Editing Friendly Persuasion (1956 film) (section)

==Connection with House Un-American Activities Committee testimony==
The original screenplay by [[Michael Wilson (writer)|Michael Wilson]] was changed significantly in the wake of [[McCarthyism]]. The movie script was discussed in 1951 by [[Michael Wilson (writer)|Michael Wilson]] in his testimony as an "unfriendly witness" at the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] (HUAC), and by director [[Frank Capra]], who was seeking to dissociate himself from Wilson, who was ultimately placed on the [[Hollywood blacklist]].

Capra, who had originally contracted Wilson to write the screenplay just after the war but then dropped the project, said that although he thought Wilson did "a swell job" adapting West's book, the movie was not produced because he felt "it would be a bad time to produce a picture that might be construed as being antiwar. But we let Wilson work on it until he had finished with it."<ref name="McBride">{{cite news|last=McBride|first=Joseph|title="A Very Good American" The undaunted artistry of blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson|url=http://marlowesghost.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Microsoft_Word_-A_Very_Good_American.5371929.pdf|access-date=February 9, 2013|newspaper=Written By Joseph McBride|date=February 2002}}{{Dead link|date=October 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Wilson told HUAC in 1951, "I feel that this committee might take the credit, or part of it at least, for the fact that ''The Friendly Persuasion'' was not produced, in view of the fact that it dealt warmly, in my opinion, with a peace-loving people."<ref name="McBride"/>

"What happened to Wilson's pacifist script after Capra dropped it," notes film historian Joseph McBride, "reflected the political climate of the Cold War. When William Wyler directed the film for Allied Artists in 1956 as ''Friendly Persuasion'', he had the story changed to make the Quaker youth (played by Anthony Perkins) become a killer. The Quakers in Wyler's version, as [[Pauline Kael]] observed, 'are there only to violate their convictions.' But some of the strength of Wilson's conception remains, as in a scene of a crippled Union Army officer respectfully challenging the steadfast Quakers about pacifism in their meeting house."<ref>{{cite news|last=McBride|first=Joseph|title="A Very Good American" The undaunted artistry of blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson|url=http://marlowesghost.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Microsoft_Word_-_A_Very_Good_American.5371929.pdf|access-date=February 9, 2013|newspaper=Written By Joseph McBride|date=February 2002|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130627000031/http://marlowesghost.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Microsoft_Word_-_A_Very_Good_American.5371929.pdf|archive-date=June 27, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>