Mark Steyn takes on the blacklist! Or rather, the sentimentality that’s built up over the last half century in Hollywood regarding it, which, much like believing that Richard Nixon (let alone the Gipper and George W. Bush) is the antichrist, requires that the blinders be placed as tight as possible over the eyes. Not to mention the brain:
Bernard Gordon died over the weekend. He was one of those Hollywood Communists of the Forties blacklisted in the Fifties, and it defined him till the end. A solid Hollywood screenwriter, Gordon adapted The Day Of The Triffids and was a reliable hand at war movies, among them The Battle Of The Bulge and, of all things, Hellcats Of The Navy, with Ronald Reagan’s only film role with Nancy. Gordon’s screenplay and the stars’ performance aren’t always in sync: even as Ron’s explaining why he’s so tortured with guilt he can never marry her, he and Nancy look like a placidly contented small-town couple heading for a night out at the local Rotary Club. In later years, the screenwriter led the protests against the very belated Oscar awarded to Elia Kazan in 1999. As Gordon wrote of Kazan in The Los Angeles Times,
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