Too Big for Their Britches: The Matter of America's Electronic Media by Thomas Adams

Author:Thomas Adams [Adams, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781649529923
Google: OXuBzgEACAAJ
Amazon: B09B2TLQ4Y
Goodreads: 59498895
Publisher: Fulton Books
Published: 2021-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

Hollywood

“As long as there have been widely recognizable celebrities, those celebrities have been getting involved in politics.” (Mark Harvey; author of Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy and the director of graduate programs at the University of Saint Mary.) “In 1920, Al Jolson, the singer and actor, became the first celebrity to publicly endorse someone for president when he stumped for Warren G. Harding. But in that case, it was Senator Harding’s campaign that reached out to Jolson. Celebrities actually advocating on their own, that’s a much more recent phenomenon,” Mr. Harvey said, “which didn’t start happening frequently until the ’60s and ’70s. That’s because up until that time, most actors had morals clauses in their contracts, which kept them from making politically divisive statements, because they would otherwise suffer potentially career-ending consequences.”

“The fall of the studio system in Hollywood in the ’70s gave them much more leeway to take political stances. Many celebrities, notably Warren Beatty and Jane Fonda, spoke out against the Vietnam War, for example.” Melvyn Douglas and Helen Gahagan Douglas. Glamorous and urbane, earnest and committed, they were the first couple of New Deal liberalism during the formative years of Hollywood’s political development. Initially, Melvyn was the driving force—a mainstay of sophisticated MGM comedies (renowned as “the man who made Garbo laugh” in the 1939 classic Ninotchka). Douglas also proved a born political organizer. He played a central role in building the lustrous Hollywood Popular Front groups that sought to mobilize opposition to Hitler and support for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War; in 1938, he took the lead in creating the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, Hollywood’s first organization focused on electoral politics.

A popular and energetic campaigner, Douglas was rewarded for his activism in 1940 by becoming the first celebrity elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. That convention, ironically, marked the turning point at which his wife, a singer and actress with a deep commitment to the poor, assumed the family’s leading political role: During the 1940 campaign, she appeared tirelessly for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, even accepting an appointment as the California Democratic Party’s vice chairwoman. In 1944, Helen was elected to Congress (FDR promoted her as the Democratic alternative to the arch and elegant Republican Rep. Clare Boothe Luce). She served three terms before losing the 1950 California Senate race to Richard Nixon, who famously branded her “the pink lady” and unfairly accused her of being a communist sympathizer. (In fact, both Helen and Melvyn had frequently sparred with communists in the Popular Front groups.) Neither Douglas engaged much in politics thereafter, Melvyn was “gray-listed” as a “premature anti-Fascist,” and he did not work regularly again until the 1960s.

But more than any others in Hollywood’s founding generation of activists, they demonstrated how many doors in Washington would open to politically engaged stars. Some other well-known actor/advocates include Warren Beatty, Harry Belafonte, Bono, George Clooney, Michael J. Fox, Bob Geldof, Jane Fonda, Lee Greenwood, C. Heston, Angelina Jolie and

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