More on CPUSA culture during the non-aggression pact:
Woman of the Year
Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn made a number of popular movies in
the 1930s and 40s written specifically as vehicles for the two. He
starred as a blunt, homespun, no-nonsense sort of guy while she was
sophisticated, aristocratic and somewhat aloof. The plot centered on
their clashing characters and inevitably involved his struggle to break
through her formidable exterior and win her heart.
"Woman of The Year" was one such movie and it has the rather odd
distinction of being a propaganda piece, if ambivalent one, for the
August 1939 Stalin-Hitler non-aggression pact. Hollywood Ten
screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. wrote it in collaboration with Michael
Kanin. It is produced and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and George
Stevens. While the film was released in 1942, the evidence is clear that
it retains the isolationist orientation of the prior year when Hitler
and Stalin had tenuously peaceful relations.
The Stalin-Hitler pact lasted until June 1941 when the Nazis invaded the
Soviet Union. Communists around the world, including those on the
payrolls of Hollywood studios, cheered every foreign policy initiative
of the Soviet Union. When the Kremlin called for international
solidarity on behalf of the Spanish Popular Front, Communists around the
world rallied around the flag. But all of a sudden in 1939, the Kremlin
called off the crusade against fascism and a new non-interventionist, if
not isolationist, attitude became politically correct. The Almanac
Singers, led by Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, sang songs like
"Washington Breakdown":
"Franklin D., listen to me, You ain't gonna send me across the sea,
'Cross the sea, 'cross the sea. You may say its for defense, It's that
kind of talk I'm against..."
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/woman_of_the_year.htm
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