American History Hit - Hollywood Blacklist

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

After World War 2 ended, the Nazis defeated, America feared communist infiltration of its institutions, among them, Hollywood. In November 1947, a number of high profile ‘friendly witnesses’ in the film industry, including Walt Disney and Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and named people and organisations they believed were associated with communists. As Don hears from Dr. Kathleen Feeley - Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Redlands, this began a witch hunt for communists in the entertainment industry, which lasted more than a decade. Hundreds of writers, producers and actors - many with no affiliation with communism - were left unable to work.Senior Producer: Charlotte Long. Producer: Benjie Guy. Mixed by Benjie Guy.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. I believe at that time that Mr. Sorrell was a communist because of all the things that I had heard and had seen his name appearing on many of the commie front things. And when he pulled the strike, the first people to smear me and put me on the unfair list were all of the commie front organizations.

I can't remember them all. They've changed so often. But one that's clear in my mind is the League of Women Voters, the People's World, the Daily Worker, the PM Magazine in New York. smeared me. Nobody came near to find out what the true facts of the thing were. We are hearing Walt Disney give testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. World War II had ended two years prior, and the country is in the grip of fear of communist infiltration of American institutions, among them Hollywood. Disney's testimony, and that of other so-called friendly witnesses, helped establish the Hollywood blacklist, a list that included

hundreds of writers and entertainers suspected of having communist affiliates. many themselves hauled in front of the un-American activities committee. The blacklist was created in November 1947 and for more than a decade ended the careers of many Hollywood hopefuls. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Welcome to the podcast. After World War II was won, a formidable adversary reemerged onto the American stage. An ideology, that some said, would threaten the fragile freedoms and liberties held dear by all Americans. It was communism. And according to many, it had become a cancer that infected the American body politic, one that had to be excised before the nation could be cured.

My guest today, Dr. Kathleen Feeley, has written several books on Hollywood history and studied the era which came to be known as the Red Scare and written about its effects in Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s when the film and television industry policed itself by naming its own names. Greetings, Dr. Feeley, Kathy. Welcome to American History Hit. Thanks for having me. We're talking, of course, about the Hollywood blacklist. So let's first define what that term means. What is a blacklist? And why in Hollywood? The Hollywood blacklist, I should say, was the most high profile and well-known of the economic, political, and cultural sanctions that were imposed upon people suspected of being communist in post-World War II America.

So it is a result of the federal government, the House on American Activities Committee, we're going to be talking about that a lot. Its acronym is Huac. It started targeting the film industry in the late 1930s. It did not do so successfully. Post-World War II, it is able to do so, that that sort of is what lays the groundwork for what becomes known as the Hollywood Blacklist. So the idea that folks working in front of and behind the camera lose their jobs, lose their livelihoods, have their reputations undermined, have to seek other forms of work is effectively when we say the Hollywood Blacklist, that's what we're talking about. How many people are we talking about when we're talking about the Hollywood Blacklist? We're talking about hundreds of people. It's hard to know because on the other piece of it is that it's not really official.

Like it both is and it isn't. The folks who are known as the Hollywood 10, those are the producers, directors, and writers who testify before Hughack in really high-profile proceedings in late 1947. They're declared in contempt of Congress because they refuse to answer Hughack's question. and they ultimately go to jail. And they are fired by the industry. The industry after these proceedings makes the decision it didn't want to make, which was going to have to take a public stand because of the negative publicity

and because of the kind of splintering, the political polarization in the industry and like lots of other factors. So they're officially sanctioned. Ultimately, they go to jail. But then lots of other people stop getting work. And it's not official, right? that there's whisper networks. There is a publication called The Red Channels, which is created by a group of three former FBI agents,

which becomes a list of folks not just in the film industry, but the entertainment industry writ large, who are ultimately, if you're on the left politically, you might end up with your name in this booklet that gets sold. It's how they're making a living. But really, it's also deeply unofficial. Both getting on and off the Hollywood blacklist becomes this process. You have to start asking people and figuring out, am I on the list? And if I'm on the list, how can I get my name cleared? Let's back up and give us incredibly specific story some broad context.

We're coming out of World War II, obviously, which ends in 1945. Even before that, there is a revolution in China. Mao Zedong takes control of China. Chiang Kai Czech ends up at Taiwan eventually. This whole era, this rise of communism, beyond the Soviet Union is what's alarming a whole bunch of people in the United States. They are coming for us, everyone thinks, in that camp, and we need to begin to strategize against it. This happens in all avenues of American life, from business to government to culture, but it doesn't really catch up to Hollywood until after the war.

Really, it all got paused by World War II as we fought the Axis Powers. but it all comes back up after 1945 and we begin anew, what had earlier happened in the previous decades. What made Hollywood such an attractive target in this effort to combat communism within our borders? Because if you are a politician seeking legitimacy, seeking publicity, seeking headlines, going after Hollywood can get you those headlines, right? Because you're going after high-profile names and figures. And the industry is also vulnerable post-war. World War II because the industry has spent the war talking about how they can change hearts and minds

via the propaganda film as they make in conjunction with the U.S. government. It's part of their war work. And they produce three films in conjunction with the government, with governmental sanction in support of the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union becomes our wartime ally. And after the war, those three films get pointed to over and over again by Hueck and all of the other local and state Hughax and other organizations, both public and private, targeting the industry and the industry is vulnerable because television is on the rise, so there's competition from television after the war. There's a loss of foreign markets. The industry is also facing the end of a long antitrust suit that is going to result in the major film studios having to divest themselves of

their theaters, and they know that's coming. And the industry is also politically polarized during the 1930s and also during the war. So in the 1930s and 40s, you have personnel in the industry unionizing. So the screenwriters guild, the screen actors guild, producers, guild, directors, guild all get formed. And the major studio heads do not like this. They don't want this. And so what happens post-war around the blacklist also becomes some payback as well. Originally, this effort begins, I guess, in D.C., in the House of Representatives. And this dates back before World War II. This committee already existed. I believe in 1938 it was begun. Was Hewak started specifically to combat communism, or was there a more general purpose for it?

It was a range of things. They were looking at subversion. In many ways, it comes out of a kind of right-wing populism, right? And the focus is really looking at left-wing radicals, right, which is going to equal communists, among many others, labor organizers, civil rights activists. Like, it's not accidental, right? That civil rights, African-American civil rights organizing an activity picks up post-World War II, and the Red Scare is deeply connected to that as well. Yeah, I mean, let's be honest. Everything we're dealing with today, the extremities of politics, the disembates of politics,

division. Boy was that going on in the 1930s with the New Deal in response to the Great Depression, everything that FDR came in on his mandate in 1932 was enormously controversial within the United States. And a lot of the right wing was empowered by this controversy and built committees and so forth to combat that which they saw as a socialist revolution in the United States. Absolutely. This moment we're talking about is not as. aberrational. There's a red scare that happens post-World War I. It creates the FBI, and it makes J. Edgar Hoover its director, and he becomes its director for life, and he is a fierce anti-communist. And he plays a really central role in pushing Harry Truman, who's president in post-World War II after

the death of FDR. He pushes Truman from the center to the right, and his administration is being accused of being soft on communists. Right. We see it post-9-11, the targeting of, of not communists, but terrorists, right? Middle Eastern terrorists become the other that the nation must be protected from. One of the reasons I love doing this show is to circle back to these events, which have become so institutionalized in our memories now. Oh, the Red Scar is just that thing that you just label what it is. No, all this stuff bubbles up and completely percolates throughout American society and history

for the length of the life of this country, really. Hollywood in post-World War II had really matured at this point. We're still talking about an industry that's fairly new, really finding its feet in the world, but World War II, you know, hits the throttle and shows that this can be a tool as well as an entertainment. The government understands this and basically hires up Hollywood to do its bidding, which is to create these films for recruitment and information and emergency alarms and so forth. all of that begins a new relationship between the government and Hollywood that is really glove in hand. It is. And it creates problems that in effect a government that is working with the industry,

it happens actually post-World War I when the industry is very new and it's being accused of being run by immigrants and Jews, right? The kind of xenophobia, anti-Semitism that happens post-World War I in a very early. U.S. film industry has to sort of prove its patriotism, that stuff still exists, right? This notion, quote, the Jews run Hollywood. Like, that notion still exists today, right? This sort of notion. And that still is a sort of really powerful tool that repeatedly is being used against the industry. So the industry during World War II is once again trying to prove its patriotism and also justify

enormous profits during the war, right? So they're saying, but no, look, we're making all of these films and are making us tons of money, but we're also doing the recruitment films, the war propaganda films, right? Sort of the high-profile enlistments of major stars like Jimmy Stewart. But the industry is also making enormous profits before and during the war and is at this moment in time one of the most powerful and significant film industries around the globe. So there's a lot to lose. But in the post-war world, foreign markets are getting closed off to the industry, right?

