Customer Reviews

Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist (Texas Film and Media Studies Series)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is not really a review. I am the author of the book and wish to call to your atfention that you are running the Janis review twice. That is exactly a repetition of the original review. Since Janis is clearly political opponent with an axe to grind, one version of his vitriol should suffice. Please eliminate the duplication. Thank you.

This book is a wonderful surprise. Although it deals with very serious matters, it is vastly entertaining, plum full of tasty anecdotes about people whose names we know, people we wish to know. Movie makers and movie stars are dealt with without fear of favour. Among them are Ronald and Nancy (Davis) Reagan. Ronnie denied there was a blacklist although when president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was secretly and treacherously supplying the FBI with the names of his members he considered radicals; Gordon, while blacklisted, was secretly writing love scenes for Ronnie and Nancy in the film, Hellcats of the Navy. This became one of the First Couple's favourite films and was run repeatedly at the White House.They never knew who had put the words in their mouths.

Read about David Niven, Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner (not so good); Telly Savalas, Robert Shaw, James Mason (good) and many others. Most of all, read how Gordon, laughing much of the way, turned the tables, built a fascinating career and refused to be destroyed by the blacklist.

This book is not just about Hollywood. Europeans will be surprised to read of the involvement of their contrymen in the McCarthy period. The British and Spanish film industries gain new stature as places where Gordon finds he can work without having to suppress his independent spirit.

I first heard that Bernard Gordon was working on his memoirs some years ago on a CNN piece, I believe about restoring the credits of blacklisted writers. And only now after I forgot about is it finally availible. A worthwhile wait. "Hollywood Exile" is a great autobiography that paints a vivid word picture of Mr. Gordon's years living and working in Europe. Focusing mostly on his complex relationship with producer Philip Yordan, this book is a remarkably candid account told with humor and intelligence. The blacklist was a terrible period in America's history and it's always gratifying to hear from those few who managed to beat it. Plus I'm a fan of Bernard Gordon's work, including his production of "Horror Express" and writing gigs like "Battle of the Bulge"(a guilty pleasure if there ever was one), and the 1964 version of "The Thin Red Line."

This book will certainly infuriate the troglodytes (still among us) who bemoan the passing of Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and John Foster Dulles. Where oh where are the good old days of the Cold War when we could blame all of our ills on the Reds at home and abroad? For the rest of us, this is a unique and fascinating personal account of someone who honorably stood up to all the forces against him, tells the unvarnished truth about one our darkest time, and reained his humor and wit while beating back the bad guys (plus the studio bosses). It reads like a riveting suspense story. You will turn the pages late into the night, wanting to know what comes next, how he won his personal war, wrote and produced some twenty of your favorite films, and never forgot to tell an entertaining story. Read and enjoy.

Bernard Gordon's book is a compelling first hand account of how this Nation treated some of it's most talented citizens in an era when the only Americans who truly enjoyed freedom were the decendants of those who came over on the Mayflower. It is impossible for the younger generation to comprehend the motivation of those who's idealism led them to explore other political avenues, without truly understanding the context of the dark times in which the HUAC hearings took place. Mr. Gordon's book sheds an intimate and personal light on that context and should be required reading for every student of political science, and indeed, every young American. I recently heard someone say, trying to make choices in today's society without a knowledge of history is like planting cut flowers and expecting them to grow. In a country that represented itself to be free and great, this book explains how the Gordons, and the many other families of many of our finest citizens, were deprived of that freedom, persecuted, and denied even the right to work and feed their children. In the comfortable 90's it is very easy to simply condem communism and hindsight is indeed 20/20, but this book will give those who truly want to know, the real perspective on those who selflessly stood up to the tyranny of our own government for the good of all our citizens and endured the subsequent hardships. All who experience this book will be infinitly more prepared to cast a meaningful vote at the ballot box, and the very future of our Nation depends on the votes of those who understand its history. I hope all who have a real desire for truth, will share in reading this book.

