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Director Martin Ritt
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Writer Walter Bernstein with Woody Allen
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Walter Bernstein
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THE FRONT B+ USA (95 mi)
1976 d: Martin Ritt
What if there were a
list? A list that said: Our finest
actors weren’t allowed to act. Our best
writers weren’t allowed to write. Our
funniest comedians weren’t allowed to make us laugh. What would it be like if there were such a
list? It would be like America in 1953. —movie poster
Among the only films to deal honestly with the Hollywood
Blacklist, with Robert Rossen’s Body
and Soul (1947) being made by the very people who were eventually
blacklisted, while Red
Hollywood (1996) is more of a documentary film, yet this film is distinguished
by the fact it carries a certain credibility, having also been written and
performed by people who were themselves blacklisted, each one identified in the
end credits, including the year they were blacklisted. The script is written by Walter Bernstein, a
legendary screenwriter who lived to be over 100 and may be remembered for his
longevity in the industry, as his screenplays have covered the period from the
1940’s to the 2000’s, where he may be the longest-working writer of produced
films and television programs in history. Bernstein got his start in the late 40’s
working with Robert Rossen shortly before the House Un-American Activities
Committee conducted hearings on the alleged Communist influence in the
motion picture industry, with an intent to purge the subversive elements through
blacklists, a devastating abuse of power that prevented targeted individuals from
ever working again for nearly a decade because of alleged Communist or
subversive ties, where people were hauled before the committee to name names, badgered
and humiliated into taking a pledge of loyalty that was little more than a
publicity stunt before television cameras, as the committee already had all the
names. Yet this was part of the postwar
patriotic fervor that led to the paranoid overreach of McCarthyism,
aka the Red Scare, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s name became synonymous with Red-baiting
political extremism, portraying freedom versus Communism as a life or death matter
in the most apocalyptic of terms, where every Communist was viewed as a Soviet
agent infiltrating the fabric of American society, reaching a fever pitch
between 1950 and 1954, characterized by playwright Lillian Hellman, integral in
the fight against fascism both at home and abroad, and twice the recipient of
the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best play of the year, yet she
was blacklisted in 1949, describing this era as “the time of scoundrels.” Anyone thought to have radical political
views in general was investigated, arrested, imprisoned, fined, fired from
their jobs, and barred from future employment in their fields, as people lost
their careers, their friends, and sometimes even their families. Ordinary people were encouraged to spy on
their friends and neighbors, like going to actor’s union meetings, writing down
the names of everybody there and turning them in, reporting any suspicions of
“subversive” activity. It was a terrible
time, with plenty of hatred developing, leading to family divisions, and in some
instances to suicide. Bernstein was
blacklisted in 1950, and was not credited with any work again until 1958, reportedly
sleeping on director Martin Ritt’s couch during the McCarthy era, yet throughout
the 1950’s he managed to continue writing for television, both under pseudonyms
(Paul Bauman) and through the use of fronts, non-affected individuals who allowed
their names to appear on his work, with the producer typically having to
explain to his bosses that the author was a literary hermit and recluse who
shied away from being seen in public, which would explain why you never saw
them. Bernstein unapologetically joined
the Communist Party in 1939 as a college student at Dartmouth, a time when
roughly half of the Communist Party members in America were Jewish, an
extension of Yiddish culture, the labor movement, and the Jewish Left, extremely
popular with newly arriving Jewish immigrants, coming from a long history of
fleeing persecution, and part of a burgeoning socialist movement from the Great
Depression to the war. Many forget that McCarthyism
targeted education as well, as it’s important to remember that 90% of the
teachers blacklisted from working in public schools due to alleged subversive
activities were Jewish, as were six of the original Hollywood
Ten. Bernstein served in the Army
during the war, writing dispatches as a war correspondent from multiple war
fronts that he compiled into his first published book in 1945, Keep Your Head Down. After the war, however, what had formerly
been tolerated was suddenly criminalized, writing his published memoirs years
afterwards in 1996, Inside Out, A Memoir
of the Blacklist, Inside
Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist - Google Books, providing his own
perspective on the so-called menace of the Communist Party in America, which
was, by that time, a small and beleaguered organization wielding little
influence, where the only time most citizens even became aware of their
existence was viewing Presidential candidates on the ballot every four years,
never once becoming a factor or posing a threat to democracy.
