'Dear Owen': The CIA, Luigi Luraschi and Hollywood, 1953

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 149-196

  Eldridge, David N ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HULL   (United Kingdom)

^b JESUS COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 54349092007     PISSN: 01439685     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/713669714     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Marc Eliot, in Walt Disney: Hollywood's dark prince, revealed that, because of the information he provided the bureau, Disney was made a 'full Special Agent in Charge Contact' [sic] in 1954. For discussion of this and Reagan's similar role as confidential source designated 'T-10', see The New York Times, 6 May 1993.
2. Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the cultural Cold War (London, 1999), p. 290.
3. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, p. 2.
4. Statement by Eisenhower, quoted in Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, p. 148.
5. The news report concerned a peculiar burglary at Alsop's Pasadena home, in which a 'masked gunman' broke into the house, tied up the maid and forced the butler 'to go to the Alsops' bedroom and get Alsop to open the door by telling him he needed $25'. Alsop refused to answer the door, but passed through the $25, which the gunman took and fled! It seems that, while being interviewed by the LA Times about this incident, Alsop himself boasted of his former CIA connections, adding an air of intrigue to the affair. Los Angeles Times, 19 August 1966.
6. See Robert M. W. Vogel Oral History, interviewed by Barbara Hall, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Los Angeles, 1991), p. 231.
7. Richard Maltby, Harmless Entertainment: Hollywood and the iodeology of consensus (London, 1983), p. 82.
8. MPAA press release, 27 March 1947, Production Code Administration File 1, Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers' (AMPTP) Collection, at the Margaret Herrick Library (AMPAS), Los Angeles.
9. Hollywood is World Conscious by Rupert Allen, American Films Abroad file, AMPTP Collection, AMPAS.
10. See Stephen Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (London, 1988), Chapter 8.
11. Quoted in Donald F. Crosby, God, Church and Flag: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church, 1950-1957 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1978), p. 229. Crosby casts serious doubt on the validity of the Gallup results, but evidently Luraschi was one Catholic who did stand behind McCarthy.
12. Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-1985 (London, 1993), pp. 60 and 81.
13. Robert Frederick Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights (Knoxville, TN 1984), p. 29.
14. Daily Variety, 30 January 1953, p. 6.
15. In his memoir of the PCA, Jack Vizzard records that Durland, a Cuban-American was hired 'at the urging of officials in high estate in Washington' to help bring Hollywood into step with the cultivation of international goodwill during the war. He recounts an occasion in 1953, when Durland brought producer Sam Katzman to book on the script Flame of Calcutta, a film concerned with the fight of Indian guerrillas to oust the East India Company in 1760: 'You're running around with the recklessness of a bull in a china shop,' Durland told Katzman. 'Line after line in your script tramples on the sensitivities of the Indian people. You have gross distortions of history, you are untactful, you maul traditional customs, and, in a word, you leave much to be desired. Don't you realize your picture will be banned everywhere throughout the Far East?' 'So what if it is?' asked Sam . . . 'You don't think I've had pictures banned before. ' 'I imagine you have,' conceded Durland, 'but India is a tinderbox at the present moment. The Russians are trying to woo it, and the American government is trying to get it over to our side. So why do you aggravate it?' Katzman prevaricated and pleaded he was too poor to hire a technical advisor, so Durland himself personally undertook the research to correct the misrepresentations. (See Jack Vizzard, See No Evil: Life Inside a Hollywood Censor (New York, 1970), p. 123. )
16. Press release of Bureau of Information of National Catholic Welfare, 25 November 1953, Production Code Administration file 2, AMPTP Collection, AMPAS.
17. What They Say About Us. The Impact of U. S. Motion Pictures Abroad, report by Eric Johnston to Board of Directors, Motion Picture Association of America, May 1958, Eric Johnston files, AMPTP Collection, AMPAS.
18. State Dept. lauds H'W'D pix exports, Daily Variety, 29 January 1953.
19. New York Times, 6 March 1953, p. 13.
20. David Haight, The Papers of CD. Jackson: a glimpse at President Eisenhower's psychological warfare expert, Manuscripts (Winter 1976), p. 29.
21. This could refer to William Meiklejohn, the supervisor of talent at Paramount Studios from 1940.
22. Luraschi is stretching a point here. The butler was already a character in the novel by Frank G. Slaughter, on which the screenplay was based. Sangaree concerned a Civil War surgeon who inherits a plantation in Georgia, with directions to run it as a social 'experiment' - growing tobacco and encouraging profit-sharing with the workers and the education and manumission of slaves. Priam, the butler at the home of Mrs Darby (the love interest), is presumably such a manumitted slave. When the surgeon first meets Priam, he mistakenly thinks he 'belongs to Mrs Darby'. Priam corrects him, stating 'I'm a freedman, Sir. I work where I'm paid. ' This dialogue had been introduced in a draft dated 8 September 1952, but was not intended as a commentary on slavery. Rather it simply set the scene for a later development, in which Priam is paid by slave traders to assassinate the surgeon. The notion of a manumitted slave working for slave traders had obviously caused concern to Ralph Bettinson, the first scenarist to work on the script, who had made the assassin a 'one-eyed beggar', but the later drafts and filmed screenplay rejected this in favour of returning to the novel's original plot. This was hardly a good demonstration of Luraschi's influence or of Hollywood's racial sensitivity. (Sangaree, Paramount Script Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS, Los Angeles. )
23. By 1953, the cycle of films which had dealt openly with issues of racism in America had ended. Following the war, film makers had made efforts at treating the race problem with some seriousness. In 1949, 20th Century-Fox had made Pinky, MGM adapted William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust and independent film makers, such as Stanley Kramer with Home of the Brave, had produced a run of films which dealt with issues of racism and Black identity in post-war America. Fox's No Way Out of 1950 perhaps went furthest, at least in 'shock value', by embodying extreme racism in a psychotic killer and filming cinema's first 'race riot'. However, by 1953, the crusading momentum had been lost and Blacks were increasingly being shown in 'normative' positions in society. Paramount had avoided any real contribution to the cycle of 'message' films and Luraschi's idea of showing African-Americans at country clubs and golf clubs in the 1950s was in effect a continuation of the studio's policy. As Frances Stonor Saunders noted, this was at a time 'when many "negroes" had as much chance of getting into a golf club as they had of getting the vote', but the studio preferred to place Blacks in circumspect roles. Perhaps by showing them with cars, Luraschi hoped White American audiences might assume they were valets or chauffeurs. Caddy was finally released in September 1953. See Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black: the Hollywood message movie from World War II to the civil rights era (Oxford, 1993).
24. The early 1950s also saw a cycle of movies depicting the Indian - Cavalry Wars. Many of these films had continued the traditional Western thesis, that the only 'good Indian is a dead Indian' - e. g. I Killed Geronimo (1950), New Mexico (1951) and Bugles in the Afternoon (1952). Arrowhead evidently was conceived in a similar vein and Luraschi's suggestion must have seemed progressive after such a series. However, as with depictions of African-Americans, Luraschi's attitude was rather overtaken by a growing number of films which demonstrated greater sensitivity to the one-sidedness of Hollywood's previous treatments. Oh Susanna (Republic, 1951) depicted an Indian-hating commandant allowing greedy gold miners to break the treaty with the Apaches and plunder the Black Hills. Friendly Indians had already been accepted by the television audiences for Daniel Boone and The Lone Ranger and more positive images of Native Americans were developed in films such as Apache (United Artists, 1954), Pillars of the Sky and They Rode West (Columbia, 1954).
