The Front (1976)

Take care of yourself. The water is full of sharks.

At the age of thirty-seven, Martin Ritt was already an old pro. He’d started as an actor with the Group Theater, understudying John Garfield in Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy, before launching a television career on both sides of the camera, appearing in around 150 television plays and directing a hundred more at CBS. And then, in 1951, the network declined to renew his contract. CBS refused to give a reason, much to Ritt’s annoyance: “Nobody would dare admit it, because it was against the law to blacklist anybody. They didn’t want any legal problems on their hands. To this day, they deny that anything like that existed.” But it was obvious that Ritt was guilty by association. He had directed a play for a trade union, he had been involved in a Russian war relief show at Madison Square Garden, and he’d been a member of the Group Theater, known not only for its adoption of Stanislavski’s method but also its left-wing politics. He was, in short, a liability. The House Un-American Activities Committee had tasted blood with the Hollywood Ten in 1947, became further emboldened by the Red Channels list in 1950 (which included former Group Theater colleagues John Garfield and Lee J. Cobb), and the networks, particularly CBS, “being in the PR business, just capitulated totally.”

Ritt wasn’t the only one to face the wrath of the blacklist. Writer Walter Bernstein was one of the names on the Red Channels list and was forced to write under the name Paul Bauman (and, in one case, replace Paul Bauman when the studio fired the pseudonym because he wouldn’t agree to an in-person meeting) or remain uncredited on shows like Danger and You Are There. The two finally came together on Paris Blues (1961), which just so happened to star two of Ritt’s former students at the Actor’s Studio, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, but it wouldn’t be their only project. By the late ‘60s, HUAC had largely lost both its prestige and its teeth, and the Committee was eventually terminated in 1975. For Ritt and Bernstein, it was the perfect time to reflect on one of the darkest periods in American history.

But finding a way to tell the story proved difficult. Ritt and Bernstein initially decided to treat the subject as a straight drama, the story of a blacklisted comedian who eventually commits suicide, based loosely on Philip Loeb. According to Ritt, “halfway through, Walter and I decided it was going to be maudlin and sentimental, so together we came up with the notion of ‘the front’ – we remembered the story because it really happened – and decided that’s what the film should be. And that’s what the film became.” Even then, the story proved too much for an industry that wanted to forget the whole thing, and it was only when Bernstein showed it to the “mischief maker” ex-agent David Begelman,¹ then head of Columbia, that the production came together.

The Front is the story of part-time bookie and tavern cashier Howard Prince (Woody Allen), who agrees to act as a front for his blacklisted writer friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) in return for ten percent of the sale. Miller’s script makes it into the hands of Howard Sussman (Herschel Bernardi), a network producer in charge of the show Grand Central, which happens to star Catskills legend Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel). The show is a huge success, prompting Prince to front for two more writers and pursue a relationship with Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci), the show’s script editor. But there is trouble brewing: Hecky is under investigation by the “Freedom Information Services” because he subscribed to The Daily Worker to impress a woman with a “great big ass”, and is compelled to spy on the mysterious Prince, who has no track record of writing. When Hecky fails to turn up the dirt, he commits suicide, and the investigators move in on the previously apolitical Prince, who now has to own up to being a front and is under pressure to denounce his dead friend.

If all this sounds a bit dour, rest assured The Front is supposed to be a comedy of sorts. Allen was not the first choice for Howard Prince – Ritt and Bernstein originally wanted Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman to play the role – but he was a big enough star to get the movie made, and had spent considerable time in the TV comedy trenches writing for Sid Caesar. The Front is one of only two movies Allen made with another director and writer (the other is 1991’s Scenes from a Mall), but he was happy to do so because “the subject was worthwhile. Martin Ritt and Walter Bernstein lived through the blacklist and survived it with dignity, so I didn’t mind deferring to their judgement.”

They weren’t the only ones: Bernardi and Lloyd Gough (who plays another blacklisted writer, Herbert Delaney) were also blacklisted.² As was Zero Mostel, whose career had been derailed by HUAC in 1955,³ and who was a close friend of the main inspiration for the film, Philip Loeb. While the other actors appear happy to act as stooge to Allen’s typically neurotic, ironic persona, Mostel was never going to play second fiddle. Allen and Mostel make for an odd couple on screen – apparently they weren’t keen on each other personally, with the touch-averse Allen suffering Mostel’s frequent pawing – and their performances sometimes chafe against the story.

Allen is the prime offender here. However you feel about Allen as a person,⁴ one thing remains true: he is a performer of limited range and dubious charm. This can be masked in his own films, but when he’s asked to actually act, the results aren’t particularly effective. So it is with Howard Prince, an opportunistic Sammy Glick-like hustler, who appears largely driven by money and sex, and whose final face turn appears to come out of necessity rather than loyalty. He’s supposed to be humanised by his relationship with Florence – a committed, engaging turn by Andrea Marcovicci – but Allen’s sex-obsessed, scheming persona (as evidenced in his comedies) never tips into romantic lead material and his final happy-ending martyrdom rings hollow: Prince doesn’t so much appear to be taking a stand against injustice as jacking in a job he doesn’t want.

As for Mostel, those of you who know me will expect nothing but praise here. I am inordinately, irrationally fond of Mostel’s work, even while I accept that it’s not to everyone’s taste.⁵ And his turn in The Front is no exception: Hecky is ostensibly the lachrymose heart of the movie, the sentimental sacrificial lamb at the altar of right-wing ideology, and had Mostel limited himself to a broad, tear-jerking performance the movie would have been insufferable. As it stands, for all his theatrical bravado, Mostel was an actor of incredible subtlety – this was an actor compared favourably to Olivier for Ulysees in Nighttown, an actor who performed Ionesco and Beckett, and who created two major musical theatre roles in Pseudolus (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and Tevye (Fiddler on the Roof) – and while there are typical moments of Mostel shenanigans, they are tempered with a rage and desperation that make the character work. Nowhere is this more apparent than his suicide – not directed by Martin Ritt, but DP Michael Chapman⁶ – which plays out as a two-and-a-half-minute silent movie that is easily the highlight of the film. Hecky arrives at a swish hotel suite, tips the porter, tests the bed, enjoys a gulped glass of room service champagne (it’s the only way he knows how to drink), mugs for the mirror, then throws open a window and dives to his death off-screen. It works as a wee film in its own right. See for yourself:

If the rest of The Front had allowed itself the elegance of Hecky’s suicide scene, it would have been more successful. Unfortunately, the film’s tone appears caught between comedy and drama, delivering neither with any effectiveness. Neither Ritt nor Bernstein were natural comedy writers, so much of the comic burden appear to be on Allen’s shoulders, and the subject matter calls for more than irony. The Front feels compromised and toothless, attempting to appeal to all and failing to account for itself beyond its inherent importance as the first film to address the blacklist.⁷ It didn’t need to be a worthy drama – anyone who’s sat through Guilty by Suspicion (1991) would agree – but there was the opportunity to ramp up the black comedy and absurdism. It comes close – Remak Ramsay’s investigator has a fine line in doublespeak and a last-minute rewrite of concentration camp flashback (the gas company doesn’t want it to sully their product) is fun – but never quite goes for the jugular. As with most comedy-dramas, I wonder what Billy Wilder would have done.⁸

But it’s churlish to beat a movie for something it isn’t and never intended to be. The Front’s blessing and its curse is its apolitical stance – it focuses on the injustice rather than the ideology, which both avoids the kind of brow-beating that would alienate an audience and trivialises it at the same time. As much as I’m loath to agree with Pauline Kael, she rightly noted that the film felt like “the forties wartime movies written by those who were later blacklisted,” and The Front does have a broadly old-fashioned moralistic feel to it, presenting the problem of the blacklist as one less of politics than systemic cowardice. Despite its good intentions – and they were genuinely good – the film is inherently compromised by its need to tell the story in an accessible way (and against tremendous odds) to the widest possible audience. As a result it can feel like - as Roger Ebert put it - “blacklisting is the backdrop for a situation comedy.”

For his part, Ritt was annoyed by the critical reception in the United States (it did well in Europe), and particularly that of Kael and Sarris, who implied that he had somehow been duped: “Now I venture to say the political knowledge of both people is nil. Their political commitment is nil. They have suffered for the politics not one whit. There’s not a political gut between the two of them. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I don’t know who they are on that level to make such statements.”

As a response to accusations of lingering bitterness, it was a poorly judged one, but he has a point: The Front may appear to be a somewhat sanitised version of a decades-long injustice that ruined the careers of “professors, doctors, teachers, musicians, actors, writers, directors, people from all kinds of professions,” but it was the only marketable version they could make at that time. Though Ritt would later acknowledge that The Front wasn’t successful - “I would like to make another picture that deals more seriously with that time and that subject. It might have a chance to be a better film.” - it remains important. As Zero Mostel once said, “It’s part of the history of this country, and a lot of kids don’t even realise that blacklisting ever existed;” The Front persists as an entry point for those curious enough to want to learn more, and that can only be a good thing.

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Next Up: “Passion wears a mask of terror in this strangest of all games!”

1. If the name David Begelman rings a bell, it’s because his mischief involved embezzlement, detailed in David McClintick’s book Indecent Exposure.

2. The end credits feature the blacklisted dates of affected cast and crew. I also believe Julie Garfield (who plays the waitress Margo) is the daughter of blacklisted John Garfield, so it goes beyond the first generation. Ritt apologised to Michael Chapman for leaving his end credit so late, with the consolation that if he’d been around at the time, he would have been blacklisted too. Walter Bernstein wasn’t keen on the idea; he didn’t want it to look like they were asking for sympathy. But he was just the writer, so …

3. Mostel’s “butterfly at rest” testimony is rightly famous for its irreverence, and his manipulation of the Committee is pure dark vaudeville. “Put the bug to rest somewhere else next time …”

4. The obligatory “this isn’t the place” footnote. For the record I am, and have always been, ambivalent to Allen’s talent and have never shaken the Orson Welles takedown: “Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited.”

5. Some people don’t like caviar. Some people don’t have the palate. And some people find theatrical performances off-putting. I am not one of those people, for I too “crept the boards in my youth …”

6. Chapman came in for criticism for the movie’s flat look, but that was entirely intentional. It was supposed to look like a 50s TV show. Ritt wasn’t bothered about the look of the thing; he was more interested in the actors and the writing than camera set-ups.

7. It wouldn’t be the only blacklist-themed film that year: the documentary Hollywood on Trial appeared a few months after The Front.

8. Probably wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole. Wilder was notoriously flippant about the original Unfriendly Ten: “Only two of them have talent. The rest are just unfriendly.” For the record, the “two with talent” were Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo.