During the era that McCarthyism made a devastating impact on Hollywood, stars who had dallied with any other line of thought - and all such lines were 'commie' to McCarthyism - were out. Being smeared by HUAC destroyed the careers of John Garfield, Betty Garret and Larry Parks; even Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe risked jeopardizing their position by their apparent amiable relationship with the Left.
If direct politics was no possible, a sort of lateral
protest was. This was most evident in the so-called 'rebel' stars; James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando in coalition with other stars from other nations such as Zbigniew Cybulski in Poland, Jean-Paul Belmondo in France and Britain's Albert Finney. They were each deemed 'angry' - their acting was heavy on scowls and pained looks they portrayed the pariahs, the delinquents and the tearaways, off screen they had laissez-faire attitudes with the press and were uncooperative with the studio's publicity machine. Yet it would be hard to say just what they were angry about - their characteristic inarticulateness (Cliff's piercing silences, Brando's mumbling delivery, Belmondo's throwaway style) was an expression of the very unfocused nature of their discontent. Brando in The Wild One, is asked what he is rebelling against and replies with a question: 'What have you got?'
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| Finney going off the rails, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning style. |
Albert Finney at the end of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1961) throws a stone at the housing estate, a symbol of everyday conformity but it is really no more precise than that. The rebel stars were 'anti' but as a lifestyle rather than as a political position.