The sort of imperialism of the U.S. film industry, it gets challenged by other nations, even as the United States emerges as one of two superpowers after the war. So there's a lot of stake. This naming names begins with Huac and then sort of moves on into Hollywood. First comes the blacklist, then comes the Hollywood 10. Am I right? The Hollywood 10 are the first names on that list, effectively. because Hughack keeps failing to get Hollywood to do its bidding, right? So that it's in late

1947. Finally, they say, we're going to hear a list of friendly witnesses and unfriendly witnesses, and you have to come to Washington to testify because it's not working. They're doing just investigations, and the industry was resisting it. The industry initially going into the Washington hearings, they're kind of like, well, we know this will be disastrous, right? We recognize this, but we're also worried for a variety of other reasons. There's talk of boycotting of films. We know there are about 300 in total, kind of loud, organized communists, current and former communists, like who work in the industry in a variety of ways. So they're going to try to sort of make this work, except that Hewack and its chairman, Pernell Thomas, calls Jack Warner

first. Head of Warner Brothers Studio. He's the first friendly witness to testify, and he has a disaster because he started naming names he was not supposed to. So the friendly witnesses testify first. That's Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayor of MGM. Walt Disney of Disney Studios, Walt Disney was a fierce anti-communist. He was a leader of the Motion Picture Alliance for the preservation of American ideals. And people are paying attention to that. And then you've got Ronald Reagan is an actor. His career begins as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He testifies as a friendly witness, naming names and talking about the fact that there are communists running rampant in Hollywood.

I'll be back with more American history after this short break. So, Kathy, when we get to the Hollywood 10, who are these people? And why are they digging in like this? The Hollywood 10, generally speaking, are not superstars. They're writers, producers, directors. They include John Howard Lawson, who was the first to testify, and he was a disaster. He was a hardcore communist and was kind of an ideologue, and that's why they chose him to go first, right? He was like, I will not answer a single one of your questions, and, you know, he was angry and he was pounding on the table, and he was a very savvy choice from the perspective of Hughack.

It includes Lester Cole, Albert Maltz. The most high profile of that group is the screenwriter and author and sort of Bon Vivant, Dalton Trumbo. A big personality, this man. Absolutely. There's footage of him, like, writing in his bathtub, smoking a cigarette with a parrot on his shoulder, right? He is a charming and fascinating figure. They decide they are going to use the First Amendment, the freedom of speech and assembly, to refuse to answer the committee's questions. So they get asked and they say, right, you do not have the right.

Like, technically, I have the right to be a member of any political party that I choose. All of these initial unfriendly witnesses had been or were currently members of the Communist Party. They had been, right? Like, the U.S. Communist Party hits a high water mark in terms of its membership in the 1930s because crisis of the Great Depression. It kind of looks like capitalism is struggling a little bit. So these initial witnesses use the First Amendment defense. They refuse to answer the questions, which is why the House votes overwhelmingly to declare them in contempt of Congress. Their case winds its way through the courts. The Supreme Court refuses to listen to this case. So they all go to jail for roughly about a year or two. And there's something called the Committee for the First Amendment that Judy Garland and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and lots of major stars, John Houston in front of and behind the camera are part of. They also travel to Hollywood and they are

defending the unfriendly witnesses. And the folks who are defending them aren't necessarily communists. They might be fellow travelers. They might just be people who are on the political left or center. But they see the real problem here with folks who were not spies. The idea that Hollywood film content is full of communist propaganda is just absolute nonsense. They just kept pointing back to the three films made during the war that were Soviet propaganda films made in conjunction with the U.S. government. Like, that's the proof they can come up with. So the Hollywood 10 come together in order to present a legal challenge to Huac and to Hollywood in general, that you have no right to accuse me of things that I may or may not have done, but

