Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM)

         The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayers (MGM) studios are a well know part of Culver City history.  The triangular plot that would become MGM was originally established as the first major studio under Thomas Harper Ince, who originally built the recognizable colonnade that would become the ceremonial entrance to the studio in 1915.  Ince had moved his Inceville Studio to Culver City after meeting with Harry Culver, which resulted in the Ince/ Triangle Studio that Ince built with D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennet.  In 1918, Samuel Goldwyn took over the lot for his Goldwyn Studios company, and in 1924 a merger took place that would create the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company. MGM was managed by Louis B. Mayer, and throughout the 1920's the studio began growing to include numerous studios and sound stages. MGM had been a major contributor to the film industry from its early beginning in silent films, and continued to be an important part of Culver City up until the 1990's, when the property became part of Columbia Pictures, and later Sony Pictures Studios.
10202 W. Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA
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Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Location of the drafting of The Waldorf Statement.
          From its founding, MGM had produced and distributed numerous films for Hollywood.  It was considered one of "The Big Five" Hollywood studios (along with RKO).  Both Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn (at the time running the Samuel Goldwyn Company) were present at the meeting at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where Hollywood's top studio executives drafted the Waldorf Statement, which eventually led to the Hollywood Blacklist. MGM contributed to the public image of the Cold War through a number of important film productions, and through its role as a film distributor.  Throughout the films made and distributed by MGM you can see the changing image of "Russians" related to the changing political relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during WWII. 

Before and After WWII

          One of MGM's early films depicting the image of the Soviet Union was the 1939 comedy Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It is one of the first American movies to use a romantic story of "opposites attract" to provide a satirical comparison that portrays the oppressive rigidity of communist doctrine in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the free, exciting Parisian society of the West.  ​In the movie, Ninotchka, played by Greta Garbo, is sent to assist in the sale of jewelry confiscated during the Russian Revolution, which would eventually lead to the creation of the communist state.  The sale had been foiled by a Count (Melvyn Douglas), who is working for an heir to the aristocracy, and convinces the salesmen to stay in Paris.  The film ends with the Russian salesmen accepting capitalism, and Ninotchka (Garbo) and the Count (Douglas) falling in love. The film was well-received at the time, and there was even an attempt to revive the film during World War II, but it was suppressed as being too critical of the U.S.'s new ally against fascism and Nazi Germany. However, after the war, when it was once again permissible to  criticize the Soviet Union, it served as the basis for the musical Silk Stockings (1955), which itself was made into a movie in 1957, this time starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.
Ninotchka was an influential film in establishing a formula for comparing the Soviet Union (Communism) and "The West" (Capitalism), usually at the expense of the Soviet people being portrayed as backward.  Its success not only led to its own remakes, but to a number of movies based on the same formula of using romantic entanglements to establish the comparison.
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           Another MGM film that uses comedic interactions between members of the seemingly opposite ideologies was Comrade X (1940), an American spy film starring Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr and Oskar Homolka. The film was made prior to the U.S. entrance into WWII, and before the Soviet Union became one of the US's allies. The film takes place in the Soviet Union, where an American reporter (Gable) secretly writes newspaper stories about the 1930's Moscow purge trials for a Texas-based newspaper syndicate.  In order to protect his identity, the reporter attributes the articles to the anonymous "Comrade X". His identity is discovered by his valet, who blackmails him into getting his daughter (Lamar) out of the country through a sham marriage.  She agrees only in order to be able to spread the message of Communism to the rest of the world. However, a commissar is determined to find the true identity of Comrade X, and the couple must escape the Soviet Union by hijacking a tank and forcing their way over the Romanian border. 
          More than simply being a familiar romantic comedy, the movie posters for Comrade X marketed the film as “The funniest comedy since ‘Ninotchka’."  After WWII, Comrade X was later remade as Never Let Me Go (1953), also staring Clark Gable, in the same role.  However, in the anti-communist frenzy of the 1950's, the story is transformed to an "action adventure romance," and the story is about a reporter marrying a Bolshoi ballerina (Gene Tierney) being forced to perform against her will.  The reporter attempts to get her to accompany him back to San Francisco, and the two must find a way out of the Soviet Union.

Pro-Soviet WWII Films

           During the war, the government and motion picture industry switched from depicting Soviets as a group of backward people to a more positive image of an allied force in the war against Nazi Germany.  In addition to suppressing negative images, films often portrayed the Soviets as liberators, and brave soldiers in the effort to defeat the Germans. Song of Russia (1943) was one film made by MGM that used the war as the pretense for another romantic relationship.  The trailer for the film states, "Out of the conflict and drama of our day...comes a great love story."  The film follows the romantic relationship between an American composer and Russian (Soviet) woman, which is ruined by the invasion of Nazi-Germany.  Instead of fleeing to the U.S. the woman urges the composer to stay to help defend her small village against invasion. The film emphasized the brave image of Soviets (represented by a female character), but also the relationship of the U.S. fighting against Germany.

          Even though movies such as Song of Russia were created under the pressure of the government to produce positive images of the Soviet-American alliance, after the war the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) often subpoenaed those working on the film.  HUAC specifically cited Song of Russia as one of the three noted examples of "pro-Soviet propaganda films" made by Hollywood (RKO's The North Star being another). The screenplay was co-written by Paul Jerricho, who would later be blacklisted while working for Howard Hughes at RKO. In her 1947 testimony before the HUAC, Ayn Rand was a "friendly witness" who cited Song of Russia as an example of Communist propaganda in the motion picture industry.  She claimed that it portrayed an idealized Soviet Union with freedom and comfort, which she argued never existed in the real Soviet Union. 
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Author Ayn Rand testifying as HUAC "friendly witness".