25. It has been suggested that these films may have been seen by film makers as a way of addressing civil rights issues, with the Native American standing in for the African-American. However, the 'one bad Indian' plot which Luraschi saw as a temporary solution, persisted as a common device in westerns -a formula of 'Cochise good, Geronimo bad' developed by Fox in Broken Arrow in 1950 and White Feather (1955) and particularly apparent in The Conquest of Cochise (Columbia, 1953) in which 'good' Apaches united with the US Cavalry to wipe out 'renegade' Comanches. (See Peter Biskind, Seeing Is Believing: how Hollywood taught us to stop worrying and love the fifties (London, 1984), pp. 230-239. )
26. Tangier had been designated a 'free' city - administered by eight occupying allied forces. The 'international airport' story planned to use this circumstance to make international tension the background to an espionage plot. Released as Flight to Tangier in November 1953, scripted and directed by Charles Marquis Warren, the complex plot involved the defection of a Prague millionaire and his pursuit by a number of disparate villains after his money. The prime villain is Danzer, a renegade American, of German descent, intent on stealing the millions to use in purchasing planes to sell behind the Iron Curtain. One of the pursuers is actually an undercover CIA agent, desperate to stop Danzer Brady: If Danzer ever completed the deal, the propaganda value to Russia would be disastrous. An American, selling to the enemy just to make money would be all they needed. As Luraschi advised, a minor but significant alteration was made to Danzer's background by the time Robert Douglas played him on the screen. Demonstrating that the USSR had always planned for the Cold War, Danzer was made a Soviet agent, sent as a 'sleeper' in 1945 to gain citizenship and bide his time to discredit the United States: Danzer: With papers to prove that I'm an American citizen, I buy these materials and sell them behind what is referred to as the Iron Curtain. And then I'll have proved our point - that Americans are the war mongers we say they are. (Flight to Tangier, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS).
27. See notes 69 and 74 for a discussion of Money From Home.
28. The Persian Gulf had been the scene of one of the earliest crises in the Cold War. During the Second World War, the Soviets, British and Americans had jointly occupied Iran, but in 1946 the Soviets hesitated to leave until they received oil concessions similar to those won by the British. Diplomatic pressure had been sufficient to end this confrontation, but in 1951 the premier of Iran, Dr Mohammed Mosaddeq, provoked new tensions by nationalising Iran's oil wells, including those owned by Britain. In retaliation, the Western-owned companies boycotted Iranian oil, creating an economic crisis in the Persian state. As Luraschi was writing, Eisenhower had refused Mosaddeq's appeal for assistance. This encouraged the premier, who was already associated with the Soviet-inspired Tudeh party, to turn towards the Soviet Union. In August 1953, the CIA was to intervene in backing a coup d'état in which the imperial government of Shah Pahlavi took the place of Mosaddeq's administration. As historians have noted, this served a number of US goals, 'protecting the flow of oil to the American economy . . . ; destroyed the potential menace of an oil-enhanced power bloc extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean; diminished the Moslem threat to the fledgling state of Israel; and ended the danger of Soviet encroachment on the oil-rich gulf. (See Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven, CT, 1989), p. 89. )
29. William Pine and William Thomas were an independent co-producing team working out of Paramount (Pine had been a production executive and Thomas a writer). In the 1940s they had been responsible for such B-movie fodder as They Made Me a Killer, but by the mid-1950s they were in charge of some of the studio's biggest productions, particularly historical dramas such as the 1955 Lewis and Clarke story Far Horizons and Sangaree (see letter 1). The 'Persian Gulf' project was never produced.
30. Released in June 1954 as Secret of the Incas, this was made a vehicle for Charlton Heston. In the earliest draft of the screenplay, by Sydney Boehm, the heroine was Penny Ante, 'a cute and wise blonde from the States who is in trouble with the Cuzco police'. This was the character Luraschi wanted changing. By October 1952, Heston's character was now to befriend one Julia Bartosh, 'a refugee from a European slave labor camp, an ex-model of Paris, and at the moment a fugitive from the police because she unwisely irked a man of wealth and influence and is facing deportation charges'. Evidently, the background was right, but Bartosh's virtue was still open to question. Luraschi had his way and Ranald McDougall rechristened the girl Elena Antonescu - a 'lovely refugee from a country behind the Iron Curtain . . . pursued by a Communist agent who wants to take her back - and her only hope of escape is to reach the United States'. Elena, eventually played by Nicole Maurey, is a Romanian refugee, pursued by the consul. She joins Heston in his quest for Inca treasure, simply because he is the only man with a plane to fly her out of Peru (Secret of the Incas, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS).
31. Paramount's treatment of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited was sold to MGM, retitled The Last Time I Saw Paris and produced by Jack Cummings in 1954. The novel's 1920s setting was updated to make it a story of a GI with literary ambitions in post-Second World War Paris and Elizabeth Taylor was cast as the feminine lead. Bernard Smith had been a story editor and subsequently the head of writers at Paramount from 1948. He became a producer in 1952 but left Paramount the same year, later joining the notably liberal Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production company. Smith returned to prominence in the 1960s, seemingly appearing from 'nowhere' with Elmer Gantry (1960) and How the West Was Won (1962). It is possible that his low profile during the 1950s was related to the blacklist. William Wyler had recently been directing Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday for Paramount (filmed in the summer of 1952). They were keen to work together again and, after considering a number of projects, they eventually co-produced Big Country in 1958.
32. They shared similar liberal democrat politics and, along with others such as Humphrey Bogart and Danny Kaye, Peck and Wyler had been founding members of the Committee for the First Amendment, the organization which hoped to combat the anti-communist witch-hunt in Hollywood and the blacklist. Peck was particularly outspoken when his Jewish friend John Garfield was blacklisted - Garfield had been Peck's inspiration for his role in Gentleman's Agreement, the 1947 cinematic assault on anti-Semitism. Peck himself was 'investigated' by California's State Committee for Un-American Activities, who brought up his membership of supposed communist front organisations (including the Actor's Laboratory, the China Conferences Arrangements Committee, Committee for a Democratic Eastern Policy and the Progressive Citizens of America), but he was cleared by State Senator Hugh Burns and was never called to answer before McCarthy. Coincidentally, while Peck never appeared in Babylon Revisited, he did play F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1959 in Fox's Beloved Infidel. (See Michael Freedland, Gregory Peck (London, 1980) pp. 86-89. )
33. The property screenplayed by Ruth and Augustus Goetz was sold early in the year to MGM for $210,000, with Vidor accompanying it to direct. Described as a 'romantic soap opera set to classic music', Rhapsody starred Elizabeth Taylor as a brattish rich girl, passionately in love with a young violinist who puts his music above her. Her possessiveness drives him away from her and she retaliates by marrying another young musician - an ex-GI and pianist - whom she does not really love. She almost ruins his career, turning him to drink. In the novel Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson, the alcoholic GI commits suicide. Set in Paris, Zurich, St Moritz and Rome, Luraschi probably considered that this story of 'rich-bitch', alcoholic and generally dysfunctional expatriate Americans marauding through Europe was definitely the wrong image to promote, much the same reason for which he condemned Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited.
34. Julius Epstein collaborated with his twin brother Philip on the scripts of Casablanca, The Man Who Came to Dinner and Forever Female. Philip had died in 1952.
35. Although the film was never produced, Yul Brynner came on board with Wilder and Epstein, to play the role of a Soviet Commissar in Washington. A discussion of the potential project was held with the PCA which Luraschi attended. According to a memo in the PCA files dated 10 December 1952, Wilder envisaged 'a modern story very much along the lines of Anna Karenina. The lead, Jule [sic] Brynner will be a member of the Soviet embassy in Washington. He will fall in love with the wife of some other foreign diplomat. The situation will develop to the point where they will have to flee the country to Mexico. The Soviets will be after him throughout the story. After a very unhappy and tragic time in Mexico, our lead will realize the impossibility of the situation and will let the Soviets catch up with him and kill him, somewhat as in the case of Trotsky. The wife will then be free to endeavor to rehabilitate herself. ' Wilder's most recent biographer suggests 'casting complications' as the reason for shelving the project. (See Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard (New York, 1998), p. 345. )
36. This man has not been identified. It is possible that he was Carleton Alsop.
37. Interaction with the staff of the PCA represented Luraschi's principal work at Paramount. He was the 'buffer' between writers and producers at the studio and the industry's own 'moral watchdog' which had been set up to anticipate the cuts that censor boards might make. As Luraschi implies, individual members of Joseph Breen's staff had their individual temperaments and some would allow film makers more licence than others. Geoffrey Shurlock and Jack Vizzard were the key 'deputies' to Joseph Breen, the director of the PCA. Shurlock took over at Breen's retirement in October 1954. Vizzard was evidently Luraschi's favoured contact - perhaps because of their shared Catholic background - but Luraschi is cautious about recommending anyone too positively, possibly covering himself in case the CIA had information on these people which he was not aware of. It is noteworthy that Luraschi does not suggest Addison Durland, who officially had the responsibility of seeing that Article 10 was enforced. (Article 10 stated that 'the just rights, history, and feelings of any nation are entitled to most careful consideration and respectful treatment' and gave the PCA the authority to insist on changes to the way in which other nations were represented. ) This absence may reflect the fact that Durland was not yet integrated into the PCA, remaining in an essentially advisory capacity at the International Department of the MPAA until later in 1953.
38. That RKO could be dismissed so readily reflects Howard Hughes's mismanagement of the studio since he took it over in 1948. Staff had been cut by 75% and, with the resignation of Dore Schary, film making dropped to a minimum. Most of RKO's output consisted of distribution deals for independent producers. In 1952 Hughes had sold his stock to a dubious Chicago-based syndicate and at the time Luraschi was writing, the studio was tied up in a stream of law suits-most of them directed against Hughes and his incompetence.
39. Left-wing directors such as John Huston had provoked accusations of 'communist propaganda' being turned out by Columbia. Huston's 1949 film We Were Strangers concerned the 1933 Cuban revolution and the overthrow of the Machado Government and Hollywood Reporter had branded the film 'a shameful handbook of Marxian dialectics' (22 April 1949). The studio was an easy target for the anti-communist investigations and, in 1952, the HUAC accused Columbia of having had 38 communists on the writers' payroll. Five of the Hollywood Ten - Herbert Biberman, Edward Dymtryk, John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz and Dalton Trumbo - had worked at the studio before the war. Sidney Buchman, writer of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Here Comes Mr Jordan and The Talk of the Town was the most notable HUAC casualty at Columbia. (See Bernard F. Dick, Columbia Pictures: portrait of a studio (Lexington, KY, 1992), p. 16. )
40. Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) had been personally instigated by Jack Warner - against high level opposition from the German Government - with writer Milton Krims working alongside an FBI investigator who had found Nazi spies operating in the east in 1938. The studio continued its anti-Nazi films during the war, notably with Casablanca (1942), Edge of Darkness (1943) and Passage to Marseilles (1944).
41. In this patriotic frame of mind, the studio also produced Mission to Moscow, at the urging of the Office of War Information, in 194 3 - a film which distorted Russian history, particularly in relation to the Trotskyite trials, blatantly defending Stalin's actions. In a meeting between Ambassador Davies and Stalin, the premier was depicted as a noble prophet, 'a great builder for the benefit of mankind'. One of Hollywood's few purely propaganda films, this became a serious and infamous embarrassment to the studio during HUAC's investigations. (See Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory Black, Hollywood Goes to War (London, 1987), Chapter 7. ) Despite the pressure, Warners reacted less certainly than some studios. It was not until 1951 that I Was a Communist for the FBI was made to appease HUAC, relating the story of a real-life investigator who posed as a Pittsburgh steelworker to infiltrate communist organisations (with the unfortunate implication that Blacks and school teachers were most susceptible to the red menace).
42. 'Pro-Catholic' and anti-communist sentiments combined in The Miracle of Fatima (1952). This box office success reverentially re-created an alleged miracle which occurred in Portugal in 1917 - when the Virgin was seen in the sky by three children, bringing them prophesies which the villagers treated with scepticism until they too witnessed an apocalyptic vision. Chief among these prophesies was a warning about the 'evil scheme' designed to destroy the earth which would first appear in 1917 (See Ted Sennett, Warner Brothers Presents (New York, 1971).
43. William Gordon was Luraschi's counterpart at Universal - International, head of the departments of public relations, foreign affairs and censorship. Gordon also served with Luraschi on the Academy's Committee on Documentary Awards in 1953. Little is known of his political associations. As for the studio, their principal casualty to HUAC was Lester Cole, one of the Hollywood Ten, who had a long association with Universal before the war.
44. Over the previous 5 years, Fox had released 184 features and MGM 171. In comparison, Warner Bros, released 129 and Paramount 122. Columbia and Universal had released more (261 and 175, respectively), but the majority of these were 'B-movie' products. As a indication of the 'quality' of these films, Fox had dominated the seven Academy Awards since the war, with eight best picture nominations and two awards and MGM had seven nominations with one win. In contrast, Paramount had only four best picture nominations, and had won with The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952, principally because of the Academy's need to honour Cecil B. DeMille.
45. George Custen, Zanuck's recent biographer, notes that, unlike Louis Mayer or Jack Warner, Zanuck did not go to Washington to testify before the HUAC and, standing apart from almost every other powerbroker in Hollywood, he did not consent to the 1947 Waldorf Agreement which initiated the blacklist. Zanuck was a conservative, but he had many left-wing and liberal writers working for him and knew that they did not represent a threat to the national welfare. However, he did yield to pressure in dismissing Ring Lardner Jr and Abraham Polonsky, two of the Hollywood Ten. And he did become more cautious in his productions: the man who had made films in the 1940s attacking racism and anti-Semitism now backed away from some of Philip Dunne's ideas for making similar films which criticised the HUAC and McCarthyism. (See George Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the culture of Hollywood (New York, 1997) pp. 312-317. )
46. Julian Blaustein, appointed executive producer at 20th-century Fox in 1951, had been responsible for Broken Arrow and The Day the Earth Stood Still - both of which were pacifistic message films, the former highly critical of the historic treatment of Native Americans, the latter condemning the militaristic attitudes of all nations in the Cold War and man's capacity for self-destruction.
47. Before joining 20th-century Fox as the director of public relations in 1949, Frank McCarthy's credentials included wartime service in the military intelligence division of the war department, as secretary to the war department general staff and as assistant secretary to the Secretary of State in 1945. His role in handling foreign pictures had been as the European manager for the MPAA in 1947-1948.
