FILMS AND PEOPLE

Hollywood
wrong .again

SPIKING THE argument of
Hollywood’s bosses that the pub-—
lic «doesn’t go for social films,

the biggest profit maker for
Twentieth-Century Fox for 1948
is, as you may have read, Gentile-
man’s Agreement, which brought
in $3,900,000. What should give
the entire entertainment industry
food for thought is the fact that
contrary to the company’s belief,
‘this film, with its message
against racial discrimination, was
also it’s second top grosser in the
South. (Not to mention the fact,
of course, that the film was made
by two of the Hollywood Ten)...

* * *

THE ESTABLISHMENT of an
Israel film studio is near realiza-
tion with one half of the capital
being put up by Israel and the re-
maining money being invested by
individuals in the U.S. The new
piant will have a capitalization of
$600,000. *

The production committee for
the studio includes Edward G.
Robinson, Eddie Canter, John
Ruston, Lewis Milestone, Charles
Vidor, Jersey Wald, Billy Wilder,
William and Fred Zimmerman.

Israel has 70 Jewish-owned
theaters: Tel Aviv, with a popu-
lation of 250,000 , has five legiti-
mate theaters, one opera house,
ene Philharmonic orchestra, two
major bajlet theaters, five dram-
atic work shops and numerous.
dance studios,

While Israel has not in the past
had a film studio or labor for
sound and processing, it has been
producing film documentaries for
the past 20 years. Over $1,000,000
has been expended during the
past two years in this field.

* * *

- SUSAN HAYWARD is reported
to have turned down Howard
Hughes’ offer to star in the red-
baiting film I Married a Commun-
ist, one of Hughes’ as RKO pro-
jects.

Hughes, as we get the story,
called Miss Hayward to a read-
ing of the script— still in rough
outline form—which was also at-
tended by his studio's top side
boys.

Miss Hayward listened to the
very end—and then turned Hugh-
es down flat. — BARNARD
RUBIN.

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Phone HAstings 1248
Moderate Rental Rates
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Russian People’s Home—
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MEETINGS

Swedish-Finnish Workers Club
meets last Friday of every month

Atomic.-clock’ <plits seconds

The intricate mechanism of the world’s first “atomic clock”,
capable of splitting a second with the extraordinary accuracy of
one part in 20 million, is unveiled at the National Bureau of
Standards at Washington, D.C. Inset shows face of timepiece.

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Irwin Shaw’s first novel

ONE OF THE MOST difficult tasks:a novelist can set himself
In The Naked and the Dead, Norman

is the broad canvas of a war.

Mailer confined himself to a specific action on a hypothetical island
in the Pacific; more than that, he confined himself to a specific group

of’ men within that action—the
men of a reconaissance platoon.

Irwin Shaw, in fis first novel,
The Young Lioms, has set him-
self a far more ambitious task.
He starts in 1938 and ends with
the imminent collapse of Ger-
many. He skips from the United

States to Africa, to Sicily and.

Italy, to England, France and
Germany. And while the burden
of his story is supported by three
major characters, he introduces
literally dozens of subsidiary
figures in each of these coun-
tries, who impinge upon the lead-
ing actors—Christian Diestl, Ger-
man, and Michael Whiteacre and
Noah Arkerman, Americans.

: :

Shaw obviously felt this was
the best design for his subject,
for he regards ‘these three char-
acters as typical soldiers in the
vast struggle. That not one of
them'is typical is the measure
of his confusion. Diestl is a
“good” Nazi who really does not
believe in the slogans under
which Hitler is fighting the war;
Whiteacre is a_ special type of
intellectual and, throughout most
of the book, is a moral and
Physical coward. And Noah
Ackerman is a Jew.

All these factors—the arbitrary

~~

structure of the novel, the’ un-
related episodes, the unconvinced
Nazi, the un-Jewish Jew, the
cowardly anti-fascist — plus the
clever, superficial but “entertain-
ing” vignettes of life behind the
lines—add up to a point of view
which seems to say, “The war
was not worth fighting and I
don’t know what the hell it was
about anyhow.”
* ede Maes

THE TOTAL PICTURE of the -

war projected by The Young
Lions—a, picture which was cer-

tainly complex but was still cap-. -

able of being understood, and
which demanded partisanship—is
of a mindless chaos in which
men suffer pointlessly and die
without conviction.

