Good Night, and Good Luck: attack on McCarthyism simplifies but satisfies

Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
Director: George Clooney
Entertainment grade: B+
History grade: A–

The American journalist Edward R Murrow became famous for his radio broadcasts from London during the second world war. On Christmas Eve 1940, during the blitz, he finished his programme: “Merry Christmas is somehow ill-timed and out of place, so I shall just use the current London phrase – so long and good luck.” The variant “Good night, and good luck” became his sign-off in later television reports.

Thought police

In 1950, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy gave his name to a phenomenon: McCarthyism. McCarthy aimed to interrogate and root out the secret communists who he imagined riddled the ranks of the United States government, the military and other institutions. This quickly became a witch-hunt. The film begins with the case of Milo Radulovich, a Serbian-American air force lieutenant. Radulovich was discharged, accused of being a security risk because his father and sister were suspected of holding leftwing political opinions. This story is pretty much true as the movie tells it – helped, perhaps, by the fact that the real Radulovich served as an adviser to the film-makers. Ed Murrow (David Strathairn) and his co-producer at CBS, Fred Friendly (George Clooney), fear the repercussions of running the story, but feel they must. “We’re not going at McCarthy,” says Murrow. “Well, you’re starting the goddamn fire,” replies Friendly.

Characters

Good Night, and Good Luck was criticised by some on its release for making Murrow into too simplistic a hero. While most historical films simplify things, this one doesn’t completely sanctify its protagonist. After Murrow debates with McCarthy, his boss Bill Paley (Frank Langella) accuses him of not correcting the senator on one point of fact: that the lawyer and State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, not treason. Paley suggests Murrow didn’t want to be seen defending a known communist. Joseph McCarthy – who effectively plays himself in the film, appearing in documentary footage – emerges as a straightforward villain, but he made that bed for himself and most historians have let him lie in it.

Celebrity

“We don’t make the news,” says Paley. “We report the news.” As Murrow is drawn into a war with McCarthy, the station frets about its revenue. Good Night, and Good Luck does a fantastically clever job of intercutting real footage of McCarthy and other figures into its drama, mostly to serious effect – though there is a moment of levity when Murrow must interview Liberace. “Have you given much thought to getting married and eventually settling down?” Murrow asks the exceptionally camp but closeted performer. “I want to some day find a perfect mate,” the real Liberace replies in the documentary footage. “In fact I was reading about lovely young Princess Margaret, and she’s looking for her dream man too, and I hope she finds him some day.” Not even subtle. Remarkably, in 1959, Liberace won a lawsuit against the Daily Mirror after it implied he was what was then called a “homosexualist”.

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Consequences

Good Night, and Good Luck cheats history a little by suggesting that Murrow’s show, See it Now, was pushed to a graveyard slot and then cancelled after the McCarthy reports. In real life, the show continued to broadcast in its primetime slot for another season before being rescheduled. The film can, perhaps, be forgiven for merging these events to create a more dramatic ending. It allows Murrow his real and brilliant speech to the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association in 1958, arguing back against those who sneered at television as a medium: “This instrument can teach. It can illuminate and, yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it toward these ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

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Blacklists

This story is close to Hollywood’s heart, and it is easy to see why it appealed to a liberal actor-writer-director like George Clooney. The film industry was attacked before McCarthy himself began his campaign, by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI. The first Hollywood blacklist, a list of directors, screenwriters, composers, actors and other film-makers suspected of communist sympathies, was published in 1947. It was followed by several more such lists. Being named on such a list could damage or even destroy a career. Household names who were blacklisted, and/or were watched by the FBI, included Richard Attenborough, Harry Belafonte, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Chaplin, Lena Horne, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Paul Robeson and Orson Welles.

Verdict

Good Night, and Good Luck is a sophisticated, well-researched and beautifully made movie about the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s – and an understandable moment of Hollywood revenge on Joseph McCarthy.