A short obituary for movie legend Kirk Douglas which appeared on the taxpayer-funded Voice of America website mentioned his successful attempt in the late 1950s to end the blacklisting by the Hollywood studios of American writers and actors accused of supporting communism and Soviet Russia.
Many of those writers and actors had done nothing wrong. But a few were indeed Communist Party USA members. Some, including the 1953 Stalin Peace Prize winner Howard Fast — in the early 1940s, the chief news writer and editor of VOA English radio broadcasts — spread Soviet propaganda and disinformation and indirectly facilitated Stalin’s takeover of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II.
The blacklisted Hollywood writers were not disloyal to the United States, but a few of them, especially Fast, were duped by Soviet propaganda and did a lot of harm to the cause of freedom in Eastern Europe by praising Stalin and censoring information about Soviet atrocities. Some of their pro-Soviet propaganda in VOA broadcasts was also used by American newspapers and radio networks. Even President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt believed in much of it, which could explain how easily FDR had agreed at the Tehran and Yalta conferences to Stalin’s demands for control over Eastern Europe and how he took Stalin’s promises of democratic elections at face value.
The VOA report mentioned that Douglas had helped to end the blacklisting of Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter for the Hollywood movie Spartacus, in which Douglas played the title role and was the executive producer. The report did not mention that the film was based on a bestselling book by VOA’s Fast, who had later become editor of the Communist Party USA’s newspaper the Daily Worker.
However, by the late 1950s, both Fast and Trumbo had resigned from the Communist Party. The Hollywood blacklisting became simply an un-American suppression of free speech, and in most cases, an unjust punishment.
Douglas helped to deliver the final blow to the McCarthy-period hysteria in Hollywood, which in the end had worked to the propaganda benefit of the Kremlin by showing the American public as confused, divided, turning against each other and easily manipulated.
This is not to deny the widespread presence of actual Soviet agents in that era in government and all other institutions of influence. But Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical antics discredited attempts to counter Soviet influence operations in the U.S. Fast’s case was especially egregious — his tenure at the U.S. government-run VOA was an affront to journalism, and he deserved to be condemned.
Most people eventually united against the Soviet enemy and tried to reverse the enslavement of Eastern Europe by Soviet Russia. They supported Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and the reformed VOA. By the early 1950s, VOA no longer employed pro-Soviet journalists. They were replaced by journalists who were refugees from communism.
For a more balanced and broader picture, VOA should have mentioned that Douglas also contributed to American efforts in defense of free speech behind the Iron Curtain, which at least some of the early VOA journalists initially helped to suppress.
Douglas’s most memorable contribution to the Cold War occurred in 1954. Radio Moscow reported at the time that Douglas, who had played the lead part in a movie based on Homer’s Odyssey, did not know who Homer was. Radio Moscow then praised the quality of superior Soviet education.
Douglas, whose Jewish parents had immigrated to the U.S. from present-day Belarus, responded in a May 6, 1954, RFE broadcast in which he spoke Russian and explained how the Radio Moscow propaganda piece about him was a complete lie.
His response to Radio Moscow is recalled fondly by former RFE/RL security director Richard H. Cummings in his Cold War Radio Broadcasting blog. Douglas said, “Ordinarily I wouldn’t dignify any communist propaganda merchant with a reply, but this broadcast’s true purpose is to picture the American people as a nation of ignoramuses, without education, breeding, or culture.“
In 1982, Douglas again lent his hand to fight communist propaganda. After the imposition of martial law in Poland by the communist regime, he participated in the special television program Let Poland Be Poland, which was produced by the U.S. International Communications Agency with private Hollywood partners. In Let Poland Be Poland, Douglas talked about the connection between artistic and political freedom, and he shared memories from his visit to the National Film School in Łódź, Poland in 1966.
I remember that back in 1982, quite a few VOA English newsroom correspondents and some VOA managers who profoundly disliked Ronald Reagan and his domestic and foreign policy were greatly upset by the U.S. government-Hollywood television cooperation in producing Let Poland Be Poland. To them, it was U.S. government propaganda. Many VOA broadcasters from Eastern Europe, of which I was one, did not see it that way. Neither did Douglas.
The VOA Polish Service broadcast on shortwave and medium wave radio the full audio of the television film with Douglas and other Hollywood stars. Even some imprisoned Polish Solidarity labor union activists were able to listen to it on radios smuggled into the internment camps where they were held. Reagan was their hero, and listenership to VOA programs in Poland grew by about 500% during his presidency. Douglas proudly took part in this U.S. government effort to counter propaganda from the Polish and Soviet communist regimes.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propagandists are again spreading lies around the world and trying to undermine American democracy, it would have been useful for the VOA to have mentioned in his VOA obituary Douglas’s defense of free speech, not only in the U.S., but also behind the Iron Curtain. VOA journalists themselves could have learned from a broader and more balanced presentation on how easily their predecessors were deceived by Soviet propaganda — and how liberals and conservatives later united to help win the Cold War by defending free speech.
Ted Lipien, a former Voice of America acting associate director, was in charge of the VOA Polish Service in the 1980s during martial law in Poland.
