Sarah Palin and her ilk continue to blather about the “liberal media,” which scarcely exists in the Fox News all-spin era, and the media's presumed ally, those “Hollywood liberals.” Well, sure, liberals have always worked in Hollywood, but so have their opposite numbers. As USC film historian Steven J. Ross shows in Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (published by Oxford University Press), Tinsel Town's conservatives have exercised a more profound effect on the U.S. than their opponents. The liberals throw parties while the conservatives win elections.
Hollywood Left and Right focuses on nine prominent figures, eight of them movies stars, one of them a mogul—the man behind the MGM lion, Louis B. Mayer. In Ross' analysis, Mayer's role is perhaps more critical than any screen actor. During the 1920s, Mayer became prominent in the Republican Party from a mixture of motives, including his emotional need as a Jewish immigrant for acceptance by the WASP establishment and his belief in the GOP's fervent pro-business rhetoric. He was eager to purchase influence and Republicans were ready to do business. By helping secure the 1928 presidential nomination for Herbert Hoover, “Mayer turned Hollywood into an important new center for Republican money.” The proliferation of radio made political campaigns more expensive than ever, and Mayer was willing to pay the bill. The mogul eagerly wrapped politics in the bright togs of entertainment, stage managing the 1932 GOP National Convention and mobilizing a score of likeminded stars to campaign for Hoover. Ross mentions, however, that brothers Harry and Jack Warner went for FDR and called out their stars to support the New Deal.
In the short term, it may have appeared that Mayer had backed the losing team. According to a poll during the 1936 presidential election, the move industry favored FDR over his Republican challenger by a 6-1 margin. But while the liberal tide was rising, Mayer built a system of cultural levies to contain it, even encouraging political indoctrination sessions for his stars and staff and sneaking his vision of the American Way into screenplays. His efforts also influenced the rightward direction of the Screen Actors Guild, turning several prominent actors from Democrat to Republican, including one who would later serve two terms in the White House, Ronald Reagan.
And yes, there were liberals in Hollywood. “The overwhelmingly liberal orientation of actors, then and now, can be partially understood as a byproduct of the demands of their craft,” Ross offers, explaining that actors lean liberal from being forced to empathize with the many characters they play. The argument is unsatisfying, given that actors have always held various beliefs. Many thespians cited in Hollywood Left and Right, not just action figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger but great actors such as Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Stewart, could be defined as politically conservative. Ross stands on more solid ground by observing that in Hollywood's Golden Age, the 1930s and '40s, the film industry town was a mecca for political refugees from many places, most of them fleeing rightwing regimes. “Living and working together created a sense of tolerance, if not genuine acceptance, among movie personnel.”
Even then, turning one's liberal convictions from cocktail conversation into action proved challenging. As Ross shows, Hollywood's original leftist superstar, Charlie Chaplin, lost his audience as the anti-authoritarian Little Tramp became overtly political. During the McCarthy era Chaplin was forced into exile. Edward G. Robinson was another object lesson in how taking liberal stands could be a bad career move. The tough-acting star of gangster pictures was a confirmed anti-Nazi and anti-Communist. He thought he stood for American values by protesting the rise of Hitler, denouncing racial and religious discrimination and supporting (as did the U.S. government) the Soviet Union during the German invasion of World War II. But in the feverish, know-nothing politics that followed the war, he was branded a Communist, castigated by the pen-and-ink predecessors of today's idiot bloggers and online commentators, and found little work from the studios.
Chapters on George Clooney and Sean Penn might have helped bring Ross' argument up to date, but Hollywood Left and Right conclusion by noting Arnold Schwarzenegger made it to the California governor's mansion, not Warren Beatty. Schwarzenegger represented a new height for celebrity politics. He had no deep ties to the GOP and played, like one of his movie characters, by his own rules. But unlike a Hollywood movie, his political career had no happy ending. A shrewd campaigner who used his celebrity to reach beyond the usual cadre of voters, as governor “he had to deal with the people he belittled or avoided during the election: politicians and mainstream media.” And he was unprepared for the financial crisis that would engulf California and the world.
As for why the Hollywood right has been more successful than the Hollywood left, Ross offers a sobering thought. Liberals preach “the politics of hope and guilt,” while the right stirs the electorate with the politics of “fear and reassurance,” evidently potent motivators on Election Day.
