Book Description: Fifty years ago, McCarthyism silenced Hollywood. In the pages of Tender Comrades, those who were suppressed finally have their say. A unique collection of profiles in courage, this extraordinary oral history brings to light the voices of thirty-six blacklist survivors, including two members of the Hollywood Ten; seminal directors of film noir; starring actresses and equally memorable supporting players; several of Hollywood's top screenwriters; and many others, lesser known to the public, who are rescued from obscurity by the stories they offer here. Casting a long-overdue light onto not only the blacklist itself but onto the close-knit, vibrant liberal community it decimated, Tender Comrades is the definitive portrait of Hollywood's dark High Noon.
Amazon.com: Film historians Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle have assembled a collection of interviews with film writers, directors, and actors whose careers were interrupted by the blacklist imposed in the wake of congressional probes into alleged Communist influence over the motion-picture industry. The subjects, including two of the "Hollywood Ten," Alvah Bessie and Ring Lardner Jr., systematically debunk the notion that there was an extensive conspiracy to load mainstream movies with "Red propaganda." "We were in the film business not to change the world but to make films," recalls writer-director Abraham Polonsky. "To change the world we were involved in other kinds of things, like the labor struggle in Hollywood." Screenwriter Paul Jarrico concurs: "The Communist Party was not a revolutionary organization, not in the period when I was in it. It was a reformist organization, and for most of the years I was in it, it was the tail to the liberal-Democrat kite." (Recent historical research, it must be noted, indicates that Kremlin officials did in fact wield substantial influence over the CPUSA platform. Evidence for the attempted subversion of America's movies, however, remains elusive.)
Some of those shut out of the industry weren't even actual Communists, but ran into them as part of broader leftist activities. Character actor Lionel Stander, for example, became an actor in order to support his extravagant lifestyle; when the film jobs disappeared, he waited out the studios on the stock market. "It seems that if my face or figure got on the screen, so delicate was the balance of the American socioeconomic and political scene at the time that I would throw the thing right off the tightrope," he recalls drolly. "But I could go to Wall Street and invest the savings of widows and orphans with impunity." At turns mirthful and tragic, Tender Comrades presents an unfiltered perspective on the cold war that should be studied by anyone interested in the effects of a government persecuting its own people. --Ron Hogan
They just can't get over it. It has been nearly 50 years since the Hollywood blacklist and they just can't get over what happened. The blacklist victims were hardly "tender comrades", they were dangerous people who sought to destroy the American way of life. The real enemy is not anti-communism, but communism itself. The KGB and Venona files have confirmed that everything McCarthy said was right. Why can't they get over this? Why? They need to get over this and move on.
Mesmerizing! I love this book. Its first person accounts by the courageous men and woman who fought valiantly for social justice and economic equality for all people, and stood strong against reactionary forces are so inspiring and moving that I was often in tears.
The book is also immensely informative and even quite funny at times. It vividly presents an amazing array of personalities and is arguably the most affecting, revealing and far-reaching volume about the most shameful chapter in Hollywood's history
Tender Comrades is required reading. We are all indebted to Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle for gathering these testimonials, which are true profiles in courage.
Image shattering I grew up midwestern 1950's, in a hotbed of Mc Carthyism. Needless to mention, my ingrained image of who and what was a communist was somewhat different from the thoroughly humanized portraits that emerge in the pages of the book. Not that the interviews with individual victims of the blacklist result in glamorized or enviable cameos. They don't. Instead, we get a glimpse of what life was like for people of strong conviction who defied the fashion of their day even when it cost them dearly. The fact that most were communists was enough to demonize them in the eyes of so many of us, who, when it comes right down to it, were victims ourselves.
To those who have been assailed by America's peculiarly virulent strain of anti-communism, please read the book. It won't make a communist of you, but it will give you second thoughts about a political culture that regularly demonizes its opposition, whoever that may be. The interviews reveal not only an America that was, but in many ways an America that still is. The individual stories themselves are fascinating. The names are ones you may have seen briefly on a late night movie credit crawl. Here they come alive in their own words, names and faces that were on the screen one day, then gone the next. Not celebrities, but the kind of people who made movies memorable because they brought more than varying degrees of talent to their work, they brought social commitment.
I hope the authors soon bring us a similar volume on non-Hollywood victims of the purges, of which, I gather, there were thousands. Folks without marquee names, but with their own stories to tell about how the world was made safe for democracy.
Absolutely Fascinating Read For anyone that's ready to move past the historical books about the Blacklist period and is ready to hear more about the people involved this is the book to read. It contains interviews with 35 blacklisted personalities (many of them screenwriters, two of them were even in the Hollywood Ten) and deals with more than just the blacklist. This is an intimate book that gives a voice to those that are not often heard or have been forgotten. Many of these people led fascinating lives outside of Hollywood (one of them having fought in the war in Spain against the fascists), and you will hear about their own childhood, how they came to Hollywood, and all the dreams and visions they had before the Red Scare destroyed them. It is also interesting to hear these people talk about this turbulent time in their lives since it is something that can only be explained by those who were wronged. Some have moved on and forgiven the friendly witnesses while others still recall those horrible moments and refuse to forget and forgive their transgessors (which they have a reason to). Among those included are Norma and Ben Barzman, Hugo Butler, Alvah Bessie, John Bright, Ring Lardner Jr., Frank Tarloff, and Bernard Vorhaus. All in all, this book is clearly one to read.
Good look at the the Blacklistee's story. This book is a good resource for anyone who wishes to study the Hollywood Blacklist during the 1940s through 1960s. It has excellent interviews with two of the original Hollywood Ten and proves to be a very interesting read. For further reading on the subject I suggest Naming Names by Victor Navasky.
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