July 1982 RAIN Page 9 Freedom "How Long Would Germany Stand for It?” {Life, December 13,1917) From: The First Freedom Naming Names, by Victor Navasky, 1980 482 pp., $5.95 from: Penguin Books 625 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10022 Hollywood Red, by Lester Cole, 1981, 448 pp., $12.95 hardcover from: Ramparts Press P.O. Box 50128 Palo Alto, CA 94303 Ronald Reagan, so the story goes, was approached one day in the early 1950s by a young actress named Nancy Davis who had a serious problem. Her name had mistakenly shown up on a list of Hollywood “Reds" and she was being denied work in the film industry. As president of SAG (the Screen Actors Guild), could Reagan please help? He could and did. Nancy Davis' name was cleared and she soon became Nancy Reagan. The rest, as they say, is history. Or p>erhaps history in the making? Recently, Reagan's current successor as SAG president, Edward Asner, was the target of anonymous hate letters and death threats for his supposed "Communist sympathies" in raising money to buy medical supplies for Salvadoran rebels. And Reagan himself now presides over a national administration which has made noises about "unleashing" the CLA and FBI to resume widespread wiretapping, "black bag" operations, and infiltration of suspect citizen groups. It seems only prudent to review events in the Hollywood of thirty years ago where our Commander-in-Chief received his leadership training and develop>ed his peculiar notions about what constitutes subversion. Naming Names and Hollywood Red give us that opportunity. Naming Names focuses on the complexities of the moral dilemma facing actors, directors and screenwriters called to testify before HUAC (the House Unamerican Activities Committee) in the McCarthy/Cold War climate of the late 40s and early 50s. Failure to tell the committee what it wanted to hear could result in loss of work, imprisonment, and branding as a traitor. Talking — especially talking in detail about the suspiciously leftist actions of one's friends and co-workers — could save the job, bring momentary praise for patriotic behavior — and result in a lifetime of guilt. Author Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation, does a masterful job of portra3Tng an era of Hollywood history more bizarre, in its way, than any horror film. He makes clear that in the atmosphere of the time there were no easy answers for people targeted by HUAC. There were families to be considered, promising careers, and (in many cases) genuine confusion or ambivalence about responsibilities to "country" and loyalty to friends. Nonetheless, it is encouraging to note that for every Hollywood witness who informed before HUAC there were two who were willing to jeopardize themselves by refusing to cooperate. One who refused, and suffered the consequences for decades, was Lester Cole. One of the original "Hollywood Ten" who were sentenced to prison terms in 1947 for contempt of Congress, Cole was, and is, a well known screenwriter with Bom Free among his many credits. In Hollywood Red, he describes his prosperous pre-war career, his political associations, his experiences with HUAC and his life as a blacklisted screenwriter after his release from prison. Cole was able to complete his autobiography with the aid of crucial documents from his FBI file which were finally released to him in1980. Only after reading these documents did he realize the full absurdity of his situation: the government had carefully monitored his actions for nearly half of his life. Thirty-two years! Myself and how many others like me, for how long tracked, trailed and tailed. Hundreds of thousands ofcitizens' tax dollars paid to agents and informers, all to end in nothing. What frustration it must have been for them! Yet it is a frustration they seem only too willing to experience again—if we let them. — John Ferrell The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America, Nat Hentoff, 1980,340 pp., $9.95 from: Delacorte Press 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, NY10017 Perhaps the most hotly debated, misunderstood, yet cherished principle of our constitution is the First Amendment. For many second- and older-generation North Americans, the right to unlimited freedom of thought and action seems sacrosanct. Yet protection of speech, religious liberty and freedom of the press are all fairly recent concepts, subject to judicial interpretation and repeated public challenge. Well known and respected as a staff writer for New Yorker and Village Voice, Hentoff is also a board member of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union. His writing reflects his partiality; nonetheless, his representation of history is fair and thorough. Hentoff's historical account of the First Amendment opens with a precedent- setting case, in 1735, establishing freedom of the press in the prerevolutionary North
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