Every night before bed, I’ve been reading a few pages of Brian Kellow’s biography of the Republican most loved by gay men. On the last night of the Bush Administration, I read this anecdote:
Once when featured player [in Annie Get Your Gun] Danny Nagrin announced that he was going to march in the Communist Parade with his wife, choreographer Helen Tamiris, Ethel exploded.
“You march in that parade, and you’ll never get a job anywhere else I work. I don’t care what you do anywhere else. But not in my show. I’m an American citizen, and I’m proud of it. . . . .”
Nagrin didn’t march in the parade, and Ethel’s strong feelings on the subject never changed. On April 29, 1950, she would serve as Queen of the Loyalty Day Parade down Fifth Avenue, which she did as a way of undermining the Communist Parade.
How the entertainment industry has changed since Ethel’s heyday. Then, she could get a man fired for marching in a Communist parade. But, had a Danny Nagrin today announced his intention to march in a Republican parade, the announcement alone would cost him his job.
While I would rather Ethel had allowed Nagrin to march in that parade, expressing his political views on his own time however he wanted, at least she didn’t fire him for holding those views. Many of those today who hold views at odds with the prevailing liberal ideology in Hollywood would not be so fortunate as that Broadway actor. Just ask someone who knows.
Well, as Ethel might put it, there is no business like this one:
Remember when Hollywood was anti-communist instead of just plain communist. Thats when Hollywood was mostly Republican. Now they glorify Che with 5 hour movies and vote Obama.
This reminds me. Isn’t the whole “The 50s were a dark time because commies were blacklisted” thing rather overplayed by leftists? I mean, I don’t doubt that people were informally shunned if they crossed a line, or threatened with it mano-a-mano, like in your Merman anecdote. Aren’t those guaranteed Constitutional rights, called “freedom of speech” and “freedom of association”? Wasn’t it mainly individuals, like Merman or Reagan, deciding whom they could stand to work with and what they were willing to put up with? And as supporters of dictatorship and death, don’t commies deserve to be confronted? (Yes, they do.) And don’t leftists in Hollywood do what they want to conservatives – blacklisting or worse (e.g., slander)?