Hollywood Bohemia

Book excerpt: Rob Wagner's Script, the film literary magazine published between 1929 and 1949, was Hollywood's only left-leaning, rabble-rousing movie publication that provided its readers with a regular dose of progressive politics, open love letters to the Soviet Union and a forum for such leftists as Dalton Trumbo and Charlie Chaplin. Rob Wagner founded the magazine on socialist principles. Its remarkable success in a company town ruled by conservative studio moguls is testament to Wagner's humorous but sophisticated approach to Depression-era radical politics. Author Rob Leicester Wagner, the great-grandson of Wagner, traces the birth of Script 'to the Red Scare of 1918-1919. The US government spied on Wagner and used his friends to inform on him for his antiwar activities and alleged German sympathies. The government ultimately attempted, but failed, to indict him on sedition charges. In Hollywood Bohemia: The Roots of Progressive Politics in Rob Wagner's Script, the author uses declassified War Department and FBI files and Rob Wagner's own personal diaries to deliver a portrait of a man driven to extol the virtues of socialism in an industry that best illustrates the unstoppable engine of capitalism. Illus., Notes, Index.