https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/a-nation-and-a-saint/A Nation and a SaintJUNE 16, 2026
BY LLOYD BILLINGSLEY
“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 250th 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.
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