Century Fox, Harry Cohn at Columbia,nand the rest rather hke overlords,nwith stars in their vassalage. JacknWarner demonstrated this conclusivelynwhen Bette Davis fought him inncourt to sever her seven-year contract.nTheir power did not only make thenstudio bosses feel God-like over writersnlike Faulkner, Chandler, Cain,nDreiser, and Brecht, or composers likenStravinsky and Schoenberg—but itnalso gave them a feeling of omnisciencenabout what the American peoplenwanted. The tones of their fulminationsnand self-justifications impartednthe conviction that theirs was a sacrednstewardship and that they were notnsolely kingpins of the market but kingpinsnof state as well.nExalted, they denied their particularity.nBaited by born-again ZionistnBen Hecht, David O. Selznick felt henhad to deny his primary identity wasnJewish; approached to produce the firstnfilms about anti-Semitism, Crossfiren(1947) and Gentleman’s Agreementn(1948), the moguls initially hesitatednor refused. Flushed with success, theyndonned the mantle of—to use Rogin’snMarxian categories — “the citizennideal” rather than that of “bourgeoisnreality,” and appealed “against conflictnand diversity and for Americanism.”nTheirs, too, was an immigrant consciousness,nbut they repressed it ornturned it inside out: Friedrich twicenrefers to Mayer calling somebody an”kike.” Henry Ford’s way of seeing thenworld—threatened by a Jewish Communistnconspiracy — was not hisnalone. The moguls were powerlessnagainst it. What they could do, as theyndiscovered their kingpin pretensions,nsqueezed by HUAC into meekness,nwas to turn in their own—as Warnerndid to Mission to Moscow writer HowardnKoch (who also had scriptednCasablanca) — and make anti-Rednpictures.nRonald Reagan made a few of them.nOne was 1951’s Storm Warning, innwhich the subversives are, strangely,nthe Ku Klux Klan, though we arenmade to understand that their businessnis not to persecute blacks but somenkind of nefarious racketeering. Roginnis right in saying that the best of thengenre was director Sam Fuller’s Pickupnon South Street (1953), a picture thatnwas good, Rogin surmises, because itsnanti-Communism was detachable; thenFrench version, in fact, replaced thenoriginal’s espionage plot with a criminalnone without anyone being thenwiser.nThese sops may have satisfiednHUAC, but Washington wasn’tnthrough with the moguls, as Friedrichnrecounts. It broke the studios’ nation­nMr. KostelanetznReplies:nwide control over the theaters, givingnnew hope to independent franchisesnbut sounding a death knell to thenoverlords.nGary Houston is a former culturalnwriter and editor for the ChicagonSun-Times.nPOLEMICS & EXCHANGESnI wish you had shown me, before younpublished it, Jacob Neusner’s accusatorynletter {Chronicles, Septembern1987) regarding my “Ask Dr. Grants”n{Chronicles, April 1987). The issuenraised by Neusner is whether or notnthe current chairman of the NationalnEndowment for the Arts vetoes morendecisions of its departmental peer panelsnthan his predecessors. The last timenI asked the NEA’s press office aboutnthe current chairman’s vetoes for reasonsnother than technical, I was toldnthat they did not exist, all rumor andnreport to the contrary notwithstanding.nNow we find an insider revealing thatnthe rumors are true! This discrepancynmakes Neusner’s demand for morenpublic accounting of chairman’s vetoesnwholly appropriate; and since he isnnow an NEA councilor, I hope he willnask for it.nNeusner questions my assertion thatnthe current chairman “exercises, farnmore frequently than his predecessors”nthis veto power over democratic processes.nMy informants, both in thenNEA and out, told me that previousnNEA chairmen did not exercise thisnpower—ever. Since some is considerablynmore than none, my phrase “farnmore frequently” is not inappropriate.nSince my informants might be wrong,nI (and others) would like to hear fromnNeusner or anyone else who knowsnnnmore about the alleged vetoes of previousnchairmen! “My impression is thatn[K.’s] judgment is false.” Otherwise,nthose prior “vetoes” in Neusner’s “impression”nare strictly his invention. Ifnthe current NEA administration is asncomparatively modest about chairman’snvetoing as he says, you wouldnthink it would want to initiate a researchnreport that would take Neusnernoff the perilous hook on which he hasnguilelessly suspended himself andnthem.nSecondly, Neusner accuses me ofn”no information whatsoever” in referringnto “liberal do-gooding operations”nthat were defunded. Perhaps I shouldnhave added that the examples I had innmind were previously funded programsnthat sent surplus literary magazinesnto prisoners. In his third paragraph,nNeusner attributes two numberednconclusions to me—the first andirect quotation from a passage ofnmine quoted earlier in his letter andnthen a second statement similarly innquotes. However, an intelligent readernglancing back in his polemic will noticenthe latter statement twists in annexaggerated way what was previouslynquoted from me. This second “quotation”ndid not appear in my article (andnis not anything I would say, or believe,neven as paraphrase, which it does notnpretend to be); aside from two wordsntaken from me, the second quotationnis wholly Neusner’s invention!nHonest Neusner is, nonetheless, asnhe also tells us of scandalous “WhitenDECEMBER 19871 57n