Instead you will find an anarch-
istic hatred of the brass; an
acceptable exposure of the cor-
ruption and debauchery in the

_vear echelons in the ETO, wheth-

er German or American. But
you will find practically no re-
flection of the forces actually in
operation; the determination of
millions of people to destroy fas-
bism once and for, all time; the
true nature of the enemy they
were fighting; the deep and com-
plex significance of individual
human beings,

CANADIAN ARTS COUNCIL f

Lead from the left

ON JUNE 21, 1944,

16 Canadian cultural organizations

presented a brief -to he federal department of reconstruction and re-

The brief asked ‘

establishment.

body for the supervision of all cultural activities.’

ernment grant of $10,000,000 for
the implementation of the speci-
fic proposals made, which includ-
ed community centers, extended
education facilities, art galleries,

libraries, theaters,

From this association
societies—the first time they had

ever come together—was formed

the Canadian Arts Council, which
still exists, on paper if not as
an active force,

*.

The fact that the Canadian gov-.
ernment completely ignored the
representations of the leading
cultural organizations cannot be
brushed aside simply by saying:
Well, what can one expect from
such a government? Of course
it was to be expected. No gov-
ernment that has spent as little
as the King-St. Laurent admin-
istration—which keeps _ its
National Gallery so poverty-
Stricken it can scatcely move—
could be expected to listen, un-
less the voice became loud and
insistent and there was mass
support.

There lies the main reason
Canadian governments Pay not
the slightest attention to the
cultural side of living. The pro-
test of Canadian cultural work-
ers is neither loud nor insistent,
nor has it a mass following. Life
is evidently too comfortabe for
our “cultural leaders” and_ be-
sides, you can’t mix art
politics. You can ask; you can
go hat in hand; but never, never
campaign. That would be politics!

The Canadian Arts Council
which, up until recently has been

Own.

_ headed by one Herman Voaden,
has yet to lift a finger to begin

a public campaign for the re-
cognition of the arts by our
governments. Aside from recom-
mending a list of delegates to
Ottawa to represent Canada at
UNESCO meetings—which was
also brusquely rejected by the
government—the Arts (Cotncil

has done little but twiddle its
thumbs:
* od *
& "
JOHN COULTER, who read

the brief to the Turgeon Commis-
sion in 1944, said in the course
of discussion. ‘‘Now we talk, we

SS

of 16_ ;

with

‘the setting up of a governmental
It asked a gov-

make various proposals, But
where there is passion to accom-
plish these things they will be
accomplished. The technique is

always adequate to the passion-
ate need: . . 3”

It is quite evident that the
members of the Canadian Arts
Council have demonstrated no
‘such. passion.

It is also becoming more and
more evident that the longer we
place. our hopes and faith in or-

»ganizations of this kind, the
longer will we flounder.

The formation of the Canadian
Arts Council was—or could have
been—a great forward step in
the emerging of a people’s cul-
ture. The trouble is, however,
that its bourgeois base is rotten
at the core. The 16 organiza-
tions are, by and large—with
perhaps one or two exceptions—
set up and financed by the phil-
anthropies of Big Business. They
will never initiate popular move-
ments because they were never
intended, in reality, to serve the
people.

* * *

THE RESPONSIBILITY for
the building of a people’s culture
in Canada rests with they labor
and primarily on the left wing of
the labor. movement. Allies will
and must be found among those in
the 16 organizations and in the
Arts Council, But there can be no
compromise with genuine people’s
culture simply in order to “win”
such allies. ‘

!

The left-wing cultural move-
ment must be integrally identi-
fied with the people and the la-
bor movement and those who
come to it from “outside” must
be prepared to take their stand.

Let us have no more wishy-
washy organizations watered
down to preserve some mythical
‘“vespectability’ or the opposite
number, a narrow, sectarian, “Bo-
hemian” group which just as
readily BivoEecs itself from real-
ity.

Let the left wing build a genu-
ine cultural movement that will
truly transform the arts into
weapons. In direct proportion to
the strength such a movement can
win in the labor movement, will

_ it begin to influence such organ-
izations as the Canadian Arts
Council, our governments— and
the development of the emerg-
ing people’s national culture of
Canada.—W. Jd:.a8:

PORPOOEPEOE

DSPs? 2 2$”_ SO OEE EOS
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_ FRIDAY, JANUARY 28

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T ENIN MEMORIAL MEETING
; “A BETTER WOR LD’S IN. BIRTH”
ODEON-HASTINGS THEATRE - 8 p.m., SUNDAY, JANUARY 23
Speaker: MINERVA MILLER sagt ee oe Sans MUSICAL PROGRAM.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANURY 21, 1949 — PAGE 10