by
Elia Kazan
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Was I really a leftist? Had I ever been? Did I really want to change the social system I was living under? Apparently that was what I’d stood for at one time. But what shit! Everything I had of value I’d gained under that system. After seventeen years of watching the Soviet Union turn into an imperialist power, was that truly what I wanted here? Hadn’t I been clinging to once-held loyalties that were no longer valid?
Wasn’t what I’d been defending up until now by my silence a conspiracy working for another country? Hadn’t I watched my “comrades” staggering through political switch after political switch by instructions not written in this country?
this allegiance to 'country' feels so parochial and im sure he knows it
Reader, I don’t seek your favor. I’ve been telling you only some of the things I was asking myself on the way “down.” But if you expect an apology now because I would later name names to the House Committee, you’ve misjudged my character. The “horrible, immoral thing” I would do, I did out of my true self. Everything before was seventeen years of posturing. The people who owe you an explanation (no apology expected) are those who, year after year, held the Soviets blameless for all their crimes.
I WAS drifting. So I decided to consult some friends who I was certain were “on the side of the angels” and would want to talk me out of wrongdoing.
I wrote down what follows early in the spring of 1952, before I’d testified “cooperatively.” It is from a diary.
A conversation with Art Miller, in the woods back of my home. I mentioned that Skouras had implied I couldn’t work in pictures anymore if I didn’t name the other lefties in the Group, then told Art I’d prepared myself for a period of no movie work or money, that I was prepared to face this if it was worthwhile. But that I didn’t feel altogether good about such a decision. That I’d say (to myself) what the hell am I giving all this up for? To defend a secrecy I didn’t think right and to defend people who’d already been named or soon would be by someone else? I said I’d hated the Communists for many years and didn’t feel right about giving up my career to defend them. That I would give up my film career if it was in the interests of defending something I believed in but not this.
Art said that it would be a personal disaster for him if I was “run out of pictures.” He hoped that would not happen. He could see that it would concern me deeply. After all, he could write in jail, whereas I couldn’t make movies except with financing and an organization of some kind. I said I wasn’t contemplating doing it to save my job. But since this was going to happen, I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t. I only had to consider this: was I sacrificing for something I believed in? I didn’t believe in the secret membership of the Communists, had fought it when I was a member. I then told Art how I’d been pushed to resign from the Party.
Art and I had never been frank about the Communist business. This was as much my fault as his and as much his as mine. But mainly it was that no one asked if his friend was a Communist in these days. Art never offered to tell me. He knew I was anti-Communist, but I’d always refrained from what I considered to be “red-baiting.” Art went on about the political situation. He was against the Marshall Plan [which I was for; it rescued Greece] and against what we were doing in Korea. He said I was naive. We talked for three-quarters of an hour. He looked terribly worried. Walking back to the house, just before we came into the view of the other people, he stopped and put his arm around me in his awkward way—the side of his body against mine—and said, “Don’t worry about what I’ll think. Whatever you do will be okay with me. Because I know your heart is in the right place.” I was surprised by the phrase and, as soon as I could, wrote it down. “Your heart is in the right place.” It was like the truth in a pop song title. There was no doubt that Art meant it and that he was anxious to say this to me before we separated. We parted on affectionate terms.
[after he testifies cooperatively, arthur miller snubs him, so he says, a few months later, tho they do work together again ten years later]
I STILL hadn’t made up my mind what to do. I was edging toward cooperating with the committee, but of all the people I might name, the one for whom I felt the most concern and affection was Clifford. I certainly couldn’t name him—if I chose that way—without his permission. I made up my mind, as I asked him to have dinner with me, that if I found him in accord with my old “loyal leftist” position, which is what I expected, I’d not name him, not name anyone.
We ate at Clifford’s favorite restaurant, The Lobster, just off Broadway, where the environment was down to earth, the seafood fresh, and the waiters familiar. Then we walked slowly uptown, and I told him that I was of two minds, but seemed to be veering toward telling the committee everything I knew about the Party in the Group. Yes, I’d name the others in the cell with us, all seven of them, and name him too. Then I told him that if he did not agree to my naming him, I’d do as others had done, refuse to cooperate with the committee. I’d give up filmmaking and work in the theatre; I was prepared for that. “But,” I said, “both you and I know what the Party is. I remember you explaining the Stalin-Hitler pact to Frances Farmer sympathetically, but those days are long gone, aren’t they? You wouldn’t do that now, would you? Not sympathetically. I don’t have any respect for the Party’s secrecy and won’t mind breaking it, and I don’t have any respect for their program. I do have respect for the truth and the effect that it would have if it was spoken. I believe we should all of us name all of us, establish the truth of what went on. That would make clear how small the scale was, and this thing would be off our backs. But you are one of my best friends, and I won’t even consider that without your permission.”
