HOW THE CIA FOULED OUR LITERATURE

LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN, NY TIMES, 2000 - Many people remember reading George
Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high school or college, with its chilling
finale in which the farm animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical
pigs and the exploitative human farmers but found it "impossible to say
which was which."
That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the
humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood
butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret
producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too
influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the
capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents
were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate
fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow to make its
message more overtly anti-Communist.

Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often
absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book,
"The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters"
(The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist. . .

As it turns out, "Animal Farm" was not the only instance of the C.I.A.'s
dabbling in Hollywood. Ms. Stonor Saunders reports that one operative
who was a producer and talent agent slipped affluent-looking
African-Americans into several films as extras to try to counter Soviet
criticism of the American race problem.

The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of "1984,"
disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be
altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely
defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last line,
Orwell writes of Winston, "He loved Big Brother." In the movie, Winston
and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly shouts:
"Down with Big Brother!" . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031800-02.htm