Radical Hollywood

The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies

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by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner

New Press

Due/Published May 2002, 448 pages, cloth

ISBN 1565847180

This is a comprehensive account of the personal and political lives of the left-wing screenwriters, directors, and actors behind Hollywood's Golden Age. Tracing Hollywood's future blacklistees and the hundreds of films they wrote or directed from the dawn of sound movies to the early 1950s, Radical Hollywood follows the political and personal lives of the activists along with the often-decisive impact of their work on American film. A highly readable, anecdotal history, featuring an insert of classic film stills, , Radical Hollywood describes the story-behind-the-story of such famous films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Casablanca, and Woman of the Year, along with such campy items as The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, and Kiss the Blood off My Hands. Genres like crime and women's films, family cinema, war, animation and, above all, film noir are reconsidered here, with new evidence drawn from interviews and recent archival breakthroughs. 

Films discussed include: The Adventures of Captain Marvel; The Big Clock; Body and Soul; Back Door to Heaven; Blues in the Night ; Cabin in the Sky; Caged; Casablanca; Champion; Deadline at Dawn; Destry Rides Again; The Devil-Doll; Diplomaniacs; Dynamite; Frankenstein; G. I. Joe; Give Us This Day; Gun Crazy; High Noon; Hitler's Children; Hold That Ghost; Honky Tonk; Keeper of the Flame; Kiss the Blood off My Hands; Kitty Foyle; Lassie, Come Home; The Lawless; Life with Father; The Long Night; The Maltese Falcon; The Man Who Reclaimed His Head; Marked Woman; Mayor of Hell; Meet the People; Mission to Moscow; Monsieur Verdoux; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; None but the Lonely Heart; Our Vines Have Tender Grapes; Phantom Lady; The Philadelphia Story; A Place in the Sun; The President's Mystery; Pride of the Marines; The Public Enemy; Ruthless; The Sea Hawk; Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror; Stella Dallas; Stormy Weather; The Story of G.I. Joe; Talk of the Town; Theodora Goes Wild; The Thin Man; Thirty Seconds over Tokyo; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Watch on the Rhine; The Wizard of Oz; Woman of the Year

Review

Hopalong Cassidy as a political radical? Though it seems unlikely that this American icon would have leftist leanings, in the 1943 movie Colt Comrades Hoppy exposes and destroys a banker's cattle monopoly. Written by Michael Wilson, who was later blacklisted, Colt Comrades was just one of the many movies made in the '30s and '40s that explored issues of social justice and morality from a leftist perspective. Of course, many of the writers, directors, and actors responsible for these movies would later go into "exile" after being questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but not before they created some of Hollywood's most memorable films. Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner's lively book recounts the personal and creative histories of leftist filmmakers in Hollywood and brilliantly analyzes a variety of their films. Emboldened by the New Deal reforms of F.D.R. and the fight against fascism, many in Hollywood seized the opportunity to make films that subtly and not-so-subtly critiqued capitalism and offered hope for a new society. Wagner and Buhle discuss the ideas expressed in a variety of films created by leftist directors and writers, including such classics as The Public Enemy, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, High Noon, Body and Soul and the not-so-classic films of Abbott and Costello and Hopalong Cassidy. (This is one of those film books that will whet your appetite for watching the movies it discusses.) Radical Hollywood also includes a wealth of old Hollywood anecdotes and behind-the-scenes stories. Buhle and Wagner bring to light the life and work of many of Hollywood's forgotten workers and their quietly heroic efforts to combat injustice.

Also of interest: A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner.