When Elia Kazan, one of the 20th century's great American theater and movie directors, died two years ago, the obituaries almost all struck the same sour note. The Los Angeles Times, the movie business's hometown paper, announced his death with a straightforward page one headline, "Elia Kazan, 1909-2003," but then got down to cases in the subhead: "Stage and screen triumphs were eclipsed by his testimony against colleagues in the blacklist era."

For many "progressives"- especially in the entertainment business - "eclipsed" doesn't begin to tell the story. Over the entire half-century after he "named names" to the House Un-American Activities Committee on April 12, 1952, Kazan remained the very embodiment of a self-serving, backstabbing rat. The assumption about his moral turpitude rests on another assumption, so often echoed in books, movies and classrooms that by now it appears an indisputable fact: that the blacklist was a straightforward case of good versus evil, pitting decent Americans defending free thought and expression against the vilest forces of reaction.

'WITCHES' WERE REAL

While no one can deny or excuse the bullying and moral corruption of federal investigators, the term routinely applied to their work - "witch hunt" - is entirely misleading. In Hollywood, the witches - communist activists, working surreptitiously to advance Soviet interests - were all too real.

Many celebrities today get their history from movies or from one another, and they're suckers for good-guy-versus-bad-guy takes on complex events. Hence the rhapsodic Hollywood reaction to George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck," a film chronicling CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow's clash with Sen. Joseph McCarthy that scrupulously resists any suggestion that communism posed a meaningful danger.

In the Bush era, liberal celebrities revel in casting themselves as the descendants of the brave but powerless individuals who paid such a high price for resisting the bullies of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

BLACKLIST FANTASIES

As a chief villain in the blacklist myth, Kazan got his due and then some when the Motion Picture Academy announced in 1999 that it would at last award the sickly 89-year-old filmmaker a lifetime-achievement Oscar. The firestorm that followed split Hollywood between those who insisted that Kazan should never be forgiven and those who argued that honoring his artistic work wasn't the same as excusing his testimony.

None defended Kazan's actions a half-century earlier. What put Kazan beyond redemption wasn't simply his cooperation with HUAC. He could still have won forgiveness. But far from repentant, Kazan was defiant. The day after his HUAC appearance, he took out a New York Times ad entitled, almost regally, "A Statement by Elia Kazan." "I believe that communist activities confront the people of this country with an unprecedented and exceptionally tough problem," it read. "That is, how to protect ourselves from a dangerous and alien society and still keep the free, open, healthy way of life that gives us self-respect." Kazan then briefly recounted his youth in the communist movement and the contempt that he came to have for the totalitarian mentality that he'd seen firsthand.

A complex and contradictory man, outgoing but given to gloomy self-reflection, Kazan conceded in his autobiography that his haughty defiance was largely a pose. "Any time you hurt people, and I did hurt some people, you don't like it," he wrote. Yet self-serving as it undoubtedly was - for his HUAC testimony allowed him to keep working in Hollywood - Kazan's statement also expressed his deepest beliefs.

STUNNED DISBELIEF

The theater and film communities, which lionized Kazan, reacted with stunned disbelief at his testimony. But when Kazan ran his Times ad justifying his actions, disbelief turned to fury. People he'd been close with for his entire career now crossed the street to avoid him. At parties, old friends wouldn't meet his eye. Some openly insulted him.

In the wake of his "betrayal," Kazan went on to tremendous acclaim with "On the Waterfront," released in 1954. The film's writer was Budd Schulberg, also an ex-communist who had named names before HUAC, for reasons nearly identical to Kazan's.

But in the view of the Hollywood Left Kazan and Schulberg used "On the Waterfront" - the story of a young man, played by Marlon Brando, who achieves nobility by informing on the corrupt thugs who rule the docks - to justify their own treachery. "On the Waterfront" won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kazan. Yet in the circles where Kazan was once a star, the acclaim only made the hatred fiercer.

In the years that followed, Kazan directed other memorable pictures, among them "East of Eden," "A Face in the Crowd," "Splendor in the Grass," and the deeply personal love letter to his country, "America, America." But by the mid- '60s, demand diminished for his brand of serious, character-driven filmmaking. Yet as he moved into old age, Kazan started to win some of the honors that great achievers usually take for granted. Hollywood, though, repeatedly and publicly snubbed him.

Then, finally, the Motion Picture Academy announced that it would give Kazan his lifetime-achievement award. In the ensuing controversy, the Hollywood Left achieved new levels of self-righteousness, though a few brave commentators challenged its version of events. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen asked why the industry had waited so long to bestow this honor on such a legend. "The answer is clear: He was blacklisted."

'VILLAINS' REVISITED

Kazan doubtless could have composed in advance the slighting headlines that would follow his death. But developments since might have surprised him.

At long last, America is looking at the "heroes" and the "villains" of the blacklist period with clearer eyes. Two important new books that probably would not have been published several years ago are causing even some liberals to reconsider. Ronald and Allis Radosh's "Red Star over Hollywood" gives chapter and verse on the communists' efforts to infiltrate the film industry. And Time movie critic Richard Schickel's forthcoming biography of Kazan credits the director for his courage, even as it reveals many of his adversaries as the unapologetic Stalinist tools that they were.

Blacklisted screenwriter Paul Jarrico might have been right, at a HUAC anniversary gathering in 1997, if not quite in the way that he intended: It could just be that in the final accounting, the good guys will win after all.

This commentary is excerpted from the autumn 2005 issue of City Journal.