Errata in the book “Radical Hollywood”

compiled by David P. Hayes

When published in 2002, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner’s book Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies (The New Press, New York) offered research and documentation on the infiltration of pro-Communist screenwriters into 1930s and 1940s Hollywood that had never before been offered to the many of us who read books about the movie industry’s Golden Era.  This article is not offered as an appraisal and recitation of that book’s virtues.  Rather, these pages serve as a companion and corrective to that book, citing the many occasions known to this author of errors in the published volume.

This list should not be considered exhaustive.  Some of the subjects treated by both the Buhle/Wagner book and this article are intimately known by the author of this article.  The errors listed would not have been known to me without that knowledge.  It must be surmised that there were errors on other subjects (horror films, for example) that escaped my notice.

On page xv: “… some of the best Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy… films, … owe heavily to the Hollywood left.”  The specific Laurel and Hardy films discussed in the text are derided by all of the roughly half-dozen consulted books on the subject as being the worst the team appeared in.  (This observation does not negate the possible truthfulness of the statement, but if the statement is true, the authors failed to name the films and the connections that leftists had with them.)

On page 35: John Howard Lawson’s “first assignment, at  MGM, in 1926, was to write sound dialogue for one sequence of Garbo’s Flesh and the Devil.”

MGM did not plunge into sound this early, and would take a wait-and-see attitude even after Warner Bros. was the first studio to incorporate two brief spoken-voice sequences into The Jazz Singer the following year.  Furthermore, Garbo was the last of MGM’s stars that the studio would introduce to sound film, concerned that audiences would not accept her Swedish accent.  (Although all other MGM stars would be heard on screen by 1929, Garbo’s voice waited until 1930.)

On page 90: The 1937 A Star is Born is said to have “looked enormously like What Price Hollywood? (1932), also produced by Zanuck… .”  In fact, both films were produced by David O. Selznick.  Selznick’s being the producer of the 1937 version is stated on the next page, contradicting the error of page 90 with regards to the 1937 version but leaving no correction regarding the 1932 version.

On page 119: The text refers to Edgar G. Ulmer’s credits as a set designer as having “included The Last Laugh, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and DeMille’s King of Kings.”

The last title is actually that of the 1960s remake of the 1927 DeMille film, which was called The King of Kings.  Although one might excuse omission of the “The,” the absence is striking considering the authors’ careful inclusion of it in regards to The Last Laugh, on the same list.

On page 119: Ulmer’s The Black Cat has its year given as “1936” rather the correct 1934.  Ulmer’s departure from the studio that made The Black Cat occurred that same earlier year.  (See below.)

On page 120: “Sickened by the studio system and even more by the prospect of his own potential corruption there, Ulmer embarked on a series of nonrealist projects in other directions…”

In actuality, Ulmer was fired from Universal and blackballed by them from working for any other studio.  He had defied the studio owners by marrying the mistress of one of the Laemmle family.  This story has been told by Shirley Ulmer at revival screenings of her late husband’s films.  Her composure suggests that she was proud of the price that her husband placed on her.

On page 121:  The year for The Most Dangerous Game is given as “1934,” not the correct 1932.

On page 129: Regarding the six “kids” who were introduced to movie audiences in Dead End, the book correctly notes that they were subsequently cast in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), and that the “same year, the best known of the young actors had already broken off to work at Universal as the Little Tough Guys (nine films between 1938 and 1943)…”  The actors who went to Universal were those who Warner Bros. released from their contracts believing (mistakenly, it turned out) their services were no longer needed.  Leo Gorcey was arguably the second most-prominent of the six “kids” yet Warner Bros. kept him under contract, thus accounting for his not working at Universal.  The quoted passage also errs in stating that the actors worked as “the Little Tough Guys.”  In actuality, their films (other than the first) were credited as starring “The ‘Dead End’ Kids and Little Tough Guys.”  The nomenclature “Little Tough Guys” referred to the additional kid actors hired for these films, as can be ascertained by noting that when Universal made three films starring “The Little Tough Guys” without naming “The ‘Dead End’ Kids,” these three Universal films alone had none of the kids from the Dead End movie just as these three films were absent any screen credit reading “The ‘Dead End’ Kids.”

