Customer Reviews

Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-Communism in 1940s Hollywood

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This is an excellent book on Ayn Rand's famous 1947 testimony, before the House Un-American Activities Committee, on MGM's 1944 movie Song of Russia.

Ayn Rand exposed the movie as pro-Soviet propaganda, a deliberate whitewash of the terrible reality of life under communism. Robert Mayhew discusses every point of her testimony in relation to the historical record of the Soviet Union, proving Ayn Rand right in every respect. His book is also an important work of original historical research. Dr. Mayhew interviewed the surviving co-writer of Song of Russia, ex-Communist Richard Collins, and dug deep in the historical archives. The result is a revealing picture of Communist influence in Hollywood - and Washington. One of many fascinating revelations is that the Roosevelt administration's Office of War Information - which claimed the right to "comment" on film scripts - had the Song-of-Russia script vetted by the Soviet Embassy!

Being a philosopher, Dr. Mayhew goes beyond the presentation of historical facts. He discusses the political and ethical implications of the HUAC investigations for such issues as free speech, blacklists, "naming names," honesty in relation to wartime propaganda, etc. In so doing, he gives us both Ayn Rand's views, drawing in part on previously unpublished material, and his own illuminating analysis.

Dr. Mayhew also reveals the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Communists in Hollywood and of their leftist successors, refuting their smears of Ayn Rand's testimony, which continue to this day. Thus - in addition to being a fresh, first-hand investigation of a still controversial period of American history, and of Ayn Rand's part in it - Robert Mayhew's book is a sorely needed act of justice.

Thoroughly researched, richly textured with telling detail, clearly written and strongly argued, this new book should be on the must-read list of anyone interested in modern American history.

As the title "Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-Communism in 1940s Hollywood" suggests, this book by Robert Mayhew is an examination of Ayn Rand's testimony on the movie _Song of Russia_ before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.

Part I offers three chapters of helpful background information on the movie. Perhaps most importantly, Mayhew offers a detailed synopsis of _Song of Russia_. In addition to the synopsis, Mayhew includes a chapter on the making of the movie (with particular attention to the involved communists and the changes made in production) and a chapter on its reception in the press and elsewhere. (I was particularly surprised to learn of the nature and extent of the meddling in the production of movies by FDR's administration.)

In Part II, Mayhew turns to Ayn Rand's testimony before the HUAC. He begins with a chapter on her life up through the testimony, particularly focusing on her childhood in Russia, her work in Hollywood, and the publication of _We the Living_. He examines Ayn Rand's general view of the HUAC hearings, including a detailed and interesting discussion of the supposed moral crime of "naming names." In the next two chapters, Mayhew examines the accuracy of Ayn Rand's testimony about the utterly false picture of life in Soviet Russia in _Song of Russia_, as well as her rejection of the supposed need to lie about the true condition of our Russian ally during World War II. The final chapter considers the absurd responses of various leftists to Ayn Rand's testimony.

As I've come to expect from Robert Mayhew's work, _Ayn Rand and Song of Russia_ is a careful and thorough examination of the topic at hand. I particularly appreciated the clarity of Mayhew's writing, in both the structure and the prose. The analyses were methodical, but never dragged on. Although more can always be said about side topics in any writing, I finished the book with a good grasp of the core issues.

All in all, I highly recommend _Ayn Rand and Song of Russia_, particularly to those with an interest Ayn Rand's HUAC testimony or the communist influence in Hollywood.

I was interested in reading Ayn Rand and Song of Russia because I had previously heard about the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) of the late 1940s, but I had always heard about it in a negative light. It always seemed to be associated with witch hunting and blacklisting. When I learned that one of my favorite authors, Ayn Rand, testified as a friendly witness, I wanted to know more. This committee wanted to find out the extent of communist infiltration into the movie industry. As a Russian who lived through the Russian Revolution, and as a writer in Hollywood, Ayn Rand was in a unique position to comment on the extent of propaganda in some of the movies coming out of Hollywood at the time. Ayn Rand was asked to comment specifically on Song of Russia, a movie very sympathetic to Russia released in 1944. This book does a fine job of explaining what propaganda is and the subtle nature of propaganda. It also describes the movie in detail and how it distorts what life was like in Russia after the revolution. The second part of the book contains the actual transcript of Rand's testimony along with the author's analysis. This book is well worth reading because it helps one to understand how bad ideas did, and still can, seep into our culture. It also points out that it wasn't the people sympathetic to communism that got blacklisted; rather, it was those people who were considered friendly witnesses. Finally, it shows Ayn Rand eloquently fighting for her values: a United States that upholds individual rights.

I enjoyed reading this book, my first by Robert Mayhew who teaches philosophy at Seton Hall University. How I wish I attended that school, so I could perhaps pass by the man himself as he makes his way through the halls and common rooms towards the philosophy department.

It's great that the other reviewers of this book are other Ayn Rand scholars, including the man who edited her famous book, THE ART OF FICTION. He must know Dr. Mayhew, perhaps from conferences in which Objectivism, the philosophy she invented, is still being discussed many years after her own sad death.

They give the book five stars, but I cannot give it so many because, even though Mayhew is a skillful writer, he has fallen into the trap of taking something minor that Ayn Rand did, in this case, she presented her incomplete testimony to HUAC about a film called SONG OF RUSSIA, and although she did not know it, the organizers were just using her and would not permit her to expand on her ideas, they attempted to corral her into a little niche market, as a Russian woman herself, she could testify that the Russia presented in SONG OF RUSSIA was bogus. Afterwards, as she admitted later, she felt lied to and abused. Mayhew nevertheless takes her few pages of testimony and tries to blow up a whole book around this little donut hole of an anecdote.

About the smiling thing, well, Mayhew must not have much of a sense of humor if he couldn't see that as soon as Rand starts talking about people in Russia not smiling, it sort of got funny, and she lost a large part of her audience, who used this as an excuse to call her a humorless kook. Mayhew just keeps arguing that, of course, people in Russia did not smile, citing a number of independent accounts of the period that agree with Rand's estimate. She hadn't been there since 1926. Mayhew argues that she had been in touch by letter with her family all the way until 1937; however, my bet is that, her family knew their little Ayn by now and I'm sure self-censored their letters so that none of them included the phrase, "I had a good laugh the other day when . . . "

Now I'm curious to see SONG OF RUSSIA! They should put it out on DVD and for commentary, they could have Ayn Rand's actual voice in her HUAC testimony going through the differentt scenes and commenting acidly how there really were no department stores of nightclubs in Moscow and how village people lived in shacks, not comfortable collective housing.

I feel kind of sorry for Robert Taylor, dragooned into playing in this movie, but Mayhew leaves out the real reason he could be so easily blackmailed into starring in a role he didn't personally care for.

And Susan Peters is always a treat, so c'mon, powers that be, unleash this quaint relic for a bygone day!