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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Olivia de Havilland patriot? Olivia de Havilland's radiant beauty lit up the screen in endless scenes she innocently stole from other actors. However, she stole my heart for her courageous efforts to oppose the communist infiltration of Hollywood in the mid-1940s. Few men showed as much courage or principle, and those virtues made her an ally of the guy who ended up winning the "Cold War." Ronald Reagan was a naive liberal in the 1940s, who joined every "progressive" organization he could find. Some turned out to be communist fronts, such as HIC-CASP, the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Wrongly assuming its members were fellow liberals, he eagerly joined. Olivia de Havilland was already a member of HICCASP at the time Reagan joined, but she had grown increasingly suspicious of its goals and agenda. She noticed the group never hesitated to denounce fascism, but con-spicuously avoided criticizing communism. The Gipper's epiphany occurred at a July 2, 1946 HICCASP meeting also attended by Olivia de Havilland. Reagan and FDR's son, James Roosevelt, proposed that HICCASP issue a statement denouncing communism. The vicious and abusive reaction to Roosevelt's proposal from the group's communists was an awakening for Ronald Reagan. They denounced both Reagan and Roosevelt as "witch-hunters," "Fascists," "capitalist scum," and "enemies of the people." Never again would The Gipper naively as-sume that all "liberal" groups were necessarily innocent, nor would he ever fail to recognize the intentions of his communist enemy. By then, Olivia de Havilland was no longer under any illusions about Hollywood's communists. A few days before the July 2 HICCASP meeting, she was handed a speech by CPUSA member Dalton Trumbo to deliver at a meeting in Seattle. It was glaringly pro-Soviet, so she threw it away and gave an anti-communist speech, in-stead. In her speech, she defiantly told her Seattle audience that “We believe in democracy, and not in communism.” She also warned well- meaning liberals about manipula-tion by communists, who frequently join or establish lib-eral organizations to recruit naive individuals. Hollywood communists were outraged, and Trumbo and other CPUSA members denounced her viciously. Immediately after the July 2nd HICCASP meeting, Reagan was invited to attend a quiet gathering at Olivia de Havil-land's home later that evening. When he arrived, Reagan discovered that Olivia de Havilland was not "one of them," as he put it, and they both had a good laugh after realizing each had suspected the other of being a com-munist. In the wake of her Seattle speech and the explosive HIC-CASP meeting, Olivia de Havilland was routinely labeled an "anti- communist liberal." There really were such peo-ple in those days. Historian John Meroney interviewed her in 2006 and con-cluded: “Ms. de Havilland felt a great sense of personal betrayal that the communists had used her, other celeb-rities, and liberalism as covers for their party work.” She redeemed herself by courageously speaking out against communism for the rest of her life, just as her pal, The Gipper would do. May flights of Angels sing her to her rest. Poster Comment: This is the lead article in the new issue of the CofCC magazine -- n time to reformat. I have never heard anything like this about OdH before -- has anybody?? Well well: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
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Don't know how the link escaped https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_de_Havilland#Religion_and_politics
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