Glamorous Notions

by Megan Chance

May 1946. McGovern’s ninety thousand feet of footage was returned to the Pentagon. Once the government viewed the footage, it canceled a Warner Brothers feature film that was to be based on the project. The Atomic Energy Commission also did not want the film shown. It was generally felt that that footage would work against US government goals to increase the nuclear weapon arsenal. Both the Japanese and US footage were classified top secret and filed away. The Japanese film would remain concealed for more than twenty years, and the US film for more than thirty. For readers wishing to learn more details about this footage: https://apjjf.org/-Greg-Mitchell/1554/article.html.

There was, however, a vibrant underground scene and black market for jazz, and bootleg recordings from radio stations (recorded on x-ray sheets) were popular. Voice of America and the BBC were jammed, but resourceful fans found ways around that, and Radio Iran, Radio Luxembourg, and others had jazz programs that could be accessed. Red and Hot, by S. Frederick Starr, is an excellent history of jazz in the Soviet Union, and the website https://www.x-rayaudio.com has plenty of information on “bone music” for readers who wish to explore further.

The story of the US government using popular culture during the Cold War to influence both Soviet and American thought was the inspiration for this book. Many Americans opposed the shaping of minds through propaganda and would have been horrified to learn what the CIA was doing in the Soviet Union and throughout the world. They would have been more horrified to learn that the CIA was also using propaganda to influence Americans. The CIA not only helped to produce several books and articles with the intention of demonizing communism and to warn of a monolithic aggressor, but also used popular culture to urge a “normal” American way of life; that is, “the people’s capitalism,” blissful domesticity, American strength reflected in whole families with healthy children, and a racially diverse and happily blended society with equal opportunity for all.

The US Psychological Strategy Board, established in 1951, united several departments of US national security bureaucracy behind one goal: utilizing a campaign of psychological warfare in an effort to defeat the Soviet Union. The organization had a Motion Picture Service that employed director-producers who were given high security clearance and pursued film assignments (it cultivated directors like Frank Capra and producers such as Walt Disney) that fulfilled US messaging objectives. They searched out allies who were prepared to insert in their scripts the right actions and ideas, and em...

The blacklist, McCarthyism, HUAC, and the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals effectively got communists and alternative thinkers out of Hollywood, or so frightened them that they felt straitjacketed creatively and philosophically, and many of them fled to Mexico, Spain, Great Britain, or other more forgiving locales to write and produce screenplays.

Lawrence “Larry” Lipton was a real person, a writer, a poet, and the author of The Holy Barbarians, a book about the Beat scene in Venice Beach in the 1950s. He is also the father of James Lipton, host of Inside the Actors Studio.