Myron Coureval Fagan

Myron Coureval Fagan (31 October 1887 - 12 May 1972) was an American writer, producer and director for film and theatre and a red scare figure in the late 1940s and 50s. Fagan was an ardent anti-communist and influential conspiracy theorist.

Career

Fagan arrived on Broadway in 1907, where he quickly became one of the youngest playwrights in American Theater. Over the years, he worked in the theater with, among others, Alla Nazimova, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Barrymore. He also directed plays for the producers such as Charles Frohman, David Belasco. Fagan also became the dramatic editor of the Associated Newspapers. Many of the actors including Humphrey Bogart, Brian Donlevy and Robert Ryan whom Fagan directed or who appeared in his plays or screen adaptions, later became stars in Hollywood.

In 1916 Fagan took a break from the theater to serve as Director of Public Relations for Republican Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes. When a similar offer was made in 1928 to him by Herbert Hoover he turned it down.

In 1929 the talking picture version of his play "The Great Power" earned the dubious record of being the shortest run of any movie at the Capitol Theatre, New York. It was replaced with a silent comedy film after only one performance.^[1]

He moved to Hollywood in 1930, where he served as a writer and director with Pathe Pictures, Inc., then owned by Joseph P. Kennedy, and also at 20th Century Fox, and other Hollywood Film Studios.

Anti-communism

In 1945, Fagan claimed he saw secret documents of the meetings in Yalta, shown to him by author John T. Flynn, that led him to write the plays Red Rainbow, and Thieves Paradise. Written in 1945, Red Rainbow portrays Roosevelt, Stalin and others in Yalta plotting to deliver the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Berlin to Stalin. Left-wing groups in the New York opposed the production of the play and Fagan had difficulties getting financial backing to produce it. Fagan took the play to Hollywood where he encountered even more protests against it than he had in New York.^[2]

In the late 1940s Fagan launched a one-man crusade against what he claimed was a "Red Conspiracy in Hollywood". Out of this crusade would come the Cinema Education Guild.^[3]

In 1953, Red Rainbow was produced by Bruce Fagan and staged for 16 performances at the Royal Theatre ^[4] between 14 September and 26 September.^[5]

Written two years later, Thieves Paradise portrays the same group plotting to create the United Nations as a Communist front for one world government.^[6]

Despite opposition, Thieves Paradise opened at the Las Palmas Theatre in Hollywood on December 26, 1947. It starred Howard Johnson^[3] who was subject to a campaign of harassment so bitter and intense that it sent him to St. Vincent's Hospital with a nervous breakdown after six performances and never made another movie in Hollywood.Thieves Paradise was also produced and staged at the El Patio theatre in Hollywood in April, 1948. It opened on April 12,^[3] and, despite protest against it, was able to complete its run.

Personal life

He was married to actress Minna Gombell, who starred in many of his productions.

Death

Myron C. Fagan died on 12 May 1972 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Credits

References

External links

Myron Fagan's FBI files, obtained under the FOIA and hosted at the Internet Archive