LA LISTA NEGRA de Hollywood -y en general, el coco senador McCarthy, el Comité de Actividades Antiamericanas y tal- responde a un episodio ciertamente poco digno de ser alabado en la historia de los EEUU. Pero sin exagerar, porque también es uno de los más distorsionados, casi diría mitificados, por parte de la intelligentsia yanqui, y por mimetismo la europea.

Y ya era hora que alguien hiciese que esa lista fuese algo menos negra: interesantísimo artículo de Clive Davis en el Times de Londres a partir de un irreverente libro de Ron y Allis Radosh: "Red Star Over Hollywood" (Estrella Roja en Hollywood), que espero leer pronto (por supuesto, escribo irreverente porque destroza varios mitos de la religión biempensante). Leed el artículo en el propio blog de Davis, y el comentario de Roger Simon que, además de amigo y blogger, es un veterano de la meca del cine.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. También via Roger veo este artículo del New York Sun sobre el libro:

So let's begin by stipulating, as Ronald and Allis Radosh clearly do, that the blacklist was wrong. Artists, even empty-headed actors, should not be denied a livelihood because of their political beliefs. The studio chiefs who invented and ran this unemployment scheme have plenty to answer for, as do the grandstanding politicians who coerced them to do it. All this has been explored at length, if not in perfect clarity, in such mainstream movies as "The Way We Were," "Guilty by Suspicion," "The Front," and "The Majestic."

What gets very little attention in Hollywood, on screen or off, is the story of how Soviet agents and the Communist Party USA actually did infiltrate and influence the film industry. Hollywood has paid even less attention to the background of the story, including Stalin's deal with Hitler and the increasingly bloody Soviet purges. It's no accident, as the comrades would say, that Hollywood's Reds stuck with "Uncle Joe" every zig and zag of the way. Roosevelt was a warmonger for a year or two, then a hero. Civil Rights was a front-burner issue before Pearl Harbor; after war was declared, Civil Rights was "divisive." And, yes, Finland was to blame for the Soviet invasion of Finland.

The Radoshes have done an estimable job filling in the blanks with the names of communist agents and officials and the specifics of their meddling. The result is going to make Barbra Streisand crazy. But the best thing of all (well, apart from making Barbra crazy) is that the Radoshes are both nuanced and fair. They know how to separate the simpletons, like matinee idol John Garfield, from the truly loathsome, like playwright Lillian Hellman. And they are no kinder to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), with its yahoo anti-Semite chairman, than to the communists and Fellow Travelers.

Como os decía, tengo que leer este libro cuanto antes.