Steve Centola

Interviewer: 1951. What is Arthur Miller’s place in pop culture? Do people in America even have any clue at that point in time?

Steve Centola: He’s a tremendously successful playwright.

Interviewer: Again, my question is not there.

Steve Centola: OK. In 1951, Arthur Miller is recognized as one of the leading playwrights in the country. He has the tremendous success with Death of a Salesman. And there’s there’s great anticipation about this young playwright and his ability to comment on a society and capture the interest of the American public.

Interviewer: What do you mean, great anticipation? What’s expected of me?

Steve Centola: Well, now that he has done All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller is the most promising young playwright in American society. And so I think the the critics and theater goers in New York City in particular are eagerly awaiting to see with this imaginative, creative, exciting new talent is going to bring to the American stage.

Interviewer: OK, so give me a sense also, if you would, you know, Death of a Salesman is now top schools. It’s just part of the lexicon of American life. Was it a normal. I mean, there are hits on Broadway all the time. So was Death of a Salesman sort of success clearly but.

Steve Centola: I think it was an extraordinary success. I think people recognize scholars, theater goers, the critics. I think people in the theater community, directors, actors, I think everyone recognize that this was a watershed. This had this was a significant turning point in Death of a Salesman was a significant turning point in the American theater and in theater in general because of his ability to synthesize events from the past in action of the present and to create a kind of super realism, a different type of realism, to fuse the the expressionistic theater with the realistic theater and create a hybrid was something that I think really compelled people at the time they got in the heart. It was an extremely moving, very powerful play. And Miller himself has commented on the fact that he received hundreds of letters from people over the years who have wanted to know whether he had any familiarity with their fathers, with their grandfathers, with their uncles, with with some person they knew because Willy Loman was such a familiar character on the stage. And he spoke directly to the lives of people. People recognize either themselves or someone they loved or knew in Willy Loman.

Interviewer: So let’s for a second have anything to do with the success. What is Kazan contributing?

Steve Centola: I think Miller has been very honest and I think very accurate in saying that the theater is a collaborative art form. And so he recognizes that any script he has taken to the stage goes through modifications as a result of the rehearsals that take place. And during that rehearsal phase, Kazan as director offered suggestions for rewrites, as probably did other people involved in a production. And Miller, as the as the writer, as the playwright, had the opportunity to take into consideration some of those suggestions to go back and rework those scenes, take the new versions into rehearsal.

Interviewer: I guess what I’m saying so much has been in terms of personality and force. You know, what is bringing to Miller’s stage or Williams? I mean, this is a guy I mean, is he just lucky.

Steve Centola: Well, I think he’s I think he’s I think he was very, very clever and very smart in recognizing great talent. He knew when he worked with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller that he was working with great playwrights. And I think he knew that the the material that they provided him with was material that he could do something with as a director. I think what they saw in Kazan was a very confident, very self-assured, very strong visionary figure. And I felt I believe that they felt that his vision in a way matched their own vision and would enable them to bring to the stage or to bring to the cinema a vision of life and human experience that they wanted to achieve. You can’t you can’t just trust that had been shown before. You can’t just trust any director to do that. You have to find a person whose temperament, whose vision, whose insight. In a way, even whose personality is a close enough match to your own that you can trust that person understands what you’re trying to accomplish and then bring that out in the media that they they use.

Interviewer: Miller talks Kazan. Kazan talks about Miller. They both say they were like brothers, right? Why? Right.

Steve Centola: Similar family experiences. OK. Well, both Miller and Kazan had somewhat difficult relationships within the family with their fathers. Difficult in the sense that they felt maybe that their fathers did not always live up to the expectations that they may have had for them and their father, that their fathers, in some respect, did not live up to their expectations. And so there’s a sense of that that inherent conflict between parent and child that you find in Miller’s plays all the time. But that surfaces directly, more directly, perhaps in Kazan’s life. But it’s there also in Miller’s to perhaps to a lesser degree. And so I think that they recognize in each other a kind of aspiring, struggling artistic talent that is in a household where maybe art is not quite as appreciated by the father figure. In Miller’s case, the mother certainly cultivates that, but not necessarily the father. And so Miller, with an artistic temperament, growing up in a household with a father who is a successful businessman. That creates a conflict for the son who is like Biff Loman in a way striving to achieve his identity and set out in a different direction from the father.

