up to sing the praises of actor Robert Davi’s new disc, ‘Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance.’

The actor, whose impressive career includes roles in ‘Die Hard,’ ‘Goonies,’ and ‘License to Kill,’ started out as a trained singer before Hollywood came calling. Now, he’s reclaimed his musical legacy, and several major publications like USA Today appear glad he did. Here’s another rave, the kind that must make the Sinatra fan in Davi light up:

“Listening to it, you just know Sinatra would have smiled, given Davi a light tap on the cheek, and said, ‘Nice job, kid.’”

JazzTimes.com fell for Davi’s decision to find inspiration from Sinatra without resorting to an unwise imitation:

“The results are, indeed, uniformly impressive. A solid swinger and equally capable balladeer …”

Bill Miller of National Radio Syndicators called the new album a “winner.”

“This guy has the chops that translate into great listening.”

Davi’s way with a melody isn’t restricted to recorded music. Consider this review of a recent live appearance covering material from the just-released album:

By the time he’d finished his second number – “Nice ‘n’ Easy” – and was swinging smoothly through “At Long Last Love,” it was apparent that he was clearly in touch with the content, the details and the spirit of Sinatra’s way with a song.

Davi’s acting gigs often play up his intimidating side, but it’s the way he cradles Sinatra songbook that’s wooing otherwise skeptical scribes.

After all, the respected character actor turned crooner’s politics don’t exactly align with those of the Commander in Chief. But Davi still has a few practical thoughts he’d love to share with the president. He recently spoke with The Creative Coalition’s Robin Bronk on what he’d say to Obama if given the chance:

ROBIN BRONK: If you had five minutes in the Oval Office with President Obama, what would you discuss with him? What issue would you like him to know about?

ROBERT DAVI: I would like to talk with him about the crisis in American education. To help children reach their full intellectual potential, an education must include American values, civics and history. Our students must have an exceptional education that inspires them and builds upon our country’s greatness, instead of a relativistic, socialistic worldview that wants to erase what our country stands for and has accomplished. There has been a systematic approach to undermine the “Greatness of America” — a pervasive hipness in denigrating our country that flatters itself as being intellectually provocative. And, while I know he distanced himself from the Rev. Wright’s comments, I would like to discuss with the president why the comment “God damn America” offended the vast majority of Americans. Specifically, because America is an ideal — a living dream that has been a beacon of hope for the world. Yes, at times, the men and women who make political decisions may be misguided and cause some to want to damn them. But if we erased America from world history, one must unequivocally agree the world would be a lesser place. Therefore, I say, “God BLESS America!”

Davi hopes his upcoming album, ‘Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance,’ extends his patriotic philosophy. The disk, due to drop Oct. 24, finds Davi cradling the Great American Songbook in a way meant to flatter both it and the man who made its songs iconic – Francis Albert Sinatra.

One comment I read put it best: Too bad Frank Sinatra isn’t alive to kick his ass.

ABC News:

[On his radio show, Howard] Stern then asked Bennett about how America should deal with terrorists, specifically those responsible for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said.

In a soft-spoken voice, the singer disagreed with Stern’s premise that 9/11 terrorists’ actions led to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett responded. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”

Following seconds of silence, Stern said that his guest was “making some good points.”

Before leaving, Bennett recalled an evening in 2005 when he was honored at the Kennedy Center. Meeting President George W. Bush at the event, the singer said that the commander-in-chief shared his opinion about the Iraq War.

“He told me personally that night that, he said, ‘I think I made a mistake,’” Bennett said.

Bennett believed that the president made this revelation because “he had a special liking to me.”

Bush told a lib crooner he made a mistake in Iraq?

Looks like Bennett also left his credibility in San Francisco.

Yeah, this will sell albums.

The American rebels with a cause in “From Here To Eternity,” the heroes of that 1941, Pearl Harbor drama, are all, in some sense, a replica of Lt. Col. West. The Colonel’s individual freedom and individual integrity, his truth to himself and responsibility to his enlisted men were fulfilled in the clearest and most unswerving manner.

—–

In my opinion, he saved the lives of American servicemen and drew a line in the sand before the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, homicidal bully of Iran.

In the eyes of Col. West’s military superiors, he was considered the villain in “From Here To Eternity.”

