In the summer of 1947, Crossfire, a controversial thriller exposing American anti-Semitism, was a critical and box-office hit, and RKO producer Adrian Scott was at the pinnacle of his career. Within several months, however, Scott became infamous as a member of the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted for his refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood reconstructs the production and reception of Scott's major films, exploring the political and creative challenges faced by Hollywood radicals within the studio system and reassessing the relationship among film noir, antifascism, anticommunism, and the politics of Americanism.

Introduction
Discovering Crossfire: Texts and Contexts

This project grew out of my lifelong passion for novels and movies (especially crime fiction and film noir), a commitment to progressive politics past and present, and a critical moment of archival serendipity. As I was beginning my dissertation research, I took a trip to the State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin. At that point, I had a rather vague notion that I would write on the process of adapting novels to film.

Though I had decided already, as a way of narrowing the field, to focus on crime fiction that became film noir, my list of prospects was still impossibly long, and I hoped that archival research might help me narrow the topic further. So I went to Madison on a fishing expedition, and in the papers of filmmaker Dore Schary, I reeled in a whopper. ...

Read Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood Online

Hardcover: 320 pages
Author: Jennifer E. Langdon
Publisher: Columbia University Press (September 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0231142501
ISBN-13: 978-0231142502

Conclusion
Freedom of the Screen? The Politics of Postwar Cultural Production

    [T]he Thomases and Rankins—they could not investigate the work [of the Hollywood Nineteen]; for their work would prove that they have taken the meaning of this country literally and through their talents have invested it with spirit and magnificence. The Thomases and the Rankins did not dare comment on one picture—for there was no such thing as a subversive picture.
    —Adrian Scott

In their defense of "freedom of the screen," Adrian Scott and his comrades had consistently challenged HUAC and the American people to judge them on their films, insisting that their politics were on the screen for all to see. Now, more than a half century later, it is sometimes difficult to see what all the fuss was about. Indeed, from our next-millennial perspective Crossfire seems rather tame and more than a little pedantic, while Scott himself and his utterly sincere and idealistic Americanism now seem about as radical as his clean, fuzzy argyle socks. ...

About the Author

Jennifer E. Langdon earned her M.A. in women's history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Ph.D. in U.S. cultural history from the State University of New York-Binghamton. She is currently the associate director of the University of California, Davis Humanities Institute.

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment