======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: AFA Press Release: SCREENWRITERS AND THE BLACKLIST: BEFORE,
DURING, AND AFTER August 22-September 2
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 18:23:13 +0000
From: Ava Tews <a...@anthologyfilmarchives.org>
Reply-To: Ava Tews <a...@anthologyfilmarchives.org>
To: <l...@panix.com>
AFA Press Release: SCREENWRITERS AND THE BLACKLIST: BEFORE, DURING, AND
AFTER August 22-September 2
ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES + CINEASTE MAGAZINE PRESENT:
*SCREENWRITERS AND THE BLACKLIST: BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER*
August 22 – September 2
The damage wrought by the Hollywood blacklist, especially the hardships
endured by its victims, has been well documented. This series showcases
the artistic contributions of prominent blacklisted screenwriters,
including well-known radicals such as Hugo Butler, Dalton Trumbo, Ben
Barzman, Abraham Polonsky, and Ring Lardner, Jr. Recent scholarship by
Thom Andersen, Pat McGilligan, and Larry Ceplair emphasizes how films by
blacklisted personnel yielded scripts (written, in many cases, by
unapologetic Communists or left-wing activists closely aligned with the
party) that explored, both subtly and blatantly, the nuances of race,
class, and gender, as well as issues of justice and equity.
In the first installment of a three-part series, we’ll be focusing on
films made before the imposition of the blacklist in 1947 or before the
screenwriters in question were prevented from working under their actual
names. Film noir, for example, a genre that proved fertile territory for
Hollywood radicals, is represented by Abraham Polonsky’s FORCE OF EVIL,
while the shifting political landscape during World War II is
discernible in George Stevens’s WOMAN OF THE YEAR (co-written by Ring
Lardner, Jr.) and Delmer Daves’s PRIDE OF THE MARINES (written by Albert
Maltz). This first part of the series also encompasses rarely-screened
films such as Bernard Vorhaus’s THREE FACES WEST (Samuel Ornitz) and
John Farrow’s FIVE CAME BACK (Dalton Trumbo), among others, many of them
discussed in Thom Andersen and Noël Burch’s brilliant essay film, RED
HOLLYWOOD, which will be enjoying a re-release this summer at the Film
Society of Lincoln Center.
The second part of the series, coming this fall, will highlight films
produced during the blacklist, by writers either working in exile in the
UK, France, Mexico, and elsewhere, or toiling in the shadows of credited
‘fronts,’ while the third and final installment will feature ‘comeback’
films made in the post-blacklist era.
Co-presented by Cineaste Magazine
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=c329ef9a4d&e=b8985af7d9>,
which has been a major source for blacklist-related scholarship
throughout its 40-plus-year history, SCREENWRITERS AND THE BLACKLIST is
also presented in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center,
which will be hosting a week-long revival run of Thom Andersen and Noël
Burch’s RED HOLLYWOOD, as well as a parallel series of films by
blacklisted directors and writers, curated by Andersen. For more info on
both Film Society programs, which will take place from August 15-21,
visit www.filmlinc.com.
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=92af0d76c5&e=b8985af7d9>
Special thanks to series co-curator Richard Porton, as well as to
Patrick McGilligan, Larry Ceplair, Daniel Bish (George Eastman House),
Paul Ginsburg (Universal), Mark Johnson (Harvard Film Archive), Mark
McElhatten (Sikelia), Kristie Nakamura (WB), Judy Nicaud (Paramount),
Lynanne Schweighofer (Library of Congress), Todd Wiener & Steven Hill
(UCLA Film & Television Archive).
Abraham Polonsky
*FORCE OF EVIL*
1948, 78 min, 35mm, b&w. Screenplay by Abraham Polonsky and Ira Wolfert,
based on Wolfert’s novel. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA
Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by The Film
Foundation and the Archive Council.
