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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. THE CONTAINMENT OF SUBVERSION (AND SUBVERSION OF CONTAINMENT) IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS by Mark Stein submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literature

Chair: sberg, Chair. thesis director

*, -A. vSffcty fr. Be 7 O U u ClMMZ Marianne Noble

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences U > ______Date

2001

American University Washington, D.C. 20016

JWEWCJUI DWVERSm LBRAD

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE CONTAINMENT OF SUBVERSION (AND SUBVERSION OF CONTAINMENT) IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS

by Mark Stein ABSTRACT Selected Hollywood films from the Depression, 1930-1941, are examined for ways in which writers and directors might convey anti-capitalist meanings in productions by capitalist

corporations (Hollywood studios). The study explores ways

in which filmmakers seek to alter viewer attitudes with meanings that are elicited via textual and visual gaps. This implicit effort at attitude change represents

subversion, in contrast to explicit efforts which represent persuasion. Finally, the study seeks to assess if such subversively embedded meanings were, in fact, received by

viewers of the work.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor David L. Pike for serving as my thesis director, and for turning the task of being his

graduate assistant during my two years at American

University into the unexpectedly joyful cornerstone of my graduate education. Heartfelt thanks also to Professor Betty T. Bennett and Professor Marianne Noble, who also served on my thesis committee and provided guidance not only

on the work itself but, in their respective ways, on the process of integrating one's person with one's work. I would also like to thank Professor William Slights and Professor Camille Slights of the University of Saskatchewan, who generously responded to some of the earliest stages of

this effort. And finally, my appreciation to my wife,

Arlene Balkansky. As a Motion Picture Cataloger at the Library of Congress, Arlene possesses both a wealth of helpful knowledge and the Holy Grail of research: borrowing

privileges.

i n

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In memory of Nancy Schwartz, author of The Hollywood Writers' Wars, college friend.

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From the transcripts of the House Committee on Un- American Activities, a question to Hallie Flanagan, director of the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Theatre Project:

CONGRESSMAN STARNES: I want to quote from your article, "A Theatre is Born." ... "There are only two theaters in the country today that are clear as to aim: one is the commercial theater which wants to make money; the other is the workers' theater which wants to make a new social order...without the help of money— and this ambition alone invests their under­ taking with a certain Marlowesque madness." You are quoting from Marlowe. Is he a Communist?1

^ric Bentley, ed. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before House Committee on Un-American Activities. 1938-1968 (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 25.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION To set the record straight, Christopher Marlowe was not a communist. Nevertheless, we might benefit by considering Congressman Starnes' question more seriously. His concern that communists were participating in the production of plays suggests that he believed the performing

arts can alter political attitudes, just as today many Americans believe the performing arts influence attitudes regarding sex and violence. When Congressman Starnes posed his question in 1938, numerous factors were converging to

produce his political fear, such as Hitler's having (seemingly, at least) mesmerized the German people and the similar view that the Soviets had inculcated the masses with

Communist Party doctrine. Following World War II, the fall of China to the communists under the singular figure of Mao Zedong added to these fears. America's perception of these

developments as somehow involving techniques for the mass manipulation of attitudes led to, and augmented the fame of,

a theory posited by Vance Packard, popularly called Subliminal Seduction.2 Packard applied psychoanalytic

2Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: McKay Co., 1957).

2

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concepts to the imagery in mass media to theorize as to how one's attitudes can be altered without one's awareness. These views found a ready audience in an America unsettled not only by foreign events but by the rapid spread

domestically of yet another mass media, television. What meanings might secretly be getting conveyed to unsuspecting Americans through theatrical performances on radio,

television, and in film? Reflecting the government's increased concern, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) re-convened its investigation into the performing arts in 1947, but this time baring its teeth. That year, the Hollywood Ten— eight screenwriters, a producer, and a director suspected of being

or having been communists— became the first witnesses to refuse to answer the Committee's questions regarding their political associations.3 For that act they went to prison and the studios instituted an unofficial blacklist,

withholding work from anyone who refused to cooperate with

HUAC. The blacklist remained in effect until I960.4 Amid the passions, politics, and publicity of the HUAC investigation, the Committee overlooked numerous items

3The Hollywood Ten consisted of screenwriters Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumbo, writer/producer Adrian Scott, and director Edward Dmytryk. “The blacklist officially ended with Spartacus. in which the screenplay is credited to Dalton Trumbo.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that could have shed light on the question of communist propaganda in the performing arts. One such item was the excerpt from Hallie Flanagan's article that Congressman Starnes cited. Flanagan had distinguished between theaters that aim to make money (capitalist theater) and those that

aim to make a new social order (anti-capitalist theater). The distinction begs the question: can one theater do both? This question went unasked by HUAC, but, transplanted to Hollywood, it will become the central question of this thesis: Can a Hollywood film, being the product of a

capitalist corporation, subvert capitalism?5 A Hollywood film that subverts capitalism ultimately subverts Hollywood itself. Such a film would be truly seditious and therefore its subversive devices would be well worth contemplating. Keying off the HUAC

investigations, this inquiry will limit its probe of this

question to anti-capitalist meanings in Hollywood films produced between 193 0 and 1941, an era particularly ripe for such expressions. The onset of the Depression caused many Americans to reconsider the effectiveness of our economic and political structures. At the other end of this era, our entry into World War IX caused anti-capitalist expressions

5By Hollywood, I refer to films produced by for-profit corporations that comprise the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA)— in short, the major studios.

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to be repressed on behalf of the war effort. After the war, such expressions were, in fact, suppressed (as evidenced by the blacklisting of radical or uncooperative filmmakers) due primarily to fears emanating from the spread of communism into Eastern Europe and Korea, and the Soviet Union's

acquisition of nuclear weapons. In this study, the term "subversion" will be used in a very specific application of its denotative and

connotative meanings. Deriving from the Latin, sub-vertere.

which literally translates "to turn from below," subversion in English has always connoted the undermining of some existing condition— in this case, capitalistic attitudes.6

As undermining acts upon a foundation, from beneath the surface, subversion will be used in opposition to persuasion. Persuasion will refer to explicit efforts at

attitude change and subversion will refer to implicit efforts.7 Despite its Cold War connotations, and despite

^he Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).

7This distinction has considerable history. At the recent end of the spectrum, frequently cited behavioral studies by Richard Petty and John Caccioppo posit a model of direct and indirect approaches to attitude change. Factors that comprise the direct approach are, in effect, explicit. Factors that comprise the indirect approach are implicit. At the distant end of the spectrum, Aristotle, in his Rhetoric. recognizes the effectiveness of the emotionally based arguments of sophists (corresponding to the indirect/implicit/subversive) but denigrates the effectiveness of such attitude change in comparison to that (continued...)

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this inquiry's focus on attitudes pertinent to the Cold War, subversion is not the equivalent of communism, nor is it inherently virtuous or evil. Subversion, in this study, simply describes a way in which we seek to alter attitudes. "Containment," in turn, refers to ways in which we seek to curtail particular meanings within a given text (or film) in which they have appeared. If subversion is subversive, how will we detect it? Two examples, representing two very different methodologies, are instructive. In 1956, Yale French Studies published an article by Jean Debrix in which he described one way in which he believed film subverted attitudes: An excellent instance is the opening sequence of Citizen Kane, a series of genuinely surrealist shots, disconnected and rationally meaningless, but which have the twin function of transporting the spectator from his familiar world into the particular atmosphere of the film, and of concentrating in symbolic form the theme that will be unfolded. ... [U]nbeknownst to himself, the spectator's attitudes and behavior will have undergone a slow change. His "instinctive behavior" will have been modified. . .. Every person who is subject to and not the master of his psychic mechanisms is the cinema's predestined prey. And every day our modern world multiplies the numbers of such persons. Hence, too, the cinema's efficacy for propaganda purposes. With no limit to the devastation it can wreak at a level where the

7(...continued) resulting from reason (corresponding to the direct/explicit/persuasive) . See Richard Petty and John Cacioppo, Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change (New York: Springer- Verlag, 1986), vii-viii. Aristotle, Rhetoric. W. Rhys Roberts, trans. (New York: Modern Library, 1954).

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critical faculties are not yet aroused, the cinema may justly be looked on as a preeminently subversive force.8 We can set aside for the present questions regarding Debrix's theory of psychology (i.e., Can instinctive behavior be modified? What are the psychic mechanisms over which one can obtain mastery?) . What is methodologically

significant is Debrix's emphasis on film's visual elements to locate subversively conveyed meanings. Debrix does not exclude narrative factors, referring to visual elements concentrating the theme in symbolic form. He does, however, attribute to film's visual elements an unprecedented

ability— apparently unknown to, or far surpassing, the visual elements of theater— to influence viewers "as a preeminently subversive force." But a film cannot be reliably assessed solely in terms of its visual elements, as the art form is a synthesis of visual, auditory and narrative factors. The opening visuals in Citizen Kane, for example, are disorienting and, as Debrix suggests, such visual disorientation does come to symbolize narratives of

disorientation in the film— most particularly the

disorienting experience of encountering Charles Foster Kane.

But disorientation, in and of itself, does not subversively convey meaning. If Citizen Kane does convey meanings

8Jean Debrix, "Cinema and Poetry," Yale French Studies. 17, (1956): 96.

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subversively, or if the meanings it explicitly conveys are

culturally subversive, those meanings emanate from elements other than, or operating in tandem with, the film's disorienting visuals.

The same year that Debrix published his article, a liberal organization known as the Fund for the Republic published a study of subversion in films that concluded, A year-long inquiry was undertaken which involved a search of story files at four major studios and an examination of the content of almost 300 films which were relevant to this question. The facts brought to light indicate that some Hollywood writers in some instances made attempts to adapt the content of the films on which they worked in a manner that would have been beneficial to the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. The facts also showed, however, that the very nature of the film-making process which divides creative responsibility among a number of different people and which keeps ultimate control of content in the hands of the studio executives; the habitual caution of moviemakers with respect to content; and the self-regulating practices of the motion picture industry as carried out by the Motion Picture Association, prevented such propaganda from reaching the screen in all but possibly rare instances.9 This conclusion, too, as this study will demonstrate, is of dubious reliability. Its shortcomings result both from

privileging the text over the visual and auditory elements

of film, and from looking for communistic meanings in the explicit text without examining the implicit subtext. (The

actual criteria used in the study are cited in Appendix A.)

9John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting, vol, 1., (No location listed: Fund for the Republic, 1956), 197.

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In the ensuring years, literature and film scholars

have devoted increased analysis to meanings inferred by the gap between what is not present in relation to what is present much as linguists have similarly studied the gaps

between signifier and signified. The editors of France's Cahiers du Cinema. for example, applied this approach to

film in 1970: What will be attempted here through a re-scansion of these films in a process of active reading, is to make them say what they have to say within what they leave unsaid, to reveal their constituent lacks; these are neither faults in the work...nor a deception on the part of the author (for why should he practice deception?); they are structuring absences.10 The fundamental cognitive processes we routinely employ to generate meaning by filling gaps are the same processes filmmakers exploit when embedding attitudes subversively,

precisely because these processes are such powerful

producers of meaning.

10,,John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln.” Cahiers du Cinema, no.223 (1970). Translation in Bill Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods: An Anthology vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 496.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2 COGNITION AND SUBVERSION In Film as a Subversive Art. Amos Vogel notes that in the standard film format, twenty-four photographic images are flashed before the viewer every second, while in that same second the screen is also blank for a comparable amount

of time. But the blank screen is not what our minds perceive. "Without the viewer's physiological and psycho­ logical complicity," Vogel concludes, "the cinema could not exist."11 Complicity, however, does not describe what the viewer is doing. The viewer's brain is analyzing visual data detected by the eye and filling the gaps in that data to create a pattern. This pattern results in a perception—

completely erroneous yet extremely useful— that the images

on the screen are moving. Among the literary scholars who have explored this phenomenon is Ellen Spolsky. "Although there is plenty of

talk in literary theory about gaps," Spolsky has written, "it is not widely recognized that gaps are neither occa-

llAmos Vogel, Film as a Subversive A rt. (New York: Random House, 1974), 10.

10

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sional nor random."12 These structured absences, Spolsky claims, "not only permit but actually encourage transforma­ tion and innovation" (Spolsky, 2) . In the filling of these gaps, as part of the process of transformation and

innovation, attitudes can be subverted. While Spolsky describes this process using the example of language acquisition, one could replace the linguistic terms (e.g., vocabulary, morpheme, and morphological) with terms more pertinent to attitude change (e.g., notion, concept, and

conceptual): A new vocabulary item may combine new with familiar morphemes in an already-in-morphological structure. That new word also belongs to a recognizable syntactic structure. The familiar structures, then, provide a leg up for the one who is attempting to accommodate novelty and infer new meaning. ... The higher-level central processor would then have the job of reconciling stored and new representations, but wouldn't get to work until the new representation already had a foot in the door. (Spolsky, 8) Though the process Spolsky describes is very technical, it is at this almost imperceptible level of thought that literary and cinematic subversion operates. Meanings are

presented that combine with meanings already in place. The pre-existing meanings help us to comprehend the new meaning which, even if rejected, has established its existence.