48. With regard to distribution, MGM was the last studio to hold out against the Supreme Court's 1948 divestiture order, separating production from ownership of theatres; not until 1959 did it divide itself into two unconnected companies (Loew's Theatres and MGM), and thus lose direct control of the distribution of its product. This delay gave the company greater stability during the 1950s than Paramount, which was the first studio compelled to comply. (See Michael Conant, Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry (Berkeley, CA, 1960), Chapter VI. )
49. Dore Schary was almost unique among studio heads - such as Zanuck, Samuel Goldwyn and, most especially his predecessor, Louis Mayer - in that he did not vote Republican. He was a self-confessed liberal and an active campaigner and speech writer for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956. However, he too bowed under during the blacklist and witch-hunt. When the industry leaders determined to make a public statement in 1948, deploring the behaviour of the Hollywood Ten and announcing that know communists would no longer be employed, Schary was selected by the others to present this 'Waldorf Statement'. As 'the most conspicuous of the liberal producers' he was being forced to 'atone. ' (See Richard Maltby, Harmless Entertainment (London, 1983), p. 125. )
50. Faced with Hedda Hopper's further accusations that he was a 'red sympathiser', Schary, as Luraschi suggests, made further efforts to demonstrate his anti-communist credentials. The Hoaxters was a 36 minute documentary produced by Schary from material complied by Victor Lasky and William Herbert and released with the endorsement of the State Department, the FBI and the Psychological Strategy Board. The film likened the lure of communism to 'that of the old-time medicine man whose phony brew promised to cure everything, being swallowed cheerfully by the gullible until rigor mortis set in'. Narrated by a host of MGM players, 'the film carefully traces the tortuous foreign policy of the Soviet Union toward this country, showing how it has periodically reversed itself, always with its goal being the sovietizing of the world under Russian domination, just as Hitler planned to nazify the planet under German rule. News clips are used to help what proves to be a logical and forceful demonstration of the menace of communism to all freedom-loving people'. (Hollywood Reporter, 4 December 1952).
51. Countering the communist 'lies' were 'the big truths' - as uttered by Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Stevenson, J. Edgar Hoover and others, documenting 'the United States' record for peace since 1945 and before, starting with UNRRA, the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, SHAEF, the Voice of America, the Berlin airlift and, now, the atom bomb' (Variety, 4 December 1952). The film went on to win the Academy Award for best documentary.
52. Robert Vogel was a close friend of Luraschi's. According to Vogel's Oral History, he was responsible for showing Luraschi the ropes when he arrived in 1933 and they had a close working relationship - with Vogel recommending Luraschi for positions in the Motion Picture Society for the Americas and on Academy Award committees. Here, Luraschi was cautiously pushing Vogel forward - providing much more personal information than with any other candidate, but at the same time distancing himself a little. Perhaps Luraschi was wary of Vogel's involvement with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, for he was evidently uncertain of the CIA's opinion of such right-wing groups. Vogel also apparently had second-thoughts about his membership, and later recalled the hysteria: I think I saw things in scripts that I was dreaming. We got too concerned. We got too worried. We created evils that didn't exist . . . There was a great fear in all the studios that the Communists were trying to take over the industry. And we would read scripts - I know Luigi did it at Paramount, I did it at MGM - and read things into it that weren't there on account of our fear. The slightest little indication of dissatisfaction with something about our system, boom! became Communist propaganda. (See Robert M. W. Vogel Oral History by Barbara Hall, AMPAS, 200. )
53. The role of the story department included providing synopses of all new material considered for production possibilities. The reader in the department would also make an appraisal of whether it was worth developing the material. If no producer had a personal interest in the material, this appraisal could easily determine whether a project progressed or not.
54. Mogens Skot-Hansen arrived in Hollywood in September 1950. According to Variety he was 'available at all times to writers and studios who have ideas to develop': Neither Skot-Hansen nor the studios is [sic] interested in the moment in an all-out propaganda pitch for the success of the UN and world cooperation. Well-versed in the picture business, Skot-Hansen, who scripted the prize-winning Day of Wrath, is helping direct film-land's influence into steadier channels - the realization that the UN is now a integral part of everyday life, and that support of its aims and ideals requires no excessive out-of-the-ordinary activity. The job being done here for the UN is part of the overall effort of the Department of Public Information of the World Organization. Work, under the Films and Visual Information Division, is concerned with the production, stimulation and distribution of informational films . . . Hollywood's part in the program, however, is more dramatic. The primary goal is to inject a UN theme into entertainment pictures so that the basic message of the organization - the need for cooperation on a world scale - can be delivered without distorting or impairing in any way the entertainment value of the film in question. The project definitely is not on a propaganda level . . . What is aimed for is familiarity through continued reference to the UN and its activities . . . 'We have something definite to sell,' Skot-Hansen points out. 'The UN is not just an office building in New York. It is the focal point of many human, dramatic stories. I have approximately 1,000 stories in my files that could serve as bases for strong entertainment projects. ' (See H'Wood as World Peace Envoy, Daily Variety, 27 September 1950. )
55. As the Hollywood Reporter noted, the complex plot of Peking Express made great play on 'the political disunity affecting the Chinese people'. Joseph Cotten played Michael Bachlin, a doctor attached to the United Nations, on his way to perform a delicate operation on the head of the
56. Barney Balaban had been the president of Paramount Pictures Corporation since its formation in 1936.
57. 'Pilade' remains unidentified.
58. Orville Anderson arrived in Hollywood in October 1952, with a remit to explore 'ways and means of telling the Hollywood story in foreign countries'. He had a background in newspaper publishing, had worked for the Office of War Information and, following the war, was appointed information officer in the foreign service auxiliary. He had held several positions at Rome as a secretary in the foreign service. His work in Hollywood was a short-term assignment. His report, delivered in March 1953, reveals that the State Department wanted to improve the image of Hollywood abroad, using the film capital as an exemplar of the American way of life, business and art (see a copy of the report in the Appendix). However, much of his energy seems to have been diverted into strengthening cooperation between the State Department and the industry. The MPAA seems to have particularly concerned with sorting out the procedures by which the State Department set up tours of studios for foreign dignitaries, and with coordinating the Voice of America broadcasts which involved film stars. Both issues had been of particular irritation to the MPAA International Committee during Luraschi's chairmanship, which perhaps explains some of his antagonism. (See memoranda in International Committee File 1948-52, AMPTP Collection, AMPAS. )
59. The Battle of Russia was the fifth in a series of orientation films made by Frank Capra's army film unit. It focused on Russian resistance to foreign invasion, briefly recounting the repelling of the Germans in 1242, of Charles XII of Sweden in 1704, of Napoleon in 1812 and of the Germans again under Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914. The recent Nazi attack is depicted in detail. The producer's synopsis describes the version of history it related: In 1934 Russia joins the League of Nations and warns its European neighbors to arrest German aggression under Hitler with collective force, but to no avail. Hoping to buy time to rearm, the Russian sign a non-aggression pact with the Nazis on 21 August 1939. After Germany is blocked by Britain on their western front, however, they turn eastward toward Russia. Reactionary leaders in the Balkans sell out to Hitler for protection, and Yugoslavia and Greece are overpowered. Meanwhile the Russians brace themselves for an attack, which comes on 22 June 1941 . . . By December, 500,000 square miles of Russian land has been taken. But Russian strategy is to bend without breaking, yielding territory but sucking the enemy in deeper and blunting the invader's wedge formation. Moreover, the Russian people see the war not simply as a matter of territory but as a struggle for life and death; every Russian is a solider participating in a total war. And while generals win campaigns, people win wars. Directed by Anatole Litvak, it was given theatrical release in 1943 - shown in Russia with a prologue by Stalin himself - and nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. (Synopsis in Why We Fight clipping file, AMPAS. )
60. Edmund Beloin was one of Bob Hope's favoured writers, penning The Lemon Drop Kid and My Favorite Spy and was also responsible for 1949's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Gringo was never made.
