Kazan and the Bad Times

Kazan and the Bad Times

Dalton Trumbo, a militant blacklisted screenwriter and novelist, commenting on the fifties struggle against government attempts to throttle the American left, said that in that battle there were

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Dalton Trumbo, a militant blacklisted screenwriter and novelist, commenting on the fifties struggle against government attempts to throttle the American left, said that in that battle there were no heroes or villains, only victims. Understandably, this view is impossible to accept for those whose lives were uprooted by blacklisting, or their careers derailed as Trumbo’s was, but it comes as close to wisdom in this matter as one is likely to come.

There is a practical side to his remark; revulsion toward informers who helped validate the various investigations into fellow artists had tended to deflect attention from the Un-American Activities Committee, the real culprits, and onto those whose resistance broke and who were led to cooperate.

I made my own position sufficiently clear at the time through my writings and statements; I thought the investigations of writers’ politics suspended democratic norms. My passport was canceled for nearly five years, but more to the point now is that in 1948, well before Hollywood had come under full-scale attack, my play All My Sons was pulled off the stages of the Army’s theatrical troupe in Europe at the behest of the Catholic War Veterans. The play raised the issue of war profiteering and the shipment of faulty engines to the Army Air Corps during the war and was deemed dangerous to troop morale. But more important, an order was issued–as I learned many years later–that any play of mine was also to be denied performance then and in the future. In short, it was a blacklisting not of offensive works but of a person, something that, incidentally, was common Soviet practice.

So I am perhaps overly sensitive to any attempts to, in effect, obliterate an artist’s name because of his morals or political actions. My feelings toward that terrible era are unchanged, but at the same time history ought not to be rewritten; Elia Kazan did sufficient extraordinary work in theater and film to merit its acknowledgment. Few of us are of a piece, as Trumbo seemed to be saying. Perhaps all one can hope for is to find in one’s heart praise for what a man has done well and censure for where he has tragically failed.

Be part of 160 years of confronting power 


Every day,
The Nation exposes the administration’s unchecked and reckless abuses of power through clear-eyed, uncompromising independent journalism—the kind of journalism that holds the powerful to account and helps build alternatives to the world we live in now. 

We have just the right people to confront this moment. Speaking on Democracy Now!, Nation DC Bureau chief Chris Lehmann translated the complex terms of the budget bill into the plain truth, describing it as “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” In the pages of the June print issue and on The Nation Podcast, Jacob Silverman dove deep into how crypto has captured American campaign finance, revealing that it was the top donor in the 2024 elections as an industry and won nearly every race it supported.

This is all in addition to The Nation’s exceptional coverage of matters of war and peace, the courts, reproductive justice, climate, immigration, healthcare, and much more.

Our 160-year history of sounding the alarm on presidential overreach and the persecution of dissent has prepared us for this moment. 2025 marks a new chapter in this history, and we need you to be part of it.

We’re aiming to raise $20,000 during our June Fundraising Campaign to fund our change-making reporting and analysis. Stand for bold, independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.

Onward, 

Katrina vanden Heuvel 
Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x