On page 132: The authors contend that the writers of the Abbott & Costello comedy Hold That Ghost (1941) “had built into this film a decisive twist in film comedy: the horror burlesque.  In retrospect, after decades of postmodern and camp treatments of the theme, it may seem that horror naturally tends toward self-satire.  If so, the possibility had not yet been detected by 1940.”

Bob Hope had made two “ghost” comedies the two years immediately prior to the Abbott and Costello effort: The Cat and the Canary (1939) and The Ghost Breakers (1940).  The former was itself a remake of a 1927 silent picture which had added a humorous veneer to the frightful situations.  “Horror burlesque” had also been a staple of two-reel comedies produced by Mack Sennett and those starring Our Gang (Little Rascals) and Laurel and Hardy, among others.

On page 134: Recounting a scene from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the authors state that Costello’s response to a question is “I’ll bite,” to which the vampire played by Bela Lugosi responds, “No, I will.”  The quotes are accurate, but the particular vampiric character who responds to Costello is that played by Lenore Aubert.

On page 135: The text calls Holiday in Havana (1949) “Desi Arnaz’s debut feature.”  Actually, Arnaz had been in films since 1940’s Too Many Girls, a feature in which Arnaz has a prominent role.  (This film is often discussed in reports on Arnaz’s films, because during the shooting of Too Many Girls he met his future wife, Lucille Ball, cast as the female lead.)

On page 136: Republic Studio’s “Three Mesquiteers series, it is written, “finds John Wayne on the job in his first major screen role.”  These low-budget hour-long films, which first reached screens in 1938, came long after Wayne had played the lead in respected director Howard Hawk’s 1930 full-length (two and a half hours) Western The Big Trail, which sought grandeur by filming in a 70mm widescreen process.  From 1933 to 1935, Wayne was the indisputable lead of numerous quickly-made Westerns which were made under the same circumstances as the Three Mesquiteers titles cited here.  From 1936 to 1937, Wayne was the lead in several full-length action dramas for Universal—certainly a more enviable circumstance for an actor than his return to hour-long films at Republic.

On page 148: “In Bowery Blitzkrieg, Leo Gorcey, the most appealing of the boys [the East Side Kids], has made up his mind to leave behind the life of low-level stickup crimes by becoming a boxing champ.  This hope is doomed, but when neighborhood mobsters try to pull him back down to their level, he finds a tough cop (former gang member, played by Warren Hull) and social-reforming dame (Charlotte Henry) reaching out to the neighborhood ragamuffins like him, winning one soul at a time.”

This description is wrong on several counts: Gorcey had not participated in any stickup crimes, and when later his former colleague (played by Bobby Jordan) does drift into such crimes, Gorcey is indignant at the change; Gorcey’s being taken under the tutelage of the tough cop occurs before mobsters attempt to fix his fight; the mobsters’ interference in the fight for purposes of winning wagers is the extent of their attempting to pull Gorcey “down to their level”; Charlotte Henry’s role is of a school teacher who it seems has always lived in poverty, which would hardly warrant her being described as a “social-reforming dame”; Gorcey’s aspirations at becoming a winning boxer are not “doomed” by anything more serious than his having difficulty resisting occasional unhealthy foods.  (The one thing that threatens his win in the climactic boxing match has nothing to do with social causes, but the loss of blood Gorcey has experienced as a result of his donating some to a hospitalized friend shortly before his bout.)

On page 148: Bela Lugosi’s role in Spooks Run Wild is described as “a magician (and Nazi collaborator).”  The former part of the description is correct—although the magician occupation is revealed as a surprise for the ending—but there is no reference of any kind to Nazism at any time in the film.  Lugosi would play a Nazi operative in his one other film with these same co-stars—Ghosts on the Loose (1943).