61. Luraschi may have been successful in blocking development of this project at Paramount, but the scenario was taken elsewhere. Lisbon was eventually made in 1956, produced by Ray Milland (who also starred) and released by Republic Studios. Maureen O'Hara replaced Joan Crawford. From the plot summary in Hollywood Reporter 1 August 1956 it is easy to see why Luraschi was concerned about the O'Hara/Crawford character: 'Milland plays an adventurer operating with his power boat out of Lisbon, making a very good living by smuggling. He is approached by Claude Rains, an international financier specializing in illegal deals, to pick up at sea an American businessman who has been held by the communists for ransom. Maureen O'Hara is the wife of the American. She has bypassed the U. S. State Department and its efforts on her husband's behalf to deal directly with the Reds for his release. At first it seems her interest is that of a loving wife. It develops that she cannot inherit her elderly husband's millions, however, until he is proved dead. She wants him out of the communist hands, but dead, so she will be in control of his money. '
62. Released as The Naked Jungle, Heston played Leiningen, the tough plantation owner who carved his empire out of the South American jungle. The local commissioner is his closest friend - but he seems more of a colonial Britisher than a Brazilian. The film comes close to celebrating Western colonialism: Leiningen is obsessed with imposing order and civilisation on the corrosive wilderness, but this is tempered this with a benevolent respect for the 'natives' and their culture. While Leiningen employs native labour on his plantation, a scene is introduced to demonstrate that he does not treat them as slaves or chattels, as one of his more 'European' (undoubtedly Germanic) neighbours does.
63. Released June 1954. See notes 70, 73 and 75 for further detail of changes made.
64. Reference to Charles Wilson, the president of General Motors, who had just been appointed by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defence. He expanded upon his famous remark by using his position in government to proclaim that a new roads system was vital to the nation's security needs.
65. The documentary committee for the 25th Academy Awards for 1952 (presented in 1953) was chaired by Sidney Solow, president of Consolidated Film Industries and a member of the documentary committee since its inception. The other 13 members consisted of Luraschi, William Gordon (Luraschi's counterpart at Universal-International), Lester Beck, George Bilson (executive producer of short subjects at RKO), John Burton (production manager for Warner Bros. Cartoons), Hal Elias (head of MGM's cartoon and short subjects productions), Cedric Francis (director of shorts at Warner Bros. ), Jules White (director of shorts for Columbia), William C. Menzies (producer-director with United-Artists), Harriet Parsons (producer-director at RKO), Frederick Y. Smith (president of American Cinema Editors), Harry Tytle (cartoon and shorts producer at Disney), Malvin Wald (screenwriter, including Naked City). Unsurprisingly, American Harvest was not nominated. (Information supplied by Barbara Hall, AMPAS. )
66. Actually entitled Autobiography of a Jeep, this was a 1943 documentary film written by Joseph Krumgold, directed by Irving Lerner and produced by the Office of War Information's Overseas Branch. It was the success story of the jeep, whimsically 'told' by a jeep itself (voiced by Robert Sloan), showing exactly what the vehicle could do. Its implications was that this 'remarkable little machine' was 'a symbol of America's presence throughout the world'. (See Richard Dyer MacCann, The People's Films: a political history of US Government motion pictures (New York, 1973), p. 144. )
67. Anderson's report is reproduced in full in the Appendix below. Positive results - at least in terms of cooperation and mutual support between the industry and State Department - were already being heralded. Reed Harris, head of the department's International Information Program told a Senate Select Committee that 'Hollywood has shown increasing awareness in recent months of the need for sending films overseas which can improve and not hurt our international relations . . . The motion picture industry has shown a thorough realization of the importance of telling the proper story about American overseas. ' Anderson's report was an analysis of further ways in which the 'proper story' could be told through and by Hollywood. (See State Dept. lauds H'W'D pix exports, Variety, 29 January 1953, p. 3. )
68. The Voice of American was the international radio service of the State Department's foreign information programme. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1949, which authorised the American Government to engage in overseas propaganda, had provided for 'an information service to disseminate abroad information about the United States, its people and policies'. (See Holly Cowan Schulman, The Voice of America: propaganda and democracy, 1941-1945 (Madison, WI, 1990), pp. 189-90. ) At the time Luraschi was writing, however, Senator McCarthy was preparing an assault on the Voice of America, launching in February an investigation into 'whether the contents of these programs have been interests of the United States'. Luraschi was evidently attuned to such anti-communist sentiments, but the Voice of America had long been a particular irritation to him and the International Committee of the MPAA. Arrangements for Voice of America units to interview motion picture personalities were supposed to be handled by the Hollywood Coordinating Committee - but frequently the Voice of America approached studios directly, or tried to go through the International Committee - which created friction. Hollywood broadcasts were being handled by the New York office of the Voice of America and the MPAA wanted a Hollywood office to be established - the studios were particularly anxious about the lack of script approval they had in these broadcasts. Eddie Schellhorn, Luraschi's lieutenant at Paramount's foreign department, angrily told the Voice of America that 'The day of saying two words in French over the radio by an American movie star is passed. We have too much at stake to let players, especially big names, make an ass of themselves' (Schellhorn to Lew Danis, Voice of America New York, 15 October 1951, Voice of America file, AMPTP Collection, AMPAS).
69. The final screenplay for Houdini was delivered by Philip Yordan on 5 September 1952. In scenes dealing with Houdini's return to America after having taken Europe by storm, Arthur Simms, a reporter from the Observer is the only journalist who takes an interest in the escapologist. Houdini sets up a demonstration of his escape from an Iron Maiden for the American press, but only Simms turns up - and he really only comes along for the free cocktails and is drunk even before he arrives. This scene was reshot, so that no reporters respond to the invitations. Simms instead witnesses another Houdini stunt, in which he is suspended in a straightjacket from a skyscraper. However, this change created a continuity problem. In a later scene Simms and Houdini pay a
70. Money From Home featured the role of jockey, Bertie Searles, a 'red-nosed Englishman, age indeterminate', first seen driving under the influence, with a bottle of whisky beside him. His alcoholism was not removed from the script - it was necessary for the comedy that he pass out from drink, so that Jerry Lewis could take his place in a crucial race. Richard Hayden was cast in the part, but this made slight difference to the caricature (Money from Home, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS).
71. Luraschi seems to have had little success in curbing drunkenness. Elephant Walk featured a group of British tea plantation owners in Ceylon. They have formed an informal club, known as the 'Saturday Night Regulars', whose activities basically consist of getting drunk and playing bicycle polo every weekend. As they play their game 'two servants stand with a tray of drinks. During the play the players reach out and grab a drink. ' In the draft script, the only man to remain sober was an aloof American secretary, sardonically observing the British in their follies. This remains in the film, and all the British get drunk and behave like overgrown schoolboys, but a concession was made in the final screenplay by putting a drink in the American's hand, thereby erasing the condescending tone of disapproval (Elephant Walk, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS). Frances Stone Saunders suggests that this concern with drunks was simply a move to eliminate 'the negative stereotypes' and replace them with 'characterizations which represented a healthy America' (Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, p. 293). This is undoubtedly true, but Luraschi tended to voice his concerns about international reception quite specifically and here he may have been responding to the perceptions of American vices in Islamic countries, particularly at a time when the Soviet Union was seeking closer ties with the Arab states. It may, of course, be a projection of Luraschi's own sense of probity and dignity or even a prohibition hang-up, but the listing that he provides suggests that the CIA had specifically asked him to look out for drunks.
