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A new look at an old quarrel over "On the Waterfront"

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Dave U. Random

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Jan 7, 2010, 10:07:17 AM1/7/10
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NY Times

...the question of whether Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg
made the classic 1954 film �On the Waterfront� to justify
their naming names of former Communist associates, seems to
have found an especially robust and curious afterlife with
the deaths in recent years of Mr. Kazan, the film�s
director, Mr. Schulberg, its scriptwriter, and two actors,
Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.

Now comes a new revelation � a footnote, really � that is
sure to keep the pot boiling for a good long time. On
Sunday night, James T. Fisher, the author of a new book
about the film and the New York waterfront (Amazon.com:
http://xrl.us/Waterfr ), told the crowd attending a reading
at Sunny�s Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn, of an intriguing
discovery he had made...

Continued: http://xrl.us/WaterF

Undecided

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Jan 7, 2010, 7:59:30 PM1/7/10
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On Jan 7, 7:07 am, Dave U. Random <anonym...@anonymitaet-im-inter.net>
wrote:

> Now comes a new revelation a footnote, really that is
> sure to keep the pot boiling for a good long time.

Thanks for the link. But there is nothing new or important there. The
question of conforming and informing was on everyone's mind who had
participated in any of the groups in the thirties and forties which
were on the HUAC banned list. I doubt there was anyone in Hollywood
who had not thought carefully about the witch hunt and their own
private spot in it from 1948 until subpoenaed. The fact that Schulberg
had finished his screenplay six weeks before he became a canary
doesn't really mean anything. Many alibis are formed in advance; and
that seems to be the case here.

- Undecided


tomcervo

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Jan 7, 2010, 9:05:44 PM1/7/10
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Apparently you had to be there, but the sessions where hacks with a
party card attacked people like John Howard Lawson--a writer with more
credits than they had had hot lunches--for being insufficiently
politically correct, and Lawson's timid submission to their criticism,
were more stomach turning than anything at HUAC. At least Lawson
thought he could speak to HUAC like a man.
The CPA was a shower of shit, even if HUAC said so--someone might be
able to explain the difference between the CPA cry of "informer" and
the thug cry of "no snitches", but it's mighty fine. Anyone who could
think of the USSR as the Motherland after the Moscow show trials or
"Homage to Catalonia" had to operating with very little brain.

Kingo Gondo

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Jan 8, 2010, 11:24:30 AM1/8/10
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"tomcervo" <tomc...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:0ee58cb4-2e55-4f29...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.current-films/msg/0671a1417ca5e5ba?hl=en


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