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CHAPLIN STATES STAND

CHARLIE CHAPLIN, the
man the United States govern-
ment doesn’t want, has decid-
ed he doesn’t want the United
States either.

He has surrendered his re-
entry permit, U.S. Attorney-
General Herbert Brownell an-
nounced in Washington last
week. .
U.S. Immigration authori-
ties said Chaplin’s action
“ean be construed as surren-
der of his domicile in the
United States,” to which he
was admitted as an alien for
permanent residence 43 years
ago.

Chaplin handed in the per-
mit, without comment, to the
U.S. «authorities in Geneva,
where he recently bought a
villa.

Back in London last week-
end, Chaplin told the world
why he will not return to Am-
erica. In a short statement
issued from his hotel he at-
tacked reactionary groups
who have worked against him
in the USS.

Chaplin, who celebrated his
64th birthday on April 16,
said:

“Tt is not easy to uproot
myself and my family from a
country where I have" lived
for 40 years without a feeling
of sadness. .

“But since the end of the
last world war I have been the
object of lies and vicious
propaganda by powerful re-
actionary groups who, by their
influence and the aid of Am-
erica’s yellow press, have
created an unhealthy atmos-
phere in which liberal-mind-
ed individuals can be singled
out and persecuted.

“Under these conditions I
continue my motion picture
find it virtually impossible to
work, and I have therefore
given up my residence in the
US”

= * x

FOR SOME TIME past the
great- comedian’s outspoken
humanism, and his refusal to
be cowed by reactionary hys-
teria, have earned him the
hatred of the U.S. witch-hunt-
ers. :

The campaign against him
eame to a head in official
action last September when
he, his wife Oona and his four

Man U.S. gov't didn’t want
doesn’t want U.S. either

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

children were on their way by
sea to visit his native London.

President Truman’s attor-
ney-general, James McGran-
ery, announced then that he
had instructed port officials
to bar Chaplin from re-enter-

- ing the U.S. until he could

prove he was admissible un-
der the U.S. alien laws.

McGranery told newspaper-
men his action was prompted
in part by “grave moral
charges” against Chaplin and
by public charges that he was
pro-Communist.

Chaplin retorted: “I am not
a Communist — I am a peace-
monger.”

He was unruffled. He said

he had-a_ re-entry permit -

which, he considered, entitled
him to return at any time.

Public reaction in Europe
was immediate and unmistak-
able, among people of widely
varying views. It could be
summed up: “If the Ameri-
cans don’t want you we do —
and we hope you'll stay.”

Recently it; was reported
that Chaplin was considering
building film studios in Switz-
‘erland.

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| Ld th

ACID PIECE OF REPORTAGE

What makes Hollywood run? —
Here’s inside sfory of one film

NO ONE emerges with much
credit from an acid piece of
Hollywood reportage called Pic-
ture, by Lillian Ross.

The book is a detailed, factual
account by a highly skilled Am-
erican journalist of how one of
Hollywood’s better producers
made an unsuccessful film of
Stephen Crane’s novel of the Am-
erican Civil War, The Red Badge
of Courage.

John Huston, the director,
thought it his best picture. Gott-
fried Reinhardt, the producer,
thought it was great art, too.

’ Dore Schary, the MGM vice-

president who backed the pic-
ture, thought it was great when
he first saw it.

But when a preview audience,
mostly teenagers with minds and
opinions on art formed by other
Hollywood films, condemned it,
Schary had no hesitation in
throwing overboard the “artis-
tie” touch he had previously com-
mended.

Nick Schenck, head of Loew’s,
Inc., and the real financial boss
of MGM, decided the picture
wouldn’t make money and re-
fused to spend money advertis-
ing it.

Lillian Ross puts it all down
sharply, brilliantly, maliciously,
but takes no sides, draws no con-
clusions, and has no positive
comment to make.

oa * *

IN THIS FASCINATING story
of a Hollywood panicked by the
bogy of “art” I found myself
warming to Louis B. Mayer, the
old-style MGM chief, whose los-
ing battle for power with the
younger Schary had much to do
with the fate of The Red Badge
of Courage.

He at least knew his own mind.
He hated the film because it
wouldn’t make money. To pro-
cucer Reinhardt, who wants the
film shown as Huston -shot it, he
says:

“You want to make money.
Why don’t you want the studio
to make money? Are you wil-
ling to starve for your art? You
want to be the artist, but you!
want other people to starve for
your art.”

Neither Mayer, at $300,000
a year (rather more than the
president of the U.S.), nor MGM’s
parent company, Loew’s, with an
income for the year of nearly $8
million, was in any immediate
danger of starving, but he had

brought the whole question down
to reality. .

