Targeted by HUAC

All the films are valuable in terms of content and their significance in the appalling political context of the time. Dmytryk’s Crossfire, featuring breakout performances by Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame, is one of the many noirs that surged out in 1947, just as HUAC ramped up its investigations, generally portraying American society in terms of dark, violent, labyrinthian urban spaces where people wander, disoriented, seeking refuge anywhere they can find it. It’s also a landmark in American film history for its subject matter, the antisemitic murder of a Jewish man by a neurotic bigot in uniform, with Ryan giving an unsparing performance as the sneering psycho whose hatred is all dressed up in jingoistic patriotism and defense of American values.

Just out of the marines himself, Ryan was a dedicated political progressive who campaigned for the role, claiming, “Nobody knows that son of a bitch better than I do.” He’d served in the same outfit as the author of the book the film is based on, Richard Brooks’s The Brick Foxhole. Brooks was a marine representing the problems and open prejudices of his fellow marines stationed at Camp Pendleton in California during the war. The book is centered on the homophobic murder of a gay man, which was impossible to get by the censors at that time.

And the workings of the blacklist are notable in this case, because Crossfire was a B movie sleeper hit that drew astonishingly good reviews and Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay by John Paxton, Best Supporting Actor (Ryan), and Best Supporting Actress (Grahame). However, by the time of the Oscars ceremony, the shine was off Crossfire. It had been targeted by HUAC as one of the “un-American” films churned out by an industry supposedly riddled with communist subversion. Producer Adrian Scott and director Dmytryk had both been blacklisted by then. How the prominent leftist Robert Ryan escaped a similar fate, even he was never sure.

It was a bitter irony that the other landmark film dealing with antisemitism that year was a shinier, posher, more prestigious A-budget film, Elia Kazan’s Gentlemen’s Agreement, starring Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, Celeste Holm, and John Garfield. It was up for many of the same awards and won them. Crossfire was snubbed across the board.

But soon enough, Kazan and Garfield would be summoned by HUAC too.