First off, let me state that I enjoy greatly many of B. Gordon's films(Earth vs the Flying Saucers, Horror Express, Day of the Triffids,Pancho Villa). One should not base one's impressions on the politics of the individual but rather the work itself. But, with Hollywood Exile, this is impossible since the book is an obvious polemic attempting to falsify a noxious part of 20th century history and the scoundrels who played their part. The communists, like Gordon, were trying desparately through any means necessary to betray their country to a genocidal idealogy that at that time had "only" killed about 60 million people. The Secret World of American Communism" has already proved beyond any doubt-using the Soviet Archives that the American Communists were taking their orders and were being funded directly from Moscow. It was this that was the crux of the motivations behind HUAC. There is no constitutional right to treason and our precious American heritage does not include mass murder. The nature of the Communist abatoir was known at the time-through reports coming out of the various Communists countries, books written by Communists like Fast's THE NAKED GOD and Foster's Toward Soviet America and even the odd film like COMRADE X or GUILTY OF TREASON. Yet the people who did not want America to become a gulag are the villians and the Maltzs, the Larsons and the Gordons are portrayed as "OUR FINEST CITIZENS and , of course being Communists, our "most talented." No where in Gordon's book does he confront the mass murders commited by the communists that are unparelled in world history. Yet he portrays himself as suffering because he had to(HORRORS!)live in(gasp)Spain. How can the reader take his claims to nobility seriously? When it comes to his involvement with Communism, Gordon obscures, deletes and falsifies. So how can he be trusted on anything else? This is the real tragedy. The book could have been an oppurtunity to learn about the makings of the many films he worked on but, on an essential issue like the murder of over one hundred million persons, Gordon is not to be trusted. So, how can the reader trust him on the making of Day of the Triffids? Finally, one can only judge this book by it's contents. If all of the recent reviewers can only repeat the same "cant" written by Willy Munzenburg so many years ago, are they not as negligent as Gordon with his denial by omission of a mountain of corpses. Is not the challenge of a book review to actually review the book?

Why I sympathize with the plight of many of the writers, directors, actors, etc that were blacklisted in the days of the McCarthy era, I must inform this particular writer that he doesn't seem very thorough in his research. I know this may be splitting hairs but first of all the parts pertaining to actor Lee Van Cleef were totally off base if not smacking with some amount of animosity.

Van Cleef never made a living as a "stuntman". I have no clue as to the author's notion that Van Cleef was a former stuntman. And Mr.Gordon's insinuation that Van Cleef was the knid of actor that didn't study a script is also a false statement. In fact Van Cleef was well known to read scripts quite thoroughly and tended to be one that would eliminate alot of his own dialogue since he had stated in interviews that he thought he did better in his parts with fewer lines. Maybe Mr.Gordon was insulted at one time by Van Cleef chopping out some of his lines that Gordon worked so hard to produce. Who knows but,calling Van Cleef a "clod" and insinuating that he was under-experienced as an actor is totally out of line.

Lee Van Cleef was a very experienced actor and a very diligent worker at his craft. Yes, he had a drinking problem but as far as his professionalism and ability to do his job on the set, he was always known to be at the top of his game.

I would never lump Bernard Gordon in the same league with Dalton Trumbo. Gordon comes off being somewhat bitter in many instances here and he needs to rethink some of his memories with less personal venom. And make sure you know that facts about a person's background before striking the first blow of the pen.

Gordon's book, Hollywood Exile, combines tales of movie stars (Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, David Niven), the fierce political 'hangings' of the American blacklist (Gordon, a screenwriter begining his career, was both a victim of and a witness to this terrible scene), and, until now, the unwritten history of American writers, producers, actors and directors--temporary expatriots who fled the blacklist into France, England and Spain to work at their craft. Gordon landed in Madrid's mini-Hollywood. He tells witty, inside stories of scripting and producing such classics as 'Horror Express' and 'Day of the Triffids'. Moreover, he is an honorable man who did not turn in his principles as so many did. You won't be able to put the book down and you'll feel glad that such people survived that American crucible to write about it and its sequel in Europe for all of us who were not there. (Actually, reading this book is like being there.)

As an old-timer in the Hollywood jungle, I read Gordon's book with a feeling of 'deja vu'. He not only 'tells it how it was' but with color, clarity and verve.

A quixotic Fate took him on a different path than many others who suffered from the blacklist and that's what makes his story stand out. Hollywood in Madrid in Franco's time was a strange place to land but he made the most of it. Phil Yordan is a real 'character'.

I took "Hollywood Exile" to bed with me, and it kept me awake until I finished it. I recommend it!

Gordon's book brought back memories of the old glory days of the gulag archipelago, Kolyma, midnight knocks at the door and the tank treads red with the blood of pulped hungarians. Though Gordon spent much time suspiciously in Franco's Spain, it is obvious that he is still an old comrade at heart. A wonderful book that should be forced reading in today's schools.