12Ellen Spolsky, Gaps in Nature: Literary Interpretation and the Modular Mind (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1993), 2.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The reconciliation of stored and new representa­ tions to which Spolsky refers doess not mean we adopt a new meaning and discard the old. Rather, as behavioral scientists Maurice Stein and Arthiur Vidich have observed,

[We] hold on to our sanity by learning to appreciate "multiple realities. ” ... Perhaps our greatest danger lies in becoming attached to any exclusive interpretation of reality, but the second greatest remains the abandonment of the search for reality.13 Multiple attitudes provide flexibility— a kind of behavioral "back-up" system, as it were— to optimize our ability to cope with an uncertain world and/*or an uncertain self. Donald Ogden Stewart, among the imost highly paid Hollywood

screenwriters in the 1930s, and ar member of the Communist Party, displayed this multiplicity of attitudes when describing his departure (due to the blacklist) from Hollywood with the phrase, "so wet piled our subversive

thoughts and our evening clothes into the car..."14 Similarly, when New York Times thieater critic Brooks Atkinson wrote, "Golden Bov is a good show into which you

13Maurice R. Stein and Arthur- J. Vidich, "Identity and History: An Overview" in Maurice R. Stein, Arthur J. Vidich and David Manning White, Identity- and Anxiety: Survival of the Person in Mass Society (Glencsoe, IL: The Free Press, I960), 18. l4Donald Ogden Stewart, Bv Stroke of Luck 1: An Autobiography (New York: Paddington Press, 1975), 297.

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can read a social message if you want to,"15 he revealed his

own possession of multiple attitudes— or what might better be termed his own "multiple cognitive patterns," thereby reserving the word "attitude" for the pattern Atkinson currently favored. While subversively conveyed meanings in films may cause us to acquire new attitudes, the fact that we continue to maintain prior attitudes reveals why we

rarely, if ever, exit a movie theater tearing fabric from

the seats to wave as banners as we storm City Hall. While an understanding of cognitive processes is essential to understanding attitude change (and, consequently, understanding the effectiveness of

subversion) , perspectives outside the behavioral realm provide equally necessary insight into processes the viewer

encounters which also participate in the viewer's

receptiveness or resistance to attitude change. Sacvan Bercovitch, for example, has traced America's cultural

inheritance from its Puritan ancestors to demonstrate how he believes radical notions are contained in the United States.

"The American Puritan jeremiad," he writes, "was the ritual of a culture on an errand, which is to say, a culture based

I5Brooks Atkinson, Review of the stage play, Golden Bov, by Clifford Odets, as performed by the Group Theater, New York. New York Times (November 5, 1937): 18(5).

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on a faith in process."16 The errand the American Puritans

believed themselves to be performing was the establishment of a non-hierarchical kingdom of God. In the later era of the Revolutionary War, Bercovitch observes, other Americans adapted this quest with more secular terms. The errand became a mission and God's kingdom consisted of freedom,

justice and equality. The jeremiad, in this secular

adaptation, became, in Bercovitch's words, a "summons to dissent," seeking now to correct those who have strayed from this newly minted mission: In the United States, the summons to dissent, because it was grounded in a prescribed ritual form, pre-empted the threat of radical alternatives. Conflict itself was rendered a mode of control. (Bercovitch, 160) From this perspective one can understand how, for example,

Lillian Heilman could write to HUAC, upon receiving a

subpoena to respond to testimony that had placed her at

various gatherings of communist organizations, I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form, and if I had ever seen any, I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities. (Bentley, 537)

Bercovitch's analysis reveals how Heilman, presuming she's

being ingenuous, could have viewed the communist organizations she encountered as performing patriotic acts, imploring America to return to its mission. Similarly,

l6Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 23.

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screenwriter John Howard Lawson, who headed the Hollywood

branch of the Communist Party, inscribed his political activities in references to the American mission as part of his opening statement to HUAC: I am like most Americans in feeling that loyalty to the United States and pride in its traditions is the guiding principle of my life. I am like most Americans in believing that divided loyalty— which is another word for treason— is the most despicable crime of which any man or woman can be accused. (Bentley, 162) Whether or not Lawson's remarks were ingenuous, he was responding within the cultural discourse Bercovitch

describes. But the actual history of Lawson's statement contradicts Bercovitch's theory since, rather than allow his

radical alternatives to be expressed in order to contain them, HUAC forbade Lawson to read or even enter into the

record his statement.

When applied to Hollywood as a model of how radical meanings are contained within a film, Bercovitch's theory

again proves to be very insightful though not entirely adequate. in terms of Depression-era films with anti­

capitalist meanings, Frank Capra directed films that questioned the compatibility of capitalism and freedom by depicting the fascistic potential of privately owned mass

media (Meet John Doe) , and that depicted the superiority of

a collectivist savings-and-loan over the repressive

domination and immorality of a capitalist bank fit's a

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Wonderful Life). In both instances, however, the films

inscribed the conflict within a celebration of traditional American values, thereby enacting the ritual Bercovitch described. This formula may explain why, over the years,

these films have continued to resonate so profoundly with American audiences.

But did the inscription of radical meanings within celebratory enactments of America's ritual of dissent render those meanings impotent? Were the radical alternatives, in fact, contained? They were not for James Agee, who believed It's a Wonderful Life advocated "a kind of Christian semi-

socialism."17 Less Christian was the FBI's interpretation of the film, which saw it as conveying communist propaganda.18 The Bureau based its conclusion on categories created by Ayn Rand for the Motion Picture Alliance for the

Preservation of American Ideals. Rand prefaced her

categories by describing how subversion operates most

effectively when cloaked in unexpected sources and limited

in scope so as to avoid detection: The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt our moral premises by corrupting non-political

17James Agee, review of It's a Wonderful Life. The Nation. (February, 15, 1947), 93. 18John A. Noakes, "Official Frames in Social Movement Theory: The FBI, HUAC, and the Communist Threat in Hollywood," Sociological Quarterly 41 no. 4, (2000): 662.

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movies— by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories— and to make people absorb the basic premises of Collectivism by indirection and implication.19 In that context, the viewer(s) for the FBI interpreted It/s a Wonderful Life as falling into several of Rand's

categories, including denigration of wealth and profit motive, glorification of failure (as defined by the criteria), celebration of collective action, and the triumph of the common man. (The criteria are listed in Appendix B.) For Agee and the FBI, the anti-capitalist elements in It's a Wonderful Life were, in fact, not contained by being inscribed in the film's celebration of America's

ritualized forms of dissent. One reason Bercovitch's theory fails to explain instances such as this is its privileging of cultural elements over behavioral elements. If, for instance, one works for J. Edgar Hoover and is told to view

films for communist propaganda, it might behoove one to find communist propaganda. But even in its cultural realm,

Bercovitch's theory overlooks an important crack in America's discourse on mission, located in the words "All

men are created equal." Black men, too? Women, too? Are

the poor created equal to the rich? Are workers equal to owners? Immigrants to native-born? "Fallen women" to

19Ayn Rand, Screen Guide for Americans (Beverly Hills: Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, 1947). In David Harriman, ed., Journals of Avn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1997), 356.

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"virtuous women"? It's a Wonderful Life raises questions of

the equality of poor and rich, immigrants (the Italian bar owner) and native born, failures and successes (George

Bailey's speech to Mr. Potter, defending his father's failure as a businessman), "fallen" and "virtuous" women (Violet and Mary) , even blacks (Annie, the assertive maid) and whites. Radical alternatives emanating from this particular breach are not controlled by America's cultural

rituals of dissent, as evidenced by Agee's and the FBI's film interpretations— not to mention the Civil War. Stephen Greenblatt has posited a theory of subversion containment applicable not to one specific culture, as Bercovitch did, but to various cultures and

eras. Interestingly, he has done this by examining a 16th century stock holders report. Greenblatt identifies what he

believes to be a cache of subversion surrounding Thomas Harriot's "A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia."20 The report describes how the Algonkin Indians,

upon seeing compasses, telescopes, guns, and books, "thought

they were rather the works of gods than of men, or at the leastwise they had been given and taught us of the gods."21

20Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Vircrinia (Ann Arbor: Edwards Bros., 1931).

21Stephen Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henrv V ." Glyph: Textual Studies. 8 (1981). In Jonathan Dollimore, Political (continued...)

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In response to Harriot's report, Christopher Marlowe was alleged (by a government spy) to have quipped that Harriot was a better juggler than Moses (Dollimore, 22). Greenblatt explains the subversion both in Harriot's account and in

Marlowe's alleged response: What we have here, X suggest, is the very core of the Machiavellian anthropology that posited the origin of religion in a cunning imposition of socially coercive doctrines by an educated and sophisticated lawgiver upon a simple people. And in Harriot's list of marvels— from wildfire to reading— with which he undermined the Indians' confidence in their native understanding of the universe, we have the core of the claim attributed to Marlowe: that Moses was but a juggler and that Raleigh's man Harriot could do more than he. (Dollimore, 22) Greenblatt alludes to four subversive occurrences. First,

Harriot's display of unfamiliar gadgets, which the Algonkins interpreted as divine, subverted "their native understanding

of the universe." Second, Moses subverted Pharaoh's power

through his attributing similarly beguiling events to God (the truthfulness of his claim being irrelevant to the subversion). Third, Marlowe's purported remark also

subverted Christianity (and Judaism, for that matter) by denying either that God exists or that God is involved in human affairs. Fourth, and the reason the spy reported the

remark, Marlowe's subversion of the biblical God in turn

21 (... continued) Shakespeare: Hew Essays in Cultural Materialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 22.

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subverted the monarchy, which justified its existence based

on a great chain of being whose links reflect the kingdom of God. Upon closer inspection, however, these subversions reveal themselves to be more complicated. For example, whether Hoses, be he historical or mythical, was a juggler or actually performing miracles made possible by God, Pharaoh still had to be repeatedly convinced. Even the Jews

whom Hoses is said to have freed required repeated eye­ popping performances to maintain their faith in a Promised Land and obey Moses' commands. Old attitudes, as Stein and Vidich maintain, do not go gentle into that good night. Of

the Native Americans, Greenblatt himself acknowledges "the history of subsequent English-Algonkian relations casts doubt upon the depths, extent, and irreversibility of the

supposed Indian crisis of belief" (Dollimore, 23).

Greenblatt's examples of subversion are vulnerable to contradiction by history because his approach privileges cultural factors over behavioral factors. Rather than say

that Harriot, through the "cunning imposition of socially coercive doctrines... undermined the Indians' confidence in

their native understanding of the universe," one can more

accurately say that Harriot may have subverted the Indians's religion as a result of cognitive gaps (their inability to

explain various technological devices) that were most effi-

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ciently filled for some period of time (possibly only while in the presence of white guys with guns) with a belief (or

professed belief) that the Europeans were favored by God. Turning from subversion to its containment, Greenblatt describes a process that invites application to Hollywood's containment of subversion. In Harriot's report, Greenblatt observes "the recording of alien voices" (Dollimore, 25). These alien voices Harriot has included are Indian theories seeking to explain an epidemic that afflicted Indians but not Europeans (this being prior to

anyone's awareness of immunities). For the English, Greenblatt writes, the explanation was self-evident: [T]he deaths only occurred "where they used some practice against us," that is, where the Indians conspired secretly against the English. And, with the wonderfully self-validating circularity that characterizes virtually all powerful constructions of reality, the evidence for these secret conspiracies is precisely the death of the Indians. (Dollimore, 25-6)

Many of the Indian views Harriot included in his report, if accepted by the British, would have undermined cultural

tenets in Elizabethan England. One Algonkin view, for example, was rooted in astrology. Another posited the

notion that the British were spirits of the dead revived.

Potentially more socially unsettling was a view that the disease was an omen, foretelling how, following the arrival

of these of white men, more would come, bringing death to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 2 the Indians, as revealed here by the killing of Indians wi^th "invisible bullets" (Dollimore, 26). Greenblatt believes Harriot included this chillingi

speculation, along with the others, in order to contain their subversive effects. If so, how did the containment

operate? Greenblatt explains, The answer may be that power, even in a colonial situation, is not perfectly monolithic and hence may encounter and record in one of its functions materials that can threaten another of its func­ tions; in part that power thrives on vigilance, and human beings are vigilant if they sense a threat; in part that power defines itself in relation to such threats or simply to that which is not identi­ cal with it. ... The recording of alien voices, their preservation in Harriot's text, is part of the process whereby Indian culture is constituted as a culture and thus brought into the light for study, discipline, correction, transformation. Th»e momentary sense of instability or plenitude— the existence of other voices— is produced by the monological power that ultimately denies the possi­ bility of plenitude. (Dollimore, 26-27)

Insofar as alien voices are recorded in order to alter the. ir voice through study, discipline, correction, and transformation, Greenblatt is describing the containment orf

subversion via the subversion of subversion.