Hollywood was a company town. The cold war was starting, and with it the
blacklist, but it was not affecting me and, secure in wish fulfillment, I did
not really believe it would. Winston
Churchill had made his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri. The Hollywood Ten were summoned before the
House committee, but the committee members seemed only stupid; I understood
their bigotry but not their power. Who,
really, could be on their side? I also
knew the Communist Party was no menace. After
all, I belonged to it. The charge that
we wanted to overthrow the government by force and violence was ludicrous. Nothing I had ever done or intended or even
thought was designed for that. No one I
knew in the Party even dreamed of it. Our
meetings might have been less boring if they had. I took for granted that I could be both
radical and accepted, since that had always been the case.
Made by the director of Edge of
the City (1957) and Hud (1963),
Martin Ritt was known for making socially conscious films, and was himself
blacklisted in 1951, largely for his connection to the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal theater
company that provided jobs for struggling artists during the Great Depression,
hardly a threat to anyone, nonetheless the blacklist forced him to earn a
living as an acting instructor until he could find work again. Some of those blacklisted chose exile in Europe
as the only way to avoid a subpoena. In
Paris, directors Jules Dassin, John Berry, Ben and Norma Barzman, and screenwriter
Lee Gold, among others, made films for television, allowing them to earn a
livelihood, though they were exploited by producers, paying rock-bottom prices
for uncredited work. Blacklisted writer Dalton
Trumbo won Academy Awards under a pseudonym for ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953) and THE
BRAVE ONE (1956), while Michael Wilson did the same for THE BRIDGE OVER RIVER
KWAI (1957), making a mockery of the blacklist, with Trumbo receiving official
credit for EXODUS (1960) and Spartacus
(1960), officially breaking the blacklist.
Of unique interest here is the casting of Woody Allen as Howard Prince,
aka “the Front,” one of the rare instances when Allen worked in a film that
wasn’t his own, but he had only made a handful of movies at that time and was
still a relative unknown, coming after LOVE AND DEATH (1975) and a year before
his breakthrough film Annie Hall
(1977), featuring the same squirrely, anxiety-ridden character that appears in
his own films. What he brings is a
comedic element, very funny, especially early in the film, but as his character
grows inherently more aware of the circumstances surrounding the blacklist and
the impact this is having on some of his friends, he grows more serious, having
a terrific punchline near the end of the film, literally coming out of nowhere,
changing the entire perspective of the film, like something only Billy Wilder
would write. But it’s extremely hard to
balance comedy with such a serious subject, something only a few films can do,
overshadowed that same year by Sidney Lumet’s Network
(1976), which drew all the attention and critical praise, especially the
Oscar-winning Paddy Chayefsky script.
Unfortunately, this film has faded from the public consciousness, with
many in the younger generation who have never even heard of the blacklist, as
it’s not something taught in schools, and is instead something of an
embarrassment in our nation’s history, a stain on our legacy, supposedly promoting
freedom and democracy, yet, as this film shows, the government can also wrongly
target innocent people with impunity. The
Hollywood blacklist ruined the lives of thousands, destroying their careers and
livelihood, often without proof, or just based on rumors, turning friends and
colleagues against each other. Despite a
lack of any proof of subversion, more than 2000 government employees, mostly
black postal workers, and nearly 3800 seaman and dockworkers, also mostly
black, lost their jobs as “poor security risks” during the government
crackdown, left in an absurdly Kafkaesque limbo having no legal recourse, never
informed why they lost their jobs, as blacklists were never officially acknowledged,
with apologists, Ronald Reagan among them, who continued to proclaim the
blacklist never happened. It even drove
Charlie Chaplin into exile, the iconic Little Tramp, who was responsible for
founding the same motion picture industry that ultimately rejected him, moving
his family to Switzerland where he remained until his death, accused by Senator
Joseph McCarthy of being a Communist, informed in 1952 after a promotional tour
in England that he would be arrested if he ever returned, only setting foot in
America 20 years later to accept an honorary lifetime achievement award at the
Academy Awards in 1972. You can’t make
this stuff up, as it’s too absurd to believe, where the investigatory hearings,
working closely with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, ultimately uncovered nothing,
as there never was any Communist infiltration, only innocent lives destroyed,
yet it actually happened, and this is one of the rare films to take the subject
seriously – with Woody Allen, of all people, who has ironically suffered his
own brand of blacklisting, accused of sexually molesting an adopted 7-year old
daughter, charges he has vociferously denied from the outset thirty years ago,
and was never charged, as evidence was inconclusive, but eventually the #MeToo
Generation caught up to him, unable to work in the industry anymore, as
potential sponsors bolted out of fear.
