The 40s: The Story of a Decade (50 page)

FEBRUARY 21, 1948 (ON THE RED SCARE IN HOLLYWOOD)

H
ollywood is baffled by the question of what the Committee on un-American Activities wants from it. People here are wondering, with some dismay and anxiety, what kind of strange, brooding alienism the Committee is trying to eliminate from their midst and, in fact, whether it was ever here. They are waiting hopefully for Chairman J. Parnell Thomas, or Congress, or God, to tell them. They have been waiting in vain ever since last November, when eight writers, a producer, and a director—often collectively referred to these days as “the ten writers”—were blacklisted by the studios because they had been charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to tell the Thomas Committee what political party, if any, they belong to. In the meantime, business, bad as it is, goes on. The place is more nervous than usual, but it is doing the same old simple things in the same old simple ways. The simplicities of life in Hollywood are not, of course, like those anywhere else. This is still a special area where you get remarkable results simply by pushing buttons; where taxi-drivers jump out of their cabs, open their doors, and politely bow you inside; where you can buy, in “the world’s largest drugstore,” a good-looking clock for $735; where all the lakes in the countryside are labelled either “For Sale” or “Not for Sale”; and where guests at parties are chosen from lists based on their weekly income brackets—low ($200–$500), middle ($500–$1,250), and upper ($1,250–$20,000). During the last few months, party guests have tended to be politically self-conscious, whatever their brackets, but this is not especially embarrassing in Hollywood, where it is possible to take an impregnable position on both sides of any controversy. At an upper-bracket party not long
ago, a Selznick man introduced to me as Merve told me that he was appalled and outraged by the blacklisting of the ten writers. “It’s a damn shame,” Merve said, beaming at me. “Those human beings got a right to think or believe anything without letting Washington in on their ideas. They can’t put their ideas into Hollywood pictures. Nobody can.”

Just then, we were approached by Sam Wood, the producer, who was feeling grumpy, according to Merve, because his latest picture,
Ivy
, had cost $2,000,000 to make and was expected to gross only $1,500,000.

“Glad to see you, Sam,” said Merve. “Listen, Sam, I want you to tell this young lady what you think of the way Congress investigated us here in Hollywood.”

“I say Congress ought to make everybody stand up publicly and be counted!” Mr. Wood shouted. “I say make every damn Communist stand up and be counted. They’re a danger and a discredit to the industry!”

Merve continued to beam. “Make
every
radical, every Communist, every Socialist, and every Anarchist stand up and be counted,” he said expansively. “We ought to get every one of them out of the industry.”

The political self-consciousness at parties is, on the whole, rather cheerful. “I never cut anybody before this,” one actress remarked happily to me. “Now I don’t go anywhere without cutting at least half a dozen former friends.” At some parties, the bracketed guests break up into sub-groups, each eying the others with rather friendly suspicion and discussing who was or was not a guest at the White House when Roosevelt was President—one of the few criteria people in the film industry have set up for judging whether a person is or is not a Communist—and how to avoid
becoming
a Communist. Some of the stars were investigated several years ago, when the un-American Activities Committee was headed by Martin Dies, and the advice and point of view of these veterans are greatly sought after. One actor who is especially in demand at social gatherings is Fredric March, who suddenly discovered, when called to account by Mr. Dies, that he was a Communist because he had given an ambulance to Loyalist Spain. Dies rebuked him, and it then turned out that Mr. March had also given an ambulance to Finland when she was at war with Russia. “I was just a big ambulance-giver,” Mr. March said to his sub-group at a recent party, loudly enough for other sub-groups to hear. “That’s what I told Dies. ‘I just like to give ambulances,’ I told him, and he said, ‘Well, then, Mr. March, before you give any more ambulances away, you go out and consult your local Chamber of Commerce or the American Legion, and they’ll tell you whether it’s all right.’ ”

