Hollywood blacklist

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 Trumbo – a 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). Despite Trumbo's breakthrough in 1960, other blacklisted film artists continued to have difficulty obtaining work for years afterward.

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 men – Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo – had 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 ($13,100 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 artists – initially 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.

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.

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. 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.