The Marxist and the Movies

A Biography of Paul Jarrico

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by Larry Ceplair

Type: Studies
Subject: Others persons > Paul Jarrico
Keywords: Paul Jarrico, politics, United States, blacklist
Publishing date: 2007
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Collection: Screen Classics
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 352 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-0-8131-2453-7

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Book Presentation:
As part of its effort to expose Communist infiltration in the United States and eliminate Communist influence on movies, from 1947–1953 the House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed hundreds of movie industry employees suspected of membership in the Communist Party. Most of them, including screenwriter Paul Jarrico (1915–1997), invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions about their political associations. They were all blacklisted.

In The Marxist and the Movies, Larry Ceplair narrates the life, movie career, and political activities of Jarrico, the recipient of an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Tom, Dick and Harry (1941) and the producer of Salt of the Earth (1954), one of the most politically besieged films in the history of the United States. Though Jarrico did not reach the upper eschelon of screenwriting, he worked steadily in Hollywood until his blacklisting. He was one of the movie industry's most engaged Communists, working on behalf of dozens of social and political causes. Song of Russia (1944) was one of the few assignments that allowed him to express his political beliefs through his screenwriting craft. Though MGM planned the film as a conventional means of boosting domestic support for the USSR, a wartime ally of the United States, it came under attack by a host of anti-Communists.

Jarrico fought the blacklist in many ways, and his greatest battle involved the making of Salt of the Earth. Jarrico, other blacklisted individuals, and the families of the miners who were the subject of the film created a landmark film in motion picture history. As did others on the blacklist, Jarrico decided that Europe offered a freer atmosphere than that of the cold war United States. Although he continued to support political causes while living abroad, he found it difficult to find remunerative black market screenwriting assignments. On the scripts he did complete, he had to use a pseudonym or allow the producers to give screen credit to others. Upon returning to the United States in 1977, he led the fight to restore screen credits to the blacklisted writers who, like himself, had been denied screen credit from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.

Despite all the obstacles he encountered, Jarrico never lost his faith in the progressive potential of movies and the possibility of a socialist future. The Marxist and the Movies details the relationship between a screenwriter's work and his Communist beliefs. From Jarrico's immense archive, interviews with him and those who knew him best, and a host of other sources, Ceplair has crafted an insider's view of Paul Jarrico's life and work, placing both in the context of U.S. cultural history.

About the Author:
Larry Ceplair is the author of Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical, The Marxist and the Movies: A Biography of Paul Jarrico, and Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History.

Press Reviews:
A useful and riveting delineation of a complex man who in some very complicated times stood at the intersection of popular culture and radical politics. -Daniel J. Leab, Seton Hall University

Ceplair's compelling story of a man who spent his life struggling for freedom of thought, is suddenly timely, impossible to read without thinking Patriot Act. This superb account of Jarrico's dogged persistence in getting Salt of the Earth made, restoring credits to blacklistees, and finally, prevailing upon the Hollywood guilds and unions to apologize for their part in the Blacklist, is inspiring. -Norma Barzman, screenwriter

Ceplair's work in scruplulous, well-written, empathetic, and emphatic. -Paul Buhle, Brown University

Larry Ceplair created a fine biography on Jarrico's unusual life. Marxist and the Movies, published by University Press of Kentucky, offers a rare insight to Jarrico's odyssey. -Phil Hall, Filmthreat.com

Ceplair's fine biography sheds important light on the blacklist and politics of the film community. [His] cautionary tale of Paul Jarrico might give pause to those who continue to perceive the diverse, capitalistic institution of Hollywood as a monolithic leftist political entity. -Ron Briley, History News Network

Working from the late Jarrico's personal archive and from Congressional records, interviews with those who knew him and from other sources, Ceplair has honored his subject with this well-documented and important book. -Moviescope

[This book] is a very capable introduction not only to Jarrico's life, but to the wider story of film and politics in the era of the blacklist. -David J. Snyder, Journal of American History

"The Marxist and the Movies is a unique look at Communist activities during this seminal period in American history." —mraxist-books.blogspot.com

""The gifted biographer and historian Larry Ceplair focuses on the intertwined lives of pairs of revolutionaries to enhance our understanding of the origins of Marxism and of the trajectory of four major revolutions that shaped the twentieth century."" -Nicholas Bunnin, editor of Blackwell's Companion to Philosophy and Dictionary of Western Philosophy

See the publisher website: University Press of Kentucky

See the complete filmography of Paul Jarrico on the website: IMDB ...

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