Customer Reviews

The Red and the Blacklist: A Memoir of a Hollywood Insider

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

God, this book is so sexy and thrilling, compared to the other worthy, dull, snoozy blacklist memoirs out there. Ms. Barzman has really lived a very full life and leaves no stones unturned, about her personal and professional frustrations, her life as a commie, her hubby being jealous, the umpteen affairs, her glitzy starstudded life in Hollywood and in Europe...the gossip is worth the price alone, but its much more than that; its fiercly political, feministic...and get this, she's still a political toughie, uncomprising and stilling fighting the good fight! Bravo!

This is a very funny book, with a lot of vivid characters and entertaining incidents. Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren are only a few of the famous figures who are shown here in unguarded moments. And the blighting of Hollywood by the Blacklist is shown in intimate portraits of the destruction of both individuals and families.

It is, however, only secondarily the story of Ben Barzman, a promising screenwriter forced into thirty years of European exile. The main story is about Norma Barzman, a talented writer herself, who falls in love with a man who is aggressively progressive on most subjects, but has reactionary ideas about women working.

Norma and Ben fall in love almost at first sight (and do they ever meet cute!). Though she is a working writer when they marry, he forces her to quit her job. He then takes her movie story ideas and passes them off as his own (as in "El Cid"), takes joint projects she initiated and demotes her to "researcher," or steals her work completely. Basically, he gets apoplectic and abusive every time she gets within hailing distance of professional recognition.

Norma Barzman loves and takes pride in the many children she raises, but the book laments the complete destruction of her self-confidence in her own talent. She stays married to the man who tries to destroy her, but occasionally strays into other men's beds in her unhappiness (which will disturb prudish, superficial and judgmental readers, but sadden the rest of us.)

When her husband dies after 47 years together, she slowly but surely regains her writing voice. The results are both satisfying and uncomfortable, as the Blacklist had a tendency to deform the personalities of its victims. But the story has more universal resonances than just the sad song of a life bent out of shape by circumstance and a tyrannical husband, and is well worth the read.

A title this great really deserves a better book. But the book it has is fun, nonetheless. Norma Barzman gives us her view of the blacklist, on which appeared the names of both her and her husband, but the view is mostly that from the high life of Paris and the South of France, with a few sidetrips to Spain (even under Franco) and England. On the upside, she offers us an intimate story of the making of "El Cid," a marvelous insider's view of the censorship process (which, alone, is probably worth the price of the book), and the hardships of not being able to work in your own country and under your own name (see Woody Allen's The Front for a closer look at those who "fronted" for blacklisted writers). The author herself cites The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 as a more "comprehensive treatment" of the years of the blacklist. Unfortunately, she and her husband didn't suffer nearly as much as those who couldn't just pick up a family and settle in Paris or on the Riviera. I know it's unfair to fault those who had the money to go live in Europe, but it also explains some of the book's superficialty: they just weren't there. So, in the end, the glamour of her life abroad and her affairs with other, powerful members of the film community, overwhelm the story of those who had to stay home and find some way to earn a living -- in another trade, under a different name. Any really good story of the blacklist would end with a list of those who committed suicide because of their inability to get work and support their own families.

The book's primary problem, however, is the issue of the history of millionaire Communists, including Picasso. You always have to deal with questions like, "If they were so rich, AND Communists, why didn't they take other blacklisted writers with them to Europe and support them there? Picasso is only the most famous millionaire Communist. There is no answer, of course. I'm sure Mz. Barzman would explain that they didn't have all THAT much money. In the end it's a matter of conscience and available funds. We can't really fault the rich blacklisted Communist writers. More power to them, and let's hope they supported charities wholeheartedly.

I grew up during the McCarthy years, and remember my father becoming practically apoplectic when watching the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). The years of the McCarthy reign of terror were a serious time and deserve some serious writing. I plan to order The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 soon. Still, the book itself is fun and a quick read. For a bit of history that reads more or less like a gossip column from Hollywood and points east, you could certainly do worse than The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate (Nation Books).

Please read the "Look Inside" to make your own mind up, rather than take heed of the two reviews by "A Customer" (are you allowed to write multiple reviews?) who obviously has a (political?) ax to grind.

This book is really not good. I am very interested in the blacklist period and screenwriting - despite the title this book does an awful job of telling you anything about those things.
All you learn about is Norma Barzman herself, and even though you only hear her side of the story, by the middle of her book you come to hate her, condemned out of her own mouth as a self-obsessed hypocrite.

How is she a hyprocrite? She's a supposed "communist" living in luxury in a South of France estate, employing servants to raise her kids.
She's a wife who shags all her loyal husband's friends behind his back.
She's someone who to this day calls herself a screenwriter when she has only one produced screenplay to her name, a 1953 Italian B-movie. She was shagging the friend of her husband who agreed to produce it.

It's a very irritating book, and really is best avoided.

This memoir of the alleged struggles of blacklisted, privileged, self-centered writer and adultress Norma Barzman reads like the chore list of some spoiled Beverly Hills trophy wife. Her supposed Communist ideology is all arm's length and she doesn't seem to have suffered at all after being exiled from the U.S. - in fact, as she puts it herself, she had "the time of her life" in France. So what's this drama queen's beef?