He was silent. Naturally he’d given the issue a great deal of thought. To my surprise, I found that what he needed from me was what I’d needed from him, permission to name the other. We were, it turned out, in agreement, and when his time came he did the same thing I did, he named names.
The sad fact is that what was possible for me hurt Clifford mortally. He was never the same after he testified. He gave away his identity when he did that; he was no longer the hero-rebel, the fearless prophet of a new world. It choked off the voice he’d had. The ringing tone, the burst of passion, were no longer there. What in the end gave me strength drained him of his. I realize now that my action in the matter had influenced him strongly. I wish it had not. I believe he should have remained defiant, maintained his treasured identity, and survived as his best self. He was to die before he died.
CONCERNED friends have asked why I didn’t take the “decent alternative,” tell everything about myself and not name the others in the Group. But in the end that was not what I wanted. Perhaps ex-Communists are particularly unrelenting against the Party. I believed that this committee, which everyone scorned—I had plenty against them too—had a proper duty. I wanted to help break open the secrecy.
I had my childhood answer: distance. I withdrew. I was silent. Never as firm as Molly, I always saw two sides to every issue and every judgment. And so, in the body of my conviction, there appeared the worm of doubt. I still believed what I’d done was correct, but no matter that my reasons had been sincerely founded and carefully thought out, there was something indecent—that’s how I felt it, as shame—in what I’d done and something murky in my motivations. What I’d done was correct, but was it right? What self-concerns were hidden in the fine talk, how powerful a role had my love of filmmaking, which I’d been discounting, played in what I’d done? I felt unresolved, alternately humiliated then resentful of those who criticized me. Which is why I remained reserved and silent for so long. My refuge was what it had always been, to drown unhappy feelings in work.
No one who did what I did, whatever his reasons, came out of it undamaged. I did not. Here I am, thirty-five years later, still worrying over it. I knew what it would cost me. Do I now feel ashamed of what I did? When a friend who read the manuscript for this book recently asked if I had met with the others I would name as I had with Clifford and Paula and Lee Strasberg, I answered I had not. For a moment I wished I had. But to wish that now, after all these years, is meaningless. The truth is that within a year I stopped feeling guilty or even embarrassed about what I’d done, and the reason for that is a series of events in the year that followed, which I will now come to.
THE HOUSE COMMITTEE on Un-American Activities was not publicity shy. They rushed my statement to The New York Times the day after I’d given it and, suddenly, there it was on the front page of the world’s greatest newspaper. I started to read it but couldn’t. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. The statement didn’t represent my true feelings, which were not that clear but confused and contradictory. Here is a piece of diary, written the next day: “Stayed home all day. Miserably depressed. Can’t get my mind off it. I know I’ve done something wrong. Still convinced I would have done something worse if I’d done the opposite. I spend every minute making rationalizations for my act. Only one thing in my life before filled me with such shame and guilt: leaving Constance the way I did. This now seems sneaky too because no one had reason from my past conduct to anticipate I would do what I did. I couldn’t go to the Actors Studio or anywhere else. Molly keeps looking at me. Why?”
I thought it would let up, but it became a dogfight and I was the bone of contention. There were many phone calls, “unsigned” and hateful. I changed my phone number. When I began to move among people again, I found I was notorious, an “informer,” a “squealer,” a “rat.” I’d become the star villain for “progressives”; just as they’d expected me to be the staunchest defender of their position, they now labeled me the most treacherous of traitors. Others who’d done what I did, perhaps because less was expected of them, were not attacked as I was—not Burl Ives, not Jerry Robbins, not even Budd Schulberg. What made people especially furious with me was that I’d bought space in The New York Times for a statement (written by Molly) that urged others in my position to do what I’d done. Very soon I heard of meetings organized by the Communist Party (“Called by all Right-Thinking people”) to isolate me for attack. I’d become the primary target.
i mean this is crazy
I had become the target of opportunity for people seeking to promote themselves at my expense and an easy mark for every self-righteous prick in New York and Hollywood. I was especially scornful of the wealthy “liberals” in southern California who’d never lived without servants, never been involved in any action except a divorce action, and only seen the life of the streets through the windows of an expensive car.
right so everyone's unworthy then
He and I would have a schnapps together, the dwarf at my side, and Freddie would tell me his latest dirty jokes—an endless supply. When we got back to Munich for the interior shots, he turned into a boy; he played. Living with me in the magnificent Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel, Freddie got into trouble with a chambermaid, and late one night I had to rush to the police station and intercede for him. He was being threatened by the chambermaid’s husband; this unreasonable man was out to become famous by killing a movie star. Freddie was a child who couldn’t keep his fingers out of the cookie jar.
the way he talks about the men he likes is so revealing