Interviewer: Because I don’t want to lose my train of thought, which I’m really trying to figure out so much in terms of what we talked for going to the 50s and hopefully. Our Miller and because are coming from different places in the 1930s. Men in there working together in the late 40s. Mid to late 40s. So, I mean, do they share a common sense of political history as well? I think that was a certainly Comminust party member. Arthur was not a communist, was he?

Steve Centola: No, he was not.

Interviewer: So what what do they share?

Steve Centola: OK. First of all, the immigrant experience is vital in their makeup. Both of them, as descendants of immigrants, never quite feel totally assimilated into mainstream American culture. And so they are, in essence, the alienated artist. They are individuals who see themselves as as outcasts, misfits, not necessarily part of the mainstream. And that’s a driving force for them. They want to belong. And at the same time, they want to maintain that distance so that they can objectively analyze and criticize the society that they long to become a part of. So they’re there. Their immigrant status or descended of immigrant status is one vital connection between both men. Coupled with that is their sense that the society is is in some ways falling short of the expectations.

Interviewer: How much is the depression impact Miller?

Steve Centola: And it’s he in his autobiography and in several other essays he’s written, he specifically says that the Depression is his great book. Miller writes, Every artist has one great book that influenced him more than anything else and impacts his career in a major way. For Arthur Miller, that great book he writes is The Depression. And so he’s saying, in essence, that he learned more about life and human experience in American society from the Great Depression than anything else. Why the Depression, he believes, taught him that there are hidden forces alive in the life of every individual. Well, what happened in the Depression? Well, for him personally, his father at the time of the Depression was a successful one woman’s coat manufacturer. And he he had come to this country very young, believe around 10 years old, on his own, and began working in sweatshops and on his own, basically, is the Horatio Alger story come true? He goes from rags to riches. But when the Great Depression comes along, he’s devastated financially from the impact of that economic crisis. He loses a fortune. And so Miller saw the crisis that occurs within the family when someone sustains that kind of huge financial loss. And on a personal level, even Miller himself remembers having a bicycle that he used to drive. Did he excuse me? He used to ride when he would deliver baked goods in a morning in a job he had while he was still in high school. And he always left that bicycle outside. And one day he left it outside. He came back out to go make his deliveries and a bike was stolen. And he said that that that stolen bicycle represented for him the desperation and the plight of people in American society at the time of the Great Depression.

Interviewer: So does it effect his politics?

Steve Centola: No, I think, in fact, he actually turns to the left what Miller, Miller, Miller calls for as a result of the heartache and the suffering and the anguish that people are experiencing as a result of the Great Depression is for greater compassion, for understanding, for the greater responsibility to one’s fellow person in society. And as part of the political ideology, he is attracted to the socialist ideals. He, for a short period of time, actually may have been more of an extent, operates on Miller, attends meetings where communist writers are present. And as a student, for example, at the University of Michigan in the 1930s, socialist ideas were very, very popular. And he he turns to socialism. Looking at socialism and possibly communism as a way of people working together for the greater good. And so that that whole philosophical system was very attractive to him for a period of time. But he never joined the Communist Party because Miller has always been independent minded and very individualistic and and I think also somewhat postmodern mystic in the sense that he never just embraces a single idea. Miller always sees many facets. Anything to any issue. And so for him to embrace communism would be like embracing Buddhism or Catholicism or any any belief system where you have to be somewhat methodical and systematic and complete in your allegiance to those ideas and give yourself over completely right in bright and familiar to himself, not to those ideas, because he old Miller always sees many different sides to the issue. And so he he sees he will see the advantages of one principle or one belief system and simultaneously analyze and dissect it and see other dimensions to it.

Interviewer: Clearly, this is also one of the things here. Right. That’s not bad.

Steve Centola: No, it is not. Both of them. OK. I think both of them are are concerned about the threat.

Interviewer: Both of them. Is it fair to say both of them carry scars from the 30s through their lives?

Steve Centola: I definitely think that’s true. I think that I think both of them feel that the the losses sustained within the family because of the depression and the the way they believe people are hurt in society because of the depression impacts their vision of the country, their vision of the nation or vision of America. America was a land of promise. But when we get to the nineteen thirties and we have the Great Depression, I think they see America as a land of promises, unfulfilled promises that are not kept. So we have in them a tremendous sense of the importance and the promise of the American dream and simultaneously a sense of the reality of the American nightmare. And that is a crucial element in their vision as artists, because they want to bring out the shortcomings and the failings of the society. And at the same time, they’re showing us the dark side. They’re also suggesting implicitly things could be better. The promise could be fulfilled. The dream could be realized.

