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The Hiss Case in Hollywood
Though to date there has been no feature film about the Hiss Case, 1 nor the lives of Whittaker Chambers or Alger Hiss, Hollywood has poked fun at the case’s most emblematic talisman, the Pumpkin Papers:
- North By Northwest: Auction Scene (1959)
Statue (starts at 1’58” marker) stands in for pumpkin in the auction scene from this Alfred Hitchcock movie, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason. 2 - North By Northwest: Trailer featuring Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
Statue on Mount Rushmore (starts 1’50’ marker), plus Cary Grant’s “red herring” quip (starts 2’11” marker). - The Three Stooges: “Dunked In The Deep” (1949)
Watermelon stands in for pumpkin in the opening scene’s spoof of the microfilm Pumpkin Papers.
Notes:
- Historical films that show footage of Chambers and Hiss include:
- The 20th Century: A Moving Visual History (1998)
- Cold War (1998)
- Nixon (1995)
- Project XX (1960)
Another production, Concealed Enemies (1984), re-enacts the Hiss Case. ↩
- Hitchcock or his scriptwriter (ironically–or not) had captured Chambers’ inspiration for hiding microfilm in a pumpkin. In his first memoir, Chambers wrote: “There had been a close-up of the Chinese god of Fate, a seated, pumpkin-shaped idol… Investigators might tear the house apart. They would never think to look for anything in a pumpkin lying in a pumpkin patch.” (Witness, pp. 751-755) ↩
Allen Drury‘s Advise and Consent, which was made into a film in 1962, was a roman a clef of sorts abut the Hiss case. The nominee, Robert Leffingwell, is hiding his past membership in the CP and is confronted at a congressional hearing by another cell member, Herbert Gelman, who is a stand-in for Chambers. Unfortunately, Hollywood reversed the conservative and anti-Hiss orientation of Drury’s book and turned Leffingwell/Hiss (played by Henry Fonda) into a victim of right-wing witch-hunters.
I saw Concealed Enemies on small screen. I’ve been unable to find it from usual sources (Netflix, etc.) If anyone knows of its availability anywhere, please share. Thanks
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