Did Hollywood include anti-capitalist meanings to

market films with a dramatic sense of instability and a satisfying sense of plenitude, but which ultimately contained these meanings by cinematic equivalents of study ,

discipline, correction, and transformation? The applicability of Greenblatt's explanation to film is

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bolstered by the fact that the ways in which he characterizes containment— what I have termed the subversion of subversion— can be viewed in literary terms as an aspect of Cleanth Brooks' notion of poetry as "the language of

paradox": [P]aradoxes spring from the very nature of the poet's language: it is a language in which the connotations play as great a part as the denotations. ... Even if he had a polysyllabic technical term, the term would not provide the solution for his problem. He must work by contradiction and qualification.22 A cinematic "language of paradox" would be both artistically potent, as Brooks describes, and politically innocuous, as Greenblatt describes. As such, it presents an ideal aesthetic for films produced by Hollywood studios. Where in Hollywood would this aesthetic be enforced? Where is control located? The studio hierarchy

would appear to be the center of control but from the onset of commercial films, state and municipal authorities

contested studio control by claiming the right to inspect

and reject films on the basis of content. Numerous court challenges ensued leading to a 1915 Supreme Court decision

that motion pictures are "a business pure and simple" and

“Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1947), 8-9.

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thus their product is not Constitutionally protected

speech.23 Faced with the threat of government regulation, the studios, after several abortive efforts at self- regulation, created the Production Code Administration (often called the Hays Office, after its founder, Will Hays) to control the content of films. Hays not only established a system of censorship, but also responded to outside

efforts to control the content with a policy that film

scholar Richard Maltby identifies, interestingly, as containment: Hays had developed a strategy to contain the threat posed to the industry by the lobbying power of nationally federated civic, religious, and educational organizations. The aim was to "make this important portion of public opinion a friendly rather than a hostile critic of pictures," and the strategy was the same one the MPPDA would consis­ tently employ: to provide previewing facilities for representatives of participating organizations, and financial assistance in distributing their lists and reviews of recommended films.24 Hays' tactic resembles Harriot's inclusion of Algonkin views in his report. But rather than seeking to contain dissident

views, Hays was seeking to contain containment by powerful

^Garth S. Jowett, "'A Capacity for Evil': The 1915 Supreme Court Mutual Decision," Historical Journal of Film. Radio and Television. 9:1 (1989): 59-78. In Matthew Bernstein, ed., Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 28. ^Richard Maltby, "The King of Kings and the Czar of All the Rushes," Screen, 31:2 (1990): 188-213. In Bernstein, 74.

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forces. A sampling of those organization invited by Hays to preview films reveals who some of those forces were: American Federation of Labor Associated Advertising Clubs of the World Boy Scouts of America Daughters of the American Revolution Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America General Federation of Women's Clubs National Catholic Welfare Conference National Congress of Parent-Teacher Associations U.S. Chamber of Commerce YMCA25 What we see here is that power was scattered throughout American society, rather than centralized in Hollywood. We

also see that, as in Greenblatt's example, this form of containment failed to provide a tight seal, since the organizations Hays had hoped to co-opt continued to publicize their opposition to particular films. With the establishment of the Production Code, all

Hollywood films required a screenplay, if for no other

reason than to enable the project's censorship. Screenplays

themselves had only recently come into existence with the tentative marketing of sound films in 1927, but with them came another fundamental question of control. Would the script, as in theater, be the copyrighted property of the

writer (who would then retain control over its text) or, as with silent film scenarios, would the copyright be in the

Maltby, in Bernstein, 76. Ruth Vasey, "Beyond Sex and Violence," Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 15:4 (1985): 65-85. In Bernstein, 103.

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name of the corporation (giving the studio control over the text and the ability to replace the writer) ? Is screenwriting art or merchandise? In many respects, we can observe this critical struggle for control in the career of John Howard Lawson, the first president of the fledgling Screen Writers Guild, who later recalled, I placed the emphasis on the creative responsibi­ lity of writers to have control of their material. I knew that this would be a fundamental struggle, so we opened up that first big meeting with a speech I made in which I said that the writers were the owners of their material.26 At the same time, RKO had made an offer to Lawson for film rights to his Broadway play, Success Storv. but insisted the play's Jewish aspects be extirpated. Absent those aspects, according to Lawson, "there would be nothing to distinguish it from other melodramas of sex and money."27 Apparently, a

melodrama of sex and money sounded better to RKO than a

clash of ethnic/communal and venal/individual values. Having no bargaining power, Lawson signed. Perhaps he hoped

his union, struggling for recognition, would eventually

provide the missing clout. Ironically, the recognition of the Screen Writers Guild sealed the deal denying authorial control. The

26Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers' Wars (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 24.

^Gary Carr, The Left Side of Paradise: The Screenwriting of John Howard Lawson (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), 50-51.

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National Labor Relations Act, under which the Guild eventually achieved recognition, designated that union members must be employees, so as not to provide a loophole for industrial cartels posing as labor unions. To qualify as an employee, a writer must be performing "work for hire,"

no different in this respect from manufacturing a hubcap or sewing a blouse. To Lawson, by then a member of the Communist Party, this conceptualization of writers perform­

ing a task akin to other industrial workers may have held appeal. Again within his own career, the cost can be seen,

this time in the comments of Darryl Zanuck, head of production at Twentieth Century-Fox, on Lawson's 1939 treat­

ment for Four Sons; The personal story has been submerged to give prominence to the March of Events. It must be the other way around. Now it is a historical step-by- step account of what happened in a small village and the people seem to be of secondary importance. Handling it like this causes us to lose 50% of the story's value as entertainment.28

Zanuck's comments suggest that Lawson's dramatic structure implied that character and behavior are defined by cultural

factors. When Zanuck stated that he wanted the personal story to take priority over the "March of Events," the

28Darryl Zanuck, "Notes on a Conference on Treatment" (November 11, 1939), Four Sons Production File. Los Angeles: UCLA Fox Archive. Cited in Bernard F. Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989), 57.

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political paradigm was turned inside-out. It is as if we went from Mother Courage to I Remember Mama. Even when working with a sympathetic producer, Lawson's experiences illustrate the variety of ways in which communistic meanings can be produced and subverted— and thus

contained. Lawson's 1938 film, Blockade, intended to convey a courageous mass action by Soviet seamen and the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, was produced by Walter Wanger, who was supportive of the Spanish Loyalists and anxious to make known their plight. Mindful, however, that film

distribution to foreign countries (including, in 1938, Nazi Germany) precluded negative depictions of those countries:

It was agreed that the people's forces and their fascist enemies were not to be identified by name or by uniforms or insignia. It was obvious that the food ship which saved the people from starvation was sent by the Soviet Union, but there was to be no hint of its nationality in the film. Compromises of this sort were less troublesome than the problems of structure and content which arose from the attempt to combine a realistic portrayal of mass activity with an artificial spy story. The artifice was required in order to give the film a commercial gloss and to make it a suitable vehicle for such well-known performers.29

Here, then, we see a film's collectivist meaning twice

undermined by Hollywood's capitalist structure. Profits from foreign distribution undermined the story's specificity to the point that it lost much of its focus. And profits

29John Howard Lawson, Film: The Creative Process. 2nd edition (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 125-6.

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from a film's increased marketability with movie stars necessitated major restructuring that accommodated the movie stars' need to maintain their popular personae. Screen­ writer William Goldman has characterized movie star personae

as "perfect parts for perfect people."30 But character conveys meanings, too. Describing the film's co-star, Madeleine Carroll, Lawson states, The speech in which she confesses her guilt was rewritten a dozen times to give it an emotional tone that fitted her personality. But it remained acting with glycerine tears. (Lawson, 126) The meaning conveyed by glycerine tears for the

not-Loyalist/Loyalists is that their plight is pretend/real. The process has not reversed or defenestrated Lawson's message so much as it has cancelled it out. Despite Lawson's efforts, or perhaps resulting from

them, he arrived at the conclusion that the sources of

control precluded the production of films expressing radically opposing ideologies. Victor Navasky, in his study

of left-wing screenwriters, noted, John Howard Lawson, who ran the Hollywood branch [of the Communist Party] , quickly understood that the collective process of moviemaking precluded the screenwriter, the low man on the creative totem pole, from influencing the content of movies. As the Party's national chairman, William Z. Foster, told the faithful at a secret meeting at Dalton Trumbo's house in 1946, "We can't expect to put any

30William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. 2nd edition (New York: Warner Books, 1983), 38.

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propaganda in the films, but we can try to keep anti-Soviet agitprop out."31 But did Hollywood's sources of control preclude anti- capitalist meanings or might Lawson simply have lacked a certain subtextual savoir-faire? The year after Party Chairman Foster convened the secret meeting at Dalton Trumbo's house, Trumbo suggested in a letter to New Masses that there were numerous ways to bypass the wickets of

political control. "Every screen writer worth his salt," Trumbo wrote, "wages the battle in his own way— a kind of literary guerilla warfare."32 Literary guerilla warfare aptly describes literary subversion. But the question remained: could literary guerilla warriors evade detection

and capture?

31Victor Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Viking Press, 1980), 78. 32"Letter to Samuel Sillen," editor of New Masses (1947) in Helen Manfull, ed., Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo. 1942—1962 (New York: Bantam Books, 1972), 23- 25.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3 SUBVERSION AND HOLLYWOOD FILMS The Power and the Glorv: Subversion Contained Preston Sturges' first screenplay, The Power and the Glorv (1933) , combined popular themes (boy rises from rags to riches, but as a rich man he falls) , titillating events (pseudo-prostitution, pseudo-incest), and breathtaking visuals (a romantic scene high atop a bridge under construction, a suicide committed by walking in front

of a streetcar) . These elements made the script, written independently of studio employment, highly marketable, but they also unleashed anti-capitalist meanings. Sturges

sought to contain those meanings, however, by locking them in a cinematic "language of paradox." So useful is this

aesthetic for corporate Hollywood that the script was

promptly purchased and produced in its first draft. "We tried to find something in the script to change," Fox studio

head, Jesse Lasky, told the Hollywood Reporter, "but could not find a word or situation."33 Had Sturges "pitched" just

^Hollywood Reporter. 22 February 1933. Cited in Diane Jacobs, Christmas in Julv: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 126. 31

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the plot points of his story, however, Lasky likely would have rejected it, as the basic story line depicts radical ideas. In the film, Tom Garner, a strong, good-hearted but uneducated lower-class kid grows up to be a track-walker for

the railroads, inspecting the rails for loose spikes which he then hammers back in. Overlooked by the social system ("Now I wonder who all's wasting paper on me?" he replies

when a postman brings him a letter) , Tom is educated by the local school teacher as an act of romance. They marry and she persuades him to aspire to more than being a track walker. Tom proceeds to rise in the world of railroads, eventually becoming president of one and then acquiring

others: HENRY He's here.

TOM Who? HENRY The president of the Santa Clara.

TOM (sneeringly) Well well...so Mr. Borden is calling on ME, huh? This is a great honor. He didn't lose any time, did he? HENRY (sympathetically) I suppose...I suppose he's worried about his job.

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TOM (harshly) Yeah? Well he's got a reason to. What he don't know about railroads is plenty...the old sissy. He kept me out of a club once...guess he thought X was too common.34

Sturges' stage direction says of Borden, the vanquished railroad baron, "His clothes are somewhat old-fashioned, but extremely well-cut. His face is drawn." The old order is visualized as antiquated and exhausted. Moreover, as the accompanying dialogue suggests, capitalism had converted

even fundamental morals into commodities of exchange:

NARRATOR'S VOICE (HENRY) I couldn't figure out what the girl [Borden's daughter] was doing there. He seemed to be asking her to do something and she looked like she didn't care much for the job. After a while she seemed to say: "Oh, all right..." (Sc.E3, 81) At this point, the scenario is akin to depicting capitalists

as decadent in the sense of both economic decay and moral decay (fathers prostituting their daughters). Moreover, at this point the scenario suggests a situation in which the workers— as represented by Tom, who began as a track walker

— are depicted as controlling the means of production. The

significance of that suggestion acquires added dimension, more as the story progresses, by the fact that it is not

^The Power and the Glory. 35 mm film, 76 min (Los Angeles: Fox Film Corporation, 1933) . On VHS, research copy only, UCLA Film Archive. Screenplay in Andrew Horton, ed., Three More Screenplays bv Preston Sturges (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Scene El, 79.

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actually the workers but a worker in control of the means of production. That worker, Tom, rather than change the system by acting collectively, will find himself changed by it. The higher Tom rises in the capitalist hierarchy, the more

disconnected he will become from those around him. Having already succumbed to the allure of power and money, Tom will

now succumb to the allure of Borden's proffered daughter. After becoming unfaithful to his wife, he will later be unfaithful to his class: NARRATOR'S VOICE They began to hate Tom, though most of them had known him all their lives and they figured what they'd do to him if they ever laid their hands on him. . .. He was a blood-sucker, an oppressor of the poor, and all like that... (Sc.Hll, 120) The strike sequence in which these lines appear culminates with Tom importing scabs who trigger a riot that results in an orgy of violence and death. Ultimately, upon discovering

that what he had believed was his newborn baby from his second wife was actually fathered by his dissipated son from his first marriage, Tom comes face-to-face with the decay of

his own acts and forces his son to shoot him. Clearly, Sturges has set loose notions that

undermine capitalism. But Sturges' script also subverts these meanings. In the strike sequence, a labor organizer expresses communist doctrine to persuade the workers to

maintain solidarity:

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[T]he jobs belong to you, and the railroad and the ground under the railroad. Tom Garner thinks he owns the railroad, but he's going to find out different. You work and slave and give him the best years of your life and what does he give you in return? STARVATION WAGES— just enough to keep you alive. (Sc.H14, 122) The stage direction accompanying this speech says, "He is almost foaming at the mouth. He yells at the top of his

lungs." Here, then, is an example of performance designed to subvert a surface meaning in the text. As important, the performance of the labor organizer elicits not only cognitions of impassioned unreasonableness but— as the way

in which we detect impassioned unreasonableness— cognitions of detached reason. Sturges seeks to elicit cognitions of detached reason to encourage the audience's acceptance of

the film's non-linear structure. By disrupting chronologically based cause-and-effeet patterning, viewers must seek alternate data to create a pattern from the order of presentation. When the pattern elicited by the film's

order of presentation is paired with the story's

chronological pattern, Sturges effects his cinematic

"language of paradox." The previously cited scene involving the old

railroad baron, for example, depicts a proletarian controlling the means of production, but that interpretation is contained by Sturges' order of presentation. The scene

comes from the "E" sequence in the film, in Sturges'

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alphabetic formatting of the screenplay, and has been preceded by sequences: "A" - Tom's funeral and the widespread malevolence toward him. |*B" — Tom's boyhood daring. "C" - Tom's adult daring making him a powerful railroad president. "D" - Tom's young adulthood as a lowly track walker, courting the local school teacher via her teaching him his three Rs. In this order of presentation, we can track Tom's attitude toward Borden, the railroad baron, with patterns based on

Tom's quest for empowerment as efficiently as the anti- capitalist pattern. Neither pattern is invalidated by the other. Rather, they are brought into a thematic conflict, accompanying and enriching the film's dramatic conflict. Sturges' anti-capitalist meanings are contained within this struggle, and emanating from it is the film's "language of

paradox."