Interviewer: That’s great. All right. So let’s move ourselves past their backgrounds. So why do Arthur Miller go to Hollywood in 1950? You know, most people think of Miller, New York City Broadway Theater. What the hell is this guy doing writing a screenplay in the early 50s? Follow me.

Steve Centola: OK. It seems that as early as 1946, Miller was attracted to the waterfront and was interested in writing something about life in Red Hook, the life of the immigrants or descendants of immigrants who are living in Brooklyn and working on the waterfront. And he in his autobiography, Miller writes about his interviews with workers, his conversations in bars, his his research. And what had happened was he he had noticed graffiti on the walls and on the sidewalks, basically saying, where is Pete Paterno? And one day he started to realize that the interest in Pete panto had spread and was now something that was being talked about more widely. And the mystery of what? Happened to this longshoreman who was attempting to organize the workers and resist the corruption on the waterfront. Really compelled his interest. And so he wanted to find out more about that story.

Interviewer: Give me a portrait of what the Brooklyn docs were like in he sense that we have today.

Steve Centola: It is unionized. But the union is also suspected of having allegiance with the Mafia. And so there’s an element of gangsterism. There are gangsters who have Ilford infiltrated the unions. So the union bosses are perceived as being corrupt. They don’t have the workers best interests in mind. So for someone like Miller, who had embraced socialist principles and ideals to now talk to these people, to work with these people and to understand their plight, this is something that moves him very powerfully because he still maintains the ideals that a union should be for the people. And he’s fighting something very contrary to that on the waterfront.

Interviewer: Was that clear? OK. So give me just quickly. Is life easy on the waterfront for longshoremen, for a stevedore? You guys, you know.

Steve Centola: What Miller finds when he goes to the waterfront is what Miller finds when he goes to the waterfront absolutely appalls him. He discovers that the workers are treated like animals. His term, essentially, that they have to get tokens to that they checks that they can use to get employment on any given day. These are people who are destitute. Their families are starving. They’re desperately in need of food. They need their their spouses to work. The wives, neither spouses to work. The children are neither fathers to bring home food for them and to make some money. And so they go to the waterfront. And on a daily basis, what happens is the team boss of the pier boss will select certain individuals to come to work. But the decisions are made on the basis of political favors or on the basis of how much of a kickback the political bosses or the pier bosses will get from the workers. The Mafia has an influence in this because they’re bringing illegal immigrants into the country and they get kickbacks. They get a certain percentage from the work they do. So there’s a lot of corruption. Miller sees this and is absolutely appalled. He writes in his autobiography How one particular day he witnesses a scene that made him disgusted the pier boss after giving out some of the checks to individuals for that particular day. Had a few left and decided to throw him up into the air. And people scramble for these checks. And what Miller writes about is not just the fact that the pier boss could be so, so inhumane and and lack compassion for for his fellow human beings. But he’s he’s more touched by more upset by the willingness of the workers to to fight each other, to get these checks. And other words, he sees them reduce. He sees them losing their humanity in the process. And in many respects, succumbing to that situation, not resisting it, not fighting it, but succumbing to it. And that’s what upsets him. He wants them to resist.

Interviewer: Why take it as a movie? Is there any influence with the kids in there?

Steve Centola: I think there’s a big influence. Kazan is is doing work now in Hollywood, and he brings Miller to Hollywood in 1951 to pitch this script of the. The waterfront drama, The Hook to Columbia Pictures. And I think when they go, maybe both of them feel that they have had a dramatic impact on the life of the American theater with Death of a Salesman. And now it’s an opportunity to have a broader impact on American society. New York obviously is the center of the theater world in the 1940s, and Hollywood is perhaps the center of the arts industry. And so if you’ve already conquered theater world, why not now try to conquer the rest of the artistic world?

Interviewer: And so when they go to a movie and you can play.

Steve Centola: You have you have wider.You have mass appeal. You can reach a wider audience base and and have international distribution and simultaneously have people all over the world have access to your your art in a way that you can’t do if your plays just being performed in one venue.

Interviewer: But, you know, when you go to Hollywood is, you know, the compromises are far greater than they are.

Steve Centola: Sure, sure. Sure.

