One of the Hollywood Ten

The movie tries to tell two stories, related but distinct: the story of the Hollywood ten and the blacklist, and the story of how Herbert Biberman came to make "Salt of the Earth" after serving his sentence for contempt of Congress. It does a fair job of telling the second story--but only fair; it does a terrible, dumbed-down job at the first. And the same defects mar both of them.

Start with a trivial, nitpicky error: the name of the striking union in "Salt." It was in fact the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers. The movie calls it International Minemill Union or something of the kind. Why does this detail matter?

It matters because Mine Mill (as it was known) was a real union, with a real history. Its roots were in the early 20th century Western Federation of Miners, a union once close to the IWW, which waged bitter struggles against the copper bosses and was ultimately destroyed. Mine Mill itself was founded as a CIO union which by 1952--when "Salt" was filmed--had been expelled from the CIO, along with the West Coast longshoremen and others, essentially for refusing to purge the Communists and endorse Cold War foreign policy.

In other words the union had a context, which included the Communist Party, which was (after all) what Biberman et al. were being punished for refusing to abjure. It wasn't fortuitous that he and the blacklisted writer and producer Michael Wilson and Paul Jarrico decided to film a Mine Mill strike story. It was part of the resistance of the Communist-influenced Left to being forced out of the labor movement and out of popular consciousness,

marginalized and demonized and rendered utterly ineffectual.

But in the movie the union and the strike seem to have sprung from nowhere, the union members and leaders are brave innocents who don't know about movies and the Cold War, and they're rescued from an FBI-led vigilante mob by--the New Mexico State troopers! (I knew something was terribly wrong when some people in the audience actually cheered the cops' arrival.)

And the Ten have no context either. All the political and legal strategic decisions seem to be made by an informal gathering at a writers' hangout where Dalton Trumbo--sorry, "Dalton Trumbo"--and Biberman make ponderous little speeches about Jefferson and the fascist danger. I don't doubt that those guys were capable of pomposity--I don't object that they're portrayed unflatteringly. But they were, in fact, CPUSA members, mostly of long standing, and that's not how decisions were made.

Nor were decisions made in the vocabulary of civil libertarianism. This vocabulary *was* deployed in public statements, but part of the problem (which, by 1949, at least three of the Ten--Lardner, Maltz, and Trumbo--were keenly aware of) was the disconnect between this Jeffersonian rhetoric and the actual ideas of Marxism-Leninism (not to mention the actual conditions obtaining in Stalin's USSR.)

Near the end, a vigilante accuses Biberman of echoing Marx; no, comes the answer, it's Jefferson. In the popular Front years the CPUSA had put forward the slogan "Communism is 20th Century Americanism." By 1952 the Popular Front was a distant memory, yet this movie "Biberman" seems to have out-Browdered Browder and dropped the Communism part altogether.

So the movie gives us, not the Ten, but the version of the Ten that the Party hoped would rally timid liberals to their aid. It was a fairly hollow construct 55 years ago; are today's audiences really so thick-headed that they won't see through it?

With cardboard heroes, a cardboard villain: Edward Dmytryk, who "named names" *after* serving his time, is presented as justifying his decision purely so he can go back to making movies. Now this may have been his real motive--certainly Lester Cole and Paul Jarrico, among others, believed it was. But it *wasn't* the motive he presented. He claimed that he had become disillusioned with Communism and couldn't see the point of sacrificing his career to a cause he had come to oppose. A rationale?--maybe. That's something people do, and audiences get to evaluate their sincerity or insincerity. But villains don't, as in the old Western formula, get off the stagecoach and immediately kick a puppy.

A friend of mine defended the movie on the ground that people know nothing about the Ten, so anything is better than utter ignorance. Leaving aside the question whether this cartoon history isn't, in fact, the same thing as utter ignorance, what people are we talking about? This movie is not going to find a big audience. Most of the people who saw it in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival were, um, well stricken in years and politically knowledgeable (if not necessarily very bright, cf. their reaction to the State Trooper sequence mentioned above.) And dammit, it's unforgivably patronizing to take the attitude that "Of course we know better, but this pabulum is good enough for--" someone else.

