A thorough and lively chronicle of a shameful episode in American political and entertainment history.
At the start of the Cold War, anti-communist fervor focused on Hollywood.
In October 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by a “dapper martinet,” New Jersey Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, held nine days of public—and much-publicized—hearings to investigate alleged Communist infiltration in Hollywood. Among the 41 witnesses were movie stars, studio heads, producers and directors, and writers and critics, all caught on newsreel and broadcast on radio, riveting the public’s attention. Doherty (American Studies/Brandeis Univ.; Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, 2013, etc.) brings considerable authority to his detailed account of the hearings, featuring colorful portraits of the large cast of characters, some of whom were willing, if not eager, to cooperate; others, called the Unfriendlies, were decidedly hostile. Lead-off witness Jack L. Warner insisted that no hint of communist propaganda ever made its way into movies, even if some in Hollywood were members of the Communist Party. Among the few films HUAC cited as suspect was MGM’s sentimental love story Song of Russia, released in 1944, when Russia was a valued ally. The steely Ayn Rand, called as an expert witness by virtue of having lived under communist rule, was adamant that the movie reflected the studio’s communist sympathies, creating “a picture of how favorable life was under a totalitarian Soviet.” The suave Adolphe Menjou, who charmed onlookers—as well as the interrogators—hinted at subtler infiltration: “a crafty actor could inject a subversive sentiment into a film with a gesture, a sidelong glance, or an arched eyebrow.” Outrage and anger over the hearings was swift: A group of glamorous stars, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye, formed the Committee for the First Amendment to protest infringement of civil liberties. Their presence in the hearing’s gallery drew enthusiastic fans. Although RKO chief Dore Schary asserted that competence, not political views, should determine hiring decisions, after the hearings ended, studio heads caved in to pressure, firing and blacklisting unfriendly witnesses.
A thorough and lively chronicle of a shameful episode in American political and entertainment history.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-231-18778-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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