Interviewer: Let me help me understand if you with an. Elia Kazan as it wants to direct it. Arthur Miller, Field surprise playwright, has written it. It seems to me that in that context, that powerhouse duo that Hollywood, even before Columbia, that Hollywood they’ve be jumping all over themselves in the studio, would be competing with themselves to make the hook. Is that what happens?

Steve Centola: I think that, you know, that’s not exactly what happens. And I think that, however, I think Harry Cohn recognize that he may have that the president of Columbia Pictures, I think, may or may have realized that he really had a major coup here in being able to land both Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan for that project. But he had stipulations and his stipulations were the result of what was happening politically in the nation. The FBI had to take a look at the manuscript. The president of the labor union had to take a look at the manuscript so other people were involved in the negotiations.

Interviewer: Go back for it. So Hollywood isn’t falling all over themselves to make this radical right front picture. What is the climate? What what’s the climate? And how was the climate in America that they’re looking into?

Steve Centola: OK. In 1951, we what we have is a tie.

Interviewer: Is it a receptive world?

Steve Centola: It is a time of fear and suspicion. And Miller is perceived to be a leftist and Kazan maybe to a lesser degree. Ironically, even though he was a member of the Communist Party and Miller was not Kazan was part of the system, the Hollywood system. Miller was the outsider. And so there’s greater suspicion, I believe, towards Miller. And they want the script to be rewritten because Miller is dealing with corruption in labor unions and he’s doing with the influence of the mob in the unions. And Harry Cohn wants miller, to change the corrupt element from the mob and the unions to the communists.

Interviewer: What’s wrong with the mob? What’s wrong with showing mob corruption on the waterfront?

Steve Centola: Well, the unions were very powerful at that time. And even in Hollywood, we have someone who’s brought in who is the president of the the workers who will run the projectors and movie theaters all across the country. And he’s the president of their union. Right. Roy Brewer. And he tells Harry Cohn, who then informs Miller and Khazen that he does not like the the approach that’s taken towards unions in Miller’s play. And if changes are not made, he will call a strike nationwide that will shut down movie theaters will have a huge financial impact on Columbia Pictures. And so politics are brought to bear on this artistic venture. And this, of course, has a significant impact on the outcome. Miller Miller just simply can’t buy into the compromise of his art that hurricane demands in order for the film to be made.

Interviewer: Let’s go back and take it back. What’s with the FBI?

Steve Centola: Well, I think that really about I think Harry Cohn is afraid that he personally and his studio could be affected adversely if he is identified as being too closely affiliated with members of the Communist Party or people who have leftist sympathies. And so the FBI is involved in investigating artists in Hollywood in 1951. And so to protect himself and to make sure it’s clear to the government and to everyone else who is concerned about communists infiltrating Hollywood in the arts. He wants to make sure that the FBI looks at this so that he can show himself to be innocent and not to be an accomplice or not to be in a conspiracy with any leftists or communists. Look, he wants the FBI to look at the manuscript that Miller is bringing with him to Hollywood, the screenplay for The Hook.

Interviewer: They look at it. Everybody says, OK, change the members of the Mafia into what’s out there.

Steve Centola: No. Miller said he had been on the waterfront. Miller had talked to people. He had even worked as pipefitter. So he knows what life is like on the waterfront and he knows what the source of the corruption is. And he said that in his time there, interviewing people, doing research, working there, he met very, very few communists. There were practically no real communists working on the waterfront. And so it seemed to be ludicrous. It was absolutely absurd to take the mob element and transform the corrupt bosses into communists just to satisfy the FBI or the the president of Columbia Pictures. And he adamantly refused to do that.

Interviewer: Let’s talk a little bit longer. This question of the plane fly overhead. And he says the haricot know, I won’t do that. But let’s let’s find another compromise. We all want to make this picture. Let’s do something else that I’m committed to, Columbia.

Steve Centola: No, no, Miller is not really. He’s he’s attracted by the prestige and the power and the glory of filmmaking and Hollywood. But his heart is in a theater. He’s a playwright. He doesn’t see himself as a screenwriter. And so he he’s a little bit tentative and ambivalent right from the start. When he goes with Kazan and 51, he’s he’s excited. There’s tremendous promise and possibility associated with Hollywood and this particular business venture. But at the same time, he as as he is with everything, he sees two sides to it. He’s a little bit uncertain about it. He knows that screenwriting is going to involve greater compromises artistically than he would have to make as a playwright working in the theater and politically. And he he may be a little bit more willing initially to make some of the compromises artistically because he trusts his on and he knows that he’s going to be working with talented artists. But politically, he cannot make the compromises he’s asked to make because he feels that they’re they’re absurd and also a compromise with integrity. It’s not just a compromise of his politics. And he can’t live in bad faith and lie about the reality that he knows he’s not going to lie and pretend that the communists are the source of the corruption on the waterfront. So you would draw he withdraws the script.

