Anti-Communism
in Hollywood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWLmfNEzaZo
Walt Disney HUAC testimony excerpt, 1947
Why was Hollywood targeted by the HUAC?
3 main reasons:
1) ‘The weapon of mass culture’
2) Hollywood the glamorous ‘dream factory’
3) After 1945 strikes, Hollywood was more receptive to the HUAC than
previously
Only in 1947 did HUAC gain influence in Hollywood.
Trials of 24 ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’ witnesses.
HUAC Trial: ‘Friendly’ Witnesses
Jack Warner testifying to HUAC
Lela Rogers (right)
Robert Taylor testifying to HUAC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTeTByQD4go
Ayn Rand on ‘Song of Russia’ at HUAC hearings 1947
HUAC Trial: ‘Unfriendly’ Witnesses
Hollywood Ten:
• Alvah Bessie
• Lester Cole
• Edward Dmytryk
• Ring Lardner Jr
• John Howard Lawson
• Albert Maltz
• Sam Ornitz
• Robert Adrian Scott
• Dalton Trumbo
Hollywood Ten October 1947
Films that may have implicated Hollywood Ten
Crossfire (1947) Dir. Edward Dymtryk.
Examined anti-Semitism in US
Tender Comrade (1943) Dir.
Dalton Trumbo
We Who Are Young (1940) Screenplay
Dalton Trumbo
Young couple struggle in capitalist world
The Hollywood Ten Trial: Response
Protests against trial outcome
Committee for the First Amendment
led by Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart
Blacklisting and further trials
• Waldorf Statement
• Over 320 people placed on blacklist including
Orson Welles who fled America to work in
Europe, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Chaplin
and Arthur Miller.
• Some blacklisted screenwriters continued to
write under assumed names such as Dalton
Trumbo and Michael Wilson.
• Greylist
• Blacklist not explicitly recognised
Red Channels Pamphlet and List
Why informers informed: Elia Kazan
In an interview to Michel Ciment 1971:
‘Since then I’ve had two feelings. One
feeling is that what I did was repulsive, and
the opposite feeling, when I see what the
Soviet Union has done to its writers, and
their death camps… It revived in me the
feeling I had at the time, that it was
essentially a symbolic act.’
Protests against Kazan in 1999
Why informers informed
• Fear in liberal community– if your not with us your against us
• Jewish informers and anti-Semitism
• Fear of exposure for homosexuals- Choreographer Jerome Robbins
• Financial desperation and career prospects- Edward Dmytryk
Promotion of Anti-Communist Films
Around 40 anti-communist films produced between 1940s and mid
1950s, all of them lost money
• The Red Menace (1949)
• Walk East on Beacon Street (1952)
• I was a Communist for the FBI (1951, won Academy Award for Best
Documentary!!)
• Iron Curtain (1948)
"I had to sell out my own girl--so would you! I
was under the toughest orders a guy could get! I
stood by and watched my brother slugged...I
started a riot that ran red with terror...I learned
every dirty rule in their book--and had to use
them--because I was a communist--but I WAS A
COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI.“
I Was A Communist for the FBI (1951)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXO88iyOyK8
The Red Menace (1949) Dir. R.G.Springsteen
Films in reaction against HUAC
A number of films were made in reaction to anticommunist activities including:
• Salt of the Earth (1954) – About New Mexico
mining strike, made by group of blacklisted
c
directors
• King of New York (1957)- Charlie Chaplin’s attack
on cold war hysteria
Salt of the Earth
Clearance Process
• Around 1952, the process of clearing and rehabilitating excommunists became popular
• However, actually strengthened the blacklists because it
acknowledged their legitimacy
Legacy
• Blacklist petered out in 1957 with successful court case of John Henry
Faulk
• In 21st century Writers Guild restored proper credits to films of the
period