In 1947 and 1951, the House on Un-American Activities Committee opened an investigation of Hollywood radicals. It was a continuation of previous pressures that dated back to the late 1930s and early 1940s by the Dies Committee and State Senator Jack Tenney's California Joint Fact-finding Committee on Un-American Activities. HUAC charged that Communists had established a significant base in film and were slowly taking over our media. This started a new fear that communists were placing subliminal messages into Hollywood films. A further concern was that Communists were in a position to place negative images of the United States in films that would have wide international distribution. The conspiracy generated by HUAC in 1947 were very much realities of the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 1940s. This was very much a reality because studio bosses had such hands-on control of their films. When films did have a political edge, studio bosses were personally involved in every phase of production, including the vital final cut such is the case in the most notoriously pro-Russian film ever made in Hollywood, Mission to Moscow (1943). The Roosevelt administration said the film combined an all-out assault on American isolationists with a complete acceptance of the Stalinist account of the purges. Evidence of these occurrences were very slim though. The communist party did have a policy on Russian film. They were not allowed to have anti-Soviet and anti-Leftist views in films. This prompted Hollywood to take action. They went directly to the source for the most part and went to blacklist the screenwriters. 80% of those blacklisted were indeed screenwriters.
Not everyone in Hollywood was for the act of blacklisting. Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, pledged that he would "never be party to anything as un-American as a blacklist. The Hollywood stand against blacklisting was tested when some of the first writers called refused to cooperate and went to the press with statements speaking against the committee. The result was bad press for Hollywood and a feeling by producers that their radical writers were doing all of this for headlines at the industry's expense. On November 24, Congress cited ten screenwriters for contempt. A meeting at the Waldorf Astoria hotel days later ended Hollywood’s stand against the blacklist and they announced that "no Communists or other subversives will be employed by Hollywood." An appeal by the "Hollywood Ten" was turned down and by mid-1950 most of them had begun to serve one-year terms in prison.
The communist paranoia prompted Hollywood to stage hearings in which people in the industry were asked about their political stance. This prompted many different responses to the hearings. Many members did not accept the right of the HUAC to question their right of political association on the basis of the First and Fifth amendments. Actors like Zero Mostel said they would gladly discuss their own conduct but were prohibited by religious convictions from naming others. Many felt that giving names of others they knew were communist was morally wrong. Ex-Communists such as Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan felt there was a Communist conspiracy and that it was proper, if not patriotic, to expose it.
However they did feel they’re was no escape once they testified. Fame was no protection. Refusal to cooperate was grounds to be blacklisted, such as in the case of lifelong non-Communist progressive Sam Jaffe. Jaffe, who had been nominated for an Oscar for The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and was famous for roles in Lost Horizon (1937) and Gunga Din (1939), was reduced to teaching high school math and living with his sisters. Lee Grant, nominated for an Oscar for her role in Detective Story (1951), was blacklisted for refusing to testify against her first husband, screenwriter Arnold Manoff. Grant would eventually return to Hollywood and win two Oscars, one for acting and another for directing a documentary.
The Hollywood blacklisting effected many lives and squashed the beginning of many careers on the rise. Screenwriters got around the black listing by working under different names but actors who could not change their faces were not as lucky.The Red Scare prompted a number or anti communist films in the fifties. The biggest effect that this had was a pure form of art and expression was corrupted in a land where your views are considered your own. They are considered sacred. No where in the constitution does it say that you can not be communist yet we ruined many careers because we deemed it to be wrong at the moment. We should all learn from the blacklisting done in Hollywood and ask this question. How free are we really?
By: Peter Matkiwsky