Interviewer: So for our purposes, as you know, biographers purposes, you know, Miller’s first foray into Hollywood proper going out there isn’t just interesting for the red. Maybe that happens. But this screenplay, he also meets someone else. How does he come to meet Monroe Marilyn?

Steve Centola: He’s at a party at Charlie Feldman’s, and he’s. He’s very much intrigued by the extravagance and luxury and almost hedonistic celebration of life that he witnesses here. And it’s it’s a liberating experience. He’s a man who has felt that his emotions were pent up deep inside him and he feels the attraction to this lifestyle. That’s somewhat foreign to him. This is a man who’s been very disciplined and very conscientious, very hard working individual. And he’s in an environment now where people seem to be free, carefree, liberated, uninhibited. And so this this has a great a great appeal to him.

Interviewer: So he said to me was that if it’s possible for a Jew to be a pure Arthur Miller.

Steve Centola: Yes, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer: I mean, not pure but you know what I mean.

Steve Centola: Well, he’s he he had embraced certain values that I think, again, come from the family.

Interviewer: So he goes up to Hollywood. He’s around this sort of play hedonistic. Is he leaving with a good marriage backing? His marriage with Mary? Tight close the records.

Steve Centola: The record suggests that his marriage at the time has some tension, that that while he still loves his wife and is involved in that marriage and that he feels maybe.

Interviewer: What are the problems?

Steve Centola: It’s hard to say.

Interviewer: That we know that he talks about at least I mean, his death obviously out there are there isn’t a stranger. There is a sense of distance and coldness there. Right.

Steve Centola: He he he talks about coldness in several of his plays, in the marital relationships. And after the fall.

Interviewer: OK, here we are. Because he talks to Kazan and he talks to other people. He talks to Marilyn. He’s not happy.

Steve Centola: No, he’s not.

Interviewer: He’s not.

Steve Centola: OK. Miller is not necessarily happy in his marriage. And at that time, however, is reluctant to do anything about his unhappiness. He feels committed to making the marriage work and is investigating his own feelings, trying to figure out, as he does with everything else, very introspectively what is wrong with me. Why am I discontent? And I think he feels some guilt that he should be happy in his marriage, but is not. And so when he when he sees the lifestyle in Hollywood, in a way, it speaks to a deep part of his nature that he has repressed. And I think he’s torn now between his public self and his private self. He wants to liberate those feelings deep inside him. But at the same time, he’s uncomfortable doing so.

Interviewer: He meetss Marilyn Monroe. T.

Steve Centola: At that party one of the actresses who shows up that evening on his unescorted. Is Marilyn Monroe. And there’s a mutual attraction that occurs almost immediately. They both notice each other. They dance that evening and they talk for a while. And it’s clear from Miller’s own record in his autobiography and from what Kazan and others have written about the meeting, that that there is of romantic interest that they share. But Miller is very faithful to his wife at that time. Nothing happens. Nothing of a sexual nature happens between Marilyn and Arthur.

Interviewer: What’s going on inside Arthur? There is this. He flees. I mean that.

Steve Centola: Well, he he he very he very miller, very directly, very honestly writes about that experience in his own biography.

Interviewer: I dont want to keep referring to what he’s right. Right. Because. There’s not an insignificant spark. That was to start off at each other, right? Right. Why they seem. Even in retrospect, very unlikely couple. What is your sense of what is going on?

Steve Centola: Miller is attracted to the. First of all, she’s a beautiful woman. Miller is attracted to Monroe in a purely physical sexual sense, as many men in American society would have been in that day. But it’s more than that. Miller is impressed with her capacity for wonder and joy, her honesty, her openness, her childlike innocence, her directness. He he sees perhaps in her. Things that he feels within himself that maybe he’s incapable of articulating as directly and openly and spontaneously as she can express them. He sees in her perhaps things that maybe he would like to retrieve that he feels he has lost within himself. And so she is a liberating woman. She’s a woman who opens a new world, a new vista to him. And that’s tremendously appealing.

Interviewer: And she’s very different from Mary.

