Some of these questions were addressed by Laura Z Hobson in her 1946 novel, Gentleman's Agreement. Some of the others were answered when the film came out the following year. Hobson, the writer, and Darryl F Zanuck, the crusading Hollywood producer, set out to teach the US a lesson about its failure to live up to its own standards. The results teach us a lot, over on this side of the millennium divide – about how the 'thin end of the wedge' can be used to pry open the hard core of prejudice, and about how the backlash against such an attempt can be ferocious.
In 1946 all Laura Hobson had to do to set the cat among the complacent pigeons was to write a novel with a simple premise: an agnostic Christian pretends to be Jewish – simply by saying that he is. Then the character, and the author, sit back to watch the feathers fly. The result was not only edifying, but electrifying for readers in the post-World War II US. The book sold 1.6 million copies and was translated into 13 languages. The film version won Best Picture of 1947, arousing a response from liberals whose eyes were opened to the subtleties of antisemitism, and fierce alarm on the part of guardians of the status quo, who began taking a closer look at the dangers presented by Hollywood intellectuals.
Laura Z Hobson – A Legacy of
Liberalism
When her five-year marriage to publisher Francis Thayer Hobson ended in divorce, Laura kept her married name, calling herself Laura Z Hobson. She refused alimony on principle, earning her living as novelist, short story writer and editor – she was one of the founders of Life magazine. In 1937, Hobson took the then-unheard-of step of adopting a baby as a single mother. In 1941, when she became pregnant as the result of an affair, she worried that her second child would suffer stigma. Her solution was typically ethical, though somewhat convoluted: Hobson gave birth under an assumed name, then adopted her own son. When he turned out to be gay, she made the 'coming-out' journey with him, and wrote a book about it – at the age of 75. Hobson was more than a card-carrying member of the ACLU1– she was on the New York board.
Hobson's attitude toward Jewishness was not unusual among liberal Jews of her time, but it might seem so in light of modern identity politics. She believed in assimilation – becoming part of the surrounding culture – and she had no particular religious beliefs. When the Jewish Book Council wanted to give her an award for her novel about antisemitism in 1947, she refused, because she didn't want Gentleman's Agreement to be seen as a 'Jewish book'. She made sure people knew she was Jewish, telling anyone who asked what the 'Z' in her name stood for. She opposed Zionism, but supported Israel when it came under attack. Her view of the responsibility of being Jewish might be best summed up by the words of her character, Professor Lieberman, in Gentleman's Agreement. Lieberman, an atomic physicist, proposes a crusade in which he tells everyone he is not Jewish – although he 'looks Jewish'. When Phil Green, the protagonist – who is pretending to be Jewish, although he isn't – asks him why non-religious Jews cling to their identity, he says:
'Because this world still makes it an advantage not to be one.' His lower lip shoved forward. His eyes changed their cheerfulness for a remote coldness. 'Yes, I will even have to abandon my crusade. Only if there were no anti-semites could I do it.'Being Jewish out of stubborn opposition to intolerance was not unique to Laura Z Hobson – Arthur Koestler did not abandon his Jewish identity, even after writing in The Thirteenth Tribe that he believed that most Jews were descended from converted Caucasian tribes. But Hobson's approach to tolerance – and the thought experiment of Gentleman's Agreement – set her apart in the history of opposition to antisemitism in the US.
Gentleman's Agreement– the Book
Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement |
Green lets everyone know that he is Jewish, without behaving differently from the way he normally behaves – that is, the way a writer on assignment would behave. While some of his co-workers befriend him, others immediately label him pushy and hypersensitive – behaviour only to be expected from Jews. When he finds out that his secretary, Miss Wales, had changed her Polish-Jewish name to gain employment at this liberal magazine, he informs his editor, who institutes a policy change – and is appalled to find Miss Wales worried that an open policy would let in less assimilated Jews, who would give everybody a bad name.
Green's romance with upper-class New Englander Kathy becomes rocky, even though her neighbours in affluent, snobbish Darien, Connecticut offer to make an exception in Phil's case and allow him into their restricted community, as he is obviously educated and urbane. Kathy becomes more and more uncomfortable with Phil's demand that she raise her consciousness, and finally rebels. When Green's son Tommy is snubbed by other children, Kathy is quick to point out that Tommy is 'no more Jewish than I am'. For Green, this attitude is a betrayal of what he is trying to accomplish. Unwilling to allow his son to be raised in an atmosphere of prejudice, he calls off the engagement. It is not until Kathy undergoes a change of heart and offers Dave Goldman the use of her Connecticut home, so that the war veteran can take advantage of a job opportunity he would otherwise be denied due to the post-war housing shortage, that the couple are able to make peace. Like its author, Gentleman's Agreement demands ethical behaviour from its characters on the deepest personal level.
