“You remember the Hollywood ‘blacklist’? McCarthyism has always been blamed for that.”
McCarthy never got involved in that or in investigating Hollywood in any fashion. For one thing he was in the Senate and it was HUAC led by Edward Hart in the House that looked into Hollywood. Others did as well including Ronald Reagan as the head of the Screen Actors Guild. There’s several books on all of this including Billingsley’s Hollywood Party.
A professor in college was going on about the McCarthy blacklist and a girl finally stood up and said, “Are you missing the word ‘House’ in HUAC? McCarthy was a senator and had nothing to do with that committee. I should have married that girl!