Steve Centola: She’s very different and.

Interviewer: Very different in what way?

Steve Centola: Well, she’s passionate. She’s. She’s expressive. She’s a woman who is in touch with her feelings and is not afraid to express them, even if her feelings are a very sexual nature. Mary from the record seems to have been someone who maybe didn’t have that confidence in herself to to express her feelings in quite the same way. And as a result, it seems as if their relationship was a bit cold, whereas with Marilyn there was passion, there was fire, there was intensity.

Interviewer: So we’re talking about the friendship of Miller. You talked about Jack Miller. That’s not. You’re talking about a union that’s not that first union with Marilyn Monroe, is it? She starts to sleep with Kazam. Right. What happens? OK. It’s such a bizarre and I don’t mean to make it into a National Enquirer story, but it does seem to inform what comes later. And Maryland does play a role. She and Arthur don’t started an affair right away. She starts an affair with Kazan. Well, let me go back Keiko back and answer question, why was Monroe attracted to Miller? I want to get that part in as well. When? When Monroe meets Miller. She meets a gentleman, she meets someone who treats her with courtesy, with respect, with kindness and. She is astounded by the way that he interacts with her. And it may be the first time that a man doesn’t try to pick her up and immediately take her to bed. And. She’s so impressed with his kindness and his gentleness and his and his respect and consideration for her as an individual, that she feels this upswelling of emotion as a result. She also thinks he’s very handsome. She knows he’s extremely talented. He’s very strong, very self-confident, very poise, very intellectual. And all these characteristics and not part of Hollywood and sends all these characteristics of this individual who is an outsider in that community, but who responds to her with passion and respect and appreciation, moves her deeply. And I think she falls in love that night. I think when she meets Arthur Miller that night, she falls in love with him. But ironically, at the same time, she’s having. A relationship with Alia Kazan. And that, for me on a personal level, was one of the most difficult things to understand about Marilyn Monroe that she could love. Arthur Miller and sleep with other men. And that’s what she’s doing. His best friend, his best friend. And there’s a there’s even a time where she’s so excited because she she knows that Miller and she will be seeing each other. And she goes to Kazan’s hotel and goes to tell him that she got a letter from Miller and she’s thrilled by the letter because it’s a letter that expresses deep feeling and it talks about their meeting again and seeing each other soon. But then almost immediately after, they have a conversation in which she pours out her heart and talks about her tremendous love and how happy she is that she’s gonna be seeing Miller. She climbs into bed with Alake, goes on and they have sex. So I don’t I don’t quite understand that relationship, but. But there is there’s definitely an interesting triangular relationship that’s occurring here, Miller and Monroe are not having sex at the time, Kazan and Monroe are. But she’s in love with Miller and he obviously is in love with her.

Interviewer: It’s almost as though she’s having sex because then she can get it.

Steve Centola: In a way, in a way. I mean, you could you could say that. I think that’s probably it.

Interviewer: Yeah. It’s also true that the story you tell is the letter where he’s thinking about leaving married just after he’s come back and then she goes to New York. Right. To work in a studio. Yeah. And he pulls back. Miller eventually get together. Does he leave married at that point?

Steve Centola: No, he does not leave her at that point. I think he’s still torn in his heart, in his feelings about his marriage. He he feels an obligation to make the marriage work. And he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility for his wife and children. And he just doesn’t want to walk away from that responsibility.

Interviewer: So he breaks up with Marilyn.

Steve Centola: He I’d say that they maintain friendship, but not necessarily that he breaks it off. They never they have never had anything to break off. He just maintains a romantic interest. It is a friendship.

Interviewer: OK, so I want to jump in with you. OK. I want to jump in because they are naming your 52 subpoena. And how frantic are the times when it gets that first pink slip and what’s causing this response?

Steve Centola: Well, when people are being subpoenaed before the House un-American Activities Committee, there is tremendous fear because there has been a sense that if you refuse to cooperate with the committee, you are going to suffer personally. You are going to be blacklisted. You are going to be prosecuted. You will end up in jail. You will be out of a job. Your family will suffer and could become destitute because of this. So the House un-American Activities Committee is perceived as a very intimidating force in American society in 1952. It is. It’s a very powerful and intimidating force in a society. So when Kazan is subpoenaed to testify, he’s afraid. He’s uncertain of what to do. And initially, he’s insistent. He’s adamant, his own mind, that he is not going to betray individuals. He’s not going to name names. And that he he will perhaps talk about things that he has done. But he doesn’t want to bring any any harm to other people at that time.