At any rate, Reinhardt, who
valued his job at MGM, did not
accept the challenge, and it was
Mayer, in the end, who left MGM,
to back his own beliefs about
films. :

_Mayer, too, is strongly against
violence in films, though he de-
nounces it in foreign “art” films

instead of in Hollywood, where

2 is now most firmly entrench-
ed,

It is this conflict between
Mayer’s , old-fashioned sentiment-
ality and the modern, brutal
schoo! with phoney pretensions
to art, represented by Schary
which looms behind the man-
oeuvres and intrigues which
went on around the cutting, re-
shaping and subsequent market-
ing of Huston’s film.

* x x

WHAT THE book shows, in
fact, is not great art butcheted
by money-grubbers but the com-
plete impossibility of producing
art of integrity in Hollywood.

Huston, a talented but un-
disciplined individualist, tried to
go his own way without refer-

ence to the requirements of
either the audience or MGM’s
stockholders and not surprising-
ly ran into trouble (he paid a
great deal of attention to box-
office requirements when it came
to making The African Queen on
his own money).

Mayer, mistaking sentimental-
ity for sentiment, failed to real-
ise that to keep abreast of the
times some readjustment of con-
tent and technique was needed
to keep the theatres filled.

Schary, the bright, up-and-
coming boss, realised that Holly-
wood presige needed raising with
“quality” films, but failed to
realise that audiences trained to
respond to tripe will not neces-
sarily respond immediately to
quality, especially when that
quality takes the form of arti-
ness, inverted romanticism and
obscurity — as in this case it
did.

Schenck, the financial boss,
made the decisions in the end.
He decided Schary was wrong, as

against Mayer, in the case of this
particular film but right in pr
ciple about .modernising Holly:
wood’s output. So he backed
Schary and Mayer went.

Schary showed he had learnt
his lesson by repudiating his ow?
views and changing the film 1
make it intelligible to ordinaly
audiences. It was written °
complacently by the company Ae
a “flop d’estime’ — a financla
loss but good for prestige.

What is to be learnt from this
story? That no real art can come
from Hollywood except by accl
dent or in exceptional crea
stances. And that Hollywooe
will continue to turn out phoney

“art films with proper box-office
ingredients.

Miss Ross has drawn a shee
cruel picture of Hollywood wit
its phoney attitudes, phoney Joy:
alties, phoney artistic prete?
sions, phoney friendships 2
phoney people. Every regular
movie-goer should read it.

_THOMAS SPENCER:

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Jailed Spanish War hero
tells his own inspiring stoty

IF YOU WANT to get an idea
of the type of American who is
today resisting all that the witch-
hunters and stoolpigeons of the
FBI can do to progressives in
the United States, then read The
Volunteers, by Steve Nelson
(Masses and Mainstream).

Sentenced to 20 years jail on a
phoney “sedition” charge in Pit-
tsburgh, Steve Nelson was only
recently released on bail, pend-
ing appeal and was immediately
brought to ‘trial on another
charge.

The Volunteers tells how this
Chicago worker, a, leader of un-
employed in the crisis years of
the early . thirties, , eventually
went to Spain to fight in the In-
ternational Brigade against
Franco.

Steve Nelson was one of the
leaders of the Lincoln-Washing-
ton Battalion of that same 15th
Brigade in which the Canadian
Mackenzie - Papineau Battalion
played such an heroic and out-
standing role.

Nearly 2,000 Americans lost
their lives in Spain, and in the
United States the movement to
aid Republican Spain swept the
country as it did elsewhere:

As a Communist, Steve Nelson

is today fighting before the

courts of the United States the
battle that he fought in Spain on
behalf of progress and human
decency.

The Volunteers is one of the
most. moving and beautiful books
on the Spanish War that has yet
been written, and its appearance
now will enable the generation
that has grown up since the
Spanish War to recall something
of the spirit of those days.

It tells of the difficulties Steve
Nelson and his fellow American
volunteers had before they could
even get to Spain, of ‘the battles
they fought, the problems they
faced.

Many of the men who fought
with him, like John Gates, editor
of the New York Daily Worker,
Irving Weissman and Dr. Barsky,
have since written heroic pages
in the history of the defense of
freedom in. America.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 24, 1953 —

_ other America person

2

d
They are men who have Hate
up courageously against 4 ress
slanders of the American Fale
and radio, against all the b
ity of the police. Bei
Those who participated. in
Aid to Spain movement 1 iq.
ada, those who fought in t those
ternational Brigade, a? t that
who want to learn wha pitt
fight meant will get new ins this
tion and .confidence £0 coq.
book. It is obtainable ‘Coop
couver at ;the People’s + Pel
ative Bookstore, 337 <
der Street, priced at $1.10. f that
It is a shining example 4 by
pa
men like Steve Nene peer
Robeson, Howard Fast a flag of
less more who keep the
)

freedom flying. ao

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