San Francisco Film Society Oral History Project Interview with ...

MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Were they working at all?
CLAUDE JARMAN: Alvah Bessie was writing. I don’t think he was doing anything at that time, but he
was pretty famous here in San Francisco. So it was just a good, different variety.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: How did those people react to what had happened to them? How did
they share that with the audience?
CLAUDE JARMAN: Well I think they were pretty proud of what they did. I don’t think they had any
regrets. They were obviously a little bitter that it did harm their careers, and they had to go underground
in order to do anything. It was Dalton Trumbo who worked under another name. There was no question
it hurt their careers. They talked about that, but still they felt they had made the right decision.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Do you remember any of that, or were you too young, from when you
were in Hollywood?
CLAUDE JARMAN: I don’t remember any of it, I sure don’t.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Something unique that happened at this Festival was the Directors
Conference—the conference of directors of various film festivals.
CLAUDE JARMAN: Oh, right.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Could you talk a little about how that came about?
CLAUDE JARMAN: I had always wanted to do something like that. I just felt that we all had a lot in
common. I thought it gave more stature to San Francisco than had been here. And it did increase the
awareness of San Francisco from the dialogue that we had with the other festivals. They loved San
Francisco. We had a lot of activities. We had a couple of people that had a big yacht, and we took them
out on an afternoon tour around the Bay, and we really sort of turned on the schmoozing with them. It
76