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3. Hopper’s Wars
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| 67 3 Hopper’s Wars In the late 1930s, as a syndicated gossip columnist with a radio show and a growing and eager audience, Hedda Hopper became a national public figure, allowing her to participate in, and pontificate on, the world of politics beyond Hollywood, particularly the politics of war. In the years before the United States entered what came to be called World War II, Hopper fiercely embraced isolationism at a time when her own Republican Party divided on the issue. “Settle our home problems,” she urged in 1939, “and stop trying to run the rest of the world!” Hopper’s stance against intervention can be viewed, like that of the vast majority of Americans, as an “intense antiwar spirit,” more a “mood than a political position,” in historian Michael S. Sherry’s words.1 Yet she articulated clear ideological and political commitments that fit with the right-wing isolationist movement, and used her column to spur her readers to action, as did other isolationists in journalism such as William Randolph Hearst. In her first attempt to mobilize her readers around a political issue, she called for and supported a mothers’ movement to keep the United States out of war.2 After U.S. entry into the war, Hopper officially fell in line. She included reasons for “why we fight” in her column, justifying and giving meaning to the U.S. war effort, and lauded Americans for fulfilling their patriotic duty by entering the military or pursuing war-related activities. But she never “went to war with gusto” or fought “the Good War,” as World War II came to be remembered , in quite the same way as the rest of Hollywood.3 In sharp contrast, she readily committed herself to fighting the Cold War, but then Communism always provoked more opposition from Hopper than did fascism, at home or overseas. Hopper’s conservatism, antistatism, and anti-Communism shaped her transformation from pre–World War II isolationist to a Cold War interventionist . Her transformation occurred as Hollywood moviemakers and movies gained greater cultural authority and political influence. During World War II, movies came to be seen by audiences, moviemakers, and govern- 68 | Hopper’s Wars ment officials as “critical carriers” of cultural meanings and messages, powerfully influencing politics and guiding Americans through the hardships created by the war. “Moving images became the new alphabet, the hieroglyphics of meaning and memory for American culture,” Thomas Doherty argues.4 In her role as scribe and interpreter, Hopper profited professionally and politically from these developments. As a columnist, she now reported on the country’s most powerful form of popular culture, and, as a political figure, she now had greater credibility and standing in public life. Building on her failed isolationist efforts but using her newly gained credibility, Hopper took on two campaigns during World War II. First, she launched a defense of Lew Ayres, star of the antiwar film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), when he decided to become a conscientious objector, demonstrating Hopper’s commitment to protecting private conscience in a time of war that did not translate into the Cold War era. Her second campaign involved an attack on Charlie Chaplin’s professional, political, and personal life, which culminated in his leaving the United States in the early 1950s. Both campaigns stood precisely at the intersection of public and private life, sparked discussion and garnered support from Hopper’s respondents, and demonstrated the power and politics of Hollywood gossip during the World War II and Cold War eras. Prewar Isolationist to Cold Warrior Hedda Hopper’s isolationism, or anti-interventionism, was motivated by and encompassed many concerns. Scholars criticize “isolationism” as a derogatory term that originated with interventionists and as a “simplistic” and even inaccurate term, because it fails to capture the multiple and even contradictory positions held by those in—or placed by their opponents in—the isolationist camp. Hopper was a good example. She justified her isolationism in antistatist terms, as did the leaders and backers of the isolationist America First Committee. Hopper believed and feared that war mobilization would further centralize and strengthen the federal government and erode individualism .5 “Are we going to toss the heritage and strength our pioneer forbears gave us into the ashcan?” she asked dramatically. What Hopper sought as an isolationist was to maintain the United States at peace, independent, and free to act unilaterally in the world. To achieve this aim, she believed in building a strong military defense...