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Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Holllywood Ten

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In 1947 Edward Dmytryk, a rising young director of such films as "Murder, My Sweet" and "Crossfire," along with 11 other Hollywood writers and executives, was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, known to history as HUAC. HUAC's stated purpose for calling these 12 men was to expose the corrupting presence of communists in the entertainment industry and, it hoped, bar them from further employment in Hollywood. Ten, the famous Hollywood Ten, did indeed testify, were found in contempt of congress for their unwillingness to fully cooperate with the House committee and were duly punished for their intransigence. Subsequent to his appearance before congress in 1947, Dmytryk was sentenced to spend six months in a minimum security federal facility.

"Odd Man Out" is Dmytryk's story of that time. It is a unique story. Most if not all of the people who were banned by the HUAC influenced Hollywood blacklists were indeed communists, or had joined the party at some point in the past. As Dmytryk writes, naming names was the ultimate sin. And, although "HUAC was out to expose a movement rather than nail a tiny group of individuals, and in that, however illegal, unethical, and un-American it was, they obviously succeeded," the blacklisted individuals were supposed to maintain a united front. After prison and a couple of years in the wilderness, though, Dmytryk had a change of heart. Never a True Believer, it seems, it became obvious to him "the Ten had been sacrificed to the Party's purpose as a pipeline for the Comintern's propaganda... and ... if I were going to be a martyr, I wanted the privilege of choosing my martyrdom, and making my family suffer to protect the American representatives of a foreign agency would certainly not be it." And so, as a condition for reinstatement, in 1951 Dmytryk testified again for HUAC, this time as a friendly witness.

Time has exposed the communist witchhunt as a dark blemish on America's record, and those who were blacklisted have become noble martyrs. Dmytryk started out a hero but became the turncoat villain in this story. His second testimony in 1951, even though he named no new names, was never completely forgiven. Towards the end of the book Dmytryk recounts an encounter with another blacklisted director, Jules Dassin, who refused to share a stage with him and yet felt free to excoriate him during a round-table discussion of the blacklist era. Dassin's reaction wasn't untypical, and even today the blacklisted individuals are revered without quarter. Save for the turncoat Dmytryk, who, unfortunately, was forced to deal with the devil and testify against his former friends and denounce his past involvement in the communist party in America. "Odd Man Out" convinced me that he did the right thing, and reminded me that history is rarely a clear-cut matter of Right and Wrong. If you're interested in a different perspective on this difficult time I strongly recommend this book.

This book is a much needed contribution to the historical record, to undo all the mindless junk that's been said for years about what the Hollywood Ten was all about. Dmytryk's memoir is candid, honest and gets to what the heart of the matter was all about. And because he was the only one of the Ten who recognized that, he is treated now as a pariah by those who seem to think that fealty to the American Communist Party is more noble than "naming names", even when in Dmytryk's case it forced him into prison in the name of beliefs he no longer held.

Probably the best memoir of one man's break from American communism since Whittaker Chambers's masterpiece "Witness."