The first Hollywood film to tackle the blacklist, made just
a year after HUAC was
abolished in 1975, the dreamlike opening features Frank Sinatra singing "Young At
Heart" 💖Frank Sinatra YouTube (2:36), a
million-selling hit in 1953 that includes clips of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s
wedding, bombing raids on Korea, a family entering a backyard air raid shelter,
with other noted dignitaries, including General Douglas MacArthur, Presidents
Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe, Rocky
Marciano, Miss America 1952 (Colleen Kay Hutchins), and Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg. This eloquently sets the
stage for where we are, a period when artists, writers, directors, and others
were rendered unemployable, with Allen as Howard Prince starring as an ordinary
diner cashier who moonlights as a bookie for extra cash, seemingly always in
debt, until he’s visited by an old friend, left-leaning television writer
Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), who has just lost his job due to Communist
sympathies that he openly acknowledges in a meeting with Howard, which was a Hollywood
first, like a punch to the gut, never before having the audacity to be up front
and open about it. Bernstein
acknowledged in interviews (4_books -
QC) that he wasn’t blacklisted for nothing, as it wasn’t an accident. Together they concoct a plan for Howard to
put his name on Miller’s scripts for 10 percent of the selling price, becoming
the blacklisted writer’s “front.” While
Miller is concerned about Howard’s naïveté, that he doesn’t really know what
he’s getting himself into, he’s nonetheless a well-meaning friend, attracted to
a steady source of income, claiming how hard can it be? Miller has been the hugely successful writer
of a dramatic anthology series entitled Grand
Central, produced by Phil Sussman (Herschel Bernardi, blacklisted in 1953)
and hosted by former vaudeville comedian Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel, blacklisted
in 1950). Yet the storyline veers
elsewhere, with Howard having a roving eye for the ladies, in particular
Sussman’s idealistic script editor, Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci), a
Connecticut girl who judges him by the quality of his work, overwhelmed by his
principles and human insight, claiming “In my family the biggest sin was to
raise your voice.” Howard’s immediate retort, “In my family the biggest sin was
to buy retail.” Howard immediately develops
a swelled head, basking in the glory of this newfound sense of importance,
seeing dollar signs in his future, broadening his enterprise to include
fronting two more of Miller’s friends, Delaney and Phelps (Lloyd Gough,
blacklisted in 1952, and David Margulies), who in reality represent blacklisted
writers Walter Bernstein, Abraham Polonsky, and Arnold Manoff, yet foolishly he
begins to believe he’s actually part of the creative process. Never taken seriously before by such important
and influential people, always relegated to the economic fringe, much like the
imposter Sabzian in Kiarostami’s Close-Up
(Nemaye Nazdik) (1990), this gives him a newfound sense of power and
authority that he never dreamed possible, suddenly paying off all his debts,
buying new clothes, and moving into an upscale apartment. This inflated cachet works wonders with
Florence, dropping her old boyfriend for him, where his sense of importance on
the set is staggering, with people constantly referring to his judgment, as
there are times they need an immediate rewrite, but instead of getting to work,
he mysteriously disappears (meeting secretly with Miller), only to return with
the precise changes needed. It’s like a
fairy tale life, where he’s suddenly the golden boy, a position only made
available because he’s not on a blacklist.
Ritt very calculatingly reveals what’s going on behind the scenes in the
offices of the Freedom Information Services, a supposedly patriotic, right-wing
organization working for the networks that spies upon and does background
checks on everyone in the industry, like a detective agency, run by a team of
investigators led by Francis X. Hennessey (Remak Ramsay), with portraits of J.
