Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals

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The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals ( MPA or MPAPAI ), German about "Film Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals ", was an association of American filmmakers founded on February 4, 1944 , who fought against the The aim was to spread " communist , fascist and other totalitarian groups" in the American film industry .

Content and story

Early on, the MPA concentrated on fighting communism. In 1947, Robert Montgomery , president of the Screen Actors Guild , and members of the Motion Picture Alliance declared before committees of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that Hollywood was being infiltrated by communists. Subsequently, filmmakers suspected of being sympathetic to the left were summoned to appear before the HUAC and given the choice of working with it or risking prison sentences and losing their jobs. The first ten notable summonses and later convicts, including Dalton Trumbo and Edward Dmytryk , came to be known as the Hollywood Ten .

MPA members included Ward Bond , Clarence Brown , Borden Chase , Charles Coburn , Gary Cooper , Laraine Day , Cecil B. DeMille , Walt Disney , Irene Dunne , Victor Fleming , Clark Gable , Howard Hawks , Hedda Hopper , Leo McCarey , Adolphe Menjou , George Murphy , Fred Niblo, Jr. , Ayn Rand , Ronald Reagan , Ginger Rogers , Barbara Stanwyck , Norman Taurog , Robert Taylor , King Vidor , John Wayne and Sam Wood . Sam Wood was elected first president, Walt Disney, Cedric Gibbons and Norman Taurog vice presidents.

An MPA member who was soon critical of the HUAC summons and the resulting professional bans was Gary Cooper. In 1975 the MPA dissolved, in the same year as the successor organization to the HUAC, the Internal Security Committee.

Ayn Rand pamphlet

In 1947 Ayn Rand published a pamphlet for the Alliance , entitled Screen Guide for Americans , based on her own experience with American films:

The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt our moral premises by corrupting non-political movies - by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories - thus making people absorb the basic principles of collectivism by indirection and implication. The principle of free speech requires that we do not use police force to forbid the Communists the expression of their ideas - which means that we do not pass laws forbidding them to speak. But the principle of free speech does not require that we furnish the Communists with the means to preach their ideas, and does not imply that we owe them jobs and support to advocate our own destruction at our own expense

The purpose of the communists in Hollywood is not to make political films that openly advocate communism. Their purpose is to undermine our morals with non-political films by adding small incidental bits of propaganda to innocent stories. So people are supposed to embrace the principles of collectivism through implication and detours. The principle of free speech requires that we do not use the police to forbid communists from expressing their ideas, which means that we do not pass laws prohibiting the right to speak. But the principle of free speech does not require that we provide communists with the means to preach their ideas. It does not imply that we owe them jobs or support them, that they advocate destroying us by our own means

Rand cited examples from well-known and critically acclaimed films that they believed contained communist or collectivist messages. These had not been recognized as such by either progressives or conservatives. Examples of this were: The best years of our lives (because this would portray business people as negatively and imply that war veterans are entitled to state compensation). Another example was polonaise (because this would imply Chopin sacrificed himself for a patriotic reason and not for music).

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Larry Ceplair, Steven Englund: Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community 1930–1960. University of California Press, 1983, p. 193, pp. 210-212, p. 378.
  2. ↑ Hollywood Renegades Archive , accessed January 1, 2013.
  3. ^ Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster: A Short History of Film. Rutgers University Press 2008, pp. 178-182.
  4. ↑ Entry on MPA on NNDB.com, accessed on January 1, 2012.
  5. ↑ Review of the 1953 Berlin Film Festival at Berlinale.de, accessed on December 28, 2012.
  6. ^ Howard Kazanjian, Chris Enss: The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne. Globe Pequot Press, Guilford 2006; Article on co-author Chris Enss's website, accessed January 1, 2013.
  7. ↑ Barbara Branden: The Passion of Ayn Rand . 1986, p. 199 .
  8. ↑ Charotte B. Becker: Encyclopedia of Ethics . Ed .: Taylor & Francis. 2001, ISBN 0-415-93675-6 , pp. 1441 .
  9. ↑ Journals of Ayn Rand , Chapter 10.