To the contrary, he belongs with the characters played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra. Three distinctively American integrities.

Why was the Colonel singled out for an enforced “resignation”?

The collective bargaining and cronyism of the Third Millennium, American Army-at-War was seen spitting on its own best soldiers because of the New World Order’s increasingly Marxist agenda.

In the film translation of that always surprising novel by James Jones, From Here To Eternity, individual freedom and individual responsibility are the heroes battling the community organizing pressure and collective bargaining going on under the guidance of Captain Dana “Dynamite” Holmes. That officer is, in short, the villain, played by Phillip Ober with perfect contempt for anyone or anything but himself.

Does such elitism sound familiar?

There are prophetically Marxist-style cabals and pressures existing to both force Prewittt, the Montgomery Clift character, to box, and to “transform” Frank Sinatra’s Maggio into a coward and someone ashamed of his Italian roots. Maggio would rather die, be beaten to death, than succumb to any bully.

Neither effort succeeds, of course, and both Maggio and Prewitt, true to themselves, die as heroes, fighting not only their enemies abroad but the very “community organizers” and “collective bargainers” that can so obscenely crop up in any military setting.

With prophetic irony, the villainous officer of “From Here To Eternity” is given the same sentence which a whole new, politically correct military – during President George W. Bush’s militarily ambitious administration – felt obliged to give our contemporary hero, Lt. Col. West a forced resignation.

Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America” had already begun during the previous Presidency. Decades before that, the soul of the American identity died with the legalized murder of Roe v Wade: Again, as in slavery days, all men and women are no longer created equal.

No wonder the likes of the Soros/Obama New World Order arrived. The enemy to the essence of American identity already had 30-some years of a homicidally corrupted law and order.

Therein lies our President’s stated view of his mission: to save the collective. The undeniably Marxist collective.

Before the American military had to even face confronting the Soviet Union, James Jones’s “From Here To Eternity” captured the basic heart of our dilemma now: Community Organizing and Collective Bargaining versus Individual Freedom and Individual Responsibility.

The Soviet Union and Red China are clearly a child of the former disciplines and America the proud and resilient offspring of the latter.

How odd that the Marxists abort millions of the very collective they claim to be protecting while traditional America feels obliged to ensure the life of every child conceived within the United States.

The title, “From Here To Eternity,” is ultimately the most hopeful thing about James Jones’ novel. That, of course, and the fact that we eventually, after huge sacrifice of the Free World’s lives, won World War II.

My last article for Big Peace set America in the classically tragic mould of Oedipus and a potential family bloodbath. That, of course, then inspired this week’s ESR article on America’s Second Civil War.

Do the murderous feelings within “From Here To Eternity” still remain in today’s America.?

I feel those American identity nightmares are worse now than ever.

Perhaps the character closest to Lt. Col. Allen West in “From Here To Eternity” is Burt Lancaster’s First Sergeant Milton Warden. This sergeant knows the entire universe of enlisted life and, yes, miraculously he treads a clear but complicated path of moral rectitude. He’s the strongest of the heroes in that film and I suspect that Lt. Col. Allen West is neck and neck with the Lancaster character and, with his officer’s credentials, will indeed stand with Sergeant Warden in the best tradition of American manhood and heroism.

No, the Sergeant of “From Here To Eternity” is hardly a saint, nor should we expect Col. Allen West to be one during his long and inevitable pilgrimage to the White House.

Am I that sure of his destiny?

Yes.

Col. West may not become our President – though circumstances may very well make him that – but he will serve in some very important role in our next President’s cabinet, that team of advisers which President Obama has so cavalierly ignored.

Aside from the obviously worn-out and beleaguered Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who or what traipses through or calls the Oval Office more often than the labor union bullies running things in Wisconsin?

This bully, played with divinely crafted sadism by Ernest Borgnine, won’t mess with the likes of Burt Lancaster’s Sgt. Warden. Fatso ultimately drops his knife.

The increasingly Fatted Marxists of the Obama Nation, in turn, won’t mess with Lt. Col. West.

What do you think?

Big Peace: Professor Kengor, Hollywood is celebrating its Academy Awards, a look back at great actors and actresses and films.

