While the studios were beginning to bring out anti-communist films, the right began to look for other targets. Not content with driving communists out of Hollywood, the right turned its attention to films with liberal messages. Ayn Rand wrote a Screen Guide for Americans in 1947 for the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of […]
The Screen is Red – book review
Brianton, Kevin Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2018, Vol.48(2), pp.64-67 Bernard F. Dick, The Screen Is Red: Hollywood, Communism, and the Cold War, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. 282 pp., illus. Hardcover: $65. During the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities – or HUAC – investigations of Hollywood in 1947, chairman […]
The Fountainhead (1949)
One of the oddest anti-communist films to come out of Hollywood in the period between the first and second HUAC investigations was the The Fountainhead (1949). Based on Ayn Rand’s bestselling book, and directed by MPAPAI founding executive committee member King Vidor, the film was a defence of the creative individual against the deadening collective. […]
Ignore press at your peril: Uni. expert
Article in the Local Paper, 9 November 2018 A senior University expert says that Victorian election candidates may be ignoring local newspapers at their peril. Dr Kevin Brianton, Head of Department, Communication and Media at La Trobe university, was commenting on the trend for candidates to use local press less for their messages to voters, […]
Philip Taffs’s Reviews > Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist
Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist by Kevin Brianton Philip Taffs‘s review Oct 10, 2018 really liked it John Ford once famously introduced himself: “I’m John Ford. I make Westerns.” To which Australian author, Kevin Brianton, might now rightfully respond: “I’m Kevin Brianton. I write […]
DeMille and the fascist salute
Swirling around the formal biographies on DeMille is the internet with its hundreds of blogs and web pages. Daniel J. Solove has argued that the internet will be increasingly powerful in defining reputation in the coming years.[1] On the web, there are many examples of DeMille and the meeting being misrepresented. Bloggers can take […]
Did Cecil B. DeMille have a foot fetish? Probably not.
One of the persistent myths about Cecil B. DeMille was that he had a foot fetish. DeMille Biographer Charles Higham in 1969 made the claim of DeMille’s foot fetism in his discussion of Feet of Clay (1924) where he wrote that there was ‘no doubt’ that DeMille’s obsession with feet drew him to […]
Run of DeMille Red Scare, Blacklist and a Directorial Feud
Run of DeMille Red Scare, Blacklist and a Directorial Feud December 8, 2017 Cinemontage Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist by Kevin Brianton University Press of Kentucky, 2016 Hardcover, 174 pages, $45.00 ISBN # 978-0-8131-6892-0 by Betsy A. McLane The blacklisting of Communists, former Communists, union supporters, […]
Roundup review
KEVIN BRIANTON Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist University Press of Kentucky Hardcover, 156 pages, $45 KentuckyPress.com. When legend becomes fact, print the facts. Finally! On October 22, 1950, during the height of the Red Scare, Screen Directors Guild members met to vote on the dismissal of […]
Mission to Moscow (1943) – Hollywood goes Stalinist
The most controversial of these pro-Stalin films was Mission to Moscow (1943) which was based on the autobiography of the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies. The film glorified Stalin at a time when the United States desperately wanted to maintain the alliance with the Soviet Union. The film glossed over […]