10/2/22
Newsletter115
The Crack of Dawn
I began hitchhiking across the country when I was 16 years old in 1975. I’m not even sure how many times I crisscrossed America and Canada. In 1978 I hitchhiked to Alaska. Anyway, I think it was 1981 when I hitched from L.A. to NYC to visit my sister Pam who was attending NYU and working at Ann Taylor. My final ride was to Hoboken, NJ, then I took the bus into Manhattan to Union Station. I called Pam at work and she said that she got off in an hour so why didn’t I meet her at the store, which was up near Central Park. Pam said, “Jump in a cab.” I said, “Nonsense, I’ll just walk.” So, carrying my big backpack, filthy from a week on the road, sporting a big bushy beard, wearing hiking boots, I marched north from 14th St. across lower Manhattan. As I was clomping along 7th Ave. at 56th St., passing Carnegie Hall, a short, gray-haired man in his 70s stepped out of Carnegie Hall and began walking along beside me. I glanced at him and it was Elia Kazan. He looked at me and saw the expression of recognition on my face. His next look to me was trepidatious and said very clearly, “Are you going to make a scene?” Many people didn’t like Kazan because he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a friendly witness – meaning, you testify or we destroy your life and career. Anyway, although I’m sure he wasn’t used to it, even at that point 25 years later, people often saw him and started yelling at him that he was a traitor. Therefore, I understood his suspicious look at me, although he was keeping stride with me. I had a hundred questions, but I also had to meet my sister. And Elia Kazan didn’t look friendly, and I don’t blame him. I smiled my biggest smile, nodded in what I hoped looked like appreciation, and sped up. I did look back and saw him head into a building.
In the course of one of my many short-lived relationships with actresses in Hollywood, I went to the apartment of one in West Hollywood, and in the backyard I was introduced to her mother. The mother was perhaps 70, slim, blonde, attractive, and a former UCLA political science professor. The actress disappeared into the apartment and for the next hour I had one of the most interesting conversations in my life. This woman was great – way better than her pretty daughter. She was intensely smart, extremely liberal, and very opinionated. At that time I was reading a terrific series of filmmaking books by the director Edward Dmytryk, called: On Film Directing, On Film Editing, On Film Acting. I’m telling this story backward, but so what. The ten Hollywood writers and directors sacrificed to HUAC were “The Hollywood Ten,” one of whom was Ed Dmytryk (who explained that his last name was like you took a handful of letters and threw them at the screen). After serving a year in prison for not cooperating with a Senate sub-committee, led by the nefarious Congressman Joseph McCarthy, along with his two evil sidekicks, Richard Nixon and Roy Cohn (Trump’s mentor), Ed Dmytryk “recanted.” He gave them every name he ever heard in his life. He was the only one of the ten to recant. And he actually got his career back. I admire the shit out of that guy. His biggest hit was The Caine Mutiny (1954) which is a good movie. More on Ed Dmytryk later. But I mentioned the books I was reading, and asked, “What do you think of Ed Dmytryk?” This 70-year-old blonde liberal former UCLA professor in the backyard on a sunny afternoon in West Hollywood in like 1991 went ballistic, Edward Dmytryk recanting was the single worst thing that occurred in the entire HUAC/black list/Hollywood Ten event. No, it came in second to Elia Kazan naming names.
And I went insane. “Ed Dymtryk spent a year in federal prison in like Arizona cutting weeds on a freeway, and you’re going to sit here in West Hollywood 30 years later and condemn him for ‘recanting’?” I swear to God I said this, “You would have named your mother, your grandmother, and everybody you ever met to get out of prison.” And this woman began to scream bloody murder. “I would not! I would have held my ground!”
“Bullshit!” I yelled. I hated her, I hated her daughter, and I left.
If you care to learn how to direct or edit a movie, I recommend Edward Dmytryk’s books.
Now I feel righteously indignant.
As Paul Harvey used to say, “Good day.”
I love Panic in the Streets, which has an especial resonance right now....I also love that you gave Kazan a smile and a nod. I bet that's a moment that stayed with him. And finally, you're absolutely right. Just about everyone would have named everybody they knew to stay out of prison. I just watched a pretty good Dmytryk film for the first time, the Western "Shalako," with Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, and Woody Strode. The plot kind of reminds me of your story. These pampered royals are on a hunting tour across the West and trespass on reservation land, but rather than leave when they can, they scoff at the idea that the Indians would be able to do anything to them.
What’s sad about Dymytryk is that many more people know about his naming names than do his time served. In Arizona. And I wish more people would watch Kazan’s movies instead of judging him. Thanks again for your series.