Golden Bov: Subversion Deleted

Because of its huge success on Broadway and on tour, Clifford Odets' play, Golden Bov, was quickly optioned

by Hollywood and produced as a film.35 By comparing the film and stage versions of Golden Bov, a network of anti-

35Tw o teams of screenwriters adapted Golden Boy. Veterans Victor Heerman and Sarah Mason, followed by two newcomers Lewis Meltzer and Daniel Taradash.

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capitalist meanings subversively embedded in the play

surfaces, by virtue of their absence in the film. In the play, Odets very specifically deployed lexicons of conflict, music, power, Christianity, and even automobiles in an effort to alter subversively their patterns of meaning. For example, a lexicon of conflict keynotes the play, fittingly enough for a play about boxing. The play's protagonist, Joe Bonaparte, faced with a choice between pursuing a career as a violinist or as a boxer, is

challenged by his brother Frank, a union organizer, who asks in this early exchange, "What's that got to do with being a gladiator?"36 To make sense of this, the viewer must fill the gap between "gladiator" and "boxer." Gladiators fought to keep the masses entertained, were drawn from the ranks of

slaves, and functioned to maintain a corrupt status quo.

Implicitly, being a boxer takes on these politically potent

meanings. Film viewers, however, never made this connection

because union organizer Frank was omitted from the screenplay, possibly because Hollywood, in 1938, had its own

labor troubles. As the play unfolds, Odets further develops this

lexicon of conflict. Like Frank, the gangster Eddie Fuselli

also challenges the establishment. The play's audience can

“Clifford Odets, Six Plavs of Clifford Odets (New York: Modern Library, 1939), 252.

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easily fill the gap between Frank and Fuselli, and in so

doing generate Odets' meaning: Fuselli fights for and by himself; Frank fights collectively. For the film's audience, Fuselli creates no such gap because there is no Frank. Consequently, the filmmakers adjusted Fuselli's function with the invention of a warning to Joe from Lorna, the woman he loves, "Before you know it, he'll put a gun in your hand."37 Fuselli now depicts a danger on the road to success, whereas in the play the "road to success" is the

danger. As with the lexicon of conflict, Odets employs a

lexicon of music that implies distinctions between individual and collective action. When Joe describes his love of music, it is in terms of empowerment within a

community:

With music I'm never alone when I'm alone— Playing music...that's like saying, "I am a man, I belong here. How do you do, World— good evening! " When I play music nothing is closed to me. I'm not afraid of people and what they say. (Odets, 263)

The screenwriters deleted these lines, though they left

Lorna's response: "Joe, listen: be a fighter! Show the world! If you made your fame and fortune— and you can— you'd be anything you want!" (Odets, 264) Absent collectivist cognitions, film audiences are apt to interpret

37Golden Bov. 35 mm, 99 min., (Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures, 1939). On VHS, Columbia-Tristar Home Video.

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Lorna's misguided paean to empowerment in a context of material (boxing) versus spiritual (violin) achievement. Odets' use of a lexicon of automobiles is, perhaps, his most unexpected. In the 1930s, automobiles tapped the

viscera of American culture in several ways. They represented industrial power, technological progress,

personal wealth and autonomy, and could serve as a metaphor for how we get from here to there. In both the play and the film, Joe acquires a powerful car as he rises in the world of boxing. In the play, we are repeatedly told Joe drives too fast, but Odets expands his use of the lexicon. After

Joe's manager, Tom Moody, asks Lorna, "Did you speak to him about the driving last night?" he continues by saying, "It's very important. A Lombardo win clinches everything. In the fall we ride up to the Chocolate's door and dump him in the gutter!" (Odets, 287) We ride up to— Odets chose driving as

his metaphor for challenging the current contender. Moments

later, Joe's brother-in-law siggie enters, dressed in his

cab driver's garb. Siggie, in turn, adds to this use of the

lexicon when he remarks, "I got a father-in-law's nothing's

nice to him but feeding his horse." The horse is more than a gag line. Its oddity helps suggest the questions: Who is in the driver's seat? How well are people driving? Is anyone aware of, and taking care of, the "vehicles" we use?

In the film, none of the above lines survive, nor does

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Siggie appear in cabbie's garb. While there are several shots of Joe's car in the film, none show him driving it too fast. Rather than presenting jeopardy, Joe's car functions in the film solely as a visual image of success. Odets' use of a Christian lexicon, like his use of the popular boxing genre, was likely designed to appeal to a working class audience not in the habit of attending plays. But Christianity also offers an inviting cover for

subversion. Most Americans are familiar with its imagery and feel secure accepting the beliefs those images represent. Originally, however, under Imperial Rome, Christianity was subversive. Its images have retained their

potential to undermine a dominant power. When Moody excitedly declares, "I feel like the Resurrection!" (Odets, 258), the word brims with meanings of rebirth and deification, though Moody's role at Golgotha is uncertain.

His very next line, however, helps viewers infer the meaning: "Once we're out of the tunnel, with thirty bouts behind us— " (Odets, 258) Thirty bouts, in such close

proximity to Resurrection, may resonate with thirty pieces of silver among some viewers. Though boxing manager Moody

claims to be in Joe's corner, he is depicted— by virtue of

filling the gaps— as Judas. The screenwriters deleted this imagery, thereby disconnecting the device by which viewers could elicit this meaning. In fact, the entire role of

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Moody in the film is far more sympathetically written. The

play begins with Moody verbally abusing his girlfriend, Lorna; the film begins with Moody being verbally abused by his wife. A key moment in the play that Odets invests with religious imagery occurs when Joe discovers he has hit an opponent so hard he has broken his own hand. The moment is

pivotal since we have been told that boxers often break their hands and that a broken hand will end any chance of playing the violin professionally. Odets sets this moment at the end of the second of the play's three acts, with Joe declaring, "Hallelujah!! It's the beginning of the world!"

(Odets, 303) . Joe's unsettling curtain line requires viewers to arrange— or more likely, rearrange— cognitions of liberation and religion. Is Joe hearkening to Genesis 1:1

or to some unholy world? To express elation at his

liberation from the violin reveals a character trajectory not likely to lead to a heavenly ending, though it does fit with the play's arc of a fatal car crash in Babylon, Long Island. The screenwriters retained the broken hand, absent

the biblical reference, moving it to the film's climactic sequence where it would appear to have acquired even greater

significance. But it is only masquerading as the climax. All its significance is subsumed within the actual climax: the revelation that the opponent whom Joe hit so hard has

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died. Rather than invest the broken hand with the troubling

liberation exhilaration of the play's Act Two positioning, the film's climactic positioning invests the broken hand with the reassurance of penance. Linking both a religious lexicon to a lexicon of power, Odets continuously refers to the championship as "the crown," rather than alternate terms for a boxing champion­

ship such as "title" or "belt." To preserve the meanings

from these conjoined lexicons, the viewer needs to generate a pattern, possibly a new pattern, distinguishing the crown of kings from the crown of thorns. When Joe ultimately declares in the play, "X don't believe that bull the meek'11

inherit the earth!" (Odets, 305), the viewer has but to fill

in the blanks to determine which crown Joe wears. By asking who in the play does believe the meek will inherit the

earth, the answer is again available: labor organizer Frank. But film viewers cannot make this distinction since the Hays

Office objected to Joe's reference from Jesus and, in any event, Frank had been deleted.

By retaining from the play a climactic boxing match between Joe and an African-American, the film conveys an egalitarianism that, for its time, was quite bold. But

opposing powers in Hollywood's various locations of control

subverted this depiction. In the film, reaction shots of the crowd reveal the blacks seated only with blacks and the

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whites only with whites. The screenwriters and director may well have opposed segregated seating, but the Production Code at that time required that blacks and whites not be shown in integrated social settings since Hollywood derived considerable revenue from the South. Thus, what may have been preserved from the play for purposes of urging equality ultimately functioned to reinforce a status quo of segregation. The racial status quo is further reinforced in a scene invented for the film, in which Joe, having inadver­

tently killed The Chocolate Drop, offers his remorse in the

victim's dressing room. When Joe's anguish suggests suicidal depth, the dead boxer's father says: That's wrong, son. I'm much older than all of ya, and I ain't no stranger to trouble. We's all jus' little people with a burden, everyone of us. You got one, too, and you got to carry it. (Golden Bov. Columbia Pictures)

The filmmakers had no choice but to invent this encounter- Since Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn insisted that the film have a happy ending, Joe required absolution, which could only come from the victim's kin. Thus, the levers of control in Hollywood were such that, even presuming the best

of intentions on the part of the filmmakers, depicting race entailed depicting a segregated black America absolving white America for its wrongs within a discourse that God is

in heaven and the world is in order. There is no need for upheaval.

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The adapters of Golden Bov preserved, or tried to preserve, many of the issues from the play. With the deletion of Odets' substructure, however, capitalism ceased to be an issue in the world of the film and instead became

the world of the film. Still, did the adapters knowingly eliminate the play's anti-capitalist meanings? Quite possibly they did not. Odets, after all, embedded them subversively to elude detection and resistance. Significantly, the Hays Office's objections to Odets' play

focused entirely on sexual concerns and religious blasphemy.38 Among the adapters, there could have been one or more who spotted Odets' subtextual devices and lifted

them out because he or she opposed their meanings. As likely, since the play's dialogue had to be reduced to filmic proportions,39 the adapters reduced the dialogue by

eliminating what to them were extraneous lines, failing to

see, as the Hays Office failed to see, how those lines

380ctober, 1938 letter to Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn. In Gerald Gardner, The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Havs Office (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 196-7. Additional information in Mark Spergel, Reinventing Reality: The Art and Life of Rouben Mamoulian (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 175. 39The need to reduce the dialogue devolved not from Hollywood politics but from the art form. In film, the camera not only tells the viewer where to look but does the looking— making the image the most powerful element in the art. In theater, to command the viewer's attention, language emerges as the most effective element in the art.

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contributed to the play's meaning. If so, given the right

screenwriters, it would appear very possible that a film with subversively embedded anti-capitalist meanings could be produced in Hollywood's capitalist system.

Kitty Fovle: Containment Subverted In adapting Christopher Morley's 1939 novel, Kitty

Fovle.40 to film, Dalton Trumbo and Donald Ogden Stewart (both of whom would later be blacklisted) not only turned Mor ley's narrative structure into a dramatic one, but did so in a way that implied that the upper class was the ruling class, with whom there could be no negotiation.41 The anti­ capitalist meaning resides in the implication that America is ruled not by democratic principles but by an economic elite. By comparing the novel to its screen adaptation, we

can locate the ways in which Trumbo and Stewart sought to

convey these anti-capitalist meanings while eluding

detection by Hollywood's systems of control.

““Christopher Morley, Kittv Fovle (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1930). 41Stewart's credit, "additional dialogue" is misleading. Stewart did the adaptation and was followed by Trumbo, who retained Stewart's structure. See Dick, 192. See also Patricia King Hanson, ed. , American Film Institute Catalogue of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. Feature Films 1931-1940. vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1116.

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In the film version of Kittv Fovle. Kitty accepts a proposal from a young doctor we know only as Mark. After arranging to go off and get married that evening, Kitty goes to her apartment to pack and discovers Wyn, whom she hasn't

seen in years. Wyn is leaving that night for Brazil and proposes that Kitty come live with him there— outside the confines of society and marriage, since he's already married. Kitty's attraction to Wyn overwhelms her thoughts of Mark and she accepts Wyn's offer. The story then goes into flashback and we can surmise that this dilemma will

return as the climax of the film. None of this, however, is in the novel. In Mor ley's version, Kitty, as narrator, periodically alludes to Mark, but he does not become a presence until after Wyn's exit from Kitty's life. That

Wyn's exit is incontrovertible we know from what Kitty says

in narrating their farewell, Last thing he ever said, "Goodbye darling, take care of yourself." (Morley, 298) Wyn Strafford is the scion of an old, moneyed family. In the novel, he is a genial man who is courteous to everyone.

