Political progressives from old Hollywood

Champagne Socialists and Commies, the lot of them. Tuh!

Burt Lancaster was a mensch (and not just his politics)

Lancaster was a vocal supporter of progressive and liberal political causes and an opponent of right-wing political movements such as McCarthyism.[47] He frequently spoke out in support of racial and other minorities. As a result, he was often a target of FBI investigations.[48][49] He was named in President Richard Nixon's 1973 "Enemies List".[50]

A vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, he helped pay for the successful defense of a soldier accused of "fragging", i.e. (murdering) another soldier during war-time.[51] In 1968, Lancaster actively supported the presidential candidacy of anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and frequently spoke on his behalf during the Democratic primaries.[52]

He campaigned heavily for George McGovern in the 1972 United States presidential election.[53]

In 1985, Lancaster joined the fight against AIDS after fellow movie star, Rock Hudson, contracted the disease.[54] Lancaster delivered the bed-ridden Hudson's last words at the Commitment to Life fundraiser at a time when the stigma surrounding AIDS was at its height. He was the only major male star who attended.[55][56]

Of his political opinions, frequent co-star Tony Curtis said: "Here's this great big aggressive guy that looks like a ding-dong athlete playing these big tough guys and he has the soul of—who were those first philosophers of equality?—Socrates, Plato. He was a Greek philosopher with a sense that everybody was equal.

I believe Eddie Albert (Green Acres) was quite liberal.

Helen Gahagan (Mrs. Melvyn Douglas)

She was a three-term Democratic Congresswoman from California from 1944 to 1950 and ran against Richard Nixon for a California Senate seat in 1950. We all know where that went...

Her portrayal of the villain in 1935's "She" inspired Disney's Evil Queen in 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Frances Farmer had a reputation as being a leftist, at least before she was famous--she won a subscription prize in the '30s to The Voice of Action, a leftist newspaper, which included a trip to the Soviet Union. According to Peter Shelley, a biographer, it was suspected she was a legitimate Communist, though I'm not sure this was ever substantiated. Things didn't end well for her anyway, so we'll never really know; it was probably rightwing claptrap, the same kind we see today.

Bogart and Bacall and of all people, Howard Hughes (he gave them a deal on a chartered TWA Constellation for the flight to Washington.)

It was called the Committee For the First Amendment

James Garner

I may be mistaken, but reading about Lee Grant, I've always got the sense that she's fairly left on the political spectrum.

Will Geer, beloved “Grandpa Walton” of the 70’s family-friendly tv drama The Waltons, was in younger years a lover of Harry Hay, an early homophile activist. He organized labor/union actions on the West Coast, toured Civilian Conservation Corps camps w Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie. He was a member of the Communist Party of the US.

He was a radical dude. ‘Night Grandpa.

Henry Fonda—his friendship with conservative Jimmy Stewart was occasionally strained by arguments about politics.

Marilyn Monroe lobbied for Ella Fitzgerald to perform at the Mocambo and showed up during the run with other famous stars. In 1960, she became a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy; that same year, as she kept a home in Roxbury, Conn., she was elected as an alternate delegate to the state’s Democratic caucus. She did not hide her pro-Castro views on Cuba or her support for the then-burgeoning civil rights movement.

Myrna Loya and Robert Ryan

Screenwriter Norma Barzman is 100 this year, and Marsha Hunt is now 102.

Karen Morley was on her way to becoming big at MGM, and she was probably one of the most liberal actors then. Progressives like her were uncommon but Jean Arthur fits the bill, as do Danny Kaye and Katharine Hepburn (more a proto-feminist than a progressive). James Cagney, Jean Harlow, and Carole Lombard were ardent Roosevelt Democrats. Many/most studio heads were anti-union, anti-tax Republicans, however.

Lucille Ball was (briefly) more than just a redhead.

She was a red.

Adding to Humphrey Bogart. When Lena Horne bought a house in the neighborhood where Bogart lived, doing so by having her agent buy the house in his name since the area was largely segregated, the neighbors passed around a petition to have her removed. Upon hearing about it, Bogart sent a message to Horne's house saying "If anyone gives you any trouble, let me know immediately". Bogart also had words with his neighbors, some of whom he knew for some time including people in the motion picture industry. Horne was never bothered again.

