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Odd Man Out
A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten
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In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee rudely interrupted the successful career and life of Edward Dmytryk, citing him with contempt of Congress. As a result, Dmytryk was fired by RKO and spent three years in England before returning to the United States to serve a six-month jail sentence and undergo a second round of hearings, during which he recanted and provided evidence against several of his former colleagues
In this personal and perceptive book, Dmytryk sharply chronicles the history of a particularly turbulent era in American political life while examining his own life before and after the events universally called the witch hunts. He details his brief membership in the Communist Party of America, explaining his initial commitment to what he perceived as communist ideals of civil liberties, economic justice, and antifacism, followed by his eventual disillusionment with the party as it betrayed those ideals. He goes on to provide a fair assessment of what then happened to him and the effect it had on the rest of his life.
Dmytryk describes the activities, prejudices, and personal behaviors of all the parties enmeshed in the congressional hearings on communism in Hollywood. His reactions to other members of the Hollywood Ten and his recollection of conversations with them lend his book an immediacy that is not only informative but also absorbing. Most importantly, he does not uphold an ideology but rather presents the events as he perceived them, understood them, and responded to them. Dmytryk's account is characterized by an openness born of a mature awareness of personal trial as history.
Press Reviews:
"This is a book written from the inside of a political hurricane made up of compromises and deceit in which the author, despite his idealistic impulses, managed to find himself. Dmytryk's effort to fight his way out of blacklisting and back to active participation in the world of film-making is dramatically but appropriately presented."--Michael Bliss, author of "What Goes Around Comes Around: The Films of Jonathan Demme "and "Justified Lives: Morality and Narrative in the Films of Sam Peckinpah"
See the publisher website: Southern Illinois University Press
See the complete filmography of Edward Dmytryk on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
On Film Editing (2018)
An Introduction to the Art of Film Construction
On Screen Acting (2018)
An Introduction to the Art of Acting for the Screen
It's a hell of a life, but not a bad living (1978)
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