The Truth about the "Hollywood Ten"

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.

Thanks-I can't really say it was a life-changing revelation for me, but it drove home to me how much of our history is pre-digested for our consumption, and how much we don't know how much is pre-determined (This is the opinion we think people should have, so we will shape events to give them that opinion...)

It was propaganda to Americans, from Americans, the way I see it.

but it drove home to me how much of our history is pre-digested for our consumption, and how much we don't know how much is pre-determined (This is the opinion we think people should have, so we will shape events to give them that opinion...)

Good point. Simply stated, if we are looking for historical truth, we must never subject ourselves to one side only. That goes for the right also. The most politically and culturally defined people usually write the histories. We should always look at both views and we will be far more likely to find that elusive truth.

How many false facts can you pack into one sentence? They went to jail for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer the question if they were or had been Communists. They had no legal grounds for refusing to answer. They went to jail for refusing to answer, not because they were Communists, just as anyone before Congress might for refusing to answer any question that wasn't self-incriminating of a crime. Any private employer that wouldn't hire any of the 10 had every right to not employ them, whether for their criminal conviction, being a member of a political party engaged in treason, or a million other less important reasons. The Hollywood 10 didn't just hold "an unpopular idea", you sarcastically call a "high crime". Knowingly or not, they were engaged in treason as members of the American Communist Party - financed and given its orders from Moscow. Since they weren't prosecuted for a crime of engaging in treason with the criminal, mass murdering Soviet regime, they got no more than a slap on the wrist for contempt of Congress, NOT for the treasonous Communism you call "an unpopular idea".

I note the article contains a felicitously amusing typo:

“the cultural shift in Hollywood to domination by a bien peasant Left...”

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