72. Y Frank Freeman was the vice-president of Paramount Pictures directing studio operations from 1938 to 1959. He also held the position of chairman of the board of directors of the Association of Motion Picture Producers from 1947 until 1966 and had been president of the Association during the Second World War.
73. It is noteworthy that Freeman could feel 'very strongly about the whole matter' of erasing drunks, but 'very cold' to the idea of injecting African-Americans into screenplays, even in the token fashion that Luraschi had suggested. Whether this reflects Freeman's own racial attitudes is unclear (no biography has been written on him), but it certainly illustrates the caution that film makers displayed in the 1950s, becoming increasingly unwilling to address social issues - particularly civil rights - and risk alienating any part of a declining domestic market.
74. The story of Elephant Walk involved a tense romantic triangle between Ruth (the English heroine), her husband (the plantation owner) and his American secretary, Wilding. Filmed in Ceylon, the studio wanted to take advantage of the location and one of the scenes developing the romantic tension between Ruth and Wilding was played at 'the ruin at Polonnarahu, featuring the huge, fifty-foot prone Buddha with Ananda, his mourning disciple, standing at his head' in a jungle clearing. The Limited Distribution Script of November 20, 1952 played this with humour: Ruth: I wonder what's the history behind this? Wilding (easily): Sort of interesting. In the fourth century BC, the Great Prince of the North, one Shlem Oberang-dulla, conquered Lanake with ten thousand foot and a thousand and one elephant cavalry. The extra one was for Shlem, I gather. Shlem . . . desired the daughter of the vanquished ruler, a lovely old hag of twelve named Avidma Faratanga - meaning Lady of the Orchids, by the way. Avidma returned Shlem's passion in a highly mature manner - and religion was dead throughout the land for centuries thereafter. Hence, this. Ruth: How did you ever have time to learn all that? Wilding: I made it up, just to keep you fascinated. You won't let me talk about real things. How beautiful you are, for example. In Revised Final dialogue this was excised. They still come to the remains of the shrine. Wilding (renamed Carver) simply tells Ruth that it is a stature of the sleeping Buddha and Ananda. Ruth replies 'It's all so beautiful - and still. I feel like we're trespassing' and so they move on (Elephant Walk, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS).
75. In Money From Home, Lewis and Martin come to the aid of an impoverished female stable owner, who desperately needs her horse to win the derby, so that a rich middle-eastern sheikh will buy the thoroughbred from her. In the script delivered on 2 March 1953, the character of the Pasha had been given the more outlandish name of 'The Poojah of Bahloop' - but the description was pure caricature: a portly Easterner dressed in a white tropical suit and wearing a satin turban . . . He is surrounded by his manservants, native musicians, several eunuchs and at least a dozen wives, all of whom wear identical robes complete with veils over their faces, only one is short and fat. Romo Vincent was cast in the role, with a number of scenes in which Lewis-in order to hide from gangsters intent on fixing the race - is disguised by Dean Martin as member of the harem (Money From Home, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS).
76. Dr Pereira was played by Abner Biberman and described in the scripts as 'a cultured-looking Sinhalese of around thirty years old, in a palm beach suit,' who tends to the plantation owner when he breaks his ankle and organises efforts to contain a cholera outbreak. Appuhamy, the principal manservant at the plantation is more of a caricature - a kind of 'Gunga Din' faithful native servant, devoted to the memories of the early colonial days. In the revised final screenplay of 27 February 1953, Appuhamy was given a new death-bed speech, which gave credit to 'forwarding-thinking' men such as Pereira, as much as to the colonists, for the advances that were being made. Appuhamy: A day will come when my people will no longer fear inoculation. They will listen to the Master - and Dr Pereira, as I did. They will learn. They are learning fast. (Elephant Walk, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS. )
77. Heston played the lead Ed Bannon whose 'hatred of the Apaches is as deadly as it is unrelenting. He knows them - their tricks - their lies - he lived with them as a boy until he sicked on their cruelty and ran away. ' He doesn't share the army's faith in the peace talk with the Indians and sees this mistrust justified when Toriano (Palance) leads them on the warpath again. Luraschi did succeed in affecting minor changes to the dialogue, but without altering Bannon's characterisation or his ultimate vindication, the effort was largely futile. In September, 1952, the script read Bannon: I'm warning you. You can't deal with Apaches like you can with other Indians. Kirk: You should know Apaches. Bannon: When you were that high and learning arithmetic I was that high and learning how to cut a man's throat so that it takes him nearly a day to die. That's Apache. As released, the dialogue merely replaced 'Apache' with 'Toriano': Bannon: I'm warning you. You can't make deals with Toriano. Kirk: You should know Toriano. Bannon: When you were that high and learning arithmetic I was that I learning how to cut a man's throat so that it takes him nearly a day to die, and that's Toriano. (Arrowhead, Paramount Script Collection, AMPAS. )
78. Heston was an early and ardent supporter of the civil rights movement, organising a group from Hollywood to join Martin Luther King's march on Washington. Yet his attitude towards American Indians was far more ambiguous than that displayed toward African-Americans. Native Americans - a 'politically correct' term which Heston expresses disgust for in his autobiography - had the historical baggage of having fought and killed many Whites and Heston's opinion seems to have been shaped by the images of the Western, which he then acquiesced in. Commenting on Jack Palance's performance, Heston recalled 'He played the part with a deep ferocity that was mesmerizing. I've never seen an Indian role better done. ' The irony of perpetuating negative stereotypes of the Indian while simultaneously fighting for civil rights went unnoticed by Heston, who recalled that during the production of Major Dundee: 'while I'd been off chasing Sam Peckinpah's Apaches, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Bill' (Charlton Heston, In the Arena (London, 1995), pp. 119 and 336. )
79. Both Audrey and Katherine Hepburn had been sought to play alongside Yul Brynner. The postponement of production following Katherine Hepburn's lack of interest was announced in Variety on 5 February, p. 2.
80. There is no reference to this project in the Kirk Douglas papers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Billy Wilder's papers are not available. (The only reference to a Wilder project from around this date in Douglas' papers is Wild Harvest (Ray Stark to Douglas, 20 February 1953, 1-f. 8)). Nor is there any mention in the well-researched Wilder biography, On Sunset Boulevard by Ed Sikov. However, the article that evidently inspired Wilder was indeed one by James Michener, entitled 'The Facts About the GI Babies' Michener wrote the piece expressly to refute 'one of the cruelest lies being circulated by the Communists against the United States . . . that our soldiers have callously abandoned 200,000 illegitimate children in Japan'. The problem revolved around the 'foolish' Japanese cultural belief 'that their race is unique and pure, unsullied by outside blood', which meant that children who were illegitimate, orphaned or of mixed blood were 'sharply discriminated against'. Lacking family status, in a culture where the family was responsible for protecting its members, finding them employment and a spouse and providing care in illness, children sired by GI fathers during the American occupation found themselves excluded from society. Michener explained this, but argued that the scale of the problem had been grossly exaggerated, estimating instead only 3925 such babies and documented efforts by the government and individual GIs to face up to their moral responsibilities - ensuring that previously unrecognised marriages were legalised or that the children were given financial support or even adopted by American couples. However, while Michener countered communist charges of American inhumanity (the evident appeal for Wilder), the account of American soldiers' behaviour in seducing Japanese girls cut directly across Luraschi's policy of improving the moral image of Americans abroad. The issues of 'illicit' sex and miscegenation would have presented a serious Production Code problem anyway. Sikov noted that Wilder only had to complete Sabrina to fulfil his contract with Paramount and was, at this stage, preparing to leave the studio and set up his own independent production company. That he consulted Luraschi on what would have been a non-Paramount project indicates the respect Wilder had for Luraschi's familiarity with the censors and their 'tastes' and he evidently hoped that Luraschi's input would save him some trouble further down the road. Here, therefore, Luraschi's day-to-day involvement and the rapport he had built up with film makers in his role as head of censorship put him in an ideal position to enforce the CIA's agenda. (See James Michener, Facts About GI Babies, reprinted in The Reader's Digest, March 1954, pp. 5-10. Additional notes from correspondence with Ed Sikov, September 9, 1999. )
