Red Star over Hollywood, Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh
Red Star over Hollywood, Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh
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Red Star over Hollywood
The Film Colonys Long Romance with the Left

Author: Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh

Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach

Unabridged: 10 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/17/2010


Synopsis

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare and how it victimized political innocents. But Ronald and Allis Radosh tell for the first time the backstory behind this myth. They show how the Soviet Comintern targeted the film capital in the late 1920s, taking us inside the cells and discussion groups that Communist Party members formed, the guilds and unions they tried to take over, and the studios they aimed to influence. The authors demonstrate that many of the screenwriters who later became part of the Hollywood Ten in fact succeeded in using film as a propaganda medium on behalf of the Soviet cause. While others were lionizing them as blameless victims of American nativism and paranoia, the Hollywood Reds themselves were beset by doubts and disagreements about their disloyalty to America and their own treatment by the Communist Party. Abandoned by their old CP allies, they faced the black list alone.Getting behind the denial and apologetics, Ronald and Allis Radosh tell the real story of one of the most discussed but least understood episodes in our political history, whose long halflife continues to influence the equally turbulent cultural politics of today.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Markus

Red Star Over Hollywood is very much a book in the same style as Radosh's earlier works like 'Commies' and which I am tempted to characterize as 'history through character assassination'. While I admit it might be a bit unfair it nevertheless captures the fact that Radosh presents history not as a m......more

Goodreads review by Shane

Great and informative yet depressing read on the Communist influence in Hollywood....particular in from the 30-50s but horribly the radical left hold on Hollywood is more pronounced then ever before....we need to have another investigation of these scoundrels!......more

Goodreads review by Gary

The author does a good job describing details of the activities of the CPUSA and individual communists in the early film industry. However more time should have been spent in summarizing the effects that these activities have had on the industry and how hollywood continues to be affected today. It w......more

Goodreads review by Dean

Yes Virginia, there were communists in Hollywood. Fun to read about how Reagan was shaped by his battles with them as union president.......more

Goodreads review by DH

The scholarship is strong, but the Radosh's are still trapped in dialectical thinking, now from the right. There are no grays or fuzzy edges in their polemic, just the wrongheadedness of the reds. Talent and jealousy need also to be taken into account. That the embrace of a radical critique of US po......more