This is the most recent installment of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College, on his book revealing how communists, from Moscow to New York to Chicago, have long manipulated America’s liberals/progressives. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century is based on an unprecedented volume of declassified materials from Soviet archives, FBI files, and more.

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. (more…)

Acting’s in the eyes and regardless of the role Jimmy Cagney’s eyes always screamed “caged.” Whether playing George M. Cohan or some middle-aged Coca-Cola executive, watching Cagney is like watching the lit fuse of a firecracker and whether it was with an explosion of song, dance or violence, Cagney never disappointed — he went off. In “White Heat,” director Raoul Walsh’s magnificent closing chapter in a magnificent two-decade series of Warner Brothers’ gangster pictures, Cagney again explodes …only this time, literally.

Jimmy Cagney in the early 1930s

Produced in 1949, within just a few minutes “White Heat” announces itself as something unlike anything that came before starting with the introduction of Verna Jarrett (29 year old Virginia Mayo), a striking, almost regal beauty shown fast asleep in a close up. Walsh immediately knocks the bark off his perfectly groomed leading lady by having her snore like a sailor after a three day bender. The message is clear: don’t believe everything you see. In just a few more minutes things will move even further beyond normal and straight into disturbing.   (more…)

John Wayne walks the walk in Hondo, 1953.

It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable. (more…)

Jimmy Cagney smashes a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face, The Public Enemy, 1931.

Most actors are remembered for their unique personae. Clark Gable was a man’s man. The humorous gleam in his eye sent daggers to the knees of women everywhere. Bette Davis practically cornered the market on the deeply neurotic woman clawing at the boundaries of love with Baroque fury. Gary Cooper was the classic taciturn American, a solid, self-confident Yankee who spoke eloquently through his silences. Marilyn Monroe is still the paradigm of the woman as vulnerable child waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armor.

Of course Fay Wray, who played in over eighty motion pictures, is only remembered for her role in King Kong. Thus she is, for better or for worse, the shrieking woman, for all time.

Less common is the actor who is identified and remembered for a single brief scene. (more…)