What Ronald Reagan Accomplished in his Hollywood Years: A New LA Times Article Tells us The Real Story
If any bona fide members of the Hollywood Left read the magazine section of tomorrow’s Los Angeles Times, they are going to ruin their breakfasts. It might even be enough to ruin their evening viewing of the Super Bowl. For what they will find is an amazing article by the journalist John Meroney about what he has found out while doing research for his book about Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood years. Titled “Left in the Past,” the article tells the story of how the seeds of Reagan’s anti-Communist ideology that led eventually to the break-up of the evil empire began in the years when Reagan was a Hollywood liberal.
Central to Meroney’s story is an account of what he found in the 75 legal size file boxes of an unknown or perhaps forgotten Hollywood labor leader, the late Roy Brewer. His files, Meroney writes, “form a remarkable portrait of Reagan’s life as a movie star, liberal Democrat and union man.” Yes, as many young people probably do not realize, Ronald Reagan was not born a conservative. Indeed, Meroney is correct when he observes that many conservatives prefer to forget that he was a union man who campaigned for Harry S. Truman in 1948, just as liberals and leftists prefer to forget that he was not an “archconservative Red baiter.”
What Meroney brings to the story — the general outlines of which my wife and I wrote about in Red Star Over Hollywood – is how Roy Brewer served as Reagan’s mentor and was a man who gave him both advice and training in how to wage the battle against the film colony’s Stalinist machine. It was Brewer and Reagan who together began the fight against Soviet influence in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s.
Conservatives tend to forget (or many do not realize) that the fight against Communism was waged at first by anti-Communist liberals and social-democrats, not by the far-Right or conservatives. As Meroney writes about Brewer:
A gritty, often misunderstood character, Brewer was a tough union man, yet he would almost weep when quoting Scarlett O’Hara’s “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again” line from Gone with the Wind. The line spoke to his personal determination, New Deal loyalties and socialist leanings. A portrait of FDR hung on his wall. He regarded Joseph McCarthy as a demagogue. (In the archive, I found far-right McCarthyite propaganda smearing Brewer as soft on Communism and castigating Reagan as a “flagrant Red.”) Politically, Brewer supported Reagan in all his campaigns, but in the Florida recounts, he backed Al Gore. He didn’t like George W. Bush.
What both men realized was that the American Communist Party in La-La land was not a regular political party, but rather, more like “an underground cult.” Or as Sidney Hook had put it in those days, it was a conspiracy led by Stalin’s minions in America, not by a group of heretics. Communists wanted everyone to believe that they were just liberals who wanted progress a bit faster, and they carefully hid the truth that the moves they made and the positions they took were orchestrated for them in Moscow.
Over the years, one issue that has come up over and over is that of whether or not the Hollywood Reds managed to insert their propaganda and viewpoint into the films they worked on. Anti-anti-communist leftists like Victor Navasky have always said this was a falsehood. But as Meroney concludes, it “may be true after all.” He cites material he found revealing that the Hollywood CP boss, screenwriter John Howard Lawson, gave concrete instructions to actors and writers on how best to do just that. The idea was to do as much as you could, and try as hard as possible to put “the party line in every script you write.” Of course that was a hard task, given that the line kept changing, and by the time a film was released, what they said may have already been obsolete. But one of Meroney’s finds is a document from screenwriter Paul Jarrico — one of the lions of the blacklisted Communists — admitting that “we were certainly involved in efforts to affect the content of films,” and were “wide-eyed about the possibility of writing movies that would affect millions and millions of viewers.”
In the later Vietnam era, when Reagan was already conservative, he and Brewer were furious about how the Hollywood Stalinists tried to depict themselves — successfully as it turned out — as civil libertarians and unjustly treated victims of repression by the studio chiefs. Reagan remembered vividly the lessons he learned during the postwar series of Communist-inspired strike actions that divided Hollywood. The Party wanted to create one single union to represent all Hollywood labor that they and by indirection the Soviet Union would control. How the Hollywood Reds depicted themselves, Reagan put it, was “the biggest fairy tale since ‘Snow White.’”
Among other things, readers will find out about the violence perpetrated by the Party under the control of a secret Communist labor leader, Herb Sorrell, who brought in union toughs from Harry Bridges’ Longshoremen’s Union (controlled by the Party) to beat up those back-lot workers and actors and others who sought to return to the studios and ignore the CP-established picket lines set up at the studio gates.