Interviewer: So help me understand. Was a little bit ago is that they both in the 30s are driven specifically into the party. Miller is a very least a fellow traveler, you know, because in his mind is the Communist Party, early 50s, the same party that he was a part of in the 30s, has less changed in those 15 or so intervening years in his mind?

Steve Centola: Yes, I think definitely that’s true. Well, I think he begins now to look at the communist messed up.

Interviewer: What is what’s what is going on? And is my you articulate very nicely the ambivalence that he’s got towards the HUAC. Is that he’s.

Steve Centola: Well, he has ambivalence towards the Communist Party in American society and and also the Communist Party in general, because now disclosures have been made about Stalin’s impact on on individuals in Russia and a tremendous persecutions that took place during his regime. So Stalin comes out not looking all that good. And his his crimes are on a par with Hitler’s. And so the the the system that was supposed to be held up against fascism as a model, perhaps, that would provide harmony globally now, as is is skeptically viewed because of Stalin’s holocausts in Russia. Moreover, in the states we have we have communist leaders that are found dead. They’re executed. They’re assassinated because they refused to march in lockstep with the with the upper tier of the organization. And so Kazan is disillusioned and he recognizes that the Communist Party is subject to corruption as any other organization. And so he’s really caught and he’s stuck in a very difficult place because he doesn’t want to cooperate with the House un-American Activities Committee because he resents what it represents as a force in a society that is persecuting innocent individuals. But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to protect the Communist Party, which he now believes is as corrupt as anything else. It is a real conspiracy and is a conspiracy. And he and he believes that it would be a perpetuation of a lie to pretend that there were not meetings in which communists got together in Hollywood and try to plan a way of advancing their political agenda. That the suspicion that indeed the suspicion that this was happening was borne out by the facts. Indeed, this was happening. It goes on knew that. So on the one hand, he knows that some some, but not all. Some of the suspicions of the people in the far right were were were were foul, well-founded.

Interviewer: So, you know, he has his own personal experience of this kind of group think that is part of the party. He sees the committee for what it is. Is the choice easy for Kazan the first time he goes.

Steve Centola: No when committee went. Excuse me, when Kazan goes before members of the House un-American Activities Committee is interviewed. The choice is very, very difficult for him. He’s he’s he’s actually, I think, in anguish because he doesn’t want to protect the party, but he doesn’t want to betray innocent individuals. And the committee is putting him in a position where in order to speak openly and honestly and completely about his activities as a member of the Communist Party and the party’s infiltration or involvement in Hollywood, he has to identify individuals who maybe were not part of that conspiracy. And so he’s real reluctant to do that. He doesn’t want to bring harm when those innocent individuals.

Interviewer: So he tells them to basically go right the first time in terms of what really matters. So he refuses to name any names. And then he goes to L.A. and gets screwed in terms of the Academy Awards. And he comes back and he starts to have a change of heart. He starts to think, well, you know, maybe I will testify as a friendly witness. What happens in between?

Steve Centola: Well, I think one of the things that happens is his wife tells him that he’s being foolish for not. Molly tells him that he is being foolish for not being more open and honest and complete in his testimony before the committee. Now, her motivation might have been for more practical considerations. She knows he’s going to suffer politically. She knows that they’re going to suffer financially and he’s going to suffer artistically. She knows that he will not be able to make the films that he wants to make. He will not be able to get the jobs. And they will not be able to have the prestige. And so she talks to him and basically invites him to reconsider and even goes as far as typing something up for him to consider, to read as a way of synthesizing and articulating what she believes are his views about the situation. And he is. I think he’s persuaded by that. But I think it’s also around a time where one of the members of the Communist Party that he felt somewhat close to, that he knew fairly well, turns up dead. And the assassination is a political assassination within the Communist Party. And I think the loss of that friend, coupled with Mollie’s influence, makes him reconsider his initial testimony and makes him feel that there’s no reason to protect a corrupt system. I can’t remember the guy’s name. Yeah, it’s in his. It’s in his memoirs, but it’s. I’m blanking on it.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Centola: Yeah. It’s India. Somebody in the upper echelon of the American Communist Party.

Interviewer: So they go against Moscow.

Steve Centola: Right. That’s right. And Moscow puts a hit out on him.

Interviewer: Why is he killed? Is he crossing the street and gets hit by a bus coincidently?