He never proposes that Kitty be his mistress. In contrast

to the screenplay, the novel views differences between people as bridgeable through love. More to the point, the novel views the bridging or effacement of those differences as a patriotic act. Regarding the character of Mark, for

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example, who in the novel is explicitly Jewish (Mark Eisen) ,

Kitty, as narrator, tells us, I'd be a better American if I married Mark than if I'd married Wyn. The more we get mixed-up, I mean race-mixed-up, the better. We got no time here for that kind of prejudice. (Morley, 280)

By effacing Mark's Jewishness, Trumbo and Stewart sidestepped what for many would be the highly charged topic of inter-marriage, eliminating the risk of diverting the

audience's attention from class struggle. The character Trumbo and Stewart most altered is Kitty's father. In the novel, he does not oppose his daughter's having a romance with Wyn. He even asks, at one

point, why Wyn has not called on her lately. In the film, however, Kitty's father repeatedly expresses negative feelings about the upper class. His efforts at persuasion set in motion an accompanying subtextual subversion that

implies a far more radical attitude. In an early sequence

invented by Trumbo and Stewart, teenage Kitty reveals her enchantment with Philadelphia's high society, which the film

(but not the novel) labels, "Main Liners," referring to the estates built by the wealthy in communities serviced by the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad such as Wynnewood,

Haverford and Bryn Mawr. The displeasure her father

expresses in the film version is a form of persuasion, but his reasoning for the corrective action he proposes creates

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a gap in which, subversively, Trumbo and Stewart elicit more

political meanings: POP I know where you were. Tonight's the Assembly and you were gawking at those Main Liners parading into the Belleview- Stratford. From now on— From now on, you're going to Sunday School. Every Sunday, rain or shine, you're going. KITTY But w h y , Pop? POP Well, it's just to give you a little Chris­ tian upbringing. Teach you some values.42

Like Odets, Trumbo and Stewart have enlisted religious beliefs, instantly recognizable and trusted, and attached to them implications that undermine wealth and social class— attitudes that are not necessarily communistic, but are necessary elements of communism. This implication resides in the gap between the goal of the corrective actions (teach

Kitty values) and the cause of the corrective action

(gawking at Main Liners)— a gap most efficiently filled by an attitude in which the desire to be a Main Liner is not of value. There is nothing terribly radical here (indeed, Americans traditionally devalue aristocrats) , but Trumbo and

Stewart are just warming up. Years pass cinematically by. Kitty now works as a

secretary at a magazine published by Wyn. When his and

42Kittv Fovle. 35 mm film, 108 min (Los Angeles: RKO, 1940). On VHS, Turner Home Entertainment.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Kitty's amusing flirtations evolve into absorbing passion, Kitty's father worries for his daughter in a sequence in a speech that depicts persuasion but contains elements that function as subversion: POP If ever a man deserved to be hung it's the man that started that Cinderella stuff. Writing claptraps, stories about Cinderellas and princes, poisoning the minds of children, putting ideas into girls' heads, making them dissatisfied with honest shoe clerks and bookkeepers. Why, they're the ruination of more girls than forty actors! KITTY Well, I don't see what's so ruination about it. The girl and the prince in Cinderella live happily ever after. POP Yes, and that's where these writing fellas are smart, too. The story always ends before it begins! Here the text calls attention to itself ("that's where these

writing fellas are smart ") in a way that urges the audi­

ence to observe not only what characters are doing in the story but what the storv is doing, and thereby corrodes the

genre itself and the ideologies it embodies. In the novel, there is only one reference to fairy

tales. Chapter 21 concludes, "It seems sad as a fairy tale.

They're pretty sad if you read them again after you're grown up" (Morley, 209). Trumbo and Stewart found in this the motherlode for subversion in Kitty Fovle. The screenplay repeatedly alludes to fairy tales in general and to

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Cinderella in particular. In its references to Cinderella, Kitty and the young women of her social class are equated with Cinderella; Wyn and his fellow Main Liners are equated

with the prince. In Cinderella, however, the prince is not only upper class but ruling class. Are "Main Liners" the

ruling class? Certainly a communist would believe that to be the case. But to make that argument explicit would turn Kittv Fovle into a very different film, dropping its generic mask, exposing its radicalism and surrendering itself to

censorship. Upon learning that Kitty is anticipating a marriage proposal from Wyn, her father's persuasive efforts intensify

in a scene that also has no counterpart in the novel: POP You've got good Irish eyes, Kitty, and they're looking into the future. ANGLE ON Kitty, eyes flashing, a smile appearing. POP (con't.) The Main Liners, they haven't even caught up with the present! (then, with unexpected pride:) Your grandfather was a Main Liner, you know. KITTY Grandpa Foyle? POP Yes. He helped lay the tracks. That was real Main Lining because those tracks were going somewhere. Oh, Kitty, why can't you fall in love with a man that's going some­ where?

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KITTY There's no use arguing about it, Pa, because I don't agree with you. And besides, he hasn't asked me yet. POP And he never will.

KITTY But he loves me, Pa. [...] POP I know the lot well enough. I taught them cricket at school. They may want to break away bad enough. But they never do, Kitty. They always end up marrying their own kind. Once again, workers are valued ("That was real Main Lining") while the wealthy continue to be subtly dehumanized by the

epithet, "Main Liners." Now, however, the epithet acquires the implication that their snobbish inbreeding is rendering the decaying ruling class culturally impotent, a line that's

not going anywhere. Following the scene with Pop, Wyn's magazine indeed

goes nowhere, which is to say, broke. Wyn expresses his

willingness not to go into the family banking business but

to discover his own path in life with Kitty. Then, noting that Kitty too is now out of work, Wyn awkwardly approaches a topic which Kitty, and the viewer, expect to be the marriage proposal she'd predicted. Instead, it turns out to

be an offer to keep her "on the payroll"— an offer that elicits cognitions of being a kept woman, cognitions that, in this context, reside in a neighborhood of vassalage

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cognitions. These cognitions are elicited at a potent

moment in the film's arc, the climax of act one. Although no curtain rises and falls in cinema, Hollywood screenplays are almost exclusively written in three-act structures, building to act breaks that are not only dramatic but which,

in some way, change the equation. In Kittv Foyle, this moment of recognition by Kitty of Wyn's seemingly (and perhaps for him genuinely) charitable offer and her

rejection of the vassalage she perceives in that offer, change the equation. Much of this moment's subtextual meaning is achieved through performance, in the vehemence of Kitty's rejection that is not matched by the words she says. Our valuation of the scene is augmented emotionally by the subsequent brief scene in which Kitty returns home to her father, who had warned her of "Main Liners," only to find he

has passed away. The scene dissolves, replicating some

sense of a curtain falling, and comes up on New York. A new city, a new job for Kitty, a new equation— this one with some altered attitudes among its variables.

Later in act two, Wyn does summon the courage to elope with Kitty, who now resides in New York. In the

novel, on the other hand, they never get married. But

Kitty's upcoming pregnancy would never be approved under the Production Code if she were unwed so Trumbo and Stewart married them, then used this plot point to depict that class

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struggle isn't about gallantry. Departing again from the novel, Trumbo and Stewart created a single dramatic scene in which we meet the enemy, represented not by one person but by a roomful of relatives. (In the novel, by contrast, Kitty has several encounters with Wyn's family and friends, not all of whom are antagonistic. This enables some good narrative, but is not hot drama.) At the textual level,

Trumbo and Stewart build the scene to its climactic revelation that Wyn must live at the ancestral estate and work at the family bank in order to receive his inheritance (a plot point they invented). The scene's subversion is located in the subtext— in this instance, the gap between what one says and what one means. Wyn's mother, after learning that Kitty is now Mrs. Strafford, says, "Please sit down. Will you have tea? ... Wyn had told us how much he

loved you. And we couldn't have been happier, for his

sake." But the actress so perfectly delivers her lines of welcome and affection with a veneer of sincerity that Wyn's mother becomes frightening. A pattern emerges in the subtexts in this scene in which only the "Main Liners" dissemble. Kitty's text and subtext are virtually

congruent. When Wyn's mother holds out hope that they may yet have a "proper wedding," Kitty replies, "And what do you

call what we had, a rehearsal?" Or in the wake of the scene's revelation regarding the trust fund, Kitty bluntly

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states, "You mean, all those people who sure dead can tell Wyn what to do?" Of particular importance are the ways the scene

implies Wyn's passivity in what Wyn doesn't do at any number of moments where he might have acted. This involves a bit

of a balancing act by Trumbo and Stewart since they must keep Wyn sympathetic enough to sustain our involvement in Kitty's overall dilemma. In this instance, Trumbo and

Stewart depict Wyn as caught in the middle, attempting to mediate between his family and the woman he loves. When Kitty finally walks out, Wyn follows and urges her, "Please try to understand my family's point of view." At the same

time he vows to go back and tell his family he is going with Kitty, foregoing his inheritance and the life to which he has been accustomed.

While Wyn goes in to issue his declaration of independence, we stay with Kitty in the foyer. Several

aspects of this scene are emblematic of the film's

subversion. First is what the script precludes us from

seeing. We are not privy to what Wyn says to his family and how he handles their reactions. By precluding images of Wyn in action, the film subversively elicits cognitions of Wyn as absent of action. (This also gets the filmmakers off the

hook in terms of showing Wyn as heroic or contemptible,

either of which would interfere with the satisfaction of the

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film's climax.) The film effects this important use of absence on numerous occasions and in numerous ways. In the film's opening framing sequence, for instance, when Wyn urges Kitty to come live with him in Buenos Aires, the camera and editing reveal the dialogue as follows:

CLOSE-UP ON KITTY KITTY (a note of hopefulness) You're going to be divorced? WYN (OFF CAMERA) No. I'm afraid I can't even promise you that. KITTY Then, w e... WYN (O.C.) That's it. CLOSE-UP ON WYN WYN (con't.) ...I wish it were different.

CLOSE-UP ON KITTY WYN (O.C.) ... That' s the way it is. KITTY I see. Through reaction shots, we experience this sequence's key moments with Kitty. Consequently, we are imbued with her attitudes— attitudes which change over the course of the film, as Trumbo and Stewart undoubtedly hope ours will, too.

While this is the effect of this sequence, I think

it important to dispel any notion of the writers or director

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having planned -these shots from the outset. The dialogue cited would have been filmed from several angles, and almost certainly close-up footage of both characters saying all their lines was available to the editor. The footage of Wyn saying the lines that, in the final cut, we hear off-camera most likely simply didn't look right. Seeing Wyn say the

words probably tipped the delicate balance the filmmakers needed to maintain in order to sustain interest in Wyn and

still achieve a satisfying ending. In the foyer scene of the Strafford home where

Kitty is awaiting Wyn, in addition to the preclusion of following Wyn, a second realm of subversion involves gaps resulting from a presence. In one uninterrupted shot, we see Kitty wait a few moments, then notice something; the camera then dollies into position alongside Kitty so that

together we look upward at an 18th century oil portrait of a

well-heeled, very self-possessed gentleman. A close-up shot reveals its identifying nameplate: WYNNEWOOD STRAFFORD IV The presence of this ancestral portrait triggers notions of

a dynasty. The upward angle from which it is filmed

conflates Kitty's visual view with a political view. By having us look upward at this aristocrat, the filmmakers subversively seek to reify previously elicited cognitions of

vassalage. These cognitions in turn resonate off the

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explicit references to Cinderella, which in their turn

triggered implicit notions of Wyn as prince of a malignant kingdom. Thus, persuasive and subversive elements interact as we contemplate the portrait and then contemplate Kitty contemplating the portrait. When, without dialogue, Kitty

then leaves, her reasons, being unstated, create a gap that we fill with the meanings we have constructed in response to the film's persuasive and subversive interactions: Class

differences cannot be bridged. Soon after this scene, divorce papers arrive, then Kitty learns she is pregnant. But that very day, Wyn calls and arranges a meeting. While excitedly waiting for him to arrive at their favorite bar (where she orders Grade A milk), Kitty spots a newspaper announcement of the

engagement of Wynnewood Strafford to Veronica Gladwyn.43

Overcome with emotion, she runs from the bar before Wyn has arrived. Again, by precluding Wyn's presence, Trumbo and Stewart have structured a gap that we are likely to fill with cognitions of Wyn as inactive, a namby pamby. But by

having had Wyn phone to set up this meeting (there, too, a

strategically structured absence, as we saw and heard only

43Even the fine print in this film serves Trumbo and Stewart's agenda. In the brief newspaper announcement, Veronica Gladwyn's family estate is in King of Prussia, which, while not on the Main Line, is a nearby community. Merely the words "King" and "Prussia" evoke notions of aristocratic order.