Edgar Hoover and Chiang Kai-shek on the walls, where anyone not given a clean
bill of health is instantly fired. It’s
astounding the amount of power and influence they hold within the industry,
especially for a relatively small operation, working completely behind the
scenes, accountable to no one except the industry moguls, skewed by extremist
political views that were hardly reflective of the viewing television audience.
The tone of the film shifts considerably, growing much darker
with a renewed focus on Hecky, already under investigation by the committee, where
in a desperate act to save himself he’ll agree to anything, with Hennessey instructing
him to name names and to spy on Howard, bringing the quietly introspective Woody
Allen and larger than life Zero Mostel together in the same scenes, which are
positively riveting, and historical, as both share similar backgrounds, Borscht
Belt comedians who became much bigger stars, with Mostel’s performance the real
stand-out of the film. The heartbreaking
aspect is that as much as Howard’s career trajectory took off, Hecky’s started
to tumble, as he is quietly removed from his job by the network and forced to
capitulate to Hennessey in order to survive.
He invites Howard along for a job back in the Catskills where he got his
start, hoping to extract some useful information, but comes up empty, and is
instead exploited by a resort owner (Joshua Shelley, blacklisted in 1952) to
work for a pittance, knowing he has no other options, and then cheats him out
of half his fee, where in the ensuing argument the owner kicks him out, calling
him a “commie son of a bitch!” This
humiliation takes its toll, with Howard growing more serious, developing a
conscience about what’s going on around him, with the film exploring the real
impact, illuminating the terrible personal tragedies experienced by those who
were blacklisted, not only robbed of their livelihood, but their dignity as
well. In a perfectly executed single
shot, the most heartbreakingly tender moment of the film reveals Hecky in his
darkest hour, one of the many souls crushed under the weight of a manufactured
threat. This would end up being Mostel’s
final onscreen performance, where much of his story is borrowed from actor
Philip Loeb, a friend of both Zero Mostel and Walter Bernstein, who was labeled
a communist for his union activities, dropped from the cast of an enormously
popular TV show, The Goldbergs
(1949-57), driven to debt and despondency, and committed suicide by overdosing
on sleeping pills in a room at New York’s Taft Hotel. His suffering is made all the more poignant
by the knowledge that much of what Hecky goes through was drawn directly from
Mostel’s own experience. Woody Allen is
also most convincing watching from a distance as events take a darker turn,
becoming painfully real in ways that feel unimaginable. When Howard is himself hauled before the committee,
supposedly a mere formality, never expecting difficulties, yet when he’s asked
to name Hecky as a subversive collaborator, the moral dilemma is written all
over his face, where the impact of the finale is an absurd twist into the
surreal, reminiscent of the final turn of Kubrick’s black comedy DR.
STRANGELOVE OR: WHY I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), with
black and white newsreel footage both
opening and closing the film to the same Sinatra tune, creating a wonderland
fantasia fused with real events that actually happened. For those who think the concept of blacklists
is a thing of the past, it’s worth noting that governments and police authorities
use cameras to identify subjects of political rallies and demonstrations, while
also singling out journalists, where the Attorney General can compile a data
base of subversive organizations and oppositional views, once again placing
names on lists. Employers also target
union activities, discharging employees for activism while hiding their real
intentions, also singling out those who dare speak up over safety issues, not
only discharging them, but actively making sure they would never find similar
work elsewhere (On
the blacklist: how did the UK's top building firms get secret ...). In the NFL, after being singled out by
President Trump, the billionaire owners conspired to prevent social activist
quarterback Colin Kaepernick from ever playing in the league again (for
kneeling during the national anthem), effectively blacklisting him from future employment.
In a hyper-suspicious Cold War
atmosphere of allegiance and loyalty oaths, it was a particularly shameful and
ugly time in our country, when insinuations of disloyalty were enough to
convince many Americans of a sinister plot infiltrating the country, allowing
narrow-minded politicians to become fear mongers preaching hate and fear, reaching
out to blind followers – mirroring what we’re seeing on the American political
landscape today.
The Front, by Martin Ritt (1976) entire film on YouTube (1:34:46)