Steve Centola: I can’t recall. I can’t remember specifically how he goes against the party, but he’s pretty. He’s ghys given some kind of directive that he refuses to carry out. And as a result, he’s assassinated.

Interviewer: From Moscow?

Steve Centola: From Moscow.

Interviewer: OK. So do you think that Kazan is aware of the personal costs of naming names that that he is going to lose friends? And if so, isn’t that a very brave thing to then do? I mean, people treat it like he’s a coward, that he only does it for the sake of a contract at Fox.

Steve Centola: Well, I’d have to I’m mixed I have mixed feelings about this. I think there are two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, you could admire the individual who knows he’s going to do something that is going to have a horrible impact on his personal life and still hold true to his convictions and beliefs. He’s doing the right thing. And you could admire that individual for for going to the committee, naming names and knowing in the process of doing that, the people will be offended that he will be alienated and even ostracized, shunned within the artistic community in which he thrives. But on the other hand. You have to be a little bit skeptical or maybe even cynical about the individual who makes that decision. If you have to wonder whether that individual’s motives were entirely pure. If he did that because he did it. Because he believed that was the principle that was important. That’s one thing, if he did it because he’s protecting his career and he doesn’t want to lose his prestige and reputation and business ventures and opportunities, then I react more cynically towards that decision.

Interviewer: I guess the question is. What difference does it make of Tony? In the 1930s, the people he’s named. Are they a threat to the well-being of the national security of the country?

Steve Centola: No, they’re not. But the fact is, when you commit yourself to a course of action and you do something like naming the names of another names of other individuals, you are doing something that will have repercussions and unforeseen repercussions, unforeseen consequences. And how can you in your in your mind, be absolutely certain that your decision making is not going have an adverse effect on the life of an individual or of of individuals related to that individual?

Interviewer: It’s not contained.

Steve Centola: It’s not contained. It’s out of control. Once you make a decision and once you named the names, you have thrown it out there for other people to do with it, whatever they will. You can’t control the outcome. You’ve said you’ve set a course of events in place that can’t be anticipated and can’t be predicted in this case. Well, by naming the names of these individuals, some of these individuals could have been blacklisted within the frame.

Interviewer: Let’s be honest. I can’t look at me. Okay.

Steve Centola: So so. Well, so then they’re gonna be blacklisted. They’re going to lose their jobs. They’re not going to be able to thrive within the community that they had once found business work and success. And so he might feel good about himself for being true to himself and getting off his chest. The. The feelings he had about his involvement in a party that he now sees as corrupt. But he is not. Taking into consideration how his decision affects the lives of other individuals and it has an impact on his other individuals.

Interviewer: Well, as Arthur says, though, that that decision isn’t coming from within. It being forced upon him by the government. So is it really honest and true if you’re doing it only under threat of subpoena.

Steve Centola: I think he had a choice, though. I think even though it is the threat of the government in the power of the government and that is big, that’s immense in the mind of any individual. How do you stand up to the United States government as individual and say, no, I’m not going to cooperate with you because it violates my ethics? It’s very difficult to do. Miller did it. Cosan could not do it. And so I think there has to be some sympathy because the individual is facing this enormous pressure and it’s enormous force. But on the other hand, the government did not make a decision for him. The government’s subpoenaed him. He had the right say, no, I’m not naming names and face the consequences of that decision. And that would have taken an act of heroism. It would have been extremely courageous to stand up to the government and say no, I think much more courageous than facing the fallout and the hostility of people who resented the fact that he named names.

Interviewer: Does he think that he’s going to be able to preserve this Kazan thing here? Because they’re able to preserve this friendship. Does he reach out to try to keep their friends?

Steve Centola: I believe he thinks he will. OK, I believe Kazan thinks that in testifying before the House un-American Activities Committee, he is not going to lose Arthur Miller’s friendship. And the reason he feels that is because before he testifies, Miller approaches him. He knows that Cassagnes been subpoenaed. He knows Kazan has to go in for testimony. And Miller, according to Kazan, basically gives me the impression that he understands that the dilemma he’s facing, he understands the situation he’s in. And Miller, in essence, gives him the impression he will be okay with whatever goes on. Does someone on testifies in 1852? He believes that he will not lose knowers friendship after after the testimony. He’s basically ignored by Miller when they start.

Interviewer: What happens to that friendship? What does that what does the testimony do? Kazan’s testimony in particular, do to Miller emotinally?