I Was A Communist For The FBI (1953)
Sept 3, 2018 1:14:11 GMT
mattgarth, vegalyra, and 2 more like this
Post by mikef6 on Sept 3, 2018 1:14:11 GMT
I Was A Communist For The FBI / Gordon Douglas (1951). By the early ‘50s, Hollywood studios were mad to convince the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) that they were all Real Americans. Sure, there were a few that joined the Communist Party, but the majority were with Washington in rooting out all those subversive Reds. Warner was leading the way with this film. “I Was A….” had a script based (ve-e-ery loosely, it is mostly fictional) on a series of “As Told To” articles in the Saturday Evening Post by a Pittsburgh steel worker named Matt Cvetic, played by Frank Lovejoy. Cvetic has risen high in the local Communist Party over a period of six years but finally revealed himself as an undercover agent. He subsequently testified before HUAC, a scene portrayed in this film, making the Committee itself one of the heroes. The “crime” of Communism, as shown in this film, is to, as the movie has it, divide Americans into groups that hate each other. “Dividing Americans” is how they describe organizing workers into Unions, striking if necessary, and talking to African-Americans about equal rights at work. These devious Reds! They are even shown making fun of the workers and calling them gullible. The Commies are not even sincere! They even laugh at Cvetic and call him a fanatic when he gets serious about justice issues. The movie shows, on the one hand, how naïve the average American is, but, on the other, just about everybody Cvetic knows, including his neighbors and his own family, his brothers and his son, heaps scorn and abuse on him because of his associations.
However, if you look past the anti-Communist, pro-right wing propaganda and just look for the B-movie gangster tropes, you may have a good time. Cutting through the surface politics, we have an undercover cop in the mob who has to protect himself and others without revealing his true agenda. We also have the scene (a couple, actually) where Lovejoy asks to be pulled out so he can resume a normal life, but is easily convinced to go back to work. Lovejoy’s acting is straightforward, without much flash, but as a man who has to keep his feelings under wrap, so it fits his character. Richard Webb (Captain Midnight!) and Philip Carey are his FBI contacts. James Millican is very good as Cvetic’s sly and smarmy immediate Party superior.
Strange Oscar Fact: Even though “I Was…” doesn’t even take a docu-drama approach like 1945’s “The House On 92nd Street,” and despite the plain truth that much, if not all, of what happens is made up, this film got an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Go figure.
Although there were a few anti-Communist films in the late ‘40s, the sub genre really got its start here with “I Was A…” The next year Warner returned to the theme by turning John Wayne loose to crack some Commie skulls in “Big Jim McLain” while Paramount would be heard from with “My Son John,” bringing in the well-known stage actress and Oscar winner Helen Hayes to portray a loving mother who begins to suspect that her son (Robert Walker, in his final film) has gone over to the dark side. 1953 saw Sam Fuller over at 20th Century Fox release “Pickup on South Street” which skipped all political activity altogether and just went straight to portraying the Commies as gangsters muscling in on a new territory.
1953 saw the premiere of a three season syndicated TV series with the same theme as “I Was…” It was “I Led 3 Lives” yet another true story of a man, Herbert A. Philbrick (Richard Carlson), who wrote a book of the same title about the years he spent as an advertising exec, a Communist Party member, and an undercover FBI informant (the three lives). It ran until 1956. I remember seeing the episode where Philbrick reveals to his grief stricken wife that he is really with the FBI.
About the time “I Led 3 Lives” went on the air, “I Was A Communist For The FBI” became a series on the radio. Dana Andrews voiced Cvetic for 78 episodes.
Such films and their hysteria are still important to know about if for no other reason than “Communist” and “Socialist” are again being flung about by people who couldn’t even start to define the words. They just mean a vague “unAmerican” to those who are so careless with their use.
Frank Lovejoy, Dorothy Hart, and James Millican
However, if you look past the anti-Communist, pro-right wing propaganda and just look for the B-movie gangster tropes, you may have a good time. Cutting through the surface politics, we have an undercover cop in the mob who has to protect himself and others without revealing his true agenda. We also have the scene (a couple, actually) where Lovejoy asks to be pulled out so he can resume a normal life, but is easily convinced to go back to work. Lovejoy’s acting is straightforward, without much flash, but as a man who has to keep his feelings under wrap, so it fits his character. Richard Webb (Captain Midnight!) and Philip Carey are his FBI contacts. James Millican is very good as Cvetic’s sly and smarmy immediate Party superior.
Strange Oscar Fact: Even though “I Was…” doesn’t even take a docu-drama approach like 1945’s “The House On 92nd Street,” and despite the plain truth that much, if not all, of what happens is made up, this film got an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Go figure.
Although there were a few anti-Communist films in the late ‘40s, the sub genre really got its start here with “I Was A…” The next year Warner returned to the theme by turning John Wayne loose to crack some Commie skulls in “Big Jim McLain” while Paramount would be heard from with “My Son John,” bringing in the well-known stage actress and Oscar winner Helen Hayes to portray a loving mother who begins to suspect that her son (Robert Walker, in his final film) has gone over to the dark side. 1953 saw Sam Fuller over at 20th Century Fox release “Pickup on South Street” which skipped all political activity altogether and just went straight to portraying the Commies as gangsters muscling in on a new territory.
1953 saw the premiere of a three season syndicated TV series with the same theme as “I Was…” It was “I Led 3 Lives” yet another true story of a man, Herbert A. Philbrick (Richard Carlson), who wrote a book of the same title about the years he spent as an advertising exec, a Communist Party member, and an undercover FBI informant (the three lives). It ran until 1956. I remember seeing the episode where Philbrick reveals to his grief stricken wife that he is really with the FBI.
About the time “I Led 3 Lives” went on the air, “I Was A Communist For The FBI” became a series on the radio. Dana Andrews voiced Cvetic for 78 episodes.
Such films and their hysteria are still important to know about if for no other reason than “Communist” and “Socialist” are again being flung about by people who couldn’t even start to define the words. They just mean a vague “unAmerican” to those who are so careless with their use.
Frank Lovejoy, Dorothy Hart, and James Millican