Based on Ira Wolfert’s TUCKER’S PEOPLE, Polonsky’s film noir, dismissed
upon its release and later celebrated as an unsung classic, is famous
for making parallels between capitalism and the criminal underworld. The
film’s emotional core resides in the fraught relationship between
corrupt lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) and his ailing brother Leo
(Thomas Gomez). Polonsky and Wolfert were subsequently blacklisted and
John Garfield’s premature death is often attributed to the pressures
exerted by HUAC; threatened with blacklisting, he refused to name names
despite his disillusionment with the Communist Party.
“The greatest debut in the history of noir.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum
*–Fri, Aug 22 at 7:00 and Sat, Aug 23 at 7:00.*
John Farrow
*FIVE CAME BACK*
1939, 75 min, 16mm, b&w. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, with Jerome Cady
and Nathanael West, based on a story by Richard Carroll. With Chester
Morris, Lucille Ball, Wendy Barrie, John Carradine, and Joseph Calleia.
From the collection of George Eastman House.
An exemplary B movie often cited as a precursor of 1970s ‘disaster
films,’ FIVE CAME BACK features a script from Dalton Trumbo (with
contributions from Jerry Cady and novelist Nathanael West, a writer with
many ties to the Communist Party) that manages to inject political
commentary into what superficially seems like a standard thriller. When
a plane en route to Panama is forced to crash land in the jungle, a
motley assortment of survivors bicker and scheme as they try to return
to civilization. The film’s political tenor becomes clear as it emerges
that an anarchist named Vasquez, played by Joseph Calleia, is in fact
the film’s most admirable, and rational, character.
*–Fri, Aug 22 at 9:00 and Sun, Aug 31 at 4:15.*
Delmer Daves
*PRIDE OF THE MARINES*
1945, 120 min, 35mm, b&w. Screenplay by Albert Maltz, adapted by Marvin
Borowsky from a book by Roger Butterfield. With John Garfield and
Eleanor Parker.
“Written by Albert Maltz and starring fellow future [HUAC victim] John
Garfield, PRIDE OF THE MARINES features Garfield as a brash Philly
welder who enlists with the Marines only to get blinded in the Pacific.
With semi-documentary detail and a feel for day-to-day dramas and
crushing challenges alike, PRIDE follows Al Schmid as he’s fixed up with
a woman (Eleanor Parker), then ships out to the jungle gun nests of
Guadalcanal, surviving yet reluctant to leave the hospital. Daves and
Garfield sensitively portray Schmid’s bonds with his tough-willed girl,
wisecracking buddies, and, touchingly, a Red Cross letter-writer.”
–Nicolas Rapold
*–Sat, Aug 23 at 2:30, Tues, Aug 26 at 9:15, and Wed, Aug 27 at 9:00.*
Bernard Vorhaus
*THREE FACES WEST*
1940, 79 min, 16mm, b&w. Screenplay by Samuel Ornitz, with F. Hugh
Herbert and Joseph Moncure March. With John Wayne and Charles Coburn.
From the collection of George Eastman House.
Samuel Ornitz, one of the Hollywood Ten eventually blacklisted after
being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee,
contributed to the script of this film, which Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner
termed a modern western, “notable for its evocation of rural values
(rather than gunplay) and anti-Nazism that extends even to a criticism
of regressive nativism and praise for the ‘good German.’” The plot
revolves around a doctor and his adult daughter, refugees from
Nazi-annexed Austria, who arrive in Oregon and eventually become part of
a modern-day wagon train, led by a sympathetic John Wayne (who in
reality later helped to blacklist many of his Hollywood colleagues),
that transplants them to a new farming community in a rural part of the
state.
“I highly recommend it if you pine for a left-wing John Wayne film.”
–Patrick McGilligan, CINEASTE
*–Sat, Aug 23 at 5:00 and Thurs, Aug 28 at 7:00.*
Raoul Walsh
*THE LAWLESS BREED*
1953, 83 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Bernard Gordon; story by William
Alland. With Rock Hudson.