What Reagan and Brewer did was to build a coalition across partisan party lines — uniting Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to work together against those in Hollywood who pledged their loyalty to Joe Stalin. They managed to interrupt the efforts of secret Communists like actor Sterling Hayden, who urged the Screen Actors Guild to support the Communist-led strike.
As for the famous HUAC hearings in Hollywood and DC that began in 1947 and went on for a few years more, Meroney’s work backs up those of us who have long argued that the true heroes were not those who refused to testify ostensibly on grounds of protection of their civil liberties, but those who openly bucked the tight-fisted leftist centers in Hollywood and decided to testify about how Communism was a real danger. Most significant is Meroney’s finding of the recollections of John Huston, who originally opposed HUAC with other liberals as an infringement on one’s political rights but who later came to see, as Huston put it, that the unfriendly witnesses were not trying to protect freedom, but were “really looking after their own skins.” They gave false testimony to imply that they were only liberals and not Communists and had he known the truth, “I would have washed my hands of them on the spot.”
Brewer and Reagan worked together to keep democracy working, by telling the truth about the Communist agenda, and at the same time trying to protect real civil liberties from infringement. They worked to keep the unions they led — like the Screen Actors Guild on the part of Reagan — a group run by its majority and not a well-oiled minority of Red militants.
When John Meroney’s book appears late this year or early next, the full story will be told. Until then, leftists in the film colony will have to do with being upset by this Sunday’s morning paper.
“If any bona fide members of the Hollywood Left read the magazine section of tomorrow’s Los Angeles Times, they are going to ruin their breakfasts.”
Why? It will only confirm what they already knew, which is (as you put it), “that the fight against Communism was waged at first by anti-Communist liberals and social-democrats—-not by the far Right or by conservatives.”
I can’t read minds but one can only wonder how much of a Democratic agenda in Hollywood films is purposeful and how much is a simple reflection of the politically correct sea we swim in.
Politics aside, a cast that looks like the United Nations with a sentient cute dolphin the smartest one can sell tickets.
I suspect that just like young people and unionized public employees, most are simply useful idiots who believe as they do because everybody around them believes as they do. But just as the young people are influenced by teachers and professors who definitely know they’re communists and the unions have a whole leadership cohort of trained and dedicated communists, I’m sure some in Hollywood are well aware of pushing a studied communist agenda.
What has changed since the Reagan days is that there is no longer the direct Comintern/CPUSA control or guidance. Since the so-called New Left sprung up in the ’60s, there has been a homegrown Trotskyite version of communism in this Country with great influence over the young anti-war/anti-draft protesters and civil rights advocates of the ’60s and early ’70s. It is no coincidence that Hillary Clinton’s Thesis was on Saul Alinsky, himself pretty much a Trotskyite, and Slick Willie has yet to adequately explain his sojourn into the Soviet Bloc when he was ostensibly in college. Slick Willie and Obama both share having been given opportunities far beyond their social and economic means.
If I had to speculated, and this is only informed speculation, but I know the territory pretty well, Comrade Obama’s grandfather in the days of his restless youth just before WWII when he was riding the rails and such came into contact with the International Workers of the World (IWW) or the Wobblies, who had quite a presence among the “bums” of the Depression era and somewhere either then or as he continued his adventures after the war in Berkeley and elsewhere either became a communist or became a known fellow traveller which would explain the family’s later move to Harry Bridges’ Seattle and then on to another Bridges town, Honolulu.
Political correctness was not always on the scene. It started as an upper-class response to urban riots in the 1960s. Hollywood was always populist, and it can be argued, so was the cultural policy of the CPUSA. The enemy was always big business or finance capital. I wrote about the timeline for the institutionalization of PC here: http://clarespark.com/2010/10/21/links-to-pacifica-memoirs/. Read them all and you will get my point.
Awesome. Love this new insight into how Reagan became so damn good at rallying people of diverse perspectives toward a common cause.
*Sigh* I miss teh Gipper!
So do I, Taxpayer, so do I.
I aleady knew about Reagan being a liberal and union man. The most fanatic anti-smoker is the smoker who quits. The best Gospel writer was a guy who presided over the stoning of Stephen. I also knew about VENONA and HUAC. But Sterling Hayden!? Makes one wonder if that’s why Kubrick chose him to play a character that was such an obvious mockery of the right.
@Patriot493 “It will only confirm what they already knew”. Not at all. The point is that they did NOT know, but rather belived that they were “civil libertarians and unjustly treated victims of repression”. In other words, they believe their own myths.