On page 149: “Hal A. Chester” is how the book gives the name of the producer credited on film as “Hal E. Chester” (and who as an actor had been billed as “Hally Chester”).

On page 168: Of Mice and Men is said to be a work “which Columbia bought, chopped badly, and produced.”  In actuality, independent producer Hal Roach bought the property and produced the film, releasing it through United Artists.

On page 171: Frank Capra is said to have “directed Our Gang and Mack Sennett comedies.”  The latter employer did graduate Capra from writing to directing, but when Capra came to Sennett from rival Hal Roach (creator of the Our Gang series), Capra had written but not directed.  Capra never returned to Roach and thus never directed for him.

On page 183: The text states that the 1939 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was made after “MGM’s successful Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1938 prompted the studio to purchase the rights to Huckleberry Finn.” The pertinent adaptation of Tom Sawyer had been produced by independent David O. Selznick (as Selznick International Pictures) and released through his own United Artists.

On page 189: The book states: “Cabin in the Sky (1943) was the first A film with an all-black cast.”  Not considered by the authors, apparently, was MGM having entrusted their prestigious director King Vidor with a lengthy schedule of location shooting for Hallelujah! in 1929.

On page 251: Yank on the Burma Road (1942) is said to have “offered another, Republic B version of premature antifascism, this time in a gutsy Manhattan cabbie played by Barry Nelson.”  Republic did not release Yank of the Burma Road—MGM did.  Nelson was a contract player for MGM for awhile at this time.  (Nelson’s one role that will bring up his name to more people than any other role, would not be played until 1954.  As the lead in a live television production of Casino Royale, he was the first actor to play James Bond.)

On page 299: Quoting the Hollywood Quarterly in a passage about Sergei Eisenstein, the authors come to a point in the quote where the Quarterly had mentioned Eisenstein’s film Ivan.  The authors use square brackets to correct this title to Ivan [the Great].  This “correction” fails to properly identify the film, which is known (in English) as Ivan the Terrible.

On page 308: The book mentions “Laurel and Hardy’s last picture, Utopia, written by Howard Dimsdale, about a hapless pair who inherit an island of uranium ore”.  Dimsdale has no known association with the film, according to Randy Skretvedt’s authoritative history, Laurel and Hardy: the Magic Behind the Movies.  Skretvedt spoke with numerous people who worked with the comedians, and for this film, countered the claim printed elsewhere that exiled “unfriendly” HUAC witness John Barry had directed the film.  The film—produced in France with English, French and Italian financing—did not employ Americans other than the two leads until mid-production chaos prompted American director Alf Goulding being brought in as uncredited replacement for French director Leo Joannon, who failed to communicate adequately to the English-speaking stars.  Given that the authors of Radical Hollywood seek to demonstrate where political themes were communicated through scripts, it’s peculiar that their plot description stops after mentioning the “island of uranium ore”; the plot continues after that discovery with a depiction of the formation and collapse of an anarchic government.

On page 331: “They Won’t Believe Me, directed by Irving Pichel, features Robert Young as a man with a mistress who tries to murder his wife, fails, and is in the process of being convicted for the murder that he didn’t commit when he throws himself out the window to his death.”

Although this seems to be what is occurring, the surprise ending of the film shows us differently.  (The fact that there is a surprise ending is usually cited in reviews.  For that reason, I won’t state what really occurs in the last seconds of the film.)

On page 331: Describing the plot of Detour, the book states that the loser protagonist “hits the road and finds himself picked up by a woman while hitchhiking.”

The drivers who accept the protagonist as a hitchhiking passenger are male.  When he does come to share the journey with a woman, it was she who was hitchhiking, he behind the steering wheel of the car he had already been driving before they met.

On page 332: Describing the plot of The Big Clock, the book states that “Ray Milland is an admired editor of Crimeways magazine (a pulp whose scale eerily resembles Henry Luce’s Time-Life empire).”

What the authors probably meant to say was that the “pulp is part of publishing group whose scale eerily resembles… .”

On page 346: “That naturalist classic, An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser, had become Hollywood tragedy when successive efforts to make a film version came to nothing.”

