Cinema Gadfly – Episode 20 – The Front

My guest for this month is West Anthony, and he’s joined me to discuss the film he chose for me, the 1976 comedy-drama film The Front. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.

Show notes:

• Not sure what happened to the audio in the introduction, apologies!
• The Hollywood blacklist is a term for the treatment of people in the entertainment industry who refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee from 1947 to 1960
• For a more in depth take on the blacklist, check out the latest season of the phenomenal You Must Remember This podcast
• WonderCon is a comic book convention that was held annually in SF until it was cruelly moved to the LA area in 2012. Yes I’m still bitter about it.
• West also recommends the Gabrielle de Cuir directed Thirty Years of Treason by Eric Bentley
• Among the people famously blacklisted were Lillian Hellman, Lionel Stander, Paul Robeson, and Zero Mostel
• This film was directed by blacklisted director Martin Ritt, who also directed the film from our third episode, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• I’m just not a fan of Woody Allen. He’s too painfully neurotic for me, even before I start thinking about whatever the hell happened with his daughter and step-daughter
• Another Woody film where he only acts is the Paul Mazursky film Scenes from a Mall
• I’ve been a huge fan of Fiddler on the Roof, and Zero Mostel in it, since I was a little kid
• The story of Elia Kazan is one of the more interesting tales of directors and the blacklist
• The writer of this film, Walter Bernstein, was also blacklisted
• As were many of its stars, including Herschel Bernardi and Lloyd Gough
• So was the father of actress Julie Garfield, actor John Garfield, which may have contributed to his death from heart problems
• West’s reference to bodily fluids is, of course, from the excellent Dr. Strangelove
• Hallie Flanagan ran the Federal Theatre Project, as part of FDR’s WPA program
• She gave Orson Welles the money to make his Voodoo Macbeth
• She also gave Marc Blitzstein the money to make The Cradle Will Rock
• Which was remade in 1999 by Tim Robbins
• LBJ said in 1966 “I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon”
• Red Channels named 151 entertainers it claimed were communists
• Trumbo is a 2015 film about Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo
• Another film about the blacklist is 1991s Guilty by Suspicion, directed by Irwin Winkler and starring Robert De Niro
• One of the co-writers of Guilty by Suspicion was Abraham Polonsky, who also wrote and directed Force of Evil with John Garfield, but he was so offended by what Irwin Winkler did that he had his name removed from it
• Guilty by Suspicion also stars Annette Bening
• Good Night and Good Luck by George Clooney is about McCarthyism, not the blacklist, but it’s also a great film about government overreach
• Panic in the Streets is a 1950 film, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Zero Mostel
• Both West and I think that On the Waterfront, written by Budd Schulberg, was a justification for Kazan’s willingness to name names
• Lee J. Cobb was also forced to testify in front of the committee
• Leonard Bernstein wrote the score for On the Waterfront, and the film featured incredible performances from Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, and Eva Marie Saint
• I still haven’t seen Hail, Caesar! yet, which is a damn shame
• Nothing better than comparing the work of the Coen brothers to that of fellow Criterion Collection auteur Michael Bay
• Paranoid American films from the 70s include Three Days of the Condor, Klute, The Parallax View, and All the President’s Men
• Everyone who reads this needs to go subscribe to Musical Notation with West Anthony. Right now. I’ll wait
• It’s part of the awesome Battleship Pretension Podcast Fleet
• You can also follow West’s amazing show on twitter @notationpod

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