Some groups play it safe at parties by refusing to engage in any conversation at all. They just sit on the floor and listen to anyone who goes by with a late rumor. There are all sorts of rumors in Hollywood right now. One late rumor is that the newest black-market commodity in town is the labor of the ten writers, who are reported to be secretly turning out scripts for all the major studios. Another is that one producer is founding a film company and will have all ten of the blacklisted men on his staff. Rumors that the F.B.I. is going to take over casting operations at the studios are discounted by those who have lived in Hollywood for more than fifteen years. The casting director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a fidgety, cynical, sharply dressed, red-cheeked man named Billy Grady, Sr., who has worked in Hollywood for nearly twenty years, thinks that it would serve J. Edgar Hoover right if the casting of actors were handed over to the F.B.I. “Hoover thinks
he’s
got worries!” Grady shouted at me in a Hollywood restaurant. “What does a G-man do? A G-man sends guys to Alcatraz! Ha! I’d like to see a G-man find a script about Abraham Lincoln’s doctor in which we could work in a part for Lassie. What do you find inside of Alcatraz? Picture stars? Directors? Cameramen? No! The goddam place is full of doctors, lawyers, and politicians. This is the fourth biggest industry in the country, and only three men in this industry ever went to jail. There are fifty thousand people in this industry, and all they want is the right to take up hobbies. Spencer Tracy takes up painting. Clark Gable takes up Idaho. Dalton Trumbo, who got the sack, takes up deep thinking. Take away their hobbies and they’re unhappy. When they’re unhappy, I’m unhappy. For God’s sake, Tracy doesn’t paint when he’s acting. Gable doesn’t shoot ducks. Trumbo doesn’t think when he’s writing for pictures. I say let them keep their goddam hobbies. They’re all a bunch of capitalists anyway.”

· · ·

The order of creation in Hollywood still works backward, and not only in the matter of filming the end or middle of a picture before the beginning. A man who recently had the job of working up advance interest in a yet-to-be-made picture based on
The Robe
managed to commit the biggest Bible publisher in the country to putting out an edition of the New Testament containing color photographs from the film. “I get this plug in the Bible,” he said to me. “Then I hear we need someone of the calibre of Tyrone Power to play the hero. We get Power, see? Then we put him in the Bible.
Then
we put him in the picture. Only trouble is we
can’t make the picture yet. Ty is too busy.” Evidently, Communism is also responsible for this trouble. Power, returning from a trip abroad lately, announced that he had seen so much suffering in Europe that he had come back determined to spend his time fighting Communism. This, as interpreted by Louella Parsons, meant that he had given up Lana Turner for the cause.

Hollywood, for the most part, is waiting earnestly for the Thomas Committee to define Communism, to name at least one film it considers Communistic, and to set down rules about what should and should not be thought about by a good American. Until the Committee offers something helpful, however, Hollywood feels it has no choice but to pay close attention to the counsel of Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and Jimmy Fidler, whose guidance to date has consisted of warnings that the public will not be satisfied with the blacklisting of only ten men, that the public wants Congress to complete its investigation of Communism in the industry, and that all writers, actors, producers, directors, and agents who have ever contributed so much as a nickel to the League of Women Shoppers had better announce their political views if they know what’s good for them. Those who fear the thunder on the Right say they are going to leave Hollywood. “I’m a dead duck!” one sad-eyed misanthrope exclaimed to me. “All I can do now is go someplace and raise chickens. Been thinking of doing it for nine years anyway.” Some say they will go back to Broadway or write novels, projects they too have been considering for nine years, more or less. A number of actors and producers, including Charlie Chaplin, are planning to go to England, France, or Italy, where they believe that they will be free to make the kind of pictures they like. Jack L. Warner, busiest of the Brothers, is genially inclined to bolster up the courage of those who are ready to throw in the towel. “Don’t worry!” he roars, slapping the backs of the lesser men around him. “Congress can’t last forever!”

· · ·

Some people in Hollywood like to think of it as still a place for pioneers. “We’re the modern covered-wagon folks,” I was told by Ruth Hussey, the actress, who returned here not long ago from an appearance on Broadway. “We are, we’re the modern covered-wagon folks. Pioneers come out here broke, and within a few years they’re earning fifty thousand a year.” In a way, Miss Hussey is exceptional. Everybody else seems eager to complain about the difficulty of making or keeping money. Studios complain
about their telephone bills. Drivers of studio cars complain that they are now being paid by the trip instead of by the week. Santa Anita race-track officials complain that betting has fallen off. Informal statisticians complain that only seventy-five million people a week went to the movies in 1947 and that maybe only sixty million will go in 1948. Producers complain about bankers’ reluctance to lend them money. Bankers complain that the revenue from American films shown overseas in 1947 was only $100,000,000, which is $38,000,000 less than the revenue from American films shown overseas in 1946, and that the revenue in 1948 may be as low as $50,000,000. Both Anglophiles and Anglophobes complain about the British import tax, imposed last August, which would confiscate 75 percent of the English earnings of any American film imported since then. Studio executives complain about production costs and overhead, and studio workers complain about being laid off to cut down on production costs and overhead. The employment of actors and writers is said to be the lowest in twenty years. As of the first of the year, twenty-three feature pictures were in production, as against twice that number in January of last year. “Hollywood is girding its loins,” a representative of the Motion Picture Association of America said to me. “Hollywood is pulling in its belt. Hollywood is pinching its pennies, taking stock of its cupboards, buckling down, putting its shoulder to the wheel and its nose to the grindstone, and looking deep within itself. Hollywood is
worrying about the box office.
”

