Jerrold Nadler and “Survivors” Panel as myth of Blacklist goes on (NYC) Nov 24, 2009

Is there a blacklist happening to day? Oh yes!! Yes and YES. Can you say Glenn Beck, David Horowitz, Nonie Darwish and Robert Spencer? This revisionist history must stop. It’s time to demand the TRUTH. Now is The Time to Stop the Real Blacklists happening as you read this announcement of a ridiculous ‘Survivors” Panel

ZERO HOUR and the myth of the Blacklist goes on and on and on. Will they EVER get over it?

Jim Brochu‘s award-winning play about the life of theatre legend Zero Mostel hosted “Survivors of the Blacklist: A Panel Discussion” on Tuesday evening, November 24th, 2009 at 7 p.m. at Theatre at St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street). This very special event was free to the public.

Following a sneak-peak of “Zero Hour”, performed by Jim Brochu, film historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne moderated a discussion of the notorious Blacklist among a group of distinguished guests, many of whom were actually blacklisted in the 1950s.

Scheduled to appear on the panel were:

• Lee Grant (actor, director),
• Jules Feiffer (playwright, cartoonist),
• Victor Navasky (former editor of The Nation, author of Naming Names),
• Christopher Trumbo (playwright, son of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo),
• Joe Gilford (playwright, son of Madeline Lee and Jack Gilford),
• Jean Rouverol (actor, author) and Cliff Carpenter (actor)

The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, US Congressman and senior member of the House Judiciary Committee introduced the panel.

This historic gathering of those targeted by the blacklist, either directly or by relation, addressed many of the issues taken up in “Zero Hour”,  such as who was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and why.

The discussion also focused on the numerous parallels between the communist “witch hunts” of the 1950’s and today’s “war on terror”.

The evening included:

• · Congressman Jerrold Nadler who spoke for about 5 – 10 minutes.
• · An excerpt from Zero Hour (10 – 15 minutes)
• · Robert Osborne  introduced the eight panelists and moderated a discussion relating to the blacklist (approx 1 hour)
• · The panel took questions from the audience for about 30 minutes

For those who made not have read Ann Coulter’s awesome book , “Treason” here’s some of the FACTS regarding what really happened (not this revisionist mythology.

It is one of the most enduring lies created by leftists: that all Hollywood trembled in fear over the persecution allegedly launched against Tinseltown by Sen. Joe McCarthy.  Along with the infamous Hollywood 10, actors, actresses, directors, producers and even the guys who swept the studio floors were allegedly writhing in agony, fearing they’d become victims of McCarthyism,  and driven into unemployment and poverty.

There are just a few things wrong with this – it’s not true, Ann Coulter writes in her best-selling  book, “Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.”

Nowadays, nobody bothers to point out that the phrase “McCarthyism” first appeared in the pages of the Communist Party’s organ in the U.S., the Daily Worker, which got it directly from the bowels of the NKVD’sMoscow headquarters at 3 Dzerzinski Square, where it was coined by the Stalinist disinformation experts in the belief that leftist useful idiots in the U.S. would adopt it as their own. Which of course they did, eagerly, and continue to do so even today.

The hysterical cry of the terrible consequences of blacklisting – of McCarthy depriving honest hardworking Hollywood celebrities of an opportunity to ply their trade, was based on a lie. But as Coulter observes, everything we know about Joe McCarthy is a lie.

The fact is that the so-called blacklisting began when the House Committee on Un-American Activities held hearings to determine the extent of communist penetration of the film industry, which was extensive. Witnesses known as the Hollywood 10, acting under orders from their Communist bosses, refused to admit under oath that they were members of the Communist Party. For this contempt of Congress they went to jail for a brief of time.

The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeals. And these so-called “victims” of the McCarthyite reign-of-terror, instead of being deprived of their civil liberties, “had the benefit of legal counsel, trial by jury, and proof beyond a reasonable-doubt standard,” Coulter writes. “Still the cosseted, over-pampered Hollywood elites were shocked to discover they could be held responsible for anything they did, and vowed that the rest of the country would never hear the end of it.“

“At about the same time – under the legal system Communists revered, Stalin executed, starved, exiled or imprisoned more than ten million people.” Coulter writes: “Ten Hollywood scribblers who subscribed to an ideology responsible for the murder by the million refused to admit their membership in the Communist party to a House Committee,” which McCarthy had absolutely nothing to do with.

As Coulter repeatedly points out, McCarthy was a senator, not a member of the House of Representatives, where the committee did its work. He concentrated on Communist infiltration into the U.S. Government, which the evidence from the Venona papers intercepts now clearly shows to have been massive.

Recoiling in fear of being labeled employers of traitors, courageous Hollywood film  moguls canned all 10 and refused to use them, at least not under their real names. As a result some of them were simply allowed  to work under false names and kept on writing films and getting well paid.

Over and over we are told that the so-called blacklist created a reign-of-terror in Tinseltown, with everybody in filmdom cringing in fear. Coulter reveals the terrible exile endured by one of the blacklistees: Norma Barzman, who was forced to flee not to Devil’s Island, but instead to Gay Paree, where, in her own words, she suffered such grievous punishment as having “… dinner with Picasso every Tuesday night when we were at our country house in Provence. Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, Jacques Prevert were our friends. Plus we got to work with all the amazing European directors including Vittorio De Sica and Constantin Costa-Gavras. It was hard, but was also the time of my life.” Oh, the horrors of it all!

“Meanwhile,” Coulter notes, “back in the country they preferred [the U.S.S.R.], people were being whisked off to Soviet gulags in the dead of night. They were being sentenced to work in forced labor camps. They were sent to Siberia for five years. They were being shot execution-style after being forced to confess to absurd diabolical conspiracies.”

But there was a real Hollywood Blacklist you never hear Leftists talking about. As NewsMax.com reported in The Left’s Lies That Never Die, conservative anti-Communists in Hollywood were denied work because of their beliefs. Men such as Bruce Cabot, Ward Bond, Adolph Menjou and many other members of John Wayne’s anti-communist Motion Picture Alliances were blacklisted and found work only in Wayne’s movies.

In “Treason” Ann Coulter proves her point again and again: “Everything you think you know about Joe McCarthy is a Lie.”

NOW ask yourself this question : Is there a Blacklist happening today? Oh yes!! Yes and YES.

Can you say Glenn Beck, David Horowitz, Nonie Darwish and Robert Spencer?

This revisionist history must stop. It’s time to demand the TRUTH.Now is The Time to Stop the Real Blacklists happening as you read this announcement of a ridiculous ‘Survivors” Panel

And as for the play that was hosting this “Survivors’ Panel: “ZERO HOUR” made its Off-Broadway premiere at Theatre at St. Clement’s

For more information about Zero Hour, visit www.zerohourshow.com