Hollywood's Missing Movies

Are you familiar with Total Eclipse? Directed by Steven Speilberg from a script by William Goldman, it stars Dustin Hoffman, Jurgen Prochnow, Robert Duvall, Harvey Keitel and Linda Hunt. The movie tells the story of the creation of the pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939 that divided Europe into fiefdoms and freed the Nazis for some of their worst depredations in Western Europe. The movie shows some of the Soviet invasion of Poland, secret meetings, Moscow trials, torture chambers, and the efforts of American Communist sympathisers to keep America out of the Soviets' way.

Haven't heard of this movie? There's a good reason. This essay by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley looks at Hollywood's tangled relations with the Communist Party, the Soviet Union and their sympathisers and agents in America. He tells you the seldom-heard truth about the Hollywood "blacklist" and the history of Communism in Hollywood. Long, but a revealing read.