Post-War "Red Scare"

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          After the war, in addition to reviving pre-war depictions, new films reflected the growing distrust of communist infiltration and espionage.  The troupe of a troubled romantic relationship between communists and the West took a different turn.  The film Conspirator (1949), distributed by MGM,  was a British thriller based on a 1948 novel by Humphrey Slater.  It starred Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.  A beautiful eighteen-year-old American woman falls in love with a British Guard officer who turns out to be a spy for the Soviet Union. After they are married, he begins to act suspiciously, and she eventually discovers his true identity. She forces him to choose between his marriage and his ideology, and he agrees to stop serving as a spy in order to placate her. However, his Soviet handlers find out she knows, and orders him to kill her, forcing him to actually choose. The movie uses the American-British relationship after the war, but the audience quickly finds out that it is actually a U.S.-Soviet relationship built on a lie. The film also suggests an equal concern for communist infiltration on the part of the British.  Other MGM films like the The Red Danube (1949) also use the British military as a potential weak link against communism.  In Red Danube, the British forces are depicted as being unable to repatriate Soviets in their mission to combat communism.
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          MGM also distributed The Hoaxsters (1952), the only Hollywood film about Communism in documentary form.  The “hoaxsters” title refers to carnival snake-oil salesmen, which is applied to world leaders who promote totalitarian ideas. The documentary was marketed as "the inside story of the World's Greatest Fraud," and makes use of numerous movie stars as narrators. The film examines fascism, and Nazism, and Adolf Hitler's promises to the German people as a hoax on a global scale. After a review of Nazism, the documentary turns toward a comparison with Communism and a history of Russia.  The two are compared for their ideological similarities, and their changing attitude toward the West, which the film argues is always in line with the goal of global domination. The U.S. is shown as combating that goal and  advancing the ideal of freedom, and the audience is warned about the communist destruction of the American way of life. Written by Herman Hoffman, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film is indicative of the 1950's frenzy that places communism as a threat equal to Nazis.
          ​Other films made during the 1950s portray social problems as the political tools of Communist exploitation.  In the film Trial (1955), the legal system itself becomes susceptible to Communist agitation. Directed by Mark Robson, and based on the novel written by Don Mankiewicz, Trial stars Glenn Ford, Dorothy McGuire, Arthur Kennedy, and Juano Hernandez. The plot follows the trial of a young Mexican-American boy from California who is accused of rape and murder after wandering onto a part of a local beach that is restricted, and a girl suffering from a heart condition dies.  It is assumed that he attempted to seduce her, and their young age means that he is seen as attempting to commit statutory rape. The boy, who is originally victimized by prejudiced accusers, becomes a pawn of his communist defender.  The defender attempts to have the boy receive a guilty verdict in order to serve his own propaganda and fund-raising purposes.  It is only through the intervention of another attorney that his plot is foiled.  The overall message of the movie is that injustices in the legal system, though originally founded on biased accusations, are actually only manifested at the hands of communist plots to agitate the social fabric.

Cold War Escapism

          Many of the tropes developed in film after WWII and into the 1950s reflected and promoted an unease within American public life.  As the Cold War heightened, and both the USSR and the United States emerged as opposing "Super Powers," the anti-communist message in films became an excuse for escaping the actual stress of Cold War conflict.  During the build up in the Reagan-Thatcher years, films provided a clear black and white view of an increasingly complex world.  In Red Dawn (1984), the theme of infiltration blossoms into full soviet occupation.  The movie poster reads, "In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil.  Until now."  The movie is set in the future of 1989, and shows America besieged by Communists as the free world falls to the USSR and its allied forces Cuba and Nicaragua, A small group of teenagers must defend their small town in Colorado, the last bastion of the free world, against Soviet paratroopers.  What ensues, against the background of the Cold War, is teenage use of guerrilla tactics to resist the Soviet forces.  At the time, Red Dawn (1984) was dubbed the most violent film ever produced.  It received mixed reviews, and some protested MGM for the movie's violence and strict anti-communist message. However, movies such as Red Dawn provided a clear cut wartime morality.  It also offered audiences a clearly identifiable enemy that was an aggressor to be resisted physically rather than ideologically. This was quite different than the real world political tensions where conflict might lead  to annihilation. Like many Cold War movies, Red Dawn (1984) has become a cult classic, and its new-found popularity inspired the 2012 remake of the same name.  However, with the U.S.-Soviet Cold War over, in this new version, the main characters must defend America against an invasion from North Korea.
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Red Dawn Protest at MGM. Courtesy of the LA Public Library Photo Collection.
          With its long history, the films produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn_Mayer Studios are a great example of the changing attitudes and fears toward world politics.  It also reflects film's use in promoting, expressing, and even escaping those images that served the constantly changing political landscape of Soviet relations with the West.  Like the other big studios, MGM's participation in blacklisting was part of a post-WWII "Red Scare" that sought to rid America of communist influence, but this scare also meant great success at the box office. The public seemed to enjoy watching these films as much as the studio and government hoped they would help shape public opinion throughout WWII and the Cold War.  
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