Josef von Sternberg completed his film version starring Sylvia Sidney, released by Paramount in 1931 under the same title as the novel (which was not the case with the better-known version, A Place in the Sun).  It remains true that productions attempted by Charles Chaplin and Sergei Eisenstein were abandoned.

On page 387: In a list of six films, the year for Gentlemen’s Agreement is given as “(1948),” as is that for Body and Soul.  Both were 1947 films.

On page 393: The book that states that “Pinky (1949) could be accurately described as the last film of Elia Kazan’s that failed to celebrate the superior qualities of American life.”

Kazan would sear the American preoccupation with material success at the expense of personal values in his autobiographical film The Arrangement (1969).

On page 416: The origin of the story for High Noon is said to “be found in a Collier’s short story.”

Although the credits of the film would lead a viewer to believe this, this is not true.  The story was devised as a screen original, and was written with no knowledge of any parallel in a print edition.  When the film was in pre-production, the distributor’s law department discovered the existence of a similar story in a magazine.  Rather than risk an infringement suit, the studio considered it cheaper to buy the movie rights to the story before there was a movie released to which the magazine story could be compared.  Having now paid a small price for screen rights to the story, the studio decided to list the magazine story on a screen credit, thereby according the movie a prestige.  (This account of events is related in a documentary produced and hosted by Leonard Maltin, included on some video versions of the film issued by Republic Home Video.)

On page 417: Recounting Carl Foreman’s screenplay work after So This is New York (1948), the book states that producer Stanley “Kramer was the writer’s meal ticket.  Their association lasted through four of the more critically successful films of the post-war era—Home of the Brave, Champion, The Men, and High Noon.”

Missing from the list of Kramer movies on which Foreman received salary and screenplay credit is Cyrano de Bergerac, which certainly could not be excluded from any list of “critically successful” films of its period: the plaudits for José Ferrer’s performance were as strong as those within the Motion Picture Academy voters who awarded Ferrer an Oscar for his lead performance.  If Cyrano were to be excluded from the listed films for cause, it could legitimately be so excluded for a different, legitimate reason.  Foreman’s screenplay credit was scarcely earned; he didn’t have a substantive contribution.  Then again, he shouldn’t have wanted to put many words of his own into this screenplay, thus it was beneficial to the film that he did not.  Foreman’s efforts were limited to cutting about a fifth of the original play for time and adding a very few new passages of dialogue to substitute for dialogues that proved resistant to workable excerpting.

On page 429: “At this writing, A Medal for Benny has not been rereleased and was viewed at the Library of Congress.”

It would have been more accurate to write that the movie “is not currently in release.”  The movie was syndicated for local television broadcast and was shown in the 1970s.

On page 431: Of The Strange Woman, it is written that star Hedy “Lamarr herself coproduced this film—for the first and last time, in her case.”

Lamarr wrote in her memoir she did continue to co-produce films after this initial venture.  After buying a subsequent script on her own, Lamarr turned to her co-producers from the previous film (Hunt Stromberg and Jack Chertok), after which “we used the collateral of the Strange Woman negative to raise the money for Dishonored Lady.” (Quoted from Lamarr, Hedy, Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman, beginning of chapter 15.  The cited passage appears on pgs. 148-149 of the hardbound first edition: Bartholomew House, 1966.)  Lamarr would take up production yet again in 1953 on a script titled Femmina, (pgs. 259-260), but after the $400,000 budget was exhausted with only half the film completed, the project was abandoned.

On page 434: Statement: “Saturday’s Hero has so far not been rereleased and was viewed at the Library of Congress.”

As with A Medal for Benny, accuracy would dictate the statement that the film is not currently in release.  Saturday’s Hero was shown on local television channels during the 1970s.  (When its star, John Derek, drew attention for his young wife, Bo, local station programmers apparently gauged that there would be interest among movie buffs in the long-ago actor who had drawn the devotion of the actress who was then making men drool over her performance in Blake Edwards’s 10.)

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