“Hardly anybody is still alive today who has personal memories of the Hollywood blacklist of the immediate post-World War II period, let alone of the rabid Communist agitation that took place in the film colony before and during the war,” notes Bruce Bawer in his review of my book, Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Movie Industry, adding “don’t expect this terrific, truth-telling tome to be made into a major-studio movie anytime soon.” Bawer is right, but as they say in Hollywood there’s more to the story.

On July 4, America’s 250^th birthday, film actress Eva Marie Saint will turn 102. She outlived Gone with the Wind star Olivia de Havilland, who departed in 2020 at 104. Marsha Hunt (Panama Hattie, Raw Deal) also lived for 104 years before her death in 2022. All three had memories of the Hollywood blacklist and Communist Party offensives in the studios. De Havilland opposed the screen Stalinists and Hunt was something of an apologist. Saint played a role in the best movie on that conflict, though it was not recognized as such when it was released in 1954.

In On the Waterfront, shot on location in Hoboken, New Jersey, Marlon Brando plays Terry Malloy, the longshoreman who blows the whistle on the mob that controls his union. Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is the local crime boss, bumping off those who refuse to play “D and D”—deaf and dumb. A crime commission is investigating and a priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden), urges the men to testify.

“Now boys, get smart,” says Barry. “Gettin’ the facts to the public. Testifyin’ for what you know is right against what you know is wrong. Now what’s ratting to them is telling the truth for you. Can’t you see that?” Those who keep silent, Barry says, share the guilt. The commission wants Terry to testify and in a famous scene he tells his brother Charlie, (Rod Steiger) there’s “a lot more” to this than he thought. When Charlie falls victim to the mob, Terry testifies, leading to the showdown scene.

“You ratted on us Terry,” mob boss Johnny growls.

“From where you stand, maybe,” Terry shoots back. “But I’m standing over here now. I was rattin’ on myself all those years and I didn’t even know it. . . You’re a cheap, lousy, dirty stinkin’ mug. And I’m glad what I done to you. You hear that? I’m glad what I done. And I’m gonna keep on doin it!” Screenwriter John Howard Lawson, Communist Party straw boss in the Writer’s Guild, denounced the movie as “McCarthyite poison,” but director Elia Kazan didn’t care.

In the New York theatre scene, Kazan refused to conform with Communist Party direction for his plays and wound up leaving the party. At the nadir of Stalinist oppression, when party members were proclaiming loyalty to the Soviet Union, Kazan called them out to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

“On the Waterfront was my own story,” Kazan explained in his autobiography, published in 1988. “Every day I worked on that film I was telling the world where I stood and my critics to go and fuck themselves.” The picture proved more than a contender, nominated for 12 Oscars and winning eight, including best picture, best director for Elia Kazan, best screenplay for Budd Schulberg, best actor for Marlon Brando, and best supporting actress for Eva Marie Saint as Edie Doyle, her first movie role. Kazan, who passed away in 2003, did not fight the Communists alone.

Ronald Reagan battled Stalinists in the talent guilds, where they worked through front groups such as Progressive Citizens of America (PCA) and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP). Reagan’s ally in the back lots was fellow New Deal Democrat Roy Brewer of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, better known as the IA. By the mid-1950s the Reagan-Brewer alliance had crushed the Hollywood Party. Like Terry Malloy, they were glad what they did to the Communists, and they kept on doing it.

Reagan left the Democratic Party, claiming it left him. He served as governor of California and president of the United States, challenging Soviet boss Mikhail Gorbachev to “rear down this wall.” Reagan passed away in 2004 and Brewer in 2006. Eva Marie Saint starred in North by Northwest, Exodus, and many other films. She outlived Marlon Brando, who passed in 2004, and that recalls another scene from On the Waterfront

When Edie warns Terry not to confront the mob, Terry replies, “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna hurt nobody. I’m just gonna go down there and get my rights.” Eva Marie Saint’s 102^nd birthday, which is America’s 250^th, reminds people to remember where those rights come from. As the Declaration of Independence puts it:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our rights do not proceed from government, which can take them away. Our rights proceed from our Creator, and it is the task of government to preserve them. On July 4, the people have no reason to play deaf and dumb. Happy birthday Eva Marie Saint! Happy birthday America!