With the death of Bud Schulberg earlier this month and his illuminating obituary in the New York Times, we've been revisiting the darker years in Hollywood and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).
The Hollywood Blacklist had its roots in the perceived threat of real and imagined links between the U.S. entertainment industry and Communism. In 1938, HUAC chairman Martin Dies released a report on the pervasiveness of Communism in Hollywood. The panic gradually began to escalate until 1947 when the first group of identified Hollywood Communist sympathizers were called to give testimony in front of HUAC. Of the 43 called, 19 refused to give testimony as they felt it a violation of their First Amendment rights. Ten of the nineteen, now known as the Hollywood 10, were found in contempt of Congress and given citations by the House of Representatives. Immediately following, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) voted to make all members swear to a non-communist pledge and the MPAA chairman declared that theten would be suspended without pay until cleared of all charges. More actors were called before congress; some named names (like Bud Schulberg and Elia Kazan) and others refused to testify and were blacklisted. The Hollywood reached its height from 1952-1956 and finally began to break around 1960.
Those interested in reading more online might consider visiting the PBS page on Elia Kazan (in conjunction with their "Miller, Kazan, and the Blacklist: None Without Sin") which features: essays, timelines, and video commentary. The Mesa County Library District (in Grand Junction, CO) has a very nice website dedicated to blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Blacklist. The Media Resource Library at UC-Berkley has a comprehensive website dedicated to the Hollywood Ten and provides mini-biographies of the ten members. And of course, Wikipedia provides a good background (but by no means 100% authoritative) on the topic as well as a comprehensive list of all blacklisted industry members.
Here at our own library, we have a few memoirs regarding the Hollywood blacklisting. Consider checking out:
The Red and the Blacklistby Norma Barzman
Hollywood Exile, or, How I Learned to Love The Blacklist by Bernard Gordon
Touch and Go by Studs Terkel
Anything Your LIttle Heart Desires by Patricia Bosworth
Also, Stuart Woods gives the Hollywood Blacklist the fiction treatment in Beverly Hills Dead.
And, since this is Hollywood we are talking about, there are bound to be films made on the subject:
Sydney Pollack's The Way We Were uses the HUAC hunt for communists as a backdrop for this love story.
Blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein wrote the Woody Allen vehicle The Front which explores the atmosphere during the blacklist.
Scandalize My Name, a documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman takes a unique perspective on the blacklist and how it affected African American members of the entertainment industry as well as the Civil Rights Movement.
And of course, George Clooney's more recent Good Night, and Good Luck chronicles newsman Edward R. Murrow's conflicts with HUAC.
BES
