Nation Publisher and Hudson Institute Fellow Debate Communist Activities of Actors
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The publisher of Nation magazine, Victor Navasky, and a Hudson Institute fellow, Ronald Radosh, locked horns last night at the CUNY Graduate Center in a debate over the communist activities of Hollywood actors and the investigation of the film industry by the House on Un-American Activities Committee.
Mr. Radosh, who is co-author of “Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance With the Left” (Encounter Books), opened by saying “the simple truth is that the Hollywood Reds were part of a movement whose raison d’etre was to apologize for, support, and work on behalf of one of the 20th century’s worst tyrants, Joseph Stalin. “That the communists in Hollywood later suffered from the blacklist does not make them heroes or establish them as a group that should be honored or lionized.”
The audience laughed when Mr. Radosh noted Billy Wilder’s quip that only two of the blacklisted Hollywood 10 were talented and the rest were just unfriendly. Party leaders regularly interfered with the creative work of its Hollywood members, Mr. Radosh said, offering the example of “cultural commissar” John Howard Lawson’s instructing Budd Schulberg not to write would later become “What Makes Sammy Run” because it had the “wrong politics.”
Mr. Radosh said Mr. Navasky saw “naming names” as “the only original sin.” Mr.Navasky, who is author most recently of “A Matter of Opinion” (Farrar Straus and Giroux), opened by saying that the last time they shared a platform, Mr. Radosh flattered him “by saying I was the one person most responsible for perpetrating the myth that the victims of the Hollywood blacklist were heroes and that the informers were victims.”
Mr. Navasky, saying that while he preferred to think his book “Naming Names” was more nuanced than Mr. Radosh’s characterization, averred that Ring Lardner Jr. was a hero. Lardner’s response to the committee,”I could answer the question … but if I did, I would hate myself in the morning,” fits Hemingway’s definition of courage as “grace under pressure,” he said.
Mr. Navasky said counter-subversives like McCarthy and others have always done more damage than subversives in this country. He gave four reasons why he feels Hollywood Reds did more good than harm, such as the fine movies they wrote (“Wizard of Oz,” “High Noon,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”) and that they resisted when it mattered most. “There are times when resistance becomes identical to morality,” he said.
Mr. Radosh said the McCarthy era was neither “the American gulag” nor a reign of terror. “In a reign of terror, people are killed.” The debate was sponsored by the Nation and the Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation.