Biography/Autobiography
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Black Crepe, Red Myth
Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington to take his remains home to Springfield 150 years ago today. Among the commemorative works about the Lincoln cortège is one that suits this blog perfectly: The Lonesome Train. It was a 25-minute radio opera written in 1942 by Earl Robinson, a self-described “working class Communist composer.” Robinson and…
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Lead Belly
There’s a new documentary about the blues and folk genius Huddie Ledbetter (1888-1949) on the Smithsonian Channel. Legend of Lead Belly follows the career of the 12-string guitar wonder who absorbed the music of rural and small-town America in his travels through his native Louisiana and Texas. The writer and arranger who gave us Goodnight Irene,…
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Boris Morros
Two in a row. Airing on TCM right after the Dore Schary movie was a 1937 comedy with Carol Lombard, Fred MacMurray, and Dorothy Lamour called Swing High, Swing Low. “Music by Boris Morros,” it said in the credits. My bleary eyes opened and I perked up. Here was another Painting the Culture Red connection.…
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The Liberals, III – Dore Schary
This morning, in the wee hours—your editor was suffering from insomnia—the Turner Classic Movies channel aired The Metro Goldwyn Mayer Story, a movie short with Dore Schary, MGM’s vice president in charge of production, announcing the studio’s offerings for 1951. We said this site would explore the different attitudes toward the Soviet Union on the part…
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Perfuming the Culture Red
This site has been relying on a visual metaphor for cultural emanations of communism. We never thought of the sense of smell. We’re thinking again, what with the products that a Cuban company called Labiofam has just brought out, in hopes that the wafting aroma of Marxist-Leninist heroes will attract the cologne-buying public. Bottles of…
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Painting the Culture Black
As in, The Black Notebooks. This site, as you know, is dedicated to mapping left-totalitarianism’s attractions for artists and intellectuals. We would be remiss if we did not do the same for right-totalitarianism. The influence that enthusiasts of the Third Reich have had on philosophy and literary theory has long been known. However, new details…
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Feature on Politics and Folk Music
New Left, Old Left, Left-Over Left. Our guest essayist this month is Bob Cohen, a veteran of the 1960s folk group the New World Singers. He discusses the Hollywood movie about folkies—and how things really were. Read “Strumming Along with Dylan and Seeger” by returning to top left, the Pages list.
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The Liberals, I — Bruce Bliven
Here at Painting the Culture Red, a major part of our mission is to explore what liberals thought of the Soviet Union. Opinion on the Left was not monolithic. (Future posts will make this clear.) But let’s start with liberals who viewed that nation and its leader as democracy’s best hope. The New Republic has…