Hollywood actors' involvement in politics started much earlier than people realize. For over 100 years, movie stars have influenced the ways in which Americans have thought about politics. From Charlie Chaplin to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hollywood activists have repeatedly spoken out on the most important political issues of their day. In a nation filled with political malaise, where a majority of voters consistently fail to go to the polls, movie stars have done more than just show us how to dress, look or love. They have taught us how to think and act politically. Yet, movie star activism on the left and the right has been far more complex than we usually think. Over the course of the century, movie stars engaged in six types of political activism: visual politics, electoral politics, issue-oriented politics, movement politics, image politics, and celebrity politics. I go into more detail in my new book, "Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics."
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Charlie Chaplin(01 of17)
Movie star activism began with visual politics in which stars like Charlie Chaplin used film to communicate political ideas directly to millions of Americans. A childhood of poverty turned Chaplin into an instinctual radical who favored the poor over the rich, labor over capital, and humane socialism over harsh capitalism. No one in power was spared from the Tramp's sharp cinematic barbs. He attacked authority figures up and down the class scale. Yet, Chaplin discovered there was a cost for being too far in front of public opinion. During World War I, the British immigrant proved his patriotism by joining Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford in selling government war bonds to movie-mad citizens. (credit:Wikimedia)
The Great Dictator(02 of17)
World War II proved a very different matter. It was only after Chaplin began making foreign policy statements on the screen in The Great Dictator (1940) and then off the screen at various Soviet-American Friendship events that audiences stopped listening to him. He discovered something that held true for the rest of the century: Audiences did not want their fantasy figures burst their dreams and illusions. This was especially true during wartime: If you spoke out or made films that supported a conservative patriotic agenda, you were likely to be hailed as a hero. However, if you criticized the government, especially from a Left point of view, you would earn the wrath and hatred of millions of Americans. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Louis B. Mayer and Herbert Hoover(03 of17)
Hollywood's move toward electoral politics came in 1920s, and surprisingly it came from the right and not the left. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer head Louis B. Mayer cemented the first formal ties with a particular party: he brought the Republican Party to Hollywood, and Hollywood to the Republican Party. Mayer redefined the relationship between the American people and American politics through his innovative use of media and celebrity. Ruling over Hollywood's most powerful studio from 1924 until 1951, he taught Republicans how to use film, radio, and movie stars to sell candidates and ideas to a mass public. (credit:Bison Archives)
Little Caesar(04 of17)
Studio moguls such as Mayer ruled Hollywood politics during the 1920s, but the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and the rapid spread of Nazism and fascism in the mid-1930s prompted many actors and actresses to become politically active, often for the first time. While Charlie Chaplin concentrated on visual politics and Louis B. Mayer on electoral politics, stars such as Edward G. Robinson engaged in what soon became the dominant form of Hollywood activism, issue-oriented politics. Robinson showed how a mobilized community of movie stars could use their celebrity to draw national attention to the most controversial issues of the day and help sway public opinion. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Edward G. Robinson(05 of17)
During the 1930s, when most Americans ignored Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Francisco Franco, movie stars organized groups that opposed fascism and Nazism--groups such as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which attracted national attention by mounting demonstrations, sponsoring weekly radio shows, and publishing their own newspaper. Although Robinson and other issue-oriented activists believed they were fighting a just cause, repeated internationalist pronouncements that were far in advance of public opinion came to haunt them in the postwar years as the House Un-American Activities Committee began its pattern of portraying anti-fascists as the allies of Communists bent on destroying America. Despite a distinguished wartime record, Robinson's career as a major star ended when he was accused of being a Communist in 1950. A whole generation of Hollywood activists took note of Robinson's fate and, as Lauren Bacall remarked, "relinquished their political opinions or at least stopped voicing them" in order to protect their families, their jobs, and their lives. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
A family affair(06 of17)
The head of California GOP from 1932 to 1934 also affected the party's long-term fortunes by turning MGM into a training ground for Republican activists and the home of a cinematic ideology that formed a core message of conservatism for decades to come. Through his involvement in party politics and his careful mentoring of conservative stars, he laid the ground work that made it possible for actors such as George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to become successful politicians. Moreover, his films--especially the Hardy Family series--helped conservatives by promoting a cinematic politics that identified America with capitalism, optimism, mobility, and hope; a cinematic politics that Ronald Reagan would later codify into his "It's Morning in America" slogan. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
George Murphy and Dwight D. Eisenhower(07 of17)
George Murphy and Ronald Reagan opened the doors for a fourth kind of Hollywood politics, movement politics. Practiced by those on the right and the left, movement politics are less a top-down phenomenon than a bottom-up grassroots mass movement embraced by diverse coalitions of groups and individuals who share a determination to bring radical changes to the nation's political, social, and economic systems. For Murphy and Reagan, the goal was not simply to win an election but to alter the very foundations of American government by overturning the most important liberal achievement of the 20th century, the New Deal state. [100] (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Reagan, Murphy and Richard Nixon(08 of17)
The two former actors were new kinds of politicians for a new media age. They understood that in the new age of television, a candidate's image was as important as his or her ideas. Hard-core conservatives admired Barry Goldwater, but his prickly personality and image as a man who might start a nuclear war frightened millions of potential voters. In 1964 and 1966, Murphy and Reagan accomplished what Goldwater could not: they figured out how to sell conservatism to a wide range of previously skeptical voters. By making conservatism palatable, Murphy and Reagan made the conservative revolution possible. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Reagan and John Wayne(09 of17)
By the early 1960s, both men were preaching a message of fear and reassurance: fear of Communism and creeping federal socialism, and reassurance that conservatives could save the nation by defeating the Soviet Union and overturning the New Deal. Their Democratic opponents preached the politics of hope and guilt: of what America could be, but how prejudice and selfishness prevented us from realizing those dreams. Murphy and Reagan proved that fear and reassurance were greater motivators of voters than hope and guilt. Murphy's election to the senate in 1964 and Reagan's election as California governor in 1966 signaled a new American attitude toward celebrity and a willingness to entrust the nation's highest offices to movie stars. (credit:USC's Special Collections Department)
Hollywood Contingent in the March on Washington(10 of17)
As the worst excesses of the Red Scare died down, Hollywood leftists became increasingly involved in radical movement politics. Like Murphy and Reagan, Harry Belafonte and Jane Fonda struggled to achieve radical changes in the relationship between government and citizens. From 1950s to 1980s, though acting independently of one another, they built coalitions that attacked racism, fought for civil rights, opposed the war in Vietnam, and launched grassroots movements aimed at limiting the power of government and corporations. Belafonte, the biggest African-American star and singer of the 1950s, understood that movement politics took many forms: marches, demonstrations, picket lines, sit-ins, voter registration drives, and electoral politics. But he also knew he could use film, music, and television as weapons of political change. (credit:National Archives)
Belafonte at the Youth March for Integrated Schools(11 of17)
Frustrated with Hollywood opposition to progressive films, Belafonte quit the movie business in 1959 and for next nine years served as one of Martin Luther King's two key advisors and the single biggest donor to the civil rights movement. Following John F. Kennedy's election in 1960, King asked Belafonte to serve as his liaison to Bobby Kennedy and Justice Department. He also worked with SNCC, CORE, and the Black Panthers to promote racial equality and to pressure government bodies to enforce civil rights legislation in a speedy manner. By the mid-1960s, the radical activist also pushed King to include opposition to the Vietnam War and American imperialism as part of the movement's struggle for justice. (credit:Special Collections, USC)
Jane Fonda and Vietnam(12 of17)