81. D. A. Doran, executive assistant to Don Hartman, head of production at Paramount.
82. Robert Taylor played Tibbetts in the Melvin Frank and Norman Panama production for MGM.
83. Directed by Julien Duvivier, The Little World of Don Camillo dramatised the post-war clash between the communists and the Catholic church in Italy by pitting the village priest against the newly elected communist mayor in a struggle for the people's support. The film was based on the consistently best-selling book by Giovanni Guareschi, which had been a selection of America's Book-of-the-Month Club. There was no ambiguity in Guareschi's 'loathing' of the communist Party. He had received the 'honour' of being publicly denounced by the chairman of the Italian Party. Printing enormously popular cartoons in his paper, Candido, Guareschi had ridiculed the communists, showing them each week doing something ineffably stupid in following the party line to the letter. The impact this had in deflating the communists was credited with a substantial share in the party's defeat in the 1948 elections - in which, ironically for Luraschi, the CIA had also intervened with substantial funding of propaganda. (See interview with Guareschi in New York Times, 17 December 1950, p. VII. 13. ) However, Bosley Crowther's review in the New York Times suggests that Luraschi was not alone in his reading of the film: A closer look at the picture . . . reveals that the fundamental conflict in its vitals is not between any socio-religious doctrines but between the natures of two stubborn men. While the priest is distinctly motivated by his own sense of moral rectitude and of outrage and indignation at the presence of the Communists in the town, some of which is unquestionably reflective of his strong religious beliefs and disciplines, he is not a responsible mirror of the policies of the Roman church. And the Mayor, while he wears the Communist label, has no apparent ties with Uncle Joe. He is just a hard-headed peasant who wants to help the people of his town. But even though neither priest nor Mayor is a genuine substantial doctrinaire and the conflicts between these two stalwarts are mainly tangles of their personal pride and zeal, thus completely eliminating any political significance, there is still a great deal of sound instruction in its happy philosophy. For what is being said in this droll picture . . . is that people are basically decent and amiable animals, whatever their ingrained prejudices and egotistic urges are. (New York Times, 11 January 1953. )
84. By the middle of February, McCarthy's investigation of the Voice of America was in full swing and had taken on the familiar tones of a witch-hunt. McCarthy had scheduled televised hearings for the week beginning 20 February but had already declared on 13 February that 'there are some people in the Voice of America who are doing a rather effective job of sabotaging Dulle's and Eisenhower's foreign policy program'. The hearings accused the Voice of America of 'mismanagement and subversion' and errors in judgement. These ranged from problems such as the building of transmitters in locations which the Russians could jam, to the numbers of incomplete broadcast projects made by the Voice of America in Ceylon which were interpreted as symbolic of the whole. Credibility was given to the charges when Dr Wilson M. Compton, the director of the International Information Administration, resigned on 18 February conceding that some funds had been 'wasted'. At least one Voice of America employee committed suicide over the allegations. Miss Nancy Lenkeith, a disgruntled former-employee on the French desk, was one of the first witnesses to appear and made the lurid accusations that the editor of the French section, Troup Mathews, had tried 'to recruit her into a Communist-style community of free-love'!. Lenkeith also charged Mathews with being 'sympathetic to the teachings of Karl Marx' and claimed that she had been dismissed because she had written 'a favorable review of Whittaker Chambers' book Witness'. Though he issued a vehement rebuttal in the press, Mathews was never invited to answer these charges. Of greater consequence to the Voice of America as a whole was the charge that communist propaganda had been broadcast. This revolved around a State Department directive of 7 March 1952, which had suggested that good things said about the US by Soviet-endorsed authors would be effective counter-propaganda. The Voice of America had also been using statements by communist leaders to show that many of the claims contradicted each other and the realities of life behind the Iron Curtain. However, the State Department automatically responded to McCarthy's assault on this policy, ordering on 20 February that no material from books or other works of communists or controversial authors could be used by the Voice of America under any circumstances. Seemingly, Giant was included on this list. In the following months, McCarthy's lieutenants, Roy Cohn and David Schine toured the State Department's information outposts abroad and announced that they had found 30,000 books by 'pro-communist' writers. Once again, the State Department retreated under pressure and books by Howard Fast, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and even Thoreau were withdrawn. Eventually, the furore died down, partly because McCarthy overstretched himself, but mainly because Eisenhower and C. D. Jackson acted to consolidate the administration's propaganda programme (including the Voice of America) in the new United States Information Agency, which came into effect in August 1953. (See Schulman, The Voice of America, p. 190
85. William Gordon, head of public relations, foreign affairs and censorship at Universal-International was succeeding Luraschi as chairman of the MPAA's International Committee for the year 1953-1954 and was an obvious contact for Anderson. Luraschi had already mentioned this Schary-Anderson meeting in his letter of 24 January-an indication that he was running out of news to pass on to 'Owen'.
86. Refers to Eric Johnston, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America and Kenneth Clark, the director of the MPAA's public relation's department in New York.
87. With a background in film production, John Murray Begg had been the assistant chief of the Department of State's Motion Picture and Radio Division, later holding positions in the division of International Information and Cultural Affairs. When Anderson did indeed take up his appointment as first secretary and consul at Mexico City in April, Begg became the MPAA's principal contact at State. An internal MPAA memo from Kenneth Clark to Clarke Wales, dated 26 March 1953, records that Clark was pressing Begg to find a replacement for Anderson. Apparently 'Mr Begg would be prepared to establish an office in Los Angeles if he could receive proper assurance in advance of active industry cooperation' (State Department Tie-Up file, AMPTP Collection, AMPAS). Plans were evidently put on hold while the organisation of the United States Information Agency occurred and Begg took up a position in the new agency. Arthur Alan Compton, like Anderson, was employed in the State Department's Foreign Service, having been second secretary at Vienna in 1951. Frances White served as United States Ambassador to Mexico from 1953 to 1957. He had previously seen service as Assistant Secretary of State in the Herbert Hoover administration and had considerable experience in Latin American affairs.
88. David Penn had been an announcer for the Office of War Information in 1942-1945 and transferred to the Department of State as a radio commentator in 1946. The 1952 Biographic Register indicated that he was currently in service with the Department's division of international broadcasting, but his name does not appear in the 1953 Biographic Register. There is no evidence in the MPAA's files of his arrival in Hollywood. George V. Allen was a career foreign service officer who had been with the Department of State since the 1930s. He was appointed US Ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1949 and the US Ambassador to India and Nepal on 11 March 1953. He was to go on to serve as Director of the United States Information Agency from 1957 to 1961. (Information provided by David Haight, archivist at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. )
89. Birth of a Nation had been re-released in Britain in November 1952 in an edited version with background sound added, which had been prepared by D. W. Griffith in 1930. As an 'art-house' release, its impact in the UK was minor and reviewers in the film journals felt that present-day audiences would find little 'entertainment appeal' in its 'old-fashioned theatricality' (Monthly Film Bulletin, January 1953, pp. 3-4).