Kengor: For me, it’s a moment to look back at Hollywood’s worst communists, communist sympathizers, Stalinists, and duped liberals and progressives—as well as the good guys (and gals) that fit none of those categories.

Big Peace: Fair enough. This should be fun. Let’s start with communists.

Charlie Chaplin comment, “Thank God for
communism!” will make you see (him) red.

Kengor: How about the Hollywood screenwriters who liberals still insist were innocent lambs? Dalton Trumbo, Communist Party code “Dalt T;” Albert Maltz, party no. 47196; Alvah Bessie, no. 46836; John Howard Lawson, no. 47275. Or, if you turn to page 191 of my book—if you don’t have a copy yet, shame on you—you can view Arthur Miller’s party application. Miller wrote The Crucible, about how Joe McCarthy pursued “liberals” unfairly suspected of being communists—“liberals” like Miller, Trumbo, Maltz, Bessie, Lawson.

Big Peace: As you say in Dupes, Hollywood produced “quite a cast.” Let’s narrow the focus to the Academy Awards.

Kengor: Among films that have canonized communists, Julia (1977) celebrated the scowling Lillian Hellman and her mystery lover/writer, Dashiell Hammett, who we now know was a CPUSA member. Hellman wrote a bitter play called Scoundrel Time, about Joe McCarthy. In Hellman’s universe, it was Joe McCarthy, not Joe Stalin, who was evil. Winning Oscars for Julia were Jason Robards and Vanessa Redgrave. Fittingly, Lillian Hellman was played by Jane Fonda, recently retired from her real-life role as Vietcong go-go girl. “If you would understand what communism was,” Fonda pleaded with a student audience, “you would pray on your knees that we would someday be communist.”

Big Peace: Another film from that period that celebrated American communists was Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981).

Kengor: That film lionized American Bolshevik John Reed. Reed today is buried in the wall of the Kremlin, a structure responsible for upwards of 60-70 million deaths. Maureen Stapleton won an Oscar for her role in that film as “Red” Emma Goldman, a woman so radical that Woodrow Wilson’s Justice Department deported her to Russia.

Big Peace: Which Academy Award winner made the worst statement about communism?

Kengor: I would roll out the red carpet for Charlie Chaplin. “Thank God for communism!” said the silent film star. “They say communism may spread all over the world. I say, so what?” The Daily Worker thrust that comment onto its front page. Communism, of course, did spread around the world, killing 100-140 million. How’s that for a “so what?”

Big Peace: You have several Oscar winners in Dupes whose names were raised as potential communists by a party organizer in Los Angeles who testified under oath to a grand jury and to Congress.

Kengor: The party organizer was John Leech. Most of those he named turned out to be proven party members. Among those who denied Leech’s charges were Jimmy Cagney, who won an Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy, Fredric March, who won it twice, and Humphrey Bogart, who won for The African Queen. I think Cagney was at least momentarily interested in the Communist Party.

Big Peace: We talked previously about your fascinating material on Humphrey Bogart, profiled in a feature by Big Hollywood (click here).

Kengor: In the Soviet Comintern Archives on CPUSA, I found a “Bogart” at the Workers School in New York in 1934. With great care, and with all the declassified documents, I consider whether this was Humphrey Bogart. I found no smoking gun, but it’s extremely intriguing.

Big Peace: We do know that Bogart was a dupe.

Kengor: He was a self-admitted dupe, ashamed at how the communist screenwriters lied to him and other celebrities that formed a group called the Committee for the First Amendment. They flew all the way to Washington to defend their “progressive” friends, only to learn that the screenwriters were closet Stalinists. Bogart was enraged, snapping, “You [expletives] sold me out!” Yes, they did. The Reds had no concern for the reputations of these actors.

Other duped liberals who threw their support behind these communists, and won Academy Awards, were Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, and Judy Garland.

Big Peace: Perhaps the biggest Oscar winner is also one of your biggest dupes: Katharine Hepburn.

Kengor: Yes. One of the sorriest episodes in Hepburn’s illustrious career came when she delivered, in flame red dress, a speech at a May 1947 Progressive Party Rally. The speech was unerringly close to the Soviet line. Why wouldn’t it be? It was written by one of those “liberal” screenwriters: Dalton Trumbo. People’s Daily World reprinted the entire text. Hepburn hit a home-run for the comrades.

