Stolen Lies? It Sounds Like TCM’s Red Eddie Muller is Ripping Off Dead Men’s Blacklisting and “Graylisting” Lies

By David in TN and N.S.

“TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 A.M. ET is Cruel Gun Story (1964).”

N.S.: David’s “just the facts, ma’am” description reflects his increasing dissatisfaction with Red Eddie Muller, a dissatisfaction I share. (If I have misunderstood you, David, I apologize in advance.)

By David in TN
Saturday, December 11, 2021 at 5:19:00 P.M. EST

Nicholas,

You read me right.

A couple of weeks ago, Eddie Muller claimed in his outro for Tight Spot (1955) that Edward G. Robinson was being persecuted by “witch hunts,” and “gray listed.” Actually, Robinson was getting leading roles regularly during the 50s in B pictures, which was good for an actor over 60 by this time.

Eddie said something like, “Cecil B. DeMille, one of the staunchest conservatives in Hollywood, gave Robinson a major role in The Ten Commandments, saving his career.”

Eddie thinks Cecil B. DeMille giving Edward G. Robinson a role in The Ten Commandments was a surprise.

N.S.: I believe that Red Eddie ripped off a “blacklist” lie started by Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004).

“Bernstein West,” as he was known, as opposed to Lenny B. (1918-1990), who was “Bernstein East,” loved to assert that he had been “blacklisted,” after his huge success scoring The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) for “liberal” Hollywood producer-director Otto Preminger but that C.B. DeMille (1881-1959) rescued his career, in hiring him to score The Ten Commandments (1956).

First of all, I have never found any independent claim that Elmer Bernstein was ever blacklisted. Secondly, not only did Cecil B. DeMille not rescue blacklisted Hollywood figures, he wanted more people blacklisted! During the late 1940s, DeMille proposed to the Directors’ Guild that all members sign an oath, whereby they would refuse to hire any suspected Communists or Communist sympathizers. John Ford told DeMille to go to heck, and that effectively killed the proposal.

I have never found any mention of DeMille rescuing blacklisted Hollywood figures. Indeed, while film historian Scott Eyman called MPA co-founder Ward Bond (1903-1960), the “self-appointed Inspector Javert” of the Hollywood Right, Bond actually helped clear the names of some blacklistees, if they repudiated their former support of The Party, or could show him they’d been falsely accused of being Party members or sympathizers. I know of no such stories regarding DeMille.

Elmer Bernstein got the job of scoring The Ten Commandments (1956), because DeMille had wanted Victor Young, who had scored several of his epics, but Young had begged off, saying he was ill.

At imdb.com, I.S. Mowis speaks of “[Young’s] sudden death from a stroke at the age of 56,” but I do not believe there was anything sudden about it. The prolific, brilliant Young was one of DeMille’s favorite composers, and it was a great honor to be chosen by DeMille, who had directed one of the first feature-length pictures (1914’s The Squaw Man), and was one of the founders of what would become Paramount Pictures, to work on any of his pictures. I believe Young (1900-1956) could tell the end was near. I have not yet been able to determine whether Young recommended Bernstein to DeMille.

(If you want to get the measure of the man, alternately as sentimental slob and as ruthless businessman, see the performance in the role of C.B. DeMille in Billy Wilder’s masterpiece Sunset Boulevard (1950), by … himself!)

IMDB.com: “According to the 3/31/41 issue of Time magazine, he and Melvyn Douglas bid $3,200 for the fedora hat that Franklin D. Roosevelt had worn during his three successful campaigns for the presidency. They acquired the hat at a special Hollywood auction to benefit the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Both Robinson and Douglas were identified as ‘loyal Democrats.’ [Edward G.] Robinson would later be ‘grey-listed’ during the McCarthy Red Scare hysteria of the 1950s and be forced to make his living on stage.”

Lies.

There was no “greylist”; that was something Reds invented, years later, in order to stretch the notion of the blacklist. Either you were blacklisted, or you weren’t. The blacklist covered work in pictures and TV. There was no stage blacklist, at least not for being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. Only people who had been blacklisted were forced to make a living—and a very good one—on the stage.

After the blacklist ended, it became a status symbol to say you’d been blacklisted. Some Reds (almost all card-carrying Party members) were blacklisted, but it’s amazing how few were. All sorts of notorious sympathizers, like Robert Ryan and Richard Brooks, never were, though one of them later claimed to have been “almost” blacklisted. (See “graylisting.”)

Some Hollywood lefties would later claim to have been “blacklisted,” while other Red writers would later claim that people who had never been banned had been “blacklisted” or “greylisted.” Often, they’d see that someone had left Hollywood for a period of years, and make up a political fairy tale to fill the gap. For instance, some communists have long asserted that Aaron Copland had been blacklisted, and that Henry Fonda was “greylisted.”

Aaron Copland was a communist, but not a “Communist” (i.e., a card-carrying party member). Copland, who was one of the greatest composers of the Sound Era’s Golden Age, left Hollywood out of disgust at William Wyler’s butchering of his score to The Heiress (1949), for which he nonetheless won his sole Oscar for Best Original Score. (Out of anger at Wyler, Copland refused to appear at the Oscars ceremony.)

Henry Fonda simply chose to spend years on the stage, starring in Mister Roberts, but not because he was forced to.

As for Edward G. Robinson having to make a living on the stage, and being rescued by DeMille, that claim is nonsense on stilts. As David in TN remarked, Robinson was constantly working in movies and TV, prior to being cast by DeMille. Between 1950 and 1955 alone, he starred in 11 movies and appeared as guest star or star in six TV shows and TV movies. For a runty old man who had never been handsome, that would have been quite a run for the entire decade. It was only after appearing in The Ten Commandments, that Robinson starred in Paddy Chayefsky’s stage hit, The Middle of the Night, and for the balance of the decade, got much less TV and movie work than he had before DeMille “saved” him, when Robinson was supposedly suffering from “witch hunts” and “greylisting.”

One must keep in mind that, while patriots sought to blacklist Communists from movies and TV, Communists’ dream was to variously slaughter, imprison, and pauperize American patriots by the tens of millions, a task which they are presently working to realize.