Screenwriter Bernard Gordon had somehow eluded the attention of HUAC
through the early 1950s, only to discover he’d been subpoenaed to appear
before the committee as he was putting the finishing touches on his
script for this Raoul Walsh film. Credited as the sole screenwriter, it
would be his last Hollywood credit until Nicholas Ray’s 55 DAYS AT
PEKING. THE LAWLESS BREED stars Rock Hudson as Texas desperado and
latter-day folk hero John Wesley Hardin (the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s
1967 album ‘John Wesley Harding’), depicting him as an ambivalent outlaw
who reforms in his middle-age and attempts to discourage his son from
following in his violent footsteps.
*–Sat, Aug 23 at 9:00 and Mon, Aug 25 at 7:00.*
Joseph Losey
*THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR*
1948, 82 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Ben Barzman, with Alfred Lewis Levitt;
based on a story by Betsy Beaton. With Dean Stockwell.
“Losey’s remarkable debut feature combines the magical realism of a
children’s story with the bold, message-driven radicalism of the
Depression-era proletariat theater where he received his first crucial
training as a director. Dean Stockwell stars as the titular boy whose
mysterious transformation awakens the fears and prejudices dormant in
his small hometown. A cult favorite and among Losey’s most enduring
films, THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR is also one of the more outspokenly
Leftist films of the 1940s, a final vestige of Rooseveltian Hollywood on
the eve of the Red Scare that would count Losey as one of its most
prominent victims.” –HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE
*–Sun, Aug 24 at 5:00, Wed, Aug 27 at 7:00, and Thurs, Aug 28 at 9:00.*
George Stevens
*WOMAN OF THE YEAR*
1942, 114 min, 35mm, b&w. Screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr., with Michael
Kanin.
When asked by HUAC if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party,
screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. famously responded, “I could answer….
But, if I did, I’d hate myself in the morning.” Best known as the first
film that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn co-starred in, WOMAN OF
THE YEAR pits cultivated journalist Tess Harding (the role was loosely
based on the career of Dorothy Thompson, a famous columnist and
broadcaster) against Sam Craig, a down-to-earth sportswriter she ends up
marrying. Lardner complained that his original ending was butchered by a
rewrite by the conservative (and uncredited) screenwriter John Lee Mahin.
*–Sun, Aug 24 at 9:00, Tues, Aug 26 at 6:45, and Sat, Aug 30 at 3:15.*
Raoul Walsh
*NORTHERN PURSUIT*
1943, 93 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Alvah Bessie and Frank Gruber, based
on a story by Leslie T. White.
This Raoul Walsh-Errol Flynn collaboration (one of seven films they
would make together) was scripted by Alvah Bessie, who as a member of
the Hollywood Ten would eventually be imprisoned for refusing to testify
before HUAC. Bessie’s pre-blacklist career was anything but quiet though
– he started out as an actor in the Provincetown Players (famed for
their early productions of Eugene O’Neill’s plays), lived for several
years in Paris where he translated avant-garde literature, and fought in
the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Subsequently joining the Communist Party and becoming a film reviewer
for THE NEW MASSES, he was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the
1945 Walsh-Flynn WWII drama OBJECTIVE, BURMA! In this earlier film,
Flynn is Canadian mountie Steve Wagner, who thanks to his German
ancestry is called upon to infiltrate a network of Nazi sympathizers.
Going deep undercover, Flynn attempts to foil the dastardly sabotage
plot of special agent Hugo von Keller (Helmut Dantine).
*–Sun, Aug 24 at 7:00, Mon, Aug 25 at 9:00, and Sat, Aug 30 at 5:45.*
Roy Del Ruth
*TAXI!*
1932, 69 min, 35mm. Screenplay by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon, based
on the play by Kenyon Nicholson. With James Cagney, Loretta Young, and
George E. Stone. Preserved by the Library of Congress.