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Kitty's end of the conversation) Trumbo and Stewart cleverly

suggest that he planned to tell her, thereby providing just enough possibility of sinew to keep viewers engaged. Just as Wyn's ambiguous offer to keep Kitty "on the payroll" was powerfully positioned as the climax of act one, the impact

of this ambiguous demise of Kitty's hopes is similarly emphasized by its position as the climax of an act two. In the final act, Trumbo and Stewart foreground the

story's generic elements up until the climax, enabling our hopefully new attitudes to (re)interpret familiar events. Kitty's baby dies in childbirth. (In the novel, Kitty has an abortion, something the Production Code would prohibit even ambiguously.) Five years elapse, and Kitty, on a

business trip to a Philadelphia department store, acciden­ tally ends up waiting on Wyn's wife. From this subordinate

position, Kitty's view of the life she could have had,

complete with child and nanny, propels us to the climax in

which subversive devices function once again. Kitty's doorman hails her a cab in which we know she is going off to

accept either Wyn or Mark's proposal. She asks the doorman to do her a favor and relay a message. Happy to do so, the doorman takes out a note pad and writes down what, in

effect, are her parting words to the losing suitor, whom she does not name. We are thus called upon to apply her meanings to both suitors— to fill in two separate gaps, as

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it were, and determine which creates a more meaningful pattern. Kitty then says to the cab driver, "St. Andrew's Hospital," indicating that her choice is the physician, Mark, and that those attitudes she just expressed will be

read to Wynnewood Strafford VXXX by a working class doorman.

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THE ASSESSMENT OF SUBVERSION The textual evidence suggests that Preston Sturges

sought to contain anti-capitalist meanings in The Power and the Glorv. that Clifford Odets sought to convey subversively such meanings in his play, Golden Bov, and that Dalton

Trumbo and Donald Ogden Stewart sought to convey subversively communistic attitudes toward social class in their screenplay for Kittv Fovle. But were these meanings

actually contained in The Power and the Glorv and actually received by viewers of Golden Bov as a play and Kittv Fovle

as a film? The Power and the Glorv seems to have in fact kept

its anti-capitalist meanings contained within its cinematic

"language of paradox." The film's reviews in Variety. Newsweek. Time. The New York Times. The Washington Post, and

the Chicago Tribune make no mention of left-wing meanings.44

With the play version of Golden Bov and the film version of Kitty Fovle. however, the assessment becomes more complex.

“^Review of "The Power and the Glory," Variety (August 22, 1933): 22; Newsweek vol. 2 (August 26, 1933): 30; Time vol. 22 (August 28, 1933): 18; The New York Times (August 17, 1933): 13:2; The Washington Post (August 28, 1933): 10; The Chicago Tribune (August 27, 1933): 1:7. 60

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 If these works did in fact subversively convey their anti-

capitalist meanings, how can we verify that fact in light of Vidich and Stein's finding that individuals maintain

multiple attitudes? Moreover, might viewers have interpreted Golden Bov and Kittv Fovle in ways that were not

anti-capitalist? In the case of Golden Bov, the play's subversively structured lexicons went unremarked by almost all reviewers,

plus the Hays Office, suggesting its anti-capitalist meanings remained undetected. But undetected does not mean undetectable. Stark Young, reviewing the play for The New Republic observed, The point I wanted to stress as where his [Odets'] theatre gift most appears is in the dialogue's avoidance of the explicit. ... To write in terms of what is not said, of combinations elusive and in detail, perhaps, insignificant, of a hidden stream of sequences, and a resulting air of spontaneity and true pressure— that is quite another matter.45

Young did not describe where Odets' "hidden stream of sequences" led, but those subtextual destinations were not

lost on Joseph Wood Krutch, reviewing the play for The

Nation; I suppose that the interpretation which Mr. Odets puts upon his own play is obvious enough. It is, I assume, that suffering like this "is inevitable under capitalism." ... But this time, at least, Mr. Odets keeps his political theories in the

45Stark Young, review of the stage play, Golden Bov, by Clifford Odets, as performed by the Group Theater, New York, The New Republic vol. 93 (November 13, 1937): 45.

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background, where they belong and writes a play which does not depend for its appeal upon a concern with his economic theories.46 For most critics, however, Odets' subversively embedded meanings either failed to convey, were conveyed undetected,

or were interpreted in some other way. This fact becomes most evident in the film reviews of Golden Bov, in which neither Variety. Newsweek, Time. The New York Times. The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, nor the left-wing

publication, New Masses made reference to the absence of the play's anti-capitalist meanings from the film.47 The critic for New Masses, in fact, preferred Hollywood's version:

I could work up no lather for the play Golden Bov or the published version of The Old Maid, yet both have become uncommonly good films. ... The screen adaptation of the Group Theater original, written by Louis Meltzer, Daniel Taradash, Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman, retains the rich texture of the play even in the added scenes made possible by the mobility of the camera. ... A great helping of the Odets dialogue is intact. It is a big, serious picture, proving again that Hollywood can do it when all the heads and hearts are in it. ... Golden Bov is a powerful, poetic tribute to the American people, all kinds of them, and will be a real pleasure to them. fNew Masses Sept. 5, 1939, p29)

‘“Joseph Wood Krutch, review of the stage play, Golden Boy, by Clifford Odets, as performed by the Group Theater, New York, The Nation, vol. 145 (November 13, 1937): 540. 47Reviews of the motion picture Golden Bov. Variety (August 16, 1939): 14; Newsweek vol. 14 (September 4, 1939): 28; Time, vol. 34 (September 18, 1939): 51; The New York Times (September 9, 1939): 28:2; The Washington Post (September 2, 1939): 11; Chicago Tribune (September 4, 1939) : 21; New Masses, vol. 32 (September 5, 1939): 29-30.

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Tribute to the American people it may have been, but not one in which they took pleasure to the degree that New Masses predicted. The film was not a big hit. Despite top quality production values (director Rouben Mamoulian and actors

William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou), ticket sales were, at best, rated "good" in certain theaters but "fair" in most.48 The play, on the other hand, was a huge success not only in New York but on tour through the hinterland. Since the most significant difference between

the play and the film is the play's anti-capitalist meanings — deleted from (as opposed to contained by) the film— it would appear those meanings were, in fact, conveyed undetected in the play and that they invested the play's characters with attitudes to which audiences in that era

enthusiastically responded, as compared to the film's

characters to which audiences responded less

enthusiastically. But were the play's subversively conveyed meanings necessarily received as anti-capitalist? Time magazine's

review of the play reveals some of the elements that, for

its critic, contributed to an interpretation of Golden Bov

that was not anti-capitalist: Golden Bov is not in the mass attack tradition of the typical Odets power play. It singles out

^P.S. Harrison, ed., "Box Office Performances," Harrison's Reports. 22:3 (January 29, 1940): 16.

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cross-eyed, spiritually tormented Joe Bonaparte, studies his indecision between the violin and pugilism, traces the gradual disintegration of his character in the brutish environment of the ring, and brings him finally to the realization that the false ideals and broken hands of the fight game have ruined his chances for happiness.49

To this viewer, the play does not challenge capitalism but "the fight game." How then might this person have processed Odets' elaborate substructure of collectivist meanings? The review states, Odets' characters are most forceful when they speak the salty idiom of the street, least effective when he hoists them on flights of unnatural rhetoric. The reviewer appears to have interpreted the lines in which collectivist meanings were embedded as "unnatural rhetoric." If we then ask why one would opt for that pattern over what appears to be the more efficient pattern of collectivism, again the review suggests the answer. When the Time critic

states that the play "is not in the mass attack tradition of

the typical Odets power play," we have some evidence of the

context in which this person interpreted Golden Bov. When Golden Bov opened, Odets was chiefly known for Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing! . both explicitly communistic plays. Stylistically, Waiting for Lefty sought to create a

collectivist dramatic structure by eliminating the concept

of a single protagonist, while Awake and Singi contained a

49Review of the stage play, Golden Bov, by Clifford Odets, as performed by the Group Theater, New York, Time (November 15, 1937): 25.

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protagonist but, remaining communal, did not focus exclusively or even predominantly on its protagonist. The opening statements in the Time review suggest that the traditional dramatic structure of Golden Bov may have contributed to this individual's assuming the play conveyed traditional meanings as well. In the case of Kittv Fovle. the evidence suggests that Trumbo and Stewart's substructure likewise succeeded in conveying meanings regarding class structure but that those

meanings were not necessarily interpreted in a communistic way. The reviewer for Variety, for example, wrote:

[Kitty] falls madly in love with the scion of rich family on the other side of the tracks. Romance proceeds apace, with girl followed to New York and married. But boy's straight-laced family provides disillusionment, separation and finally divorce... with remarriage of husband in his own social set. ... [W]hen former husband returns with plea for reunion without marriage, Kitty's inner voice decides the issue according to the best Hays code precepts.50 The key problem this reviewer cites as separating Wyn from

Kitty is that Wyn's family is "straight-laced." By

interpreting the film in terms of personal problems (e.g., "straight-laced") , this person avoided, or resisted,

meanings that implied systemic problems. The film's shift in attitude toward social class

from that of the novel appears to have eluded nearly all

50Review of the motion picture Kittv Fovle. Variety (December 18, 1940): 16.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 detection while, in fact, having actually been conveyed. Of the sampled reviews, none noted this shift with the exception of May Tinee, film critic for the Chicago Tribune. whose preference for the film appears to stem its more

militant attitude toward class:

They might build 'em bigger and brighter than Kittv Foyle. But BETTER— NOl Kitty looks up to NObody and, being Kitty, she looks down on no one either. This picture, as you undoubtedly know, is the screened adaptation of Christopher Morley's widely read and much discussed novel of the same name. A novel that some liked much, some a little, and many not at all. I guess I'm rather in the "little" class. But skip that! I cared a great deal for this picture. ... I'm sure you'll draw a breath of relief over the ending.51

In the novel, Kitty rejects both men; in the film, she rejects the upper class man in favor of the doctor who rose from the working class. While other film reviews did not note the film's shift regarding social class, many of the

sampled reviews preferred the film over the novel. Newsweek. for example, wrote, For one reason or another, a large percentage of the books that Hollywood buys because they reach a large audience are disappointing when reduced to screen terms. One of the notable exceptions is Kittv Fovle. ... Primarily the film is another rich-boy-poor-girl romance— but approached with freshness and sincerity. ... Dalton Trumbo's excellent adaptation. . .varies from its source only

51May Tinee, review of the motion picture, Kittv Fovle. "Ginger Rogers at Her Best in Kittv Foyle." Chicago Tribune (January 1, 1941): 32.

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in the interest of the dramatic and the Hays Office exigencies.52 So popular was this film that the Hollywood Reporter predicted, 11 Kittv Fovle will probably go down in the picture

history books as one of the finest love stories ever

told."53 The picture history books, however, have told a different tale. Both the novel and film versions of Kittv Fovle are all but forgotten. We can witness this shift in scholarly publications. In 1947, the cusp of the Cold War, Milton M. Gordon published "Kittv Fovle and the Concept of Class as Culture," which examined class differences as articulated in the novel. That same year, Kittv Fovle figured into discussions of class in John A. Kinneman's The Community in American Society. But after its inclusion in C. Wright Mills' 1951 book, White CollarjL The American

Middle Classes. Kittv Fovle disappears.54 By identifying

S2Review of the motion picture, Kittv Fovle. "Ginger on the Main Line: Miss Rogers in a White Collar Scores Hit in 'Kitty Foyle,'" Newsweek, vol. 17 (January 6, 1941): 51-2.

53Review of the motion picture, Kittv Fovle. "Put Down a Mark of Distinction for RKO," Hollywood Reporter. Vol. 61, No. 2 (December 17, 1940):4. ^Milton M. Gordon, "Kitty Foyle and the Concept of Class as Culture," American Journal of Sociology 51:3 (November, 1947): 210-217. John A. Kinneman, The Community in American Society (New York: F.S.Crafts and Co., 1947). C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951). In recent years, Kittv Foyle has captured the interests of scholars once again, but not regarding issues of social class. It is the significance of Hollywood's treatment of the novel's out-of- (continued...)

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the factors that contributed to this loss of interest, we

cam reveal why the film's subversively embedded meanings regarding class conflict were, for a time, so effective. Following World War XX, numerous events combined to de-emphasize class differences as a meaningful aspect of American culture. Renewed fears of communism served to deflect attention from our own class differences, while renewed prosperity dampened the need to criticize the social

system. Moreover, class differences in America were themselves undergoing change. The G.I. Bill enabled a vast number of Americans from all social classes to get a college education and enter the ranks of professionals. Hitler,

too, helped efface American class differences by giving anti-Semitism a bad name. After the war, it became increasingly unfashionable to exclude any white person from

a neighborhood, club, hotel, or job on the basis of religion

or ancestry. Class conflicts came to be replaced by racial conflicts.

54 (... continued) wedlock pregnancy (abortion in the novel, miscarriage in the film) . See Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film: 1928-1942 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991) and Jennifer Parchesky, "The New Woman Meets the Production Code: Hollywood's Adaptation of Kitty Foyle" paper delivered at Narrative: An International Conference. Sponsored by Department of English, Ohio State University and The Society for Study of Narrative Literature, Columbus, Ohio, April 25-28, 1996.

