Bernard Gordon - Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist

Texas Film and Media Studies Series

THOMAS SCHATZ
Editor

Hollywood Exile

OR HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THE BLACKLIST

Hollywood Exile

OR HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THE BLACKLIST

A Memoir by
BERNARD GORDON

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
Austin

Copyright 1999 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 1999

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gordon, Bernard, 1918
Hollywood exile, or, How I learned to love the blacklist: a memoir / by Bernard Gordon. 1st ed.
p. cm. (Texas film and media studies series)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-292-72827-1 (alk. paper)
1. Gordon, Bernard, 1918 . 2. Motion picture producers and directorsUnited States Biography. 3. ScreenwritersUnited States Biography. 4. Blacklisting of authorsUnited States. I. Title. II. Title: Hollywood exile. III. Title: How I learned to love the blacklist. IV. Series.
PN1998.3.G662A3 1999
791.430232092dc21
[B] 99-21696

ISBN 978-0-292-72833-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-292-75640-3 (library e-book)

ISBN 978-0-292-75641-0 (individual e-book)

Dedication

To Jean,

wife and closest companion for over fifty years, who knew all the bad times and supported us with good cheer, though her own wish for a peaceful and settled life was never realized.

Preface

If there is a proper start for the years of Hollywood blacklisting, the date would be October 1947, when nineteen Hollywood writers and directors were subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Washington, D.C. This created the sensation the committee desired, not only in the Hollywood and Los Angeles press, but throughout the nation. Hollywood!

My intent is not to write a political account of the Hollywood blacklist, which is already available in a number of excellent books. I want to tell of how I survived after I was blacklisted and of my unique experiences as a blacklisted screenwriter: how my life became exciting and rewarding, how I wound up with more screen credits (credited and uncredited) than any other blacklisted writer, and how I found myself improbably running a movie studio just outside Madrid, Spain.

Though I was not among those invited to Washington for the initial hearings in 1947, at one of the public sessions a friendly witness named me before the world as one of the Hollywood reds. Charles Katz, an attorney representing the unfriendly witnesses, had worked with me when I negotiated a union contract for the Screen Readers Guild. Katz protested that I was his client, that I was not present, and that I had no opportunity to defend myself from accusations or to speak for myself. He was gaveled down, and the hearings went on to other mattersand other names.

There is evidence that, early on, some powerful studio bosses like Dore Schary, Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, and Sam Goldwyn were opposed to blacklisting. Many Hollywood stars joined in signing petitions and placing newspaper ads condemning the procedures of the committee. But, already shaken by the effect of the blatant anti-Semitism of Congressman John Rankin and by the clearly imputed Hollywood-Jew-Communist thrust of the entire procedure, the studio opposition folded. Big name stars, including Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Myrna Loy, and Katharine Hepburn, were intimidated into distancing themselves from any form of support for the victims, and the studios formalized their refusal to employ people who declined to cooperate with HUAC, thus starting the blacklist.

I was eventually subpoenaed by HUAC on April 14, 1952, and was scheduled to appear before the committee at a hearing in Los Angeles, but the hearings were adjourned before the committee actually called me to testify. I received a telegram notifying me of the postponement and instructing me that I was still under subpoena for a hearing at a later date. I suppose that almost fifty years later I am still on call, but I did, happily, outlive the HUAC and never did get to testify. As a result of that, my name does not appear in any of the books about the blacklist, and nowadays I can afford to find it irritating that I had the game (being blacklisted) but not the name. Still, the motion picture studios were well informed of my unfriendly status and barred me from employment.

These were times of great change for Hollywood, the era of the demise of the major studio system as we had known it. A host of factors led to this change. The Paramount consent decree of 1948 severed the cozy tie between the studios and the distributors and theaters, put an end to block booking, and created a situation where each new film became a crapshoot. The emergence of television also had a devastating effect. The United States survived World War II with unprecedented power and wealth, so that its vast sphere of influence became a market for Hollywood films, and, with the domination of the dollar, it became possible to produce films abroad at bargain-basement rates. Creative talents like Stanley Kubrick moved to England to produce films like Lolita and 2001. Sam Spiegel produced The African Queen, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia, using studios in England and locations in Africa, Spain, and the Far East. John Huston worked in Mexico, Italy, and England. Spain, where I principally worked, was a favorite stamping ground, not just for bullfight films but for many others, because of the favorable rate of exchange and the welcome offered by Francisco Franco, who needed hard currencydollarsand made his soldiers, uniforms, tanks, and guns available to filmmakers at irresistible rates. Spain also offered a landscape that nicely mimicked the American Southwest for the purpose of filming spaghetti Westerns.

With the onset of the blacklist, many outstanding creative people like Dalton Trumbo, Michael Wilson, Carl Foreman, Ring Lardner Jr., Donald Ogden Stewart, Albert Maltz, Bertolt Brecht, Waldo Salt, Guy Endore, Adrian Scott, Jules Dassin, Sidney BuchmanAcademy Award winners among themleft Hollywood for Mexico, New York, and various capitals of Europe, depriving Hollywood of some of its best creative spirits. That this was indeed a blow is attested to by noting the fine films that these same writers, directors, and filmmakers produced during and after the blacklist, largely outside of Hollywood. What is generally labeled the McCarthy era exercised a profound effect on American filmmaking and the content of films, an effect that continued through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and reverberates even today, as Hollywood is finally assessing its role in abetting the HUAC.

For myself, I was involved in a very odd assortment of occupations inside and outside the industry. Eventually, I was fortunate to be employed in curious, exotic, sometimes downright wacky filmmaking enterprises abroad, working in a Hollywood outside Hollywood, a Hollywood in extremis that promoted and produced motion pictures at a time now gone. Some of the films with which I was associated as either writer, producer, or both, were El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Thin Red Line, Krakatoa, East of Java, and Day of the Triffids. I worked with a gallery of fascinating film personalities: motion picture stars like Charlton Heston, David Niven, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, James Mason, and many others; with directors like Nicholas Ray, Frank Capra, and Anthony Mann; and with a number of interesting producers and promoters, who operated scrupulously and otherwise in a golden if tarnished era.