Rising young Warner Brothers star Jimmy Cagney speaks fluent Yiddish and
dances in TAXI!, which fuses a tale of labor strife with gangster movie
motifs. Along the way, cabbie Cagney, when he’s able to control his
temper, also finds time to woo, and marry, Loretta Young. This gritty
New York-based movie was co-written by John Bright, identified in
Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle’s TENDER COMRADES “as one of the
original ‘secret four’ members of the Hollywood section of the Communist
Party [who] participated in every left-wing cause that came along.” In
the early 1930s, Bright worked on some of the most celebrated Cagney
vehicles – THE PUBLIC ENEMY, BLONDE CRAZY, SMART MONEY, and THE CROWD
ROARS. Bright was instrumental in arranging for Cagney to visit the
jailed labor activist Tom Mooney and confessed to McGilligan and Ken
Mate: “Cagney and I were both called in by Jack Warner, who raised hell
about us being Communist dupes.” Nevertheless, TAXI! proved
insufficiently radical for the hardcore left – in NEW THEATER, Lincoln
Kirstein complained that Cagney should instead be starring in
proletarian dramas like Clifford Odets’s WAITING FOR LEFTY.
*–Mon, Sept 1 at 7:15 and Tues, Sept 2 at 9:15.*
Garson Kanin
*TOM DICK AND HARRY*
1941, 87 min, 35mm, b&w. Screenplay by Paul Jarrico; starring Ginger
Rogers, George Murphy, Burgess Meredith, and Alan Marshal. Preserved by
the Library of Congress.
In this comic jab at the American dream and the quest for success,
Ginger Rogers has to choose between three suitors. THE DAILY WORKER
called it “the screwiest and most delightful farce of the year” although
THE NEW MASSES’ Joy Davidman faulted it for “male chauvinism.”
“Funny as well as fascinating, this wartime comedy about Ginger Rogers
trying to choose among three suitors…boasts a few wild surrealist dream
sequences about what marriage to each swain might entail, as well as
many details that are highly evocative of the period.” –Jonathan
Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
*–Mon, Sept 1 at 9:00 and Tues, Sept 2 at 7:15.*
*For screeners, images and further details, please contact:*
Ava Tews, Director of Communications, Anthology Film Archives (212)
505-5181 ext. 20
a...@anthologyfilmarchives.org
/About Anthology Film Archives/: Founded in 1970, Anthology's mission
is to preserve, exhibit, and promote public and scholarly understanding
of independent, classic, and avant-garde cinema. Anthology screens more
than 1,000 film and video programs per year, publishes books and
catalogs annually, and has preserved more than 900 films to date.
/Directions/: Anthology is at 32 Second Ave. at 2nd St. Subway: F to 2nd
Ave; 6 to Bleecker.
/Tickets/: $10 general; $8 for students, seniors, & children (12 &
under); $6 AFA members
/Web/: http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=299565c7b8&e=b8985af7d9>
/Twitter/: http://twitter.com/anthologyfilm
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=9e3c41e590&e=b8985af7d9>
/Facebook/: http://www.facebook.com/AnthologyFilm
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=615cb8663d&e=b8985af7d9>
/Copyright © 2014 Anthology Film Archives, All rights reserved./
Unsubscribe from this list
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=6324e017ab&e=b8985af7d9&c=68d92bacbc>
Update subscription preferences
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage1.com/profile?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=6324e017ab&e=b8985af7d9>
This email was sent to l...@panix.com <mailto:l...@panix.com>
/why did I get this?/
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/about?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=6324e017ab&e=b8985af7d9&c=68d92bacbc>
unsubscribe from this list
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=6324e017ab&e=b8985af7d9&c=68d92bacbc>
update subscription preferences
<http://anthologyfilmarchives.us6.list-manage1.com/profile?u=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&id=6324e017ab&e=b8985af7d9>
Anthology Film Archives · 32 Second Avenue · New York, NY 10003 · USA
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
<http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=fd770539b60f2d1fce353848e&afl=1>
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