Almost the only motion-picture star who is taking conditions in his stride is Lassie, a reddish-haired male collie, who is probably too mixed up emotionally over being called by a girl’s name to worry about the box office. Lassie is working more steadily, not only in films but on the radio, than anyone else in Hollywood. He is a star at M-G-M, the leading studio in Hollywood, which is fondly referred to out here as the Rock of Gibraltar. Visitors there are politely and desperately requested not to discuss politics or any other controversial matters with anyone on the lot. Louis B. Mayer, production chief of M-G-M, recently took personal command of the making of all pictures, of the purchase of all scripts, and of the writing of all scripts and commissary menus. The luncheon menu starts off with the announcement that meat will not be served on Tuesdays. “President Truman has appealed to Americans to conserve food, an appeal all of us will gladly heed, of course,” it says. Patrons are politely and desperately encouraged to eat apple pancakes or broiled sweetbreads for lunch. Lassie eats apple pancakes for lunch. Visitors are politely and
desperately introduced to Lassie, who ignores them. “We’d be in a hole if we didn’t have Lassie,” I heard an M-G-M man say. “We like Lassie. We’re sure of Lassie. Lassie can’t go out and embarrass the studio. Katharine Hepburn goes out and makes a speech for Henry Wallace. Bang! We’re in trouble. Lassie doesn’t make speeches. Not Lassie, thank God.” At the moment, Lassie is making a picture with Edmund Gwenn about a country doctor in Scotland. Originally, the script called for a country doctor in Scotland who hated dogs, but a part has been written in for Lassie, the plot has been changed, and the picture is to be called
Master of Lassie.
“It will help at the box office,” Lassie’s director says. Only three other pictures are in production at M-G-M, the biggest of them being a musical comedy called
Easter Parade
, starring Fred Astaire and having to do with Easter on Fifth Avenue at the beginning of the century. One of Lassie’s many champions at M-G-M told me that he had favored writing in a part for Lassie in
Easter Parade
but that he had dropped the idea. “I couldn’t find a good Lassie angle,” he explained.

· · ·

The most noticeable effect on Hollywood of the Thomas Committee investigation is, perhaps, an atmosphere of uncertainty. A man I know named Luther Greene, who belongs to what he calls the C.I.S. (“the cheap international set,” he says. “I just get passed around from party to party”), took me one evening to a small gathering at the Beverly Hills home of N. Peter Rathvon, a former New York attorney and investment banker who is now president of R.K.O. Greene and Rathvon, it seemed, thought that I might find an evening in the Rathvon household instructive. Rathvon is a mannerly, mild, yet stubborn little man, with the unwavering enthusiasm of a film-magazine fan for the movies. He has been converted, he says, to Hollywood’s suburban family life. “People enjoy having babies out here,” he says. “They enjoy inviting each other to dinner and sitting in the sunshine. That’s life.” Rathvon has two daughters and a son, rarely dines in a restaurant, and takes a sun bath at least once a week. Two of the ten men who were cited with contempt by Congress—Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk—worked at his studio, and it was he who had to inform them that they had brought disgrace upon R.K.O. and to dismiss them, a task he did not relish. After dinner, there was, as there is every evening the Rathvons are at home, a movie. That evening it was
Good News
, which deals with college life. After the showing, one of Rathvon’s daughters, who goes to the Westlake School for Girls,
denounced it as positively silly. Rathvon posted himself behind a small bar and made drinks for everybody. Then he offered to show Greene and me around his house. “Charles Boyer used to live here,” he said. “It’s an odd sensation, very odd, to live in a house Charles Boyer used to live in.” He led us up a narrow spiral staircase, like those in lighthouses, to a bedroom with blond, primavera-panelled walls and another small bar. “This was Charles Boyer’s bedroom,” he said. “It’s my bedroom now.” Greene told Rathvon that I had heard a lot about the movable glass roof over the patio of the house, and asked him to show me how it worked. Our host took us downstairs, pushed a button in the patio, and then seemed to stop breathing. The glass roof overhead slid back, exposing the heavens. He pushed another button and watched anxiously as the roof moved back into place. “I used to be fond of playing with this,” he said. “These days, I never know whether it’s going to come back.”