90. The British Film Institute has no record of the journal from which Luraschi quotes, but similar thoughts did occur in the left-wing press, particularly to the reviewer in the New Statesman (8 December 1952).
91. 'Quite certain that the melodramatic impact of the film will be to prejudice audiences against Negroes', the New Statesman drew attention to the current international racial tensions - 'Malan [prime minister of South Africa] prohibiting free assemblage and Kenya in danger of guerrilla warfare' - and argued that 'to choose this moment for its revival is at best a piece of gross insensitiveness'. The Daily Worker (22 November 1952) declaimed, rather more wearily, 'as if there were not enough new fascist films around . . . '
92. Clarke 'Duke' Wales was the Studio Publicity Director for the Motion Picture Association, responsible for the MPAA's press office and also acted as the liaison with the State Department for Voice of America and the visits of foreign dignitaries.
93. From 1947 until 1956, when the award for foreign language film became a regular category, special rules governed the selection process. A nominations committee was made up of two members of each studio foreign department and two members of the Academy's board of governors. This committee reviewed all foreign films released commercially in the US and then reported to the board of governors 'for their guidance and information'. The governors of the Academy would then view a selected number from this short list, and their vote - not that of the general membership of the Academy - would determine the recipient of the award. Luraschi, of course, was on the nominating committee and evidently he allied with Vogel and others to exercise their influence over the governors' decision. The limited number of people involved in this process and the conservatism of the governors (principally studio moguls) would have made this comparatively easy. (Information supplied by Barbara Hall. )
94. Pauline Kael called Forbidden Games 'the greatest war film since La Grande Illusion'. Adapted by Francois Boyer from his novel Editions de Minuit and directed by Rene Clement, the film 'deals with what a little French girl in the Battle of France strangely makes out of the idea of death'. Set in 1940, the girl's parents and her puppy are killed when German planes machine-gun the crowds trying to flee the invading army. A French farm boy befriends her and takes her and her limp animal to his home - explaining that, being dead, it must be buried. The reviewer in the New Yorker of 25 October 1952, explained that From then on, with a dainty sort of fixation on this service to death, she and the enslaved boy establish an animal cemetery for dead butterflies and moles, which becomes their secret garden, and for which he begins stealing crosses from the country cemetery. It is the de Maupassant touches of the fights between his family and their neighbors, and the culmination of a cemetery brawl over the stolen crosses, that is so funny - so humanly true. The film did win that year's honorary award for best foreign language film and in 1954 Boyer's screenplay was also nominated by the Academy.
95. High Noon had won the New York Film Critics' best picture award for 1952 and early in January Stanley Kramer had booked the film for a special run at the Apollo Theatre in Hollywood to draw attention to it during the Academy Award nomination race (Variety, 12 January 1953, p. 5. ) High Noon was nominated as best picture, but lost out to The Greatest Show on Earth (which was released by Paramount). However, Gary Cooper did win as best actor and Dmitri Tiomkin picked up the Oscar for scoring and song.
96. Foreman had been subpoenaed by the HUAC in April 1951 while writing the script and knew that he would be blacklisted after refusing to cooperate. Consequently, he rewrote the script, adding elements which made it an allegory of how fear affected people in Hollywood. (See Jeffrey Meyers, Gary Cooper: American hero (New York, 1998), pp. 239-249. )
97. Foreman kept credit for his screenplay and received an Academy Award nomination, but Stanley Kramer dropped him as associate producer, publicly disavowing Foreman 4 days after he appeared before the committee.
98. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Kramer and Fred Zinnemann had considered Cooper as perfect casting as Will Kane, 'whose idealism opposed indifference and evil'. Cooper himself relished the task: 'The sheriff I was asked to play was different than any I'd ever known or heard about because Sheriff Kane had to stand alone, literally, against the lawless. It was a challenging role - and I loved it. ' Pressure was put on Cooper to leave the film, by Louis Mayer and Walter Wanger among others, but Foreman recalls that Cooper personally stood by him. (See Meyers, Gary Cooper: American hero, pp. 239-249. )
99. The author's familiarity with these two prelates is another indication of Luraschi's Catholic heritage.
100. Flowers of St. Francis was made in 1949, but its release was held up by the controversy raging over Rossellini's The Miracle - which had been labelled 'blasphemous' by Cardinal Spellman. The film recounts some of the events in the life of the future saint, Francis of Assist and his twelve disciples, illustrating his message of love, peace and freedom. Variety noted that 'standout among the several episodes are one in which hardly a word is spoken, describing Francis' nighttime encounter with a leper whom he kisses; the winning out of Brother Juniper's blind and simple faith over a tyrant's fierceness; the one in which Francis and the Brothers go out into the world to preach the word of God' (Variety, 27 September 1950). Luraschi's comments echoed those of the Catholic-run Motion Picture Daily, which found that 'the purpose of the film is obscure. Some viewers undoubtedly will feel that Rossellini was motivated with the same ends as that of the authors of the original book. Others will conclude that Rossellini, although he worked with the collaboration of several priests and used Franciscan monks for most of the roles, was trying to make St. Francis and his followers appear as fools' (Motion Picture Daily, 11 October 1952).
101. This paragraph is highly revealing of Luraschi's vigilance on issues affecting his Italian and Catholic heritage. Seymour Lipset had found Italian Catholics were 'among the most pro-McCarthy groups' in America. Luraschi certainly perceived communism as a threat to both aspects of his identity and accepted the conservative Catholic position - which was readily absorbed in American political rhetoric - that communism was a Christian heresy. (See Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America (London, 1993), p. 81. ) Gabriele D'Annunzio's play La Figlia di Irio was written in 1903. The plot concerns Aligi, a shepherd who takes Mila (Iorio's daughter) into his home to protect her from lustful yokels. In the primitive and superstitious village, this is seen as a profanation of his betrothal rites. Mila becomes regarded as a 'public woman' and when Aligi kills his father for raping her, he is condemned to a barbaric death. Mila saves Aligi by declaring to his accusers that she bewitched him and she dies in a funeral pyre. Recognised as 'one of Italy's most important poets and political figures', D'Annunzio's prestige and fierce nationalism (he had led a band of volunteers in seizing Fiume in 1919 to impede the post-war treaties) had been exploited by Mussolini's Fascist Government. At the other extreme, Alberto Moravia found his name on Mussolini's list of subversives following publication of The Fancy Dress Party, a 1941 satire of the Second World War fascist leaders. Moravia was forced to flee Italy in 1943. His works after the war, most notably a series of Roman Tales, were focused on 'working-class' characters and the superficiality of the bourgeoisie. However, Luraschi was not simply concerned will Moravia's involvement on the project because he was avowedly anti-fascist or socialist. In 1952, the Catholic Church had placed all of Moravia's books on the Index of Prohibited Books. Ostensibly, this was because critics described his works as pornographic for their extensive use of sex to describe man's relationship to reality, but Moravia had courted anti-clerical controversy with Il Conformista in 1951, which contained a thinly veiled attack on the sexual hypocrisy of the Italian clergy. Thus, Luraschi's comment that the Vatican could be used in opposing the project is perhaps not so laughable as it at first appears. The film version of Daughter of Iorio was apparently never produced, so Moravia's involvement remains unclear. His interest in cinema, however, was evidenced when he became the film critic for L'Espresso in 1957.
102. (See John Robert Woodhouse, Gabriele D'Annunzio: defiant angel (Oxford, 1998), pp. 212-215
103. Thomas Erling Peterson, Alberto Moravia (New York, 1996), p. ix
104. and Luciano Rebay, Alberto Moravia (New York, 1970), pp. 4 and 26. )