Don’t
preach that everything done for others is good, while everything done for one’s own sake is evil. This damns every form of personal joy and happiness.
Don’t
preach that everything “public-spirited” is good, while everything personal and private is evil.
Don’t
make every form of loneliness a sin, and every form of the herd spirit a virtue.
Remember that America is the country of the pioneer, the non-conformist, the inventor, the originator, the innovator. Remember that all the great thinkers, artists, scientists were single, individual, independent men who stood alone, and discovered new directions of achievement—alone.
Don’t
let yourself be fooled when the Reds tell you that what they want to destroy are men like Hitler or Mussolini. What they want to destroy are men like Shakespeare, Chopin and Edison.
If you doubt this, think of a certain movie, in which a great composer was damned for succumbing, temporarily, to a horrible, vicious, selfish, anti social sin. What was his sin? That he wanted to sit alone in his room and write music!
[The movie AR refers to is
A Song to Remember;
her review of it is presented later in the chapter.]
12. Don’t Use Current Events Carelessly.
A favorite trick of the Communists is to insert into pictures casual lines of dialogue about some important, highly controversial political issue, to insert them as accidental small talk, without any connection to the scene, the plot, or the story.
Don’t
permit such lines.
Don’t
permit snide little slurs at any political party—in a picture which is to be released just before election time.
Don’t
allow chance remarks of a partisan nature about any current political events.
If you wish to mention politics on the screen, or take sides in a current controversy—then do so fully and openly. Even those who do not agree with you will respect an honest presentation of the side you’ve chosen. But the seemingly accidental remarks, the casual wisecracks, the cowardly little half-hints are the things that arouse the anger and contempt of all those who uphold the opposite side of the issue. In most of the current issues, that opposite side represents half or more than half of your picture audience.
And it is a sad joke on Hollywood that while we shy away from all controversial subjects on the screen, in order not to antagonize anybody—we arouse more antagonism throughout the country and more resentment against ourselves by one cheap little smear line in the midst of some musical comedy than we ever would by a whole political treatise.
Of all current questions, be most careful about your attitude toward Soviet Russia. You do not have to make pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet pictures, if you do not wish to take a stand. But if you claim that you wish to remain neutral,
don’t
stick into pictures casual lines favorable to Soviet Russia. Look out for remarks that praise Russia directly or indirectly; or statements to the effect that anyone who is anti-Soviet is pro-Fascist; or references to fictitious Soviet achievements.
Don’t
suggest to the audience that the Russian people are free, secure and happy, that life in Russia is just about the same as in any other country—while actually the Russian people live in constant terror under a bloody, monstrous dictatorship. Look out for speeches that support whatever is in the Soviet interests of the moment, whatever is part of the current Communist party line.
Don’t
permit dialogue such as: “The free, peace-loving nations of the world—America, England, and Russia ...” or, “Free elections, such as in Poland ...” or, “American imperialists ought to get out of China ...”
13. Don’t Smear American Political Institutions.
The Communist Party line takes many turns and makes many changes to meet shifting conditions. But on one objective it has remained fixed: to undermine faith in and ultimately to destroy our American political institutions.
Don’t
discredit the Congress of the United States by presenting it as an ineffectual body, devoted to mere talk. If you do that—you imply that representative government is no good, and what we ought to have is a dictator.
Don’t
discredit our free elections. If you do that—you imply that elections should be abolished.
Don’t
discredit our courts by presenting them as corrupt. If you do that—you lead people to believe that they have no recourse except to violence, since peaceful justice cannot be obtained.
It is true that there have been vicious Congressmen and judges, and politicians who have stolen elections, just as there are vicious men in any profession. But if you present them in a story, be sure to make it clear that you are criticizing particular men—
not the system.
The American system, as such, is the best ever devised in history. If some men do not live up to it—let us damn these men,
not
the system which they betray.
Conclusion
These are the things which Communists and their sympathizers try to sneak into pictures intended as non-political-and these are the things you must keep out of your scripts, if your intention is to make non-political movies.
There is, of course, no reason why you should not make pictures on political themes. In fact, it would be most desirable if there were more pictures advocating the political principles of Americanism, seriously, consistently, and dramatically. Serious themes are always good entertainment, if honestly done. But if you attempt such pictures—do not undertake them lightly, carelessly, and with no better equipment than a few trite generalities and safe, benevolent bromides. Be very sure of what you want to say—and say it clearly, specifically, uncompromisingly. Evasions and generalities only help the enemies of Americanism—by giving people the impression that American principles are a collection of weak, inconsistent, meaningless, hypocritical, worn-out old slogans.
There is no obligation on you to make political pictures—if you do not wish to take a strong stand. You are free to confine your work to good, honest, non-political movies. But
there is
a moral obligation on you to present the political ideas of Americanism strongly and honestly—if you undertake pictures with political themes.
And when you make pictures with political themes and implications—
Don’t
hire Communists to write, direct or produce them. You cannot expect Communists to remain “neutral” and not to insert their own ideas into their work. Take them at
their
word, not ours.
They
have declared openly and repeatedly that their first obligation is to the Communist Party, that their first duty is to spread Party propaganda, and that their work in pictures is only a means to an end, the end being the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. You had better believe them about their own stated intentions. Remember that Hitler, too, stated openly that his aim was world conquest, but nobody believed him or took him seriously until it was too late.
Now a word of warning about the question of free speech. The principle of free speech requires that we do not use
police force
to forbid the Communists the expression of their ideas—which means that we do
not pass laws
forbidding them to speak. But the principle of free speech
does not
require that we furnish the Communists with the means to preach their ideas, and
does not
imply that we owe them jobs and support to advocate our own destruction at our own expense. The Constitutional guarantee of free speech reads: “Congress shall pass no law ...” It does not require employers to be suckers.
