Neo-Tomism

In Hollywood last fortnight the bloodhounds were baying at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's heels. Bounding from ice cake to ice cake, the harassed studio finally made the Ohio shore, stopped only long enough to drop its baby in the river.

The view halloo began when M.G.M. announced plans to picturize Uncle Tom's Cabin. Eliza would be Negro Torch Singer Lena Horne; Southern Gentleman St. Clare, venerable Lewis Stone; Little Eva, Margaret O'Brien. Simon Legree was not cast, but the producer was to be Arthur Hornblow. Promptly, Negro spokesmen and liberal Whites spiked the plan of Hollywood's most conservative studio.

Most articulate were the Negroes. Volleyed California's State Tax Administrator B. B. Bratton: "Louis B. Mayer is losing [that] adroit sense of . . . the fitness of things which marks the master showman. . . ." Thundered George A. Beavers, of the Golden State Life Insurance Co.: "It is sheer folly for Jews to entertain . . . the notion that they will escape the wrath which racial and religious bigotry let loose when tensions are increased by propaganda novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin." Boomed the Negro press: Uncle Tom was a socially significant work in its day, now it is just a reminder to the Negro of slavery and discrimination.

Sharpest blow was struck by Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron's Committee on Home Front Unity (polite name for the Los Angeles Race Committee). It recommended that the Hays Office ban Uncle Tom on the grounds that the picture would cause "racial tension."

Promptly Producer Hornblow bugled: "It seems to me that the Negro press is prone to exaggerate the objectionable aspects of the book. They sometimes think of Uncle Tom as nothing more than a quisling." He also compared Mrs. Stowe with Tolstoy, called the resentment of the liberals and a "surprising" number of distinguished Negroes an insult and an irreverence toward the author.

Then M.G.M. Publicity Chief Howard Strickling quit hedging, formally announced that the production was "indefinitely" postponed--which is diplomatic dialect for forever.

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