any American is allowed to express their desire or join a party. It's not like it's an illegal thing. The Constitution protects you with this. You know, initially, it's not clear how it's going to go. It's not a foregone conclusion that the industry leaders are going to turn their backs on these unfriendly witnesses, that there's a lot of support. The Committee for the First Amendment, right, is a group of high-powered people. So heading into it, there's a sense not that they're going to be scapegoated, but that in fact, they will get supported. And the major studios initially, right, they don't want this kind of negative publicity and they want to kind of steer a course through this that is not about supporting

the communists in their midst, right, but that is about upholding the First Amendment and really honestly avoiding all of this sort of terrible publicity. But ultimately, once they are declared in contempt of Congress, the major studios know what they need to do. Like they have to cut them loose. Industry leaders from the film and television business sit down at the Waldorf Astoria and come out with a statement. The industry leaders make a decision. They come out with this Waldorf statement saying we're going to fire these people and we will not rehire them. So moving on from that, that's sort of the big public declaration and they were all 10 men. And they lose their livelihoods. And they really struggle, right? For most of them, with the exception of Dalton Trumbo, this, you know,

sort of marks the end of their careers. It's a little different. Trumbo is a writer. writers can do what they can do. And sort of famously Trumbo does this. He continues to write, and he's already a big star, right, for a writer. He's written novels, he's written screenplays. And so he can use pseudonyms, right? And he does that very effectively. So writers who get blacklisted can still work if they want to work under another name. But that's not going to be the case if you're a producer, if you're a performer, certainly. Many of these people lost their jobs, certainly lost their money, and lived their lives under an umbrella of shame. Dalton Trumbo has a different ending to his story.

He has helped out by one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time, Kirk Douglas. Tell me about that story. Yeah, so Trambo is a big star and he continues to work throughout the period, right? His kids will report like answering the phone and people are asking for Robert Rich, right? That's one of the many pseudonyms that he uses. and he writes the brave one under a pseudonym and wins an Academy Award, right, for best screenplay, which he cannot claim. So it's sort of laying bare a problem.

And this sets the stage for Kirk Douglas to hire him to be the writer for Spartacus and to be credited on screen. The first time that the blacklist have been challenged in public by a major name. So lots of folks sort of say, okay, so this is the kind of beginning of the end of the blacklist. But we need to bear in mind, Dalton Trumbo. He's one of the biggest names, right, who gets caught up in this. So what's working for him is going to take much longer for other people if they're able to recover their careers. So for listeners who remember the television show, The Waltons, Will Gere, who played Grandpa Walton, that role, right, in the sort of attention that it brings him is how his career recovers, right?

Because he actually performs in Salt of the Earth, which was a film independently produced by a number of blacklisted writers, producers, and performers, which I would encourage people to watch it. It's an extraordinary film about Mexican-American zinc miners in New Mexico that feels so contemporary in its kind of intersectional. kind of feminist take on the world, talking about class and race and gender and all kinds of complicated ways. And Will Gere plays the sort of evil sheriff in that film, but for all of the folks who were involved in that production, that absolutely put an end to their career. So he had a kind of stop on his career for about 20 years, right, before his career gets kind of reconstituted as Grandpa Walton. The fact is, there were a lot of people associated with, perhaps, not actual members of, but associated with the Communist Party throughout the 20s, 30s, into the 40s.

That was true. I mean, the Great Depression was a gigantic jolt to this country, and many people found solace in discussing other forms of governance, one of which would have been communism. Also, more broadly socialists, folks who considered themselves socialist, they didn't consider themselves communists and members of the U.S. Communist Party, right? We need to make that important distinction. And you should remember, it's important in a democracy for a democracy to work. People need to have the right to belong to any political party that they choose. But increasingly, being on the left, being a liberal, could be enough, right? Like having a friend group that includes someone who has some connection to the Communist Party could become enough, right,

to get you. It's a dangerous vortex into which a lot of different kinds. of associations and friendships even can get sucked in, let alone, you know, the actual membership, which was pretty rare. Yeah. A kind of really interesting case is the case of Lucille Ball. In 1953, Lucille Ball is the biggest star in American television. I love Lucy is the biggest show by far. Nobody wants America's favorite redhead to be declared a red.