After King's assassination in 1968, the focus of Left turns to Vietnam and Jane Fonda emerged as the most visible and vilified activist of her time. After living in France for many years, Fonda returned to the U.S. in 1970 and immediately involved herself in every major political struggle: Native Americans, Black Panthers, the antiwar movement, and especially the cause of GI rights. Fonda proved an even more hands-on activist than Belafonte, Murphy, or Reagan by creating two national grassroots organizations. In 1972 she and her husband, radical activist Tom Hayden, organized the Indochina Peace Committee to oppose Nixon's escalation of the war in Laos and Cambodia. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Jane Fonda and The China Syndrome(13 of17)
In 1976, with the war over, the couple founded the Committee for Economic Democracy--an organization that mobilized citizens around opposition to American imperialism and toward the creation of a radically different set of policies that challenged corporate dominance of government and the economy. CED also fought for greater rights for women and workers, and to restore democracy to the state and local levels. Like Chaplin and Robinson, Fonda discovered that stars who spoke out in advance of American public opinion were repeatedly accused of being non patriotic at best and traitors at worst. As columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "we give medals to stars on the right, and FBI dossiers to stars on the left." (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Charlton Heston as Moses(14 of17)
Image politics represents a leap of faith by the public; a belief that the image and the person are one and the same. In Heston's case, he was always Moses, always the savior, the lawgiver, the patriarch. Heston was aware of the political advantages of his image and used it to further his ideological positions, first on the left and then the right. In May 1961, he traveled to Oklahoma City and became the first major Hollywood to join a civil rights march on behalf of integration. Two years later, Heston cemented his public image as Moses by leading the Hollywood contingent participating in the March on Washington. (credit:Cinema/TV Library, USC)
Heston, James Baldwin, and Marlon Brando at the March on Washington(15 of17)
In 1972, disenchanted with the "radical" agenda of presidential candidate George McGovern, Heston became a leading member of Democrats for Nixon. Over the next thirty years, the iconic figure emerged as a spokesman for a variety of conservative causes. In the late 1990s, he served as the National Rifle Association's most visible spokesman. Heston's political impact proved crucial during the 2000 presidential election. Pundits credit gun owners in West Virginia--where Democrats outnumbered Republicans 2:1 and where Heston campaigned most frequently--with tipping the state and therefore the presidential election to Bush. In subsequent months, Vice President Dick Cheney and Florida Governor Jeb Bush publicly credited Heston for making the difference in West Virginia and thereby electing Bush to office. (credit:National Archives)
Arnold Schwarzenegger and the President's Council on Physical Fitness(16 of17)
The 2003 California recall and gubernatorial elections looked like a flashback to the 1960s. An actor with seemingly no political experience was trying to win a major office. Columnists breezily compared Arnold Schwarzenegger to movie stars-turned-politicians George Murphy and Ronald Reagan. Such comparisons were inaccurate. Murphy and Reagan spent several decades toiling in the political trenches and perfecting their ideological messages. Arnold, as he liked to be called, was a relative newcomer. Although he campaigned for George H. W. Bush in 1988 and 1992, he had no deep ties to the Republican Party. If history was any guide, he should have lost the special election to entrenched Democratic or Republican stalwarts. But Schwarzenegger defied history and showed that the power of modern celebrity was so great that a movie star could be elected to high office without the benefit of an established party network or precise ideological message. (credit:George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)
Schwarzenegger as California Governor(17 of17)
Schwarzenegger understood that seemingly lightweight entertainment programs such as Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight offered new ways of engaging and mobilizing voters. During his gubernatorial run, he shunned traditional news outlets and placed entertainment shows at the center of his campaign. Celebrity got Schwarzenegger elected but did not ensure that he would be an effective leader. His campaign and subsequent years in office point to the limitations of turning politics into entertainment without offering voters the complex but perhaps "boring" policy statements that allow them to select the most capable candidate. After his victory, Arnold quickly learned there was a stark difference between running for office and governing. Schwarzenegger's story highlights the critical difference between a celebrity who knows how to win an election and a politician who knows how to work within the system. As Barack Obama showed in 2008 and John Kennedy before him, politicians who become celebrities have a better chance of governing effectively than celebrities who become politicians. (credit:Wikimedia)
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