Let the Communists preach what they wish (so long as it remains mere talking) at the expense of those and in the employ of those who share their ideas. Let them create their own motion picture studios, if they can. But let us put an end to their use of our pictures, our studios and our money for the purpose of preaching our exploitation, enslavement and destruction. Freedom of speech does not imply that it is our duty to provide a knife for the murderer who wants to cut our throat.
[AR later remarked: “When the Screen Guide was first printed, the major studios generally ignored it. Then I began hearing of one studio after another ordering dozens of copies from the Motion Picture Alliance. And the attacks on businessmen as villains disappeared; if you watch the old movies, you can see the difference. ”]
1947
[The following was probably also written by ARfor the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.]
The pictures reviewed below are offered as examples of the technique of implications. There are many other pictures which contain scenes, episodes or lines of dialogue favorable, wittingly or unwittingly, to the general cause of collectivism. But there is no point in listing all such pictures, nor in denouncing anyone for past mistakes. Our purpose is not to denounce specific films, but the methods which they represent. With the help of the points given above, anyone who wishes to keep the Red trend off the screen will be able to detect it himself in any particular script or picture.
Most of the people connected with the production of the pictures reviewed below were not Communists nor Communist sympathizers.
That
is what makes the situation both needless and tragic. Any man has the right to produce any picture he wishes and to preach any ideas he believes. But it is shocking to see the talent, the skill, the technical knowledge and the wealth that went into the making of these pictures, turned to the furthering of a cause which does not represent the convictions of the men involved and which they are the first to repudiate when it is named.
It is the methods by which this is done that we wish to expose to its victims; not as a reproach, but as a warning. If anyone still wishes to permit these practices after he understands their nature—that is his right. And it is ours to denounce him.
Nobody has ever been endangered by being offered poison in a bottle bearing a label with a skull-and-crossbones. Poison is usually offered in a glass of the best wine—or, modem version, in a quart of the milk of human kindness.
The Best Years of Our Lives
Many passages of this picture preach patriotism and sympathy for veterans; this helps the unwary to accept, under the guise of patriotism, the attacks on the free enterprise system which this picture also contains.
1. A returning war hero is denied a seat on a plane, to make room for an offensive businessman who is obviously rich. What is the point of this episode—if not the implication that the vicious, unpatriotic rich are grossly indifferent to war heroes? What impression can this leave with the audience—if not resentment against businessmen? The episode is the more offensive when we remember that it implies a distortion of real facts. It was not the businessmen [during World War II], but the bureaucrats who controlled priorities on air travel. If any plane seats were obtained unfairly, it was not money that bought them, but political pull. And the only instance of this kind that attracted nationwide attention involved soldiers who were thrown off a plane, not to make room for a businessman, but for a dog belonging to an amateur politician of pronounced left-wing tendencies. If the picture episode had no such counterpart in real life, it would be bad enough. But to attach to a businessman the specific offense committed by a prominent business-baiter is an act of cynical, sickening dishonesty.
2. The returned war hero takes a job in a drugstore owned by a national chain, where he is treated unfairly, offensively and antago nistically. What does this imply—if not the idea that businessmen discriminate against veterans? What impression will this give to nerve-wracked young soldiers—if not the idea that they will get no chance in civilian life so long as jobs depend on private business and private employers? There is another distortion of facts here: most of the drug companies give special preference to veterans applying for jobs; and so do most other business concerns. If anyone claims that this sequence in the picture is not to be taken as a reflection upon business—let him answer whether he would make a picture showing a labor union discriminating against veterans, and then claim that it is not to be taken as a reflection upon labor.
3. The picture denounces a banker for being unwilling to give a veteran a loan without collateral, a refusal which is treated as if it were an act of greedy selfishness.
This
is a demagogue’s conception of economics. Nobody but a moron could really believe that the money involved in a bank loan belongs to the banker; that he refuses loans out of personal heartlessness, and that he ought to hand out the money not on the basis of his depositors’ security but on the basis of the applicant’s need. If some banker took the admonition of this picture seriously, who would suffer most and lose their life-savings but the very people that the Leftists love to cry over—the small depositors, the widows and orphans?
[This idea was later dramatized by the character of Eugene Lawson in
Atlas Shrugged] This incident is, perhaps, the all-time low in irresponsible demagoguery on the screen. To spread such ideas of economics is to take advantage of the most naive and least educated members of the audience. It can have no result except to arouse the worst instincts—the desire to loot—in some helpless illiterates who might get the idea that the banks are holding out on them.
4. In the drugstore fight episode, an obnoxious character is presented as being anti-Communist, and he soon turns out to be anti-Semitic and anti-Negro as well. It is implied that these two attitudes go together, that anyone who is anti-Soviet is pro-Nazi. When we consider that the majority of people in this country are now most bitterly anti-Soviet, the consequences of what this episode suggests to them are frightful to contemplate.
Americans are often confused about economics, and they may be uncertain on whether this picture is or is not an attack upon the American economic system. So we shall quote from an expert. An Associated Press dispatch of May 12, 1947, from Moscow, states that the Soviet newspaper
Culture and Life
denounced American movies for spreading propaganda favorable to capitalism and the American way of life. Commentator Yuri Zhukov wrote that American producers were cooperating with the State Department and “monopoly capital” to glut the world market with films “giving a distorted sweetened picture of life in the United States.” Zhukov, however, praised one American film—
The Best Years of Our Lives.