However, she had testified in a closed-door scene. session before Hewack, because in 1936, she registered to vote as a socialist. And she claimed it was like to please her ailing grandfather. And she registered to vote. I don't know if there was even evidence that she'd voted as a socialist. But she has to testify before Hughack. She does. They are satisfied. But then her testimony gets leaked in 1953, right? She testified, I think, the year before. And so this starts making headlines CBS. Her television station is panicking. She's panicking.

Everybody's panicking because this is a sign of how things have spun out of control by 1953. Right. So she, however, she's Lucille Ball, big star. And she has important allies, including folks like Hedahopper, who was a member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. So that's that sort of powerful anti-communist organization. And so Petta Hopper is like, I will help you, girl. And she does, right?

And it's a collective effort. But it's a sign of really where things have gone that this is making headlines. There's a lot of back channeling done in the blacklist era. Jane Wyman would talk about how her career, she was an up-and-comer. And all of a sudden she stopped getting work. She was up for something, some picture, and she didn't get it. And then somebody tells her, Jane, you're on a list somewhere. And so she's one of many.

There's this Red Channel's publication I mentioned created by some former FBI agents that provides an actual list. But otherwise, it's a whisper network. And that's not an uncommon thing if we look at the history of the industry. They weren't going to sort of fight over personnel. If someone was not working out for them, they weren't going to allow them to move from MGM to Warner Brothers. Nobody was going to hire them. So they have a long history of doing that. if we think about the casting couch and its long history and the whisper networks there, if we think about someone like a Harvey Weinstein, this kind of activity is not actually new in this period, right? This is the sort of public moments. And it's extreme and it's problematic, right? But it is, it's actually, sadly, not new. Hollywood is an infamous ocean of sharks. Throw in some red scare

and you've got quite a bunch of chum. People are going to start biting in every direction. me about the people. I mean, this was a, this list, this Red Channel's list was upwards of 150 people on this list. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood at that point. Orson Wells, Charlie Chaplin, Dorothy Parker, Leonard Bernstein, always surprised me to see that. Pete Seeger. I mean, a whole spectrum of people from all reaches of this industry. Yes. I think Catherine Hepburn's name is on there. Humphrey Bogart may or may not have been on that list because both Catherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, who are big stars, right? They're very big stars. Humphrey Bogart has to put his name to an article that the title of is, I am not a communist, right? And he had to kind of

renounce his involvement in the committee for the First Amendment. You know, and these were folks who had significant power in the industry. It's the conclusion in the beginning of a great deal of careers, one of which is Ronald Reagan, who essentially begins his political career out of this red scare in Hollywood. I can't help but think that this all sort of winds up because in some regard, I mean, the temperature of the nation has dropped as well in the later 50s, but also the studio system is no longer really as powerful as it was. There's been an emergence of the unions.

There's a whole new labor scene in Hollywood. Industry leaders do not like this. They are losing control of their personnel. It's leading folks also to want to create their own independent production companies in that antitrust legislation, the Paramount decision in 1948, declares the major studios in restraint of trade because they are. They control everything. They control production, distribution and exhibition. So they have to get rid of their film theaters, right? They have to divest themselves of that. And that's what's called the collapse of the studio system.

All of this leads us down a road where the blacklist no longer has the power it once had. But what's really significant with the blacklist in Hollywood in the film industry is that it sets a model for other private industries, right, with regard to how they're going to respond to this crisis. We see it happening in education, K through 12, in higher education, journalism, the law, the trades. It's already happening vis-a-vis the federal government, but in terms of private industry, this sets the table for what's going to happen. broadly. It's a crazy business. It always has been. That's what makes it wonderful, but it's also filled with all kinds of pitfalls that are kind of microcosmic of America in general. Thank you very much, Dr. Feeley. Hey, what's new on your horizon? Well, I am at work on a project that is looking at the history of the Hollywood Press Corps. So examining a press corps that doesn't exist in 1920,

and by 1945, it is the second largest in the nation, second only to the press corps. that is covering the sort of national political scene. You've got to get to those golden globes at some point. Absolutely. Thanks for coming on American History Hit. Really appreciate it. Thank you. That's it.

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