Dorothy Comingore, who played the 2nd wife in "Citizen Kane" who Kane tried to turn in to an opera star, got great reviews for the role, but she had done some liberal stuff and was blacklisted when she refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Committee. Also William Randolph Hearst, who was the inspiration for the character of Kane, hated Comingore for playing a character inspired by his mistress Marion Davies, and he had newspapers and columinsts he had on the payroll like Walter Winchell post terrible things about her. A real shame, as I was watching some of "Citizen Kane" the other day, and she was great.

Gene Kelly was also supposed to be quite liberal. One of his wives, Betsy Blair, Oscar-nominated for "Marty" was also affected by the blacklist, too.

I heard Eddie Albert was supposed to have been a great guy.

James Garner was a strong Democratic Party supporter. From 1982, Garner gave at least $29,000 to Federal campaigns, of which over $24,000 was to Democratic Party candidates, including Dennis Kucinich (for Congress in 2002), Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and various Democratic committees and groups.

On August 28, 1963, Garner was one of several celebrities to join Martin Luther King Jr. in the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom". In his autobiography, Garner recalled sitting in the third row listening to King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

For his role in the 1985 CBS miniseries Space, the character's party affiliation was changed from Republican as in the book to reflect Garner's personal views. Garner said, "My wife would leave me if I played a Republican."

There was an effort by California Democratic party leaders, led by state Senator Herschel Rosenthal, to persuade Garner to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of California in the 1990 election. However, future United States Senator and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein received the nomination instead, losing to Republican Pete Wilson in the election. Garner also supported legalizing marijuana and he was pro-choice. His mother died from an illegal abortion.

Lee Grant was blacklisted for quite a few years, as was her writer husband.

Judy Holliday was called up by the House Un-American Committee, probably for being in the NY intellectual circle/friends with Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Green, and having a genius IQ in real life, acted like one of her dumb blondes on the stand and was able to resume her career unharmed and without naming anyone. There's a transcript of her on the stand if you search the internet for it. She was truly brilliant!

I did what I could....given my circumstances!

I think celebs started to lean democrat during the FDR era? By the time of McCarthyism, they were heavily democratic, I guess?

Liberal Bette Davis and left-wing actor John Garfield were the driving forces behind the Hollywood Canteen, which provided food, entertainment, and comfort to servicemen during WW2:

[quote]The Hollywood Canteen, like others, was staffed completely by volunteers. But in Hollywood, the volunteers were often famous celebrities. Servicemen could dance with Betty Grable, be served a sandwich by Shirley Temple, and watch a performance by Carmen Miranda.

Bette Davis fought to make the Canteen racially integrated when many Hollywood nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels were not integrated and even the US armed forces had segregated units. Davis was appalled by this practice and even danced and socialized with African-American enlisted men to make her point.

Here she is with friend Hattie McDaniel at the Canteen.

Another Bette.

[quote]r14 Katharine Hepburn (more a proto-feminist than a progressive).

And a big bi/dyke.

Katharine Hepburn. But considering who her mother was, it's not that suprising.

Here's a list from IMDb. Although Idk how accurate it is because Joan Crawford is listed on the Republican page, and she was a known liberal all her life.

Here's the Republican list. I'd for sure rather find myself in the company with the dems of old Hollywood versus the repubs.

Uh, OP, Old Hollywood was 95% Communist. lol

Lucille Ball came out in support of homosexuality.

R25 the Democrat list definitely brings the star power: Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Liz Taylor, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Miriam Hopkins, Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe—most of these people are still well-remembered today. On the Republicans, you have Jerry Lewis, Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne. Some big stars, but not as many. I don't really care for any of those people as actors—the only ones on that list that I truly love are Gene Tierney and Barbara Stanwyck, both of whom were brilliant performers.

[quote] Karen Morley was on her way to becoming big at MGM

Karen and her husband Lloyd Gough were both communists. She later alibied she joined the party to please some lover who was going off to fight the fascists. I don't think Lloyd ever made a similar excuse.

I was very disappointed to learn Lionel Stander was a hared core Stalinist. I loved his performance in Mr Deeds Goes to Town.

John Howard Lawson, the screenwriter who was one of the Hollywood Ten and who served as the Communist Party's cultural commissar in Hollywood, held up Stander as the model of a committed communist actor who enhanced the class struggle through his performances. In the movie No Time to Marry (1938), which had been written by Party member Paul Jarrico, Stander had whistled a few bars of the "Internationale" while waiting for an elevator.

Stander had a long history of supporting left-wing causes. He was an active member of the Popular Front from 1936-39, a broad grouping of left-wing organizations dedicated to fighting reactionaries at home and fascism abroad. Stander wrote of the time, "We fought on every front because we realized that the forces of reaction and Faciscm fight democracy on every front. We, too, have been forced, therefore, to organize in order to combat them on every front: politically through such organizations as the Motion Picture Democratic Committee; economically through our guilds and unions; socially, and culturally through such organizations as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League."