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Clearly, the emphasis on class difference in both

the novel and film versions of Kittv Fovle accounted for

much of their success. That the reviewers extolled the film over the best-selling and very capably written novel, suggests that some enriching element existed in the film. One possibility is that the film's subversively embedded

meanings stressing class struggle were in fact successfully conveyed and received as enriching the characters with

attitudes that audiences found meaningful in 1940.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION This study revealed that a Hollywood film can convey anti—capitalist meanings, as demonstrated by Kitty

Foyle. In identifying the subversive devices in Kitty Foyle, and in assessing their effectiveness, this study also demonstrated that subversion, even as an element in artistic works, is a process in the realm of attitude change. As such, we have witnessed what psychologist Lynn Kahle

describes when she writes, Any adequate theory of attitude change, it would seem, would, necessarily examine the relationship between persons and situations. The cognitions about both, as well as factors about both not perceived, undoubtedly interact to produce most important social behavior. Yet most theories tend to overemphasize one source of influence at the expense of the other, as well as at the expense of the interaction between the two.55 Many of the theories that were explored in this study were found to lack reliability by, as Kahle says, overemphasizing a particular influence. Jean Debrix's privileging of film's visual elements resulted in an inadequate characterization

of Citizen Kane, just as Stephen Greenblatt's subordinating

5SLynn R. Kahle, Attitudes and Social Adaptation: A Person-Situation Interaction Approach (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), 8. 70

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behavioral factors to cultural factors resulted in inadequate statements regarding the undermining of the Algonkin's religion. When the Fund for the Republic examined the films of the Hollywood Ten for content that espoused communist precepts, this privileging of film's narrative elements yielded the conclusion that Hollywood's

studio system had prevented "any such propaganda from reaching the screen in all but possibly rare instances" (Cogley, 197). Was Kitty Foyle a rare instance? Might Hollywood filmmakers have been undermining capitalism, without explicitly espousing communism or anti-capitalism,

far more frequently than the Fund for the Republic realized?

The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for example, adapted John

Steinbeck's best-selling novel into a highly profitable film

depicting the values of collective action among migrant

farmers. Despite Hollywood's capitalistic marketing of the anti-capitalistic notion of collective action, did the film in fact convey anti-capitalist attitudes? As with the films examined in this initial study, the answer(s) can best be

illuminated by comparing the meanings of the film's text and visuals to the meanings elicited by gaps in its text and visuals, and then examining both the film and its viewer(s) in the context of its era to assess the degree to which it may have conveyed anti-capitalist meanings. Likewise, our

understanding of Citizen Kane (1941), in which a capitalist

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of complex and titanic proportions is depicted, would benefit from a re-examination along these axes.

Equally intriguing, however, are the films of lesser renown, which provided the staple diet of theatrical art to millions of Depression-era Americans. Following in the footsteps of the Fund for the Republic's study of films in which members of the Hollywood Ten participated, one might well reconsider Lester Cole's Sinners in Paradise (1938). Without explicitly espousing anti-capitalist meanings, the film may have conveyed such meanings subversively, cloaking them in the metaphors of a generic

"stranded on a desert island" film: When [an] airplane crashes during a storm over the Pacific Ocean and the flight officers are killed, the passengers land on a deserted island 1,500 miles from Shanghai. The only boat on the island belongs to Jim Taylor, a man with a secret past who resents the castaways' invasion of his solitude. ... Jim insists his visitors fend for themselves, but they convince him to allow his servant, Ping, to sail them to Shanghai in shifts. Determined to get off the island first, Brand and Honeyman [munitions salesmen] attack and shoot Jim...then force Ping to take them on the boat alone. ... Thelma [an heiress whose workers are on strike] complains about doing more than her share of the work on the island and goes on strike. ... Malone and Iris [a gangster and a gun moll] begin to burn Malone's ill-gotten money out of love for each other... Ping returns alone with the news that Brand and Honeyman fell overboard. . . Anne convinces Jim he must face life, and they leave the island together.56

56Patricia King Hanson, ed., American Film Institute Catalogue of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. (continued...)

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Sinners in Paradise appears to depict a microcosm of collectivization, showing both those who acquire greater fulfillment and those who fail to survive, and why. Similarly, Hollywood Ten writer Adrian Scott may have subversively conveyed anti-capitalist meanings in the

1941 film, Parson of Panamint: In the late 1800s, life changes in Panamint when Bill builds a church and goes to San Francisco to get a parson. ... The whole town turns out to welcome Philip into the parsonage, but banker Jonathan Randall and judge Arnold Mason immediately disapprove when Philip welcomes Crabapple Jones, a shiftless alcoholic and Bob Deming and Mary Mallory the saloon owner and his singer girl friend. . .. [W]hen Bill takes Philip into the gold mine which is placed hazardously under a river, Philip urges Bill to insist that mine owner Randall get the water pump fixed for the safety of his workers. ... Although he is thrown out of church for practicing the brotherly love that he preaches, Philip holds prayer meetings in the saloon with the support of his remaining allies... When he overhears Mary arguing with [a townsman] who is becoming aggressive with her, Philip intervenes. ... [The townsman] falls and dies when he hits his head on a metal rod. ... Randall and Mason... incite the town into a lynch mob. While they are dragging Philip to the hanging tree, the river breaks through the mine. Bill prevents the hanging by making an impassioned speech in which he states that the greed of the people has destroyed the town, and that the mine is permanently closed and all the gold is lost. The mob disperses and Bill feels the weight of knowing he killed his own town.57

56 (. . . continued) Feature Films 1931-1940. vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1954. ^Patricia King Hanson, ed., American Film Institute Catalogue of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. Feature Films 1941-1950. vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 1819.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In this scenario, power resides in the uncaring hands of the rich mine owner, whose wealth enables him to control the government, as personified by the judge. As in the play version of Golden Bov. Christianity is employed in the

service of collective action. This ostensibly generic western appears to convey anti-capitalist meanings as subversively, and perhaps as effectively, as did Odets'

seemingly generic boxing play. Yet another member of the Hollywood Ten, Ring

Lardner, Jr., co-wrote (with Ian McLellan Hunter, not of the Hollywood Ten but blacklisted shortly thereafter) the second

in a series of matinee movies featuring a heroic physician, The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940) : Shocked by the living conditions of a settlement of homeless people in Squatterstown, kindly Dr. Paul Christian...asks the city council to build public housing for the homeless. ... [T]he city council reneges on their agreement to build housing. ... As the police prepare to forcibly remove [the squatters], Dr. Christian discovers an epidemic of spinal meningitis and quarantines the area. This forces the townspeople to witness the plight of the homeless, thus arousing their sympathy, and they vote for the construction of public housing. (AFI: 1931-1940, 406)

While it is unclear from this scenario who causes the city council to renege on its decision and who controls the police, the doctor's objective (the construction of public housing) so clearly represents collectivist values that this

film, too, invites close re-viewing.

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Communist screenwriters, however, were not alone in conveying anti-capitalist meanings during the Depression. King Vidor, for example, one of the industry's most

successful directors and, prior to the Depression, not known for making political films, conceived the story for and directed Our Daily Bread (1934): Mary Sims and her unemployed husband John eagerly accept the proposal of Mary's uncle Anthony to move from the city and farm a tract of fallow land on which Anthony has been paying mortgage. ... Their enthusiasm not withstanding, they are ill equipped to restore the barren land. ... John is seized with an idea that. . .unemployed but skilled men could benefit the farm effort and, the next day, puts signs along the highway advertising work for ten men with trades. To his surprise, the signs bring in dozens of men and their families, all of whom beg John for a chance to work hard. Although only some of the men have labor skills, John accepts every one into the group. ... Because no mortgage payments have been made on the land, the farm is to be auctioned by the county sheriff. At the auction, the potential buyers are intimidated into silence by the group, and the sheriff is forced to sell the farm for $1.85 to a member of the collective. ... Soon, however, the corn is plagued by drought, and total crop failure appears imminent. . . . John proposes that, if they work day and night, they can build a trench from the stream and divert enough water to save the corn. Although skeptical at first, the group pledges to make the effort, and after two backbreaking days, the trench is built and the crops are salvaged. (AFI: 1931- 1940, 1586-87) As can be seen from the scenario, this film explicitly

depicts anti-capitalist and pro-collectivist meanings. Its

design is persuasive as opposed to subversive. As such,

even King Vidor had to finance, produce, and distribute Our

Daily Bread outside the traditional studio system.

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Finally (though the list could, continue), Nunnally

Johnson, the adaptor of The Grapes of Wrath, who was never a

member of the Communist Party or any left-wing organization, wrote a version of Jesse James (1939) that may well convey anti-capitalist meanings. Movies about Jesse James had

become a virtual sub-genre of westerns,58 possibly providing additional cover for what appears to be a film structured entirely on an anti-capitalist arc: The ruthless slaying of their mother by...an agent of the Midland Railroad who has been sent to swindle the farmers out of their land, forces the James boys to renounce their legacy of farming and become renegades. Fighting to stop the encroach­ ment of the railroad, Frank and Jesse organize a band of outlaws to rob the line. After a series of successful raids, Jesse's sweetheart...pleads with Jesse to give himself up and take the reduced sentence offered by McCoy, the head of the railroad. ... Jesse learns that McCoy is planning to double-cross him and, with the help of Frank and the gang, escapes. ... George Runyan, the Midland detective... announces complete amnesty and a $25,000 reward in return for the death of Jesse James. Meanwhile, Jesse is planning a risky raid on the bank at Northfield, Minnesota. Learning of the reward, gangmember Bob Ford notifies Runyan of the raid, and when Jesse and Frank enter the bank, they find the law awaiting them. ... Jesse is shot in the back by Bob Ford. (AFX: 1931-1940, 1063) Here, then, an agent of a corporation not only swindles farmers but murders mothers, while the untrustworthy head of

the corporation, having the power to negotiate jail

58Prior to Nunnally Johnson's film, Hollywood had already produced Jesse James and the Outlaw (1921), Jesse James Under the Black Flag (1921), Jesse James (1927), and Davs of Jesse James (1939).

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sentences, demonstrates his control of some, if not all, of the government. The response is collective action that does not remain within the system's rules. Still, so powerful is the pursuit of profit with which we have been raised, that it is shown to turn even a comrade into a betrayer.

Quite possibly, Nunnally Johnson was not so much seeking to convey anti-capitalism as he was seeking to get his screenplay produced in the America of 1939. During the Cold War, by contrast, Johnson wrote such politically non-provocative films as How to Marrv a Millionaire (1953) ,

which Adrian Scott cited as an example of the blacklist's chilling effect on film content.59 How to Marrv a Millionaire, as described by Bosley Crothers in this New York Times review, certainly suggests Adrian Scott's despair was not misplaced: This chucklesome account of how three girls— all of them beautiful New York models— go gunning rich old bucks looks even more skimpy and trivial on the big panel screen [Cinemascope] than it is. ... Miss [Betty] Grable, as a breezy huntress who cuts out a skittish gent, Fred Clark, and shamelessly pursues him right up to his snow-bound lodge in Maine, is the funniest of the ladies. ... Her off-screen capitulation to a forest ranger, Rory Calhoun, is by far the most sensible and painless bit of feminine behavior in the film. As the hard-headed "brain" of the trio, Miss [Lauren] Bacall has a cold and waspish way of regimenting her playmates or plunging for the heart of William Powell, and her last-minute switch to Cameron Mitchell is a

59Adrian Scott, "Blacklist— the Liberal's Straightjacket and Its Effect on Content," Hollywood Review. 1, (September/October, 1955) : 3-6. Cited in Navasky, 338.

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grudging and cheerless giving in. ... [Marilyn Monroe's] natural reluctance to wear eyeglasses when she is spreading the glamour accounts for some funny farce business of missing signals and walking into walls.60 Quite possibly, How to Marrv a Millionaire is pure escapism.

In fact, it may even use escapism to convey subversively meanings that reinforce aspects of the dominant discourse of the Cold War era, whereby one accepts without question America's distribution of wealth and power. The film may even subtly reject collective action in the implication of its "How to" title, suggestive of that era's "How to" books that valorized individual mastery (of everything from television repair to winning friends) over interdepen­

dency.61 Still, given what this study has revealed regarding subversively conveyed meanings— often embedded in seemingly innocuous vehicles— one may wonder if How to Marrv a Millionaire subversively embedded anti-capitalist meanings in ways designed to elude detection and resistance in this

particular era. The millionaires who are ultimately

rejected are, after all, capitalists. Moreover, Nunnally

Johnson's political humor could be very shrewd. When The Senator Was Indiscreet, which he produced, came under

“Review of the motion picture How to Marrv a Millionaire. The New York Times. November 11, 1953, sec. 1, pg. 37. 61Johnson, in fact, entitled a subsequent film, How to be Very Very Popular (1955).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. scrutiny by HUAC in 1947, Johnson wrote an article entitled "Confessions of a Confederate" in The New York Times which began: My name is Nunnally Johnson. N-u—n-n-a—1-1-y, Nunnally. X was born December 5, 1897, in Columbus, Georgia, of white Methodist parents. X am married to another white Methodist and have, all told, four children, all of them white Methodists, too. I am not a member of the Screen Writers' Guild. I am not a Communist. I am not a Republican. The only organization that I belong to is the Limited Editions Club, which I am assured is as clean as a hound's tooth. ... [T]he accepted view about town is that politically I am a tightwad from way back and would not give 85 cents to see Henry Wallace walk on water. I bat and throw right handed.62 Is this an expression of political loyalty or anti-HUAC

meanings cloaked in the rituals of a HUAC hearing? That Johnson bats right and throws right, after all, does not preclude his throwing curves or hitting to left. Even the

article's title, in which he identifies himself through a

term often associated with fidelity and tradition but rarely with freedom and justice, ultimately raises the question: which definition (s) of "confederate" does Johnson mean? Once again, the complexity of subversion lurks just beneath the textual surface. How to Marrv a Millionaire deserves

re-viewing, along with the context in which it was received.

