The Hollywood blacklist was the mid-20th century banning of suspected Communists from working in the United States entertainment industry. The blacklist began at the onset of the Cold War and Red Scare, and affected entertainment production in Hollywood, New York, and elsewhere. Actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other professionals were barred from employment based on their present or past membership in, alleged membership in, or perceived sympathy with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional or FBI investigations into the Party's activities.
Even during the period of its strictest enforcement from the late 1940s to late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit nor was it easily verifiable. Instead, it was the result of numerous individual decisions implemented by studio executives and was not the result of formal legal statute. Nevertheless, the blacklist directly damaged or ended the careers and incomes of scores of persons working in film, television, and radio.
Although the blacklist had no official end date, it was generally recognized to have weakened by 1960, the year when Dalton Trumboa CPUSA member from 1943 to 1948, and also one of the "Hollywood Ten"was openly hired by director Otto Preminger to write the screenplay for Exodus (1960). Several months later, actor Kirk Douglas publicly acknowledged that Trumbo wrote the screenplay for Spartacus (1960).Kirk Douglas, "My Spartacus Broke All the Rules" , The Daily Telegraph Despite Trumbo's breakthrough in 1960, other blacklisted film artists continued to have difficulty obtaining work for years afterward.
Hollywood Ten and beyond
The first systematic Hollywood blacklist was instituted on November 25, 1947, the day after ten left-wing screenwriters and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The ten menAlvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbohad been subpoenaed by the committee in late September to testify about their Communist affiliations and associates. The contempt citation included a criminal charge that led to a highly publicized trial and conviction, with a maximum of one year in jail in addition to a $1,000 fine ($ today).
The Congressional action prompted a group of studio executives, acting under the aegis of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, to suspend without pay these ten film artistsinitially labeled "The Unfriendly Ten" but soon changed to "The Hollywood Ten"and to pledge that "thereafter no Communists or other subversives would 'knowingly' be employed in Hollywood." The blacklist eventually expanded beyond ten into the hundreds. On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet-style book entitled Red Channels was published. Focused on the field of broadcasting, it identified 151 entertainment industry professionals as "Red Fascists and their sympathizers" who had infiltrated radio and television. It was not long before those named, along with a host of other artists, were barred from employment in the entertainment field.
History
Background The Hollywood blacklist was rooted in events of the 1930s and early 1940s, encompassing the depths of the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, and the U.S.-Soviet alliance in World War II. The widespread economic hardships in the 1930s, as well as the rise of fascism in the world, caused a surge in Communist Party USA (CPUSA) membership. Levels had remained below 20,000 until 1933 and then steadily grew during the decade until reaching 66,000 in 1939. Although the CPUSA lost substantial support after the Moscow show trials of 1936–1938 and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, the organization's membership was still well above its pre-1933 levels. Buhle and Georgakas write that during the CPUSA's peak year of 1942, membership reached 85,000.
With this as a backdrop, the U.S. government began turning its attention to possible links between the CPUSA and Hollywood. Under then-chairman Martin Dies, Jr., the HUAC released a report in 1938 claiming that communism was pervasive in the movie industry. Two years later, Dies privately took testimony from a former Communist Party member, John L. Leech, who named forty-two movie professionals as Communists. After Leech repeated his charges in supposed confidence to a Los Angeles grand jury, many of the names were leaked to the press, including those of stars Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Melvyn Douglas and Fredric March, among other Hollywood figures. Dies said he would "clear" those who cooperated by meeting with him in what he termed "executive session". Within two weeks of the grand jury leak, all those on the list except for actress Jean Muir had met with the HUAC chairman. Dies "cleared" everyone except actor Lionel Stander, who was fired by the movie studio, Republic Pictures, where he was under contract.
Two major film industry strikes during the 1930s had exacerbated tensions between Hollywood producers and unionized employees, particularly the Screen Writers Guild, which formed in 1933.Murphy (2003), p. 16. In 1941, producer Walt Disney took out an ad in Variety, the industry trade magazine, declaring his conviction that "Communist agitation" was behind a cartoonists and animators' strike. According to historians Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, "In actuality, the strike had resulted from Disney's overbearing paternalism, high-handedness, and insensitivity." Inspired by Disney, California State Senator Jack Tenney, chairman of the state legislature's Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, launched an investigation of "Reds in movies". The probe fell flat, and was mocked in Variety headlines.
The wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union brought the CPUSA newfound credibility. During the war, Party membership climbed back up to 50,000.Johnpoll (1994), p. xv. As World War II drew to a close, however, perceptions changed again, with communism increasingly becoming a focus of American fears and hatred. In 1945, Gerald L. K. Smith, founder of the neofascist America First Party, began giving speeches in Los Angeles assailing the "alien minded Russian Jews in Hollywood." Mississippi congressman John E. Rankin, an HUAC member, held a press conference to declare that "one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood ... the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States." Rankin promised, "We're on the trail of the tarantula now, and we're going to follow through."Murphy (2003), p. 17.
Reports of Soviet repression in Eastern and Central Europe in the war's aftermath added more fuel to what became known as the "Second Red Scare". The growth of conservative political influence and the Republican triumph in the 1946 midterm elections, which saw the GOP take control of both the House and Senate, led to a major revival of institutional anti-communist activity, publicly spearheaded by the HUAC but with an investigative push by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. The following year, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA), a political action group co-founded by James Kevin McGuinness, issued a pamphlet written by Ayn Rand and entitled "Screen Guide for Americans". It advised film producers on the avoidance of "subtle communistic touches" in their films. The pamphlet's advice was encapsulated in a list of ideological prohibitions, such as "Don't Smear the Free Enterprise System", "Don't Smear Industrialists", "Don't Smear Wealth", "Don't Smear the Profit Motive", "Don't Deify 'the Common Man'", and "Don't Glorify the Collective."
Beginning (1946–1947) On July 29, 1946, William R. Wilkerson, publisher and founder of The Hollywood Reporter (THR), titled his front-page "Tradeviews" column, "A Vote for Joe Stalin". In the column, Wilkerson named as Communist sympathizers Dalton Trumbo, Maurice Rapf, Lester Cole, Howard Koch, Harold Buchman, John Wexley, Ring Lardner Jr., Harold Salemson, Henry Meyers, Theodore Strauss, and John Howard Lawson. Over the next two months, Wilkerson published more columns containing names of other suspected Communists and "fellow travelers" working in Hollywood. His daily column earned the moniker "Billy's Blacklist" or simply "Billy's List". When Wilkerson died in 1962, his THR obituary stated that he had "named names, pseudonyms and card numbers and was widely credited with being chiefly responsible for preventing communists from becoming entrenched in Hollywood production – something that foreign film unions have been unable to do." In a 65th-anniversary article in 2012, Wilkerson's son apologized for THRs role in the blacklist and added that his father was motivated by revenge for his own thwarted ambition to own a film studio.
In late September 1947, drawing upon the lists provided in The Hollywood Reporter, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed 42 persons working in the film industry to testify at hearings. The HUAC had declared its intention to investigate whether Communist agents were sneaking propaganda into American films.
Of the people subpoenaed by the HUAC, 23 were deemed "friendly", some of whom had previously testified in closed HUAC sessions at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The October hearings in Washington, D.C. began with appearances by 14 friendly witnesses, among them Walt Disney, Jack L. Warner, Gary Cooper, Ronald Reagan, Robert Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, screenwriter Jack Moffitt (who was later employed at THR by Wilkerson), and MGM producer and story editor James K. McGuinness. Disney asserted that the threat of Communists in the film industry was a serious one, and he named specific ex-employees as probable Communists. Reagan, who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild, testified that a small clique within his union was using "communist-like tactics" in attempting to steer union policy, but that he did not know if those (unnamed) members were Communists or not, and that in any case he thought the union had them under control. Reagan's first wife, actress Jane Wyman, later saidas reported by Joe Morella in his 1985 biography of Wymanthat Reagan's political accusations against colleagues and friends led to tension in their marriage, eventually resulting in their divorce. Adolphe Menjou declared: "I am a witch hunter if the witches are Communists. I am a Red-baiter. I would like to see them all back in Russia."Scott and Rutkoff (1999), p. 338.
Unlike the friendly witnesses, other leading Hollywood figuresincluding directors John Huston, Billy Wilder, and William Wyler; and actors Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Judy Garland, Sterling Hayden, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, Myrna Loy, and Edward G. Robinsonprotested the HUAC and formed the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA). A sizable CFA delegation flew to Washington, D.C. on a chartered plane in October to voice their opposition to the government's political harassment of the film industry. A few CFA members, such as Hayden, had privately assured Bogart they were not Communists. During the HUAC hearings, a local Washington paper reported that Hayden was in fact a Communist. After returning to Hollywood, Bogart shouted at Danny Kaye, "You fuckers sold me out." The CFA was attacked for being naïve. Under pressure from Warner Bros. to distance himself from the purported Hollywood Reds, Bogart negotiated a statement, syndicated in Hearst newspapers under the title "As Bogart Sees It Now", which did not denounce the CFA but said his trip to D.C. had been "ill-advised, even foolish." Billy Wilder told the other committee members that "we oughta fold."