@Curt Newton “but one can only wonder how much of a Democratic agenda in Hollywood films is purposeful and how much is a simple reflection of the politically correct sea we swim in”. Are you talking about today? Maybe, but the article clearly states that the Meroney papers give evidence that there was a deliberate effort to influence the American movie-going public. Think The Best Years of Our Lives.
Why so little truth about the communists in Hollywood today?
There are many in Hollywood today with the same communist connections as their parents… today many are the children of known communists who had been run out …like Sean Penn, whose father was a communist too.
Just ask any journolist or teacher; only a racist is worse than a McCartheyite. The yutes have no clue about Stalin, the Comintern, the NKVD/KGB, or about fellow travellers and progressive friends, but they all know that McCarthey and what he did to those poor actors and writers was eeeeeeevuuuuul.
Absolutely, Mr. Chance. Plus, the subtle effects of all these films and TV shows that depict anti-communists as the villian has had an effect on all the boomers growing up. They created a mythology that has permeated our culture. But as long as the truth is out there, I still have hope.
the communist thing about sterling hayden is pretty well known. He did testify before HUAC and named names—but in his autobio. he said it was the worse thing he ever did.
What say you, Roger L. Simon?
No. No. It cannot be true. Hollywood always fights for truth, justice, and the American way. It is only the big capitalists such as the Koch Brothers and the politicians such as Joseph McCarthy which the capitalists keep in their breast pockets who are the evil ones. I know this must be the truth because great men such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Brad Pitt proclaim it so.
Great to look back into an earlier era time. The left still has a full court press to keep Hollywood on the left, but their tactics are different.
In the 1936 the threat of having Harry Bridges ILWU goons beat you up was a big problem. These guys were hardnosed sons of immigrants who unloaded cargo by hand for a living. They had strong backs and heavy hands. And they were not afraid to kill you.
Today leftist enforcers in Hollywood accuse you of homophobia. The more things stay the same, the more they change.
It’s hard to get good goons these days.
The great Morrie Ryskind (writer for Broadway and Hollywood before becoming a syndicated columnist) mentioned Roy Brewer in his autobiography “I Shot an Elephant in My Pajamas”:
(p. 163) “To fully detail that turbulent period would detail writing a book. Anything less would be a disservice to both sides, and for that reason I’m going to beg off the subject, content in the knowledge that Roy Brewer is finally at work on his long promised volume.”
Mr. Ryskind concludes the paragraph with “When Roy flexed his muscle, the producers had to take notice, and I think this nation owes Roy one hell of a big note of thanks.”
I look forward to Mr. Meroney’s book.
Morrie Ryskind’s son, journalist Alan Ryskind was working on a book about his father’s fight against the reds in Hollywood. I don’t know if it was out but if so, it should be one of the best insider books on the subject.
Others who fought the communists in Hollywood included John Wayne, Ward Bond (who was protected by Wayne), Adolph Mejou (who lost his jobs despite Wayne’s help), and many other unsung heroes.
There is so much more to this story but I’m glad that Radosh wrote this column as an eye-opener to the subject for PJ readers.
“What Reagan and Brewer did was to build a coalition across partisan party lines — uniting Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to work together against those in Hollywood who pledged their loyalty to Joe Stalin.”
Too bad we can’t get an alliance like that again to stand up to the far-left liberals (socialists, communists) in Congress. Hard to believe that, at one time, there were a lot of conservative Democrats, like John Kennedy. I doubt people like Kennedy or Truman could get the nomination of the Democratic party today. The far left, which wormed its way not only into Hollywood but also Congress, is much stronger than at any time in our history and has hijacked the Democratic Party. And whether you call it the far left, socialists, or communists, they sure ain’t conservative Democrats, that’s for sure.
The far left, which wormed its way not only into Hollywood but also Congress, is much stronger than at any time in our history and has hijacked the Democratic Party…That’s an understatement…
Communism was waged at first by anti-Communist liberals and social-democrats. The latter were the objetive enemies of communism. In 1933, the Commiterm ordered to vote for Hitler to avoid a social democrat victory. Social democrats and non marxist communists like Robles were killed in Spain and people like Dos Passos and Hemingway knew it.members of left wing parties from Austria asked and got diplomatic protection from Germany during the Great Terror( CF:Mitrokin)
Finding out just what brought Comrade Obama’s family from KS first to Seattle and then to Honolulu, both towns controlled by Harry Bridges’ Longshoremen, would go a long ways towards ‘splaining some things.
