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.”

I’ll be getting into that in detail in another series of articles, but we’re here to talk about Hollywood. Hollywood was once a conservative town run by immigrants who believed in the American way. Many of the stars fought in WWII and acted in patriotic movies. But there was a labor struggle in Hollywood starting with the unions, which began to get infiltrated by communists and socialists in the 1930s. They made more and more demands of the studios that they didn’t like. In 1947, the studio bosses decided to take advantage of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), with which Senator Joseph McCarthy had no direct involvement despite misinformation to the contrary. The Hollywood studio bosses wanted to bust up the unions and the method they used was the HUAC investigations and the blacklist.

Instead of solving their problem, it created a backlash which fills many members of Hollywood with bitterness to this day. It created a whole mythology and a flawed rationale for some to reject all things conservative, even though conservative politics was not really the issue at all. A sort of ideological purge began to take hold in Hollywood. Those with conservative leanings were made to feel so unwelcome that to this day many of them keep their politics to themselves. As Charlton Heston often said, “There are more conservatives in the closet in Hollywood than gays.”

Former MCA/Universal chief Lew Wasserman was famous for his politics. Like many in Hollywood, he picked the Democrats as the party to favor in the hopes that they would favor his company. Like lemmings, the industry followed his example.

Small wonder Wasserman felt a natural affinity for Lyndon Johnson. Facing a relentless Justice Department investigation in the early 1960s, Wasserman discovered the river of power that flowed from channeling Hollywood money to Democratic candidates. LBJ’s 1964 campaign marked his elevation into the top ranks of Democratic fund-raisers. In The Power and the Glitter, his 1990 book on Hollywood and politics, Ronald Brownstein writes, “Wasserman, Hollywood’s toughest operator, eased into this rugged environment as if he were born to it.”

But Wasserman, unlike the left-wing Malibu Democrats, was never an ideologue, as evidenced by his 1968 support for Hubert Humphrey. From Johnson to Clinton, his cause was making sure that the film industry had a pipeline to a Democratic White House. In his equation of politics with business, in his understanding that money buys access, Wasserman was no different than the conservative Texas oilmen who bankrolled the rise of LBJ.

Wasserman was known for punishing those in town didn’t support the Democrats. When studio heads set such examples, the minions often follow suit. So many Hollywood people started supporting Democrats, not just in Washington but the state of California. They funneled millions into the campaigns of people like Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, etc. The state became bluer over time. When Hollywood darling President Bill Clinton closed a lot of military bases in California, it helped to push the state more into the Democrat column. And lax immigration policies favored by Democrats, who see illegal aliens as their future voters, hurt Republicans in the state even more. Especially when the Republicans tried to fight back against the huge costs illegal aliens placed on the state budget.

Progressives believe in the nanny state. They’ve ushered in a quasi-Victorian age where more and more things become banned. Where your every action is dictated to by the state. California keeps creating laws to micro-manage its citizens’ every move. And all of that bureaucracy costs money. As a result, the government has become increasingly voracious when it comes to taxes and fines. They fine people for anything they can think of and tax them when they’re not fining them.

This makes the cost of living in California too much for the working class and the poor, not to mention the rich who are tired of being soaked. Business and talent are flocking away from the state. Hollywood productions are forced to relocate to more affordable climes. Which means the city of Los Angeles, which has largely depended on the Hollywood cash cow for most of the last 80 years, is starting to feel the pain. Hollywood is a vast industry that employs thousands of people. It helps fund many more ancillary businesses from the restaurants to the gardeners to the baristas at the coffee shops. When the money in Hollywood dries up so do a lot of the businesses that employ people, like out of work actors and writers. And when that happens, things gets ugly.

The end result is the state of California is on a collision course with bankruptcy. Hollywood helped bring about the end of its own glory. America was once looked on by the world as a savior. It rescued millions from the oppression of the Nazis and Communism. But Hollywood started cranking out movies starting in the late 60s that “deconstructed” the American myths. More and more films portrayed the government as evil, the military as butchers, America as oppressors. Not surprisingly, anti-Americanism started to spread around the world.

The irony of progressives is they attack the very government they created. The oppressive government which spies on our every movie in Hollywood films is less the product of the cold war conservatives and more the product of big government-loving statists. And that’s a progressive ideology. Not a conservative one.

The cost of running a government the progressive way is too expensive to take care of anyone well. It only exploits and robs revenues the citizens as much as inhumanly possible. The people are given inferior benefits as a bribe for their acceptance. They’re bribed with their own money or the money of those who could have given them a good job, if the state wasn’t bilking them first.

If Hollywood wants to return to its former success, it needs to stop deluding itself and start supporting those who would make the business climate good for them again.The leaders in California that the progressives support are not helping little guy. They are making them destitute. And if Hollywood doesn’t get smarter fast, they will meet them on the way down.

I remember being on sets or in casting-session waiting rooms and getting into heated “discussions” with actors about The Red Scare Blacklist, and how we should “never forgive anyone who named names to save their own skin.” 

But Kazan only ever admitted to doing what he thought was right. But my actor friends, most of whom were born long after the period in question, and whose knowledge of The House Unamerican Activities Committee was usually limited to lectures from their favorite college professor, wouldn’t buy it. “Phooey,” they said. There was only one explanation: anyone who cooperated with HUAC was a coward motivated by ruthless career ambition. Anyone who refused to testify, however, did so only out of a high minded commitment to principles.

When, in the course of discussion, I would posit that perhaps Kazan, who had been a member of the Communist Party early in his career, honestly saw it as an evil that was a danger to his country and acted in good conscience, I was met with laughter. “You’re not serious, are you?” they would say.

Why are the motives of some rejected out of hand, while those of others are beyond questioning?

Which is why the current suggestion of a proposed actor boycott reminded me of Kazan. Here’s an excerpt form the current “anonymous” email that was “anonymously” forwarded by actress Frances Fisher. Referring to a group of actors who have come out against the SAG strike authorization, it says:

“If I were a regular, ordinary, not-rich-and-famous actor, and if I wanted my union to be strong so it could fight for me … would I want to give any of these rich-and-famous UNION-UNDERMINERS my vote? Would I want my union to give them such an honor — MY UNION’s ultimate stamp-of-approval? I would remember those names when I began to mark my ballot.”

Why can’t Ms. Fisher and these other union members understand that we just don’t agree with them. Why is it that those who do not want to strike are being divisive, but those who do are “fighting for me?”  How is it that I am doing the undermining? Why is it not she who is undermining MY UNION?

Look at the video of Kazan’s poignant acceptance speech, with most in attendance giving the old master the respect he deserves. A few petulant holdouts sit with arms folded. It doesn’t seem to bother him. After thanking them, he says finally, “I think I can just slip away…”