Big Peace: Burl Ives won an Oscar for The Big Country (1958). Tell us about Ives.

Kengor: Burl Ives also sang some wonderful Christmas tunes. He was in a folk group called “The Almanacs,” which alternately included Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and (among others) Will Geer—“Grandpa Walton” on The Waltons, a wild left-winger, and Columbia University grad, naturally. Some of these guys joined the party. “The Almanacs” were exploited by the seditious communist front-group, American Peace Mobilization, which appeased Hitler because Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin. They were the musical entertainment for the mobilization’s signature event in New York in April 1941. Go to pages 142-157 of Dupes, which presents materials from that rally—including Soviet orders to sucker “social justice” pastors, which occurred with tremendous success.

Big Peace: On the plus side, you highlight duped liberals who learned and changed, including in Hollywood. Sticking to Oscar winners, give some examples.

Kengor: If I were giving awards for best converted dupes, male and female—who also won Oscars—they would go to Melvyn Douglas and Olivia de Havilland. Douglas warned his fellow liberals about being duped. Ditto for de Havilland, who we discussed previously (click here). Unlike Katharine Hepburn, de Havilland, who played “Melanie” in Gone With the Wind, refused a pro-Soviet speech written by Trumbo.

Big Peace: Also on the plus side, list some Oscar winners who remained committed anti-communists throughout their career.

Kengor: Top billing goes to John Wayne, of course, who won for True Grit, and declared that Hollywood needed a good communist “de-lousing.” Others: Charlton Heston, Red Buttons, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Loretta Young, Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, Shirley Temple. William Holden, who, with Ronald Reagan (click here), crashed a meeting of Hollywood communists in 1946. Gary Cooper, who won two Oscars, testified before Congress as a friendly witness on communist infiltration in Hollywood. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert both won awards for It Happened One Night (1934).

Finally, I tip my hat to Haing Ngor, real-life survivor of Pol Pot’s Cambodian holocaust. Ngor won an Oscar for playing “Dith Pran” in The Killing Fields (1984). After all that, he was murdered in California in 1996.

Big Peace: Most of those we’ve noted are deceased. Give us some names of dupes or potential dupes among recent Oscar winners.

Kengor: George Clooney won for Syriana (2005). Mercifully, he didn’t win for Good Night, and Good Luck, another film where anti-communists are the demons. Barbra Streisand won for Funny Girl (1968). Of course, Sean Penn won in 2003 and 2008. Penn fits the theme of my book well, as he’s somewhat of a bridge from Cold War dupes to War on Terror dupes.

Among the non-dupes who won recent Oscars, there’s Jon Voight (Coming Home, 1978). His role in a major film on Pope John Paul II was wonderful, and would never garner modern Hollywood’s approval.

Big Peace: Professor Kengor, thanks for a unique take on the Academy Awards.

Kengor: My pleasure.

_____________________

5. Johnny Mathis (b. 1935)

A host of other crooners fought tooth and nail for this fifth slot — Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Jim Reeves, Gene Autry, Nat King Cole — but Mathis wins the day via an impressive five Christmas-themed albums, the best of which are immeasurably improved by the melodic mastery of maestro Percy Faith (1908-1976), whose inventive yet unashamedly unambiguous orchestrations make him my favorite instrumental interpreter of Christmas tunes.

The only one of our Top 5 who is still alive, Mathis made his Xmas bones by singing what is, for my money, the single most beautiful rendition of “Ave Maria” ever recorded — a feat accomplished when he was just twenty-two. Fifty years on, no one has matched the infectious, jingling energy Mathis and Faith brought to “Sleigh Ride.” And despite a good showing by Andy Williams, I daresay he takes the prize for “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “Winter Wonderland” as well.

_____________________

4. Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)

A national treasure and one of the twentieth-century’s premier musical icons, Pops’ affinity for Christmas stemmed from the fact that his poverty-stricken youth was utterly bereft of holiday cheer (his grandparents were slaves). Armstrong’s fourth wife once told of the childlike delight he expressed when she presented him, at the ripe old age of forty, with his first decorated tree. In the following decades, his many Xmas performances never failed to capture the singular joys of the season.