62Nunnally Johnson, "Confessions of a Confederate," The New York Times 28 December, 1947, sec. 2, p. 4.

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In the final analysis, to say without qualification

that a film is or is not subversive is inadequate. The

interactive and temporal aspects of viewer attitudes, along with the multiplicity of an individual's attitudes, eliminate the accuracy of any singular characterization.

But by exploring how a film functions subversively through structured gaps that the viewer seeks to fill, and by placing these discoveries within their social context, one

can, in respecting the complexity of the process, more accurately locate those moments when film does function

subvers ively.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX A The Fund for the Republic's study of communist propaganda in the films of The Hollywood Ten cited the following criteria as the basis of its analysis: (1) Did any dialogue or any of the social,political or economic points of view expressed in a given film follow the line of the Communist Party current at the time that film was being made? (2) In instances in which dialogue or any other of the social, political or economic points of view expressed in a given film followed the Communist Party line, was this a viewpoint shared at that time by other large and identifiable non-Communist groups in the United States? (3) In instances in which the social, political or economic viewpoint appears to conform to that of the Party, were the symbols and phrases used the same as those employed at that time by the Communist Party? (4) Did any of the films credited to The Hollywood Ten which purported to reflect reality depart from known facts beyond the point usually allowed for dramatic purposes, and if so, was it in a manner which was primarily advantageous to the Communist Party and the Soviet Union? (Cogley, vol. 1, 199)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX B Excerpted below are passages from Screen Guide for Americans

which describe the criteria of the Motion Picture Alliance

for the Preservation of American Ideals— and which were, in turn, adopted by the FBI— for detection of communistic subversion in films. DON'T SMEAR THE FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM. Don't pretend that Americanism and the Free Enterprise System are two different things. They are inseparable like body and soul. The basic principle of inalienable individual rights, which is Americanism, can be translated into practical reality only in the form of the economic system of Free Enterprise. That was the system established by the American Constitution, the system which made America the best and greatest country on earth. You may preach any other form of economics, if you wish. But if you do so, don't pretend that you are preaching Americanism. ... Don't attack individual rights, individual freedom, private action, private initiative, and private property. These things are essential parts of the Free Enterprise System, without which it cannot exist.

Don't preach the superiority of public ownership as such over private ownership. Don't preach or imply that all publicly-owned projects are noble, humanitarian undertakings by grace of the mere fact that they are publicly-owned— while preaching, at the same time, that private property or the defense of private property rights is the expression of some sort of vicious greed, of anti-social selfishness or evil.

82

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DON'T SMEAR INDUSTRIALISTS. Don't spit into your own face or, worse, pay miserable little rats to do it. You, as a motion picture producer, are an industrialist. All of us are employees of an industry which gives us a good living. There is an old fable about a pig who filled his belly with acorns, then started digging to undermine the roots of the oak from which the acorns came. Don't let's allow that pig to become our symbol. Throughout American history, the best of American industrialists were men who embodied the highest virtues: productive genius, energy, initiative, independence, courage. Socially (if "social significance" interests you) they were among the greatest of all benefactors, because it is they who created the opportunities for achieving the unprecedented material wealth of the industrial age. ... Yet all too often industrialists, bankers, and businessmen are presented on the screen as villains, crooks, chiselers or exploiters. One such picture may be taken as non-political or accidental. A constant stream of such pictures becomes pernicious political propaganda: It creates hatred for all businessmen in the mind of the audience, and makes people receptive to the cause of Communism. ...

It is true that there are vicious businessmen— just as there are vicious men in any other class or profession. But we have been practicing an outrageous kind of double standard: we do not attack individual representatives of any other group, class or nation, in order not to imply an attack on the whole group; yet when we present individual businessmen as monsters, we claim that no reflection on the whole class of business men was intended. It's got to be one or the other. This sort of double standard can deceive nobody and can serve nobody's purpose except that of the Communists. ... DON'T SMEAR WEALTH. In a free society— such as America— wealth is achieved through production, and through the

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voluntary exchange of one's goods or services. You cannot hold production as evil— nor can you hold as evil a man's right to keep the result of his own effort. Only savages and Communists get rich by force— that is, by looting the property of others. It is a basic American principle that each man is free to work for his own benefit and to go as far as his ability will carry him; and his property is his— whether he has made one dollar or one million dollars. If the villain in your story happens to be rich— don't permit lines of dialogue suggesting that he is the typical representative of a whole social class, the "symbol of all the rich. Keep it clear in your mind and in your script that his villainy is due to his own personal character— not to his wealth or class.

If you do not see the difference between wealth honestly produced and wealth looted, you are preaching the ideas of Communism. You are implying that all property and all human labor should belong to the State. And you are inciting men to crime: If all wealth is evil, no matter how acquired, why should a man bother to earn it? He might as well seize it by robbery or expropriation.

It is the proper wish of every decent American to stand on his own feet, earn his own living, and be as good at it as he can— that is, get as rich as he can by honest exchange. Stop insulting him and stop defaming his proper ambition. Stop giving him— and yourself— a guilt complex by spreading unthinkingly the slogans of Communism. Put an end to that pernicious modern hypocrisy: everybody wants to get rich and almost everybody feels that he must apologize for it.

DON'T SMEAR THE PROFIT MOTIVE. If you denounce the profit motive, what is it that you wish men to do? Work without reward, like slaves, for the benefit of the State? An industrialist has to be interested in profit. In a free economy, he can make a profit only if he makes a good product which people are willing to

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buy. What do you want him to do? Should he sell his product at a loss? If so, how long is he to remain in business? And at whose expense? Don't give to your characters— as a sign of villainy, as a damning characteristic— a desire to make money. Nobody wants to, or should, work without payment, and nobody does— except a slave. There is nothing dishonorable about a pursuit of money in a free economy, because money can be earned only by productive effort. If what you mean when you denounce it is a desire to make money dishonestly or immorally— then say so. Make it clear that what you denounce is dishonesty, not money-making. Make it clear that you are denouncing evil-doers, not capitalists. Don't toss out careless generalities which imply that there is no difference between the two. That is what the Communists want you to imply. DON'T SMEAR SUCCESS. America was made by the idea that personal achievement and personal success are each man's proper and moral goal. There are many forms of success: spiritual, artistic, industrial, financial. All these forms, in any field of honest endeavor, are good, desirable and admirable. Treat them as such. Don't permit any disparagement or defamation of personal success. It is the Communists' intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. ...

DON'T GLORIFY FAILURE. Failure, in itself, is not admirable. And while every man meets with failure somewhere in his life, the admirable thing is his courage in overcoming it— not the fact that he failed. Failure is no disgrace— but it is certainly no brand of virtue or nobility, either.

It is the Communists' intention to make men accept misery, depravity and degradation as their natural lot in life. This is done by presenting every kind

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 of failure as sympathetic, as a sign of goodness and virtue— while every kind of success is presented as a sign of evil. This implies that only the evil can succeed under our American system— while the good are to be found in the gutter. Don't present all the poor as good and all the rich as evil. In judging a man's character, poverty is no disgrace— but it is no virtue, either; wealth is no virtue— but it is certainly no disgrace.

DON'T GLORIFY DEPRAVITY. Don't present sympathetic studies of depravity. ... If you use such stories, don't place yourself and the audience on the side of the criminal, don't create sympathy for him, don't give him excuses and justifications, don't imply that he "couldn't help it." ... It is a basic tenet of Marxism that man has no freedom of moral or intellectual choice: that he is only a soulless, witless collection of meat and glands, open to any sort of "conditioning" by anybody. DON'T DEIFY "THE COMMON MAN." "The common man" is one of the worst slogans of Communism— and too many of us have fallen for it, without thinking.

It is only in Europe— under social caste systems where men are divided into "aristocrats" and "commoners"— that one can talk about defending the "common man." What does the word "common" mean in America? Under the American system, all men are equal before the law. Therefore, if anyone is classified as "common"— he can be called "common" only in regard to his personal qualities. It then means that he has no outstanding abilities, no outstanding virtues, no outstanding intelligence. Is that an object of glorification? In the Communist doctrine, it is. Communism preaches the reign of mediocrity, the destruction of all individuality and all personal distinction,

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the turning of men into "masses", which means an undivided, undifferentiated, impersonal, average, common herd. In the American doctrine, no man is common. Every man's personality is unique— and it is respected as such. He may have qualities which he shares with others, but his virtue is not gauged by how much he resembles others— that is the Communist doctrine; his virtue is gauged by his personal distinction, great or small. . .. DON'T GLORIFY THE COLLECTIVE. ...There is a great difference between free co­ operation and forced collectivism. It is the difference between the United States and Soviet Russia. But the Communists are very skillful at hiding the difference and selling you the second under the guise of the first. You might miss it. The audience won't. Co-operation is the free association of men who work together by voluntary agreement, each deriving from it his own personal benefit. Collectivism is the forced herding together of men into a group, with the individual having no choice about it, no personal motive, no personal reward, and subordinating himself blindly to the will of others.

Keep this distinction clearly in mind— in order to judge whether what you are asked to glorify is American co-operation or Soviet Collectivism. ...

Don't preach that all mass action is good, and all individual action is evil. It is true that there are vicious individuals; it is also true that there are vicious groups. Both must be judged by their specific actions— and not treated as an issue of "the one" against "the many", with the many always right and the one always wrong. ...

DON'T SMEAR AN INDEPENDENT MAN.

...Don't fall for the old Communist trick of thinking that an independent man or an individualist is one who crushes and exploits others— such as a dictator. An independent man is

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 one who stands alone and respects the same right of others, who does not rule nor serve, who neither sacrifices himself nor others. A dictator— by definition— is the most complete collectivist of all, because he exists by ruling, crushing and exploiting a huge collective of men. ... Don't preach that everything done for others is good, while everything done for one's own sake is evil. This damns every form of personal joy and happiness. Don't preach that everything "public-spirited" is good, while everything personal and private is evil. Don't make every form of loneliness a sin, and every form of the herd spirit a virtue. .. . Don't let yourself be fooled when the Reds tell you that what they want to destroy are men like Hitler or Mussolini. What they want to destroy are men like Shakespeare, Chopin and Edison. ...

DON'T SMEAR AMERICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. ...Don't discredit the Congress of the United States by presenting it as an ineffectual body, devoted to mere talk. If you do that— you imply that representative government is no good, and what we ought to have is a dictator. Don't discredit our free elections. If you do that — you imply that elections should be abolished. Don't discredit our courts by presenting them as corrupt. If you do that— you lead people to believe that they have no recourse except to violence, since peaceful justice cannot be obtained. It is true that there have been vicious Congressmen and judges, and politicians who have stolen elections, just as there are vicious men in any profession. But if you present them in a story, be sure to make it clear that you are criticizing particular men— not the system. The American system, as such, is the best ever devised in history. If some men do not live up to it— let us damn these men, not the system which they betray.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agee, James. Review of It's a Wonderful Life. Th_e Nation (February 15, 1947): 93-4. Aristotle, Rhetoric. W. Rhys Roberts, trans. New1- York: Modern Library, 1954. Bentley, Eric, ed. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before House Committee on Un-American Activities. 1938-1968. New York: Viking Pre=ss, 1971.

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madis-on: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Bernstein, Matthew, ed. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies i n the Structure of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Br~ace & Company, 1947. Carr, Gary. The Left Side of Paradise: The Scree=nwriting of John Howard Lawson. Ann Arbor: UMI Research^. Press, 1984. Cogley, John. Report on Blacklisting, vol. 1. No* location listed: Fund for the Republic, 1956. Debrix, Jean. "Cinema and Poetry." Yale French S:tudies. 17, (1956): 86-104.

Dick, Bernard F. Radical Innocence: A Critical S^tudv of the Hollywood Ten. Lexington: University of Kerutucky Press, 1989. Dollimore, Jonathan. Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Gardner, Gerald. The Censorship Papers: Movie Ce=nsorship Letters from the Havs Office. 1934-1968. Ne=w York: Dodd Mead, 1987.

89

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Golden Boy. 35 mm film, 99 min. Columbia Pictures, 1939. On VHS, Columbia-Tristar Home Video.

Goldman, William. Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwritincr. 2nd edition. New York: Warner Books, 1983.

Gordon, Milton M. "Kitty Foyle and the Concept of Class as Culture." American Journal of Sociology. 51:3 (November, 1947): 210-217.

Greenblatt, Stephen. "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Author­ ity and its Subversion, Henrv IV and Henrv V ." Glvnh: Textual Studies. 8 (1981): 40—60. Hanson, Patricia King, ed. American Film Institute Catalogue of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. Feature Films 1931-1940. 2 vol. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ------, American Film Institute Catalogue of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. Feature Films 1941-1950. 2 vol. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Harriman, David, ed. Journals of Avn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1997. Harriot, Thomas. A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. Ann Arbor: Edwards Bros., 1931.

Harrison, P.S. ed. "Box Office Performances." Harrison's Reports 22:3 (January 29, 1940): 16. Horton, Andrew, ed. Three More Screenplays bv Preston Sturcres Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Jacobs, Diane. Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturqes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Jacobs, Lea. The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film: 1928-1942. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

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