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Inflation(1943) and the Blacklist: The Disrupted Film Career of Cy Endfield

2010; Routledge; Volume: 30; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2010.523998

1465-3451

Brian Neve,

Cinema and Media Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Norma Barzman, The Red and the Blacklist: the intimate memoir of a Hollywood expatriate (New York, 2003), 292–293; Ephraim Katz, The International Film Encyclopedia (Macmillan, 1980), 389; the same error is in the 2008 edition, 442. On the collapse of the blacklist, Howard Suber, The Anti-Communist Blacklist in the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry, Ph.D., UCLA, Los Angeles, 1968 (Ann Arbor, Michigan), 124ff. 2. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Pages from the Endfield File, Film Comment, 29(6) (1993), 48–55. 3. See Larry Ceplair, The Marxist and the Movies: a biography of Paul Jarrico (Lexington, Kentucky, 2007), 14–15. Much of the correspondence between Jarrico and Endfield survives in the Paul Jarrico Papers (viewed in the summer of 2008 in Ojai, California, courtesy of Larry Ceplair and Lia Benedetti Jarrico) and the Cy Endfield papers (courtesy of Maureen Endfield). The term ‘incorrigible experimenter’ is used by Endfield in a letter to the author, 6 September 1991. 4. Cy Endfield, interview with the author, 19 December 1989, the bulk of which was published in Film Studies: An International Review, 7 (Winter 2005), 116–127; later Endfield quotations are from this interview unless stated. 5. K.R.M. Short, Documents (B): ‘Washington's Information Manual for Hollywood, 1942, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 3(2) (1983), 171–172, 179; New York Times, April 28, 20. 6. Telegram, Howard Dietz to Henry Morgenthau Jr, 30 June 1943, Henry Morgenthau Jr, Diaries, vol. 646, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) Library, Hyde Park, New York; Statement of Cyril Endfield, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Washington D.C., 31 March 1960, Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington D.C. 7. Federal Bureau of Investigation Release, Subject: Cyril Endfield, FBI, US Department of Justice; Endfield (December 1989). 8. Herman Boxer obituary, Daily Variety, 8 November 1983, clipping, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Los Angeles (AMPAS); on Whispers (1941), No. 20 in the ‘John Nesbitt's Passing Parade’ series see Michael S. Shull, Hollywood's Class Wars, 1930–1941 (McFarland, forthcoming). 9. Marjorie Gratz, BMP-OWI, Hollywood Office, Film Analysis Section, on Temporary Complete script of 25 November 1942, and Complete script of 19 December 1942, in: Records of the Los Angeles Office, Motion Picture Division, Motion Picture Reviews and Analyses, 1943–45 (Entry 567), Inflation (Box 3519), NARA, College Park, MD.; Los Angeles; Herman Boxer, ‘Inflation,’ 19 November 1942, in: MGM Collection, Box 577, Department of Cinema/TV, Doheny Library, University of Southern California (USC); Weekly Bulletin of Activities, MGM Short Subject Department, MGM Pictures (AMPAS). 10. Weekly Bulletin of Activities, 15 May 1943, MGM Short Subject Department, MGM Pictures (AMPAS). 11. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat on the “Seven Point” Program, Washington, D.C., 28 April 1942, in: B.D. Zevin (ed.), Nothing to Fear: the selected addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1935–1945 (London, 1947), 323–333. 12. Ceplair, The Marxist and the Movies (2007), 40–42, 50–53; Jarrico to Endfield on Fury, undated (1936), Jarrico Papers; on the New Theatre League and its politics, see Lynn Mally, Inside a Communist Front: a post-Cold War analysis of the New Theatre League, American Communist History, 6(1) (2007), 65–95. 13. OWI pamphlet, Battle Stations for All, the Story of the Fight to Control Living Costs, Washington D.C., February 1943, but issued in late March, 120; see New York Times, 30 March 1943, 12, and on the criticism of the pamphlet in Congress see New York Times, 14 May 1943, 3 and Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda, The Office of War Information, 1942–1945 (New Haven and London, 1978), 65–67; John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory, Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York and London, 1976), 39–41; on the overall impact of the OWI on wartime Hollywood, see Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War, How Profits & Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York, 1987). 