Phil Green's series, 'I Was Jewish for Eight Weeks', creates a sensation even before it goes to press. Magazine staff members who had spoken of Phil as naturally 'pushy' because of his alleged ethnicity are confused when they see him in a new light. Others cheer him on: one of Phil's co-workers, who is not antisemitic, jokes during a deadline negotiation, 'That's the trouble with you Christians – aggressive.' Although the series is a success, others are less than delighted, particularly the co-worker who has been spreading gossip about Green in the Midwest, causing embarrassment to Phil's snobbish sister Belle. Belle's dismay at being outed at a Detroit society function as a Jewish woman who is 'passing' for Christian provides one of the more comic moments in a story that is filled with acute and wry observations of human behaviour.
It is just this acute observation that makes Gentleman's Agreement fascinating reading more than sixty years later – and no doubt made it very uncomfortable reading in its day. By moving the focus on prejudice away from easily-despised groups – uneducated Southerners, Nazis, outside agitators – to the most respected members of society, Hobson forced the reader to confront prejudice at its roots, in the everyday assumptions people make about one another. In 1946, it seems, Americans were ready to hear the message. Gentleman's Agreement became a bestseller.
Gentleman's Agreement– the Film
John Garfield in Gentleman's Agreement |
As a film, Gentleman's Agreement was as great a success as the book, winning three Oscars in 1948, including Best Picture and Best Director. It seemed that Laura Hobson might be right when she said that ordinary, decent people would be willing to fight prejudice if they were made to see the everyday occurrences that made intolerance insidious in society. It also seemed that the reluctance of Jewish film producers to stir up trouble by tackling the subject had been misplaced. America was ready to fight antisemitism.
But as Hollywood congratulated itself on a job well done, forces in Washington were at work – forces that were becoming alarmed at the power of literature and film to change minds. These forces were about to descend on the dream factory.
What Made the HUAC so nervous?
HUAC hearing |
'Friendly witnesses' were people ready to name names. One of the names was Bertolt Brecht. Brecht talked to Congress, but then took the next plane to East Berlin, where – since he really was a Communist – he was given his own theatre to run. Elia Kazan, director of Gentleman's Agreement, was called, but was afraid to go to jail. Kazan named more names. Ten Hollywood workers – writers, actors, directors – refused to answer questions on Constitutional grounds. They were jailed. Hundreds had their names placed on a blacklist, and were refused work. One of the Hollywood Ten, the Oscar-winning screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr, continued to write under pseudonyms3, and eventually won a second Oscar4. Another Hollywood Ten writer, Dalton Trumbo, did not appear on film screens again until the makers of Spartacus braved public opinion and gave him credit for his adaptation of Howard Fast's novel about social revolt in the Roman Republic. John Garfield refused to name names, was blacklisted, and went back to New York to star on Broadway.
What did the HUAC fear? On the face of it, Hollywood was not an obvious target for an anti-communist purge. Using Loyalty Boards to 'cleanse' the government might seem reasonable – after all, the Soviet Union had supported the CPUSA (American Communist Party), which had won many idealistic members through its work during the Great Depression. But writers, directors, producers, and actors, even if they belonged to the CPUSA – not an illegal institution – were not about to unleash nuclear holocaust, or open the gates to an invasion. What was it the scaremongers wanted?
Many left-leaning, liberal, or merely educated people, and a good proportion of those, like Laura Z Hobson, stoutly opposed to the Soviet Union and all its works and pomps, thought they knew the answer. The HUAC and other Redbaiters were not merely alarmed by Communism. Anti-Communist crusaders felt threatened by any challenge to the status quo. Opposition to antisemitism, racism, and homophobia made them nervous because they feared that increased tolerance would lead to more radical changes in the social order. Opponents of increased civil rights were trying to limit social change by attacking liberalism at its most influential - by making sure that US filmmakers understood to pitch their stories to the middle of the road and to stay there. Their tactics were successful. Just as the Hays Office had put a stop to the free-wheeling sexual openness of early film when it went into effect in 1930, the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s put the brakes on socially progressive cinema in Hollywood.
The late 1940s were years of experimentation in theatre, literature, and cinema. The novels and films of that time offer a glimpse into what social progress might have been made, had this trend continued. Unfortunately, some of the best and brightest in cinema were prevented from continuing to follow these ideas – and the idea of social equality became a dream deferred.
Gentleman's Agreement remains a monument to the civil courage of its time.
Footnotes:
1 The American Civil Liberties Union fights fiercely for civil rights. The organisation is much maligned by its opponents, who often try to discredit liberals by referring them as 'card-carrying members of the ACLU'.
2 At its founding in 1937, the HUAC and its chairman were praised by such civic organisations as the Ku Klux Klan.
3 Including working on the popular British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood.
4 In 1970, for M*A*S*H.
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