Posted on 04/18/2005 10:47:45 AM PDT by Liz
In 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began a series of official inquiries into the penetration of the Hollywood film industry by the American Communist Party (CPUSA).
Major public hearings were held in 1947 and 1951, with smaller hearings throughout the mid-1950s. In the course of these inquiries, dozens of “friendly” Hollywood witnesses denounced hundreds of people as secret members of the Communist Party, while dozens of “unfriendly” witnesses refused to discuss their politics with the Committee. Those who were either publicly or privately denounced as members of the CPUSA found it almost impossible to get employment in the motion-picture industry for at least for a decade.
The most famous victims of the resulting blacklist were the original group of “unfriendly” witnesses, known as the “Unfriendly Ten” or “Hollywood Ten.” These individuals–mostly screenwriters– refused to give political information about themselves before HUAC in October 1947.1
The blacklist functioned in part officially, as demonstrated by a joint public announcement of the motion picture firms in November 1947 that henceforth no studio would knowingly employ any member of the Communist Party, or the members of any other group which advocated the overthrow of the United States government by revolution.
The blacklist also operated unofficially, through instruments such as the irresponsible red-baiting newsletter Red Channels, which named whole swaths of people as subversives. This, for example, ruined the career of the left-wing but non-Communist actress Marsha Hunt. 2
The blacklist also often functioned in secret: jobs just dried up. As a result, “fixers” emerged to get people unofficially “pardoned” by anti-Communist organizations and film industry managers, therefore making them employable again. One famous “fixer” was the fiercely anti-Communist actor Ward Bond. 3
“Fronts” arose as well in the form of people offering scripts ghost-written by blacklisted screenwriters in exchange for official credit for the script and often a cut of the payment. One famous example of such a “front” was Philip Yordan, himself a quite famous screenwriter. 4
Some film careers were totally destroyed as a result of the blacklist system. For instance, Mickey Knox, “the next John Garfield,” was a rising star of the late 1940s, turning in a star performance in the great gangster film White Heat (1949). If you have never heard of Mickey Knox, well, that is the point. Many other careers suffered severe setbacks, such as that of actor Howard Da Silva. 5
Actors and directors suffered more severely than screenwriters because they could not act or direct under assumed names, whereas screenwriters could use the “front” system, which allowed the most talented of them to continue to write. The CPUSA, however, had made its largest inroads in Hollywood among screenwriters, and many screenwriters’ careers suffered greatly or ended.
It is generally not a good idea to attack professional writers because they tend to write, and to write well, to get in the last word. This has certainly been the case with the blacklist. None of the HUAC committee or staff (which originally included Congressman Richard M. Nixon) has written memorably on the events of 1947 and 1951, let alone on the later, smaller investigations.
A few of those who appeared as “friendly witnesses” before HUAC, such as directors Edward Dmytryk and Elia Kazan, and actor Sterling Hayden. have written important memoirs, often defending their conduct and sometimes expressing self-doubt. 6
But such figures are far outnumbered by the self-justifying and bitter memoirs of those who were denounced: Norma Barzman; Walter Bernstein; Alvah Bessie; Herbert Biberman; Conrad Bromberg; Lester Cole; Lillian Hellman; Howard Koch; Ring Lardner, Jr. (and now his daughter Kate); Donald Ogden Stewart; Dalton Trumbo; and Ella Winter. 7
The publication of these works, and more fundamentally the cultural shift in Hollywood to domination by a bien peasant Left that started around 1960 and accelerated in the 1970s, has led to the lionization of the Unfriendly Ten as American “rebels” and martyred “non-conformists.”
Meanwhile, the anger within the current filmmaking elite at those who originally “named names” in the 1940s and 1950s has been unremitting. A now unalterable view of what occurred is held by people who have little knowledge of what it actually meant in the 1940s to be a Communist; that is, a Stalinist. Two examples demonstrate the current political situation.
Long read---rest at link.
Ann Coulter's description of the hearings really took me by suprise. I took McCarthy to be a red-mongering witch hunter as the liberal history writers would like me to accept. After all, I never heard any OTHER interpretation of those events.
After I read her book, I did some research, downloaded the transcripts of the hearings from the appropriate government web site that makes them available, and then I sat and read through them.
I must say...her version sounds a lot more like what is reflected in the transcripts than anything I had ever heard over the years, and by a long shot, too.
I now believe Joseph McCarthy was a real American hero. As Ann Coulter said in her book, he bought us time, and made being a Communist a stain, as it should have been. Our country owes him a lot. We should honor his service as faithfully as any serviceman who lost his life in combat, which in my opinion, he did, if you know how he died.
Ann Coulter's description of the hearings really took me by suprise. I took McCarthy to be a red-mongering witch hunter as the liberal history writers would like me to accept. After all, I never heard any OTHER interpretation of those events.
After I read her book, I did some research, downloaded the transcripts of the hearings from the appropriate government web site that makes them available, and then I sat and read through them.
I must say...her version sounds a lot more like what is reflected in the transcripts than anything I had ever heard over the years, and by a long shot, too.
I now believe Joseph McCarthy was a real American hero. As Ann Coulter said in her book, he bought us time, and made being a Communist a stain, as it should have been. Our country owes him a lot. We should honor his service as faithfully as any serviceman who lost his life in combat, which in my opinion, he did, if you know how he died.
Please. I used the word "technicolor" as a writing device to emphasize a point, not to suggest Riefenstahl's work was in color. Why don't you try to think bigger thoughts, instead of relying on your ambitious provincialism?
BTW, that Disney was the only one to meet with Riefenstahl is a popular agenda-centric myth.
Most interesting is the number of German emigres who settled in Hollywood through the help of networks. Hollywood mogul Carl Laemmle helped fellow Germans out during the Nazi era. By one researcher’s account, Laemmle provided at least 300 affidavits, documents that guaranteed that an applicant for a US visa would be employed in Hollywood (and not become a public charge).
This concentrated milieu of immigrants had an inordinate and profound influence on films for years to come.
Lillian Hellman was a stupid communist who defended Stalin until Kruschev denounced him. She wasn't just a liberal she was a communist till the end. Whether the blacklist was as perfasive as this article suggests or not, she was still defending a country that was enslaving millions and wanted to the same thing to the US. It's as if a present day actor was defending Bin Laden.
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That is not right. Americans have the right to be quiet. He invoked that right. btw...how is one guilty of communism? When did belonging to any party become a crime in the USA?
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Pleae show me where I even hinted that my thoughts include what you wrote in your second paragraph.
The issue is that people belonged not just to a home grown American radical leftist party but the Soviet Communist Party which was actively working to overthrow the American goverment.
No, the issue in all my posts is that Howard DaSilva was black listed for ten years with not even the accusation that he ever was a member of the communist or any party.
Your not. That's my point. Lefties often think that this is what the Ten were charged with. This is not true. It was contempt of Congress...the fact that they did not cooperate was their crime.
It would help if you would read before ranting. Just a thought.
The list will be way longer this time around most people making movies in Hollywood are very Un-american.
My opimion on this has nothing to do with communism, it is all about the rights of speech and association.
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