The Front disintegrated when the U.S.S.R. signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, which engendered World War II by giving the Nazis the get-go to invade Poland (with the Soviet Union invading from the East). The Communist Party-USA dropped out of the Front and from anti-Nazi activities, and during the early days of the War, before Germany invaded the U.S.S.R. in June 1941, it tried to hamper US support for the UK under the aegis of supporting "peace," including calling strikes in defense plants. Many communists, such as Elia Kazan, dropped out of the Party after this development, but many others stayed. These were the Stalinists that the American non-communist left grew to despise, and eventually joined with the right to destroy, though much of their antipathy after 1947-48 was generated by a desire to save themselves from the tightening noose of reaction.

Melvyn Douglas, a prominent liberal whose wife Helen Gahagan Douglas would later be a U.S. Representative from California (and would lose her bid for the Senate to a young Congressman named Richard Nixon, who red-baited her as "The Pink Lady"), had resisted Stander's attempts to recruit him to the Party. "One night, Lionel Stander kept me up until dawn trying to sell me the Russian brand of Marxism and to recruit me for the Communist Party. I resisted. I had always been condemnatory of totalitarianism and I made continual, critical references to the U.S.S.R. in my speeches. Members of the Anti-Nazi League would urge me to delete these references and several conflicts ensued."

Stander is best remembered for playing Max on TV's Hart to Hart (1979) (1979-84) with Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, a role he reprised in a series of "Hart to Hart" TV movies. Stander also appeared on Wagner's earlier TV series It Takes a Thief (1968) and on the HBO series Dream On (1990).

I don’t know who creates or curates those IMBD list, but they are wrong about at least one:

Fred Astaire was a Democrat, it was Ginger and her harridan stage mother who were the right wingers.

Jane Russell was listed twice on the one above.

That bitch Gloria Swanson would probably be a trumptard.

Is anyone taking into account that the parties used to be somewhat different in old Hollywood days? It might just be easier to say liberal versus conservative instead of Republican versus Democratic.

Shirley MacLaine

I'd probably say anyone who was targeted by McCarthy. One name that comes to mind is Paul Robeson. When I saw Eddie Albert it made me think of Gregory Peck for some reason. Didn't Peck run for some/hold sort of office?

Dashiell Hammett (sp?), Lillian Hellman, Dalton Trumbo, Pete Seeger/The Weavers, Lee Grant, on and on.

Olivia de Haviland was a proud Ghibelline in time when most of the people were Guelph.

R35 In all her lives?

[quote] I'd probably say anyone who was targeted by McCarthy.

It wasn't McCarthy doing that. He focused on communists in the government, not Hollywood.

R10

[quote] Henry Fonda—his friendship with conservative Jimmy Stewart was occasionally strained by arguments about politics.

I once saw one of these two talk about their friendship on Johnny Carson. I believe it was Stewart.

He was quite upfront that he and Fonda had been friends from way back before either had been successful. As Stewart told it, decades back they had had a big argument about politics. Afterward, because they each valued the friendship, they agreed to never again discuss politics.

And they didn't. Choosing to preserve their friendship.

[quote]On this day — Oct. 20 — in 1947, members of the House Un-American Activities Committee began an investigation into alleged communist influences in the film industry as the post-World War II “Red Scare” ramped up towards its peak. (Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, the namesake of an era marked by anti-communist paranoia, was not involved with the Congressional committee, although their aims overlapped.) Fearing a conspiracy that would inject propaganda into productions and recruit movie-going Americans to communist causes, the committee subpoenaed more than 40 actors, directors, writers and studio executives, whom they grilled about their political affiliations and asked to name names of other Hollywood communists.

more at link

Mae West was very progressive, not only with her bringing sexuality to the forefront but in regard to race. When she would tour the South, if a place of lodging refused entrance to her black maid, West would stay somewhere else, making sure when she returned home to inform her friends and colleagues to never stay at those locations. While living in an apartment building, her black boyfriend was refused entrance due to policy so West bought the entire building and overturned the policy. When making her films, she would often give the black actresses playing her maids speaking lines, even if they weren't essential, so the actresses would be paid more than having a non-speaking appearance and also made sure they were paid the same rate as white actresses.

Yeah, but she had some strange views on Homosexuality R43

Ed Asner.

Tallulah Bankhead