14. Telegram, 7 June 1943, Nelson Poynter to Lowell Mellett, Records of the Los Angeles Office, Motion Picture Division, Motion Picture Reviews and Analyses, 1943–45 (Entry 567), Inflation (Box 3519), NARA, College Park, MD. 15. Eleanor Bernais review, OWI-BMP Hollywood Office, 15 June 1943, Records of the Los Angeles Office, Motion Picture Division, Motion Picture Reviews and Analyses, 1943–45 (Entry 567), ‘Inflation’ (Box 3519), NARA, College Park, MD. 16. Lowell Mellett, to Nelson Poynter, OWI, Washington, 11 June 1943, in: Records of the Los Angeles Office, Motion Picture Division, Motion Picture Reviews and Analyses, 1943–45 (Entry 567), ‘Inflation’ (Box 3519), NARA, College Park, MD.; Motion Picture Exhibitor, 16 June 1943, 1287; Motion Picture Herald, 10 July 1943, 1415; MGM Bulletin, 29 May 1943, AMPAS. 17. Hollywood Reporter, 2 July 1943, 1; Daily Variety, 6 July 1943, 8. 18. Telegram, Dietz to Morgenthau, 30 June 1943, letter, Morgenthau Jr, to Dietz, 1 July 1943, and letter, Morgenthau Jr, to Lowell Mellett, 1 July 1943, in: Henry Morgenthau Jr, Diaries, vol. 646, FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York. 19. John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: years of war, 1941–1945 (Boston, 1967), 65. 20. Eric Johnston, American Unlimited (New York, Doubleday, Doran and Co, 1944), 22, 55; Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Hollywood Inquisition, politics and the film community, 1930–1960 (Berkeley, 1983, 205, 285); Murray Schumach, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor, The Story of Movie and Television Censorship (New York, 1964), 129. 21. FBI file: Cyril Endfield, US Department of Justice; letters, Paul Jarrico to Cyril Endfield, undated, and John Wexley to Cy Endfield, 24 May 1944, Endfield Papers; Paul Jarrico to Cy Endfield, 18 February 1944; John Wexley to Cy Endfield, 3 April 1944; Jerome S. Bresler to Cy Endfield, 12 April 1944, Jarrico Papers. The writer-producer James K. McGuinness was a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative group that encouraged HUAC to investigate Hollywood communism; see Ceplair and Englund, The Hollywood Inquisition, 210–212. On ‘premature anti-fascism’ in this context see Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party during the Second World War (Urbana and Chicago, 1993), 181. David Raksin was a friendly witness before HUAC on September 20, 1951. 22. On the political themes of these films, see Thom Andersen, Red Hollywood, in: Frank Krutnik et al. (eds), “Un-American” Hollywood: politics and film in the Blacklist era (New Brunswick, 2007), 257, 260–261, and Reynold Humphries, The politics of crime and the crime of politics: Post-war noir, the liberal consensus and the Hollywood Left, in: Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds), Film Noir Reader 4 (New Jersey, 2004), 234–236, 240–241; Brian Neve, The Many Lives of Cy Endfield, is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press; Endfield's comment on the theatre is from a taped interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1992–1993 (courtesy of Jonathan Rosenbaum); see also Jonathan Rosenbaum, Out of the darkness, in: Featured Texts, 15 January 1993, at JonathanRosenbaum.com (accessed 6 March 2009). 23. Interview, author, with Maureen Endfield, 23 June 2009; on The Defiant Ones, see rushes of a Cy Endfield interview for The Late Show, BBC2 (14 December 1989), National Film Archive, BFI, London; on the blacklist community in Europe, see Rebecca Prime, ‘The Old Bogey’: the Hollywood Blacklist in Europe, Film History, 20 (2008), 474–486; Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Hollywood Inquisition, politics and the film community, 1930–1960 (Berkeley, CA, 1983), 396–397. 24. Cyril Endfield, letter to Frances E. Walter, 18 August 1958, in: HUAC file on Cyril Endfield, CLA/NARA, Washington D.C.; Representative Frances E. Walter, letter to Cyril Endfield (27 April 1958), HUAC file on Cyril Endfield, CLA/NARA, Washington D.C. 25. Statement of Cyril Endfield, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Washington D.C., 31 March 1960, CLA, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington D.C.; on Michael Wilson see Joseph Dmohowski, ‘Under the table,’ Michael Wilson and the screenplay for The Bridge on the River Kwai, Cineaste, 34(2) (Spring 2009), 16–21. 26. Todd McCarthy, Telluride pays homage to underappreciated Endfield, Daily Variety, 11 September 1992; Jonathan Rosenbaum, Tribute to Cy Endfield, 19th Telluride Film Festival, originally from the Chicago Reader (1992); Michael Henry, Cy Endfield, l’oeuvre anglaise, ‘La loi de la jungle,’ Positif, Revue mensuelle de cinema, 575 (2009), 32–35; Jean-Pierre Garcia, Le Mystère Endfield, and Pierre Rissient, Cy Endfield: Derrière l’homme, un cinéaste, both in: Catelogue, 28th Festival International Du Film D’Amiens (7–16 November 2008), 129–143.