Wes Vernon at the Washington Times offers a review of Allan H. Ryskind's book on the Communists in Hollywood.
At last. After more than a half-century there is now available a book that thoroughly discredits all the movie industry protestations that there were no Communists in filmmaking during and after World War II, when in fact there were hundreds.
Here is irrefutable evidence that they were very adept at using the screen to pound pro-Soviet propaganda into the heads of unsuspecting Americans in theaters coast-to-coast.
The more than 500 pages of “Hollywood Traitors; Blacklisted Screenwriters — Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler” expose in detail and with infinite documentation the pro-Soviet propaganda machine, including during the 22 months when Stalin and Hitler were allies.
This long-overdue book is authored by Allan H. Ryskind, who grew up in Hollywood, and whose father was Morrie Ryskind, lyricist, writer of stage and screen productions, including scripts for the comedic Marx Brothers.
The elder Ryskind, a staunch anti-communist, was a cooperative “friendly” witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which held years of hearings probing communism in Hollywood. For decades, Hollywood has struck back by using its control of large segments of the motion picture and TV industries to smear the reputations of those who had exposed them.
Today, the younger Mr. Ryskind, author of the new volume (and now editor-at-large for the 70-year-old Washington weekly Human Events), has given us specifics as to how the talents of screenwriters and others in Hollywood were deployed in the service of America’s enemies.
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/26/book-review-hollywood-traitors-blacklisted-screen-/
And then there is this aspect of the same era:
ReplyDeletehttp://beyondeastrod.blogspot.com/2015/01/unforgettable-book-friday-shooting-star.html
R.T.,
ReplyDeleteYes, McCarthy was a flawed man, and he was clearly the wrong man to lead the anti-communist charge, but Wicker, a liberal New York Times man, gives you the stock liberal view of McCarthy and the era.
Perhaps one should also read William F. Buckley's book "McCarthy and his Enemies' for a bit of balance and fair play.
To say the anti-communist crusade was a witch hunt fails to account for the former KGB records released after the fall of the Soviet Union.
According to KGB records, there WAS a red under every bed.
The KGB did in fact have "agents of influence" in the American labor movement, the civil rights movement and the entertainment industry.
And these "useful idiots," as Stalin - perhaps the world's greatest murderer - called his supporters in America and the West, supported not only the evil communist dictator, they also supported Hitler when Stalin signed a pact with the evil Nazi leader.
And now, even after the release of the KGB files and other undisputable evidence, die-hard leftists continue to push the lie that the Hollywood blacklisted people were vicitms and that their darling Alger Hiss was not a Soviet spy.
He was, and they were not.
If one is interested in the era, one should read the Ryskind book as well as Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin's "The Sword the Shield: The Secret History of the KGB," and Andrew's follow up book "The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle For the Third World."