Many singers try to out-cool Satchmo in this arena — Dino, Elvis, Frank, et al. — but all of their “red-beaked reindeer” and “big black Cadillac” stuff, fun as it is, can’t match the authentic jazzy hipness of tunes like “Christmas in New Orleans,” “Christmas Night in Harlem,” “Cool Yule,” and “’Zat You, Santa Claus?” His live nightclub take on “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” accompanied by a game Velma Middleton, captures the humorous ribaldry at the heart of the song better than anyone else, making it the only “essential” variant to the classic Margaret Whiting/Johnny Mercer duet.

Even at the end of his life, wracked by failing health, Armstrong knocked several more Christmas standards out of the park, virtually whispering his way through “White Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland.” The way his weak, perilously quivering voice evinces holiday enthusiasm despite his palpable pain is quite moving. And in February, 1971 he gave us one last bit of holiday gold: a tender, intimate performance of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (a.k.a. “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”) captured on tape at his home just a few months before his death.

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3. Burl Ives (1909-1995)

A young Boy Scout turned wandering itinerant folk-singer during the Great Depression, a veteran of World War II, a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee (who ticked off his commie folk-singing friends by cooperating with the investigation), and a powerful Academy Award-winning actor in the 1950s, Burl Ives had already led an eventful life before appearing in Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964. That stop-motion animated special singlehandedly cemented both his visage and voice in the Christmas pantheon, and his renditions of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Silver and Gold,” and the show’s title tune are unlikely ever to be surpassed.

While not as prolific a Christmas crooner as some others, Ives followed up Rudolph with some wonderful songs both standard and new. His longstanding love of Christian-themed folk anthems served him in good stead, lending unparalleled emotional authenticity to pieces like “Christmas Child” (“Loo, loo, loo….”), “Christmas is a Birthday,” and “Happy Birthday Jesus,” all of which would have sounded hopelessly corny in other hands. “Snow for Johnny” is one of those songs that should be a popular standard but isn’t, and his “Christmas Can’t Be Far Away” is in my opinion the most underrated song in the entire holiday canon, deserving of a fame comparable to “White Christmas” and “Silver Bells.”

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2. Bing Crosby (1903-1977)

When we think of the classic Christmas sound, the one that conjures up thoughts of our grandparents decorating a tree by firelight in the wake of the Second World War while listening to the crackling radio, we think of Bing and his seemingly effortless warm and inviting baritone.

Whether solo or accompanied by the Andrews Sisters, from the staggeringly successful “White Christmas,” to holiday staples like “The Christmas Song (“Chestnuts Roasting….”), “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “A Marshmallow World,” and “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” to unheralded gems like “The First Snowfall” “Little Jack Frost Get Lost,” and “The Secret of Christmas,” he’s one of those guys who couldn’t screw up a Christmas song if he tried. Add to that the respectful and reverent Father O’Malley aura gracing his readings of the overtly Christian lyrics of “Silent Night,” “The First Noel,” “Away in a Manger,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and “Faith of Our Fathers,” and you have the quintessential sound of the season.

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1. Perry Como (1912-2001)

If you’re under forty, you likely don’t have a full appreciation of how central Perry Como is to Christmas. A baritone so influenced by Bing Crosby that the two are often confused, he nevertheless became immensely popular in his own right. Known far and wide as a devout family man (whose marriage lasted sixty-five years), he was also that precious rarity: one of the genuine class acts in show business. The rich, simple, honest voice that powers such perennial favorites as “O Holy Night,” “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, “Bless This House,” and “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays” resonates with the same eternal vibration that courses through our shared recollections of the holiday itself.

But it was his decades of televised Christmas specials that secured his place in the hearts of our parents and grandparents. From 1948 until 1994 — a span of almost fifty years! — he routinely warmed the wintry living rooms of America with his music and personality. That makes him the Iron Man of holiday crooning, hands down, the one singer who can purr “There is No Christmas Like a Home Christmas” and mean it.

I still remember the sparkle that would fill my late grandmother’s eyes whenever a Como tune would play. His was the voice of an era, her era. Her brood of youngsters were long grown and scattered across the country, her husband was dead and gone. But thanks to the miracle of sound recording, Perry Como’s voice remained as vibrant as ever, and his dulcet tones never failed to imbue ol’ Grandma with a deep comfort and satisfaction borne by memories of a life — and many, many Christmases — well-lived.