Libertyship46 wrote:
“I doubt people like Kennedy or Truman could get the nomination of the Democratic party today.”
I am wondering if Ronald Reagan could get the GOP nod today.
I would like to think YES a thousand times over, but my gut feeling tell me otherwise.
This story would make a magnificent film.
In fact many aspects of President Reagan’s life would make great movies.
Through the past 15 years or so I have gone from a guy who believed that President Reagan was a lightweight (thank you media for the indoctrination), to realizing how focused, intelligent and humane the 40th president was.
It is those human and humane qualities that would offer a rich, vibrant film that would play well with disillusioned Americans looking for a hero. Such a movie of the Reagan presidency would play very well with those in the former Soviet blocs of Eastern Europe as well.
Getting such a project financed would entail working outside the Hollywood mainstream. Anybody have the Koch Brother’s number in their Rolodex?
I am slowly putting together a group of like-minded film professionals in fly-over country. There are more moderates and conservatives in the film business than you may think. At least the view through the ideological window from I am sitting here in the Midwest.
To be able to make a film about Ronald Reagan in an honest, forthright way is a passion that pushes me forward.
It may never happen. But the effort is what makes this over-the-hill, middle-aged, brain injured guy push forward. It is the age and injury that lets me live my life not giving a damn what Hollywood thinks of any project.
Ronald Reagan was simply a great leader no matter what era of his life you decide to focus.
And that is the solid foundation that would make for a classic movie.
Cameron, if that’s your real name, I’m going to note it somewhere so I can check to see if it’s the name of the producer-director of the Definitive Reagan movie when it eventually comes out.
Hollyweird is dying from its own lack of vision and perspective. It’s so busy trying to hold the line on their PC messages that they’re missing the big picture… that the huge English-language blockbuster pictures are now being made in England and Canada.
Perhaps a brand new Midwestern production company is what the doctor ordered to bring movie-making back to the US.
What a great idea, Mr. Smith. I hope to see your film in a theatre some day.
“But the effort is what makes this over-the-hill, middle-aged, brain injured guy push forward. It is the age and injury that lets me live my life not giving a damn what Hollywood thinks of any project.” Sounds to me like you have indeed found what Jack Schwarz called “The Jewel in the Molasses.”
Before you get too carried away fawning over The Giper, you might take a look at a little piece of history from Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980; the October Surprise and the subsequent operation this morphed into, the Iran/Contra scandal.
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the former President of Iran during the time of the hostage crisis in 1979-80, says in his book, “My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution & Secret Deals with the U.S.” that by the month before the American Presidential election in November 1980, many in Iran’s ruling circles were openly discussing the fact that a deal had been made between the Reagan campaign team and some Iranian religious leaders in which the hostages’ release would be delayed until after the election so as to prevent President Carter’s re-election. In exchange, Iran was to receive arms from the future Reagan Administration.
Gary G. Sick, a middle-eastern specialist who served on The National Security Council under Ford, Carter, and Reagan, has a doctorate in political science, and is currently an adjunct professor of International Affairs at Columbia’s School of International & Public Affairs, wrote an incisive account of this story in one of his books, “October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan”. He presents a sober, convincing and very carefully-documented case that members of Ronald Reagan’s transition team — led by William Casey, Reagan’s campaign manager and future head of the CIA — met on October 19, 1980 with representatives of the Iranian government and various intermediaries and arms dealers to trade arms and frozen assets for a promise that the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini would continue to hold the American Embassy hostages until AFTER the US presidential elections in November.
In other words, group of private citizens entered into diplomatic negotiations with a hostile foreign power to undercut their own government in a ruthless quest for political power. I think that is accurately called treason. They promised to resume arms sales (through Israel), to unfreeze the Shah’s assets, to support Iran in their fight against Iraq — all if Khomeini would deny Carter the public relations benefit of a hostage release just before the election, if Khomeini would continue to imprison his hostages for another four months. Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 1980 and the Ayatollahs were desperate to get arms and the Reagan people were offering a better deal than they could get from Carter. The hostages were released within hours after Reagan’s inauguration and he spun this into the Ayatollahs were afraid of him so they released the hostages.