Context, context, context. The prison mess hall is shown as racially integrated--in 1949! In truth Lardner and Cole successfully challenged the segregated chow line in the prison at Danbury but this was a quirky exception. But this anachronism, like the error about the union's name, gives the game away: this is a movie about history that doesn't respect history, or the audience's ability to comprehend it. Is that because the filmmakers were too busy congratulating themselves on their nobility for making the movie at all? Are they cynical, dumb, both? I don't think it matters much. I'm glad my friend Lester Cole wasn't depicted, because that would have caused me real pain.

(Hopefully there are no spoilers, but I'm not sure and may let something slip)

After watching this film several times, I cannot imagine why it was not presented in theaters. It is an engrossing film set in an era that shames America and her reputation as a free nation. It is set during the cold war when the government was seeing reds under everyones bed.

Jeff Goldblum is wonderful as Herb. The whole cast is very good. This film points out how while the government was out hunting Communist, they were behaving exactly like the Communist they were so worried about and feared.

Everyone should view this film. It could happen again. Freedom of speech should not be taken lightly.

"One of the Hollywood Ten" attempts to tell two fascinating stories: one about writer/director Herbert Biberman and the other about the filming of "Salt of the Earth." This film could not have had a very big budget, and the direction is not very good, so how anyone expected to accomplish these massive feats is anyone's guess.

I am at a disadvantage: I can't possibly write anything that can compare to the comments about this film posted on IMDb, and I haven't seen Salt of the Earth. I did, however, grow up amidst the Red Scare. We in Catholic schools were warned by the nuns that the commies were coming. They would hold guns to our heads, ask us our religion, and when we answered "Catholic" (like we were all going to be real anxious to do that), we'd be shot. Communism was going to destroy the world, there were Communists under every bed, and everybody was insane on the subject. I have read and seen a good deal on HUAC, the McCarthy hearings, and Red Channels. Am I an expert? No.

I will reference a couple of the IMDb postings. One states that Gale Sondergaard was NOT a major actress and that Biberman was a minor writer. I'm unsure of the implication the poster was trying to make, but I venture to say that if Biberman and Sondergaard (who were married for 40 years, until Biberman's death in 1971) had been allowed to work for the next 20 years or so, who knows what might have happened to their careers? This insanity ruined lives.

Another poster made a comparison to tactics used by today's government. Well, I'll second that emotion. As he states, freedom of speech is not to be taken lightly. No, it isn't. And if anyone believes there isn't a move afoot to squelch it today, they're wrong.

Others mentioned inaccuracies. I'll bring up one. According to writer Patricia Bosworth, whose father, attorney Bartley Crum, defended the Hollywood Ten, the "Hollywood Ten" were not friends, and in fact, many of them did not know one another. Crum advised them all to tell the truth at the hearings -- that when asked if they were now or had been a member of the Communist party, to disarm the committee by answering truthfully. This was shot down by whomever their adviser was because asking about anyone's political leadings is unconstitutional, and the Ten wanted to fight the hearings on constitutional grounds. In the film, one got the impression they were all friends. Crum, by the way, labeled a subversive, was haunted by the FBI until he finally got rid of them by killing himself in 1959. Also, I know this is off topic a bit, but the FBI's largest file was on Frank Sinatra, who was believed to have been sent by the communists to influence the youth of America. Great group.

As far as this film, the stories were interesting, the direction was detached, and overall, it's not great. Jeff Goldblum is marvelous as Biberman, and there are some other excellent performances as well. I think the most important thing were the points made on the chirons at the end, one of which is that Salt of the Earth is the only film ever to be blacklisted. I am so grateful that it was; otherwise, we would all be communists today. Right.

I recently saw One of the Hollywood Ten at a screener. I think Jeff Goldblum does an exceedingly good job as Herbert Biberman as were some of the supporting players, especially the Spanish actors. I did have a problem with the overall style of the film which played more like a set of moving images rather than a "movie". Photographed quite beautifully by Nigel Walters but ultimately rather loosely and sloppily directed (almost amateurishly) with a number of obvious Brits putting on American accents, namely the usually brilliant John Sessions! This may win awards in the Icelandic Film Festival but Oscar will look the other way.

This is a superb film about Blacklisting of Hollywoods writers/directors and actors. Jeff Goldblum is fantastic as Director Herbert Biebelmen who made the acclaimed film "Salt Of The City". This is a very powerful film superbly Directed by veteran Welsh film maker Karl Francis. It also features a great supporting cast. Possible Oscar noms for this film.