A Double Outsider

Yates |A Double Outsider Michael Yates University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown A Double Outsider Edward Dmytryk. Odd Man Out: A Memoir ofthe Hollywood Ten. Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. ($14.95) As readers ofthis journal know, the Hollywood Ten were the directors, screenwriters, and producers sent to prison for refusing to answer questions about their political associations before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947. Their refusal to testify was based upon the Constitution's First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech and association. They could have invoked the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination, but this they would not do, on the very good grounds that they had done nothing wrong in the first place. The courts did not accept their free speech and association defense which thereby upheld their contempt ofCongress citations and sending them to prison. The Ten were not alone in suffering the consequences ofthe police state tactics now known as McCarthyism; thousands ofothers in Hollywood, in the schools and universities, in the government, and in the labor movement, were relendessly smeared, fired, and blacklisted; some were deported, jailed, or forced to seek asylum abroad; and two—Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—were executed for spying . While the causes ofMcCarthyism are sharply debated, one consequence is clear: the Left in the United States was dealt a blow from which it has yet to recover. McCarthyism could never have succeeded without the active collaboration of the liberals and former radicals who testified against their friends and comrades—those who, in Victor Navasky's telling phrase, "named names." In this regard , Edward Dmytryk is unique among the period's players . The director of such outstanding films as Crossfire . (one of Hollywood's first films to deal effectively with antiSemitism ), The Came Mutiny, and A Walk on the Wild Side, Dmytryk was both one of the Hollywood Ten and an informer. In fact, he was the only one of the Ten to recant and then testify as a friendly witness before HUAC. In this memoir, he offers an account of his life and times. Although Dmytryk claims that he feels no guilt over his testimony , he still appears to find it necessary to explain it, in great detail, and with every possible justification. What is more, this is his second memoir, and he covered some of the same ground in the first one (It's a Hell ofa Life But Not a Bad Living). There are many interesting stories and anecdotes in this well-written (but not so well-edited) book, from his encounters with the right-wingers John Wayne, Ward Bond, and Adolph Menjou, to his forays in England work when he was blacklisted, to his character sketches of communist stalwarts such as John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, and Albert Maltz, to, of course, his work as a director. And while he obviously loathes and pities the Communists, he condemns the Right as well and HUAC in particular. However, the underlying theme of the book is Dmytryk's attempt to cast himself as a double outsider, a man who hated both the yoke of communism and the incipient fascism of McCarthyism. In other words, he characterizes himself as the "odd man out." And given this self-portrayal, it is incumbent upon any reviewer to evaluate his arguments. In Naming Names, Navasky suggests four defenses which informers have used to justify their actions: "I didn't hurt anybody ;" "They deserved what they got;" "I wasn't responsible for my actions;" and "I was acting in obedience to a higher authority ." Mr. Dmytryk uses the first, second, and fourth of these. Unfortunately, none ofthem stands up very well to close scrutiny. He says that he only named persons who had already been named. This is not true; he named at least three persons publicly for the first time and one person for the first time ever (Navasky 283). His vivid condemnations ofhis former comrades and his assertion that the communists were absolutely cynical in their defense offree speech strongly implies that they got what they deserved. On more than one occasion he blames them more for his plight than those who instituted the purges and the blacklists. Yet...