If you’re tempted to disregard all of this because the (Democratically-controlled) Congress did a so-called investigation in the 90′s and found nothing there, I’d suggest you see what Robert Parry has to say about that. He’s the journalist who is perhaps the most knowledgeable about this and Iran/Contra. He broke many of the Iran/Contra stories and was ruthlessly attacked by Reagan insiders for doing so but all of what he discovered was proven to be true and was instrumental in causing the eventual Congressional investigation. He also was able to gain access to the actual documents of the Congressional hearings on the October Surprise and, well, you’ll be surprised at what he finds there.
Furthermore, if you believe that Congressional investigations are actually designed to get to the truth, I suggest you look up the history of the Warren Commission as well as the Senate investigation of drug smuggling during the Iran/Contra operation as just two examples of Congressional investigations that were later overturned by subsequent investigations, revelations, and inquiries. Most Congressional investigations, if fact, are political documents that are sometimes actually designed to cover up.
Here’s a link to Robert Parry’s story about the so-called investigation of the October Surprise if you want to start down the rabbit-hole of discovering what really happened during Reagan’s years. If not, please return to your regularly scheduled programming.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/050610.html
“Communists wanted everyone to believe that they were just liberals who wanted progress a bit faster, and they carefully hid the truth that the moves they made ”
Sounds familiar to what’s happening today, doesn’t it?
“we were certainly involved in efforts to affect the content of films,” and were “wide-eyed about the possibility of writing movies that would affect millions and millions of viewers.” Hollywood remains enthralled with its power to influence the culture. It’s a pseudo intellectual’s paradise, the ability to wield enormous influence and make a lot of money purely on the basis of narcissism and talent coupled with a mediocre, shallow intelligence and the cultures carefully nurtured and inculcated appetite for equating glitz and glamor with great compassion and wisdom.
Around 99 or 2000 I read K.L. Billingsly’s Hollywood Party, when it came out I read Red Star over Hollywood. The former my father had given me. All my life, born in 54, my Dad was a domestic Cold Warrior. My step-mom said that she got calls from David Horowitz for my father at the house. It was not until I read Billingsley’s book that I understood who Roy Brewer was. I’d heard Pop talk of him but didn’t really listen. At my father’s funeral, in 02, as I stood in the recieving line an elderly man in a wheelchair passed and offered his condolences and moved on. At the following reception the man was there and spent his time with my stepmom. A day or two latter in conversation she told me that at Dad’s funeral Roy Brewer said that my father never got credit for all that he had done. I asked where was Mr. Brewer, he was the man in the wheel chair! I have not and will never forgive my stepma for not introducing me to Mr. Brewer. I think he passed on latter that year. He came from a day when Union Democrats did not like communists either, now they are one and the same. After all the preaching I lived through from Dad in the 60′s and on (warning me about folks like Mr. Radosh & Horowitz) I am grateful for my own awakening and that long before he passed I was able to tell my Father that he was right. I can not recomend both books I mentioned above enough, both are must reads!
As a student I was a film society president. For my own amusement I used to keep a file of “party line” propaganda in fims (including westerns). Both Arthur Miller and Abby Maltz report on their efforts to put in propaganda. “Mission to Moscow” is now available. It’s a Hoot.
What is the difference between Fascism, Communism, Marxist/Leninist Communism, Socialism, Fabian Socialism, all Dictatorships and the Progressive movement? The answer is, nothing. They are all one and the same. They are ALL simply varying forms of centralized dictatorial COLLECTIVISM! Either Collectivism by force (Marx/Lenin) or Collectivism imposed by stealthily undermining via the Fabian method, al a Bush,Blair, Brown and Obama, all national founding values, virtues and institutions for the sole purpose of allowing a small elite, like Rothschild, Rockefeller, Soros and you name them, people who own nothing (hiding everything behind irrevocable private trusts), but who control everything – especially the money supply. They pull the strings behind everything, including Hollywood production, with the sole aim of economically enslaving and herding the masses into their centralized New World Order… Agenda 21, The North American Union. They are using Hollywood to to teach your children into believing that they are no longer to known as sovereign American citizens, but rather, they to become ‘citizens of the World’ It doesn’t whether Romney or Obama becomes the next president, they are all controlled by this same selfishly evil elite who are pulling their strings. On the whole, when it comes to history, Americans and especially Hollywood have always been totally illiterate – therefore Hollywood is allowed to reign like a one-eyed man in a wholy blind America. So if Ron Paul were to get anywhere near being elected to the White House, he would go the same way as Lincoln and Kennedy and Hollywood would tow the official elite line with a blockbusting fairy tale explanation – all packaged and paid for up front!