U.S. Film and Television Censorship History

Paul Buhle and David Wagner have put together this guide to the films, directors, stars, writers, designers, producers and anyone else who was blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy during those notorious years in Hollywood. Covering such films as Roman Holiday, Bridge on the River Kwai and linking them up with the men and women involved, Buhle and Wagner have created this film lover's guide to the darkest period in Hollywood's history.

Seventy-five years ago, the Hollywood blacklist ruined lives, stifled creativity, and sent waves of proscription and censorship throughout United States culture. The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later offers new insights on the origins of the blacklist, the characteristics of those blacklisted, and the probability of future proscriptions of the blacklist type.

This is the true story of how J. Parnell Thomas, chairman of the Committee (the House of Representatives version of Senator Joseph McCarthy's witchhunts) made a national name for himself by ruining the lives of hundreds of people in the movie industry. Two years later, Thomas would be jailed for embezzling government money but in August 1953 he was riding high. 'Hollywood on Trial' relates the story of the victims of this witchhunt. Through the Committee many of Hollywood's leading lights were denied the right to work. Stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Paul Robeson were denied the passports that would have allowed them to leave America, Oscar-winning writers were forced to give their scripts to noneities to offer in their own names and then shared the proceeds. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye and John Huston went to Washington in defence of the 'Hollywood Ten', the first writers to be blacklisted, yet when Bogart and Bacall were questioned, they too buckled in. The humiliations continued until the end of the Fifties. The scars, however, have remained to this day.

The Inquisition in Hollywood examines the suppression of radical political activity in the film industry from the days of the Great Depression through the tumultuous House Un-American Activities Commission era to the waning days of the infamous blacklist. Ceplair and Englund trace the history of political struggle in Hollywood back to the formation of the Screen Writers Guild in 1933. Many of the blacklisted filmmakers were members of the Communist Party and all of the graylisted filmmakers had expressed their sympathy with progressive (mainly anti-fascist) causes.

On October 30, 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities concluded the first round of hearings on the allege Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. Hollywood was ordered to "clean its own house," and ten witnesses who had refused to answer questions about their membership in the Screen Writers Guild and the Communist party eventually received contempt citations. Radical Innocence is the first study to focus on the work of the Ten: their short stories, plays, novels, criticism, poems, memoirs, and, of course, their films. Drawing on myriad sources, including archival materials, unpublished manuscripts, black-market scripts, screenplay drafts, letters, and personal interviews, Bernard F. Dick describes the Ten's survival tactics during the blacklisting and analyzes the contribution of these ten individuals no only to film but also to the arts.

"See for yourself what happened to the innocent, what they went through, how they coped with their persecution, and how they survived the aftermath with their chins up, in dignity."

In Show Trial, Thomas Doherty takes us behind the scenes at the first full-on media-political spectacle of the postwar era. He details the theatrical elements of a proceeding that bridged the realms of entertainment and politics, a courtroom drama starring glamorous actors, colorful moguls, on-the-make congressmen, high-priced lawyers, single-minded investigators, and recalcitrant screenwriters, all recorded by newsreel cameras and broadcast over radio. Doherty tells the story of the Hollywood Ten and the other witnesses, friendly and unfriendly, who testified, and chronicles the implementation of the postwar blacklist.

More than sixty years ago, McCarthyism silenced Hollywood. In the pages of Tender Comrades, those who were suppressed, whose lives and careers were ruined, finally have their say. A unique collection of profiles in cinematic courage, this extraordinary oral history brings to light the voices of thirty-six blacklist survivors (including two members of the Hollywood Ten), seminal directors of film noir and other genres, starring actresses and memorable supporting players, top screenwriters, and many less known to the public, who are rescued from obscurity by the stories they offer here that, beyond politics, open a rich window into moviemaking during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era examines the experiences of seven prominent women of stage and screen whose lives and careers were damaged by the McCarthy-era "witch hunts" for Communists and Communist sympathizers in the entertainment industry: Judy Holliday, Anne Revere, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Margaret Webster, Mady Christians, and Kim Hunter. Author Milly S. Barranger looks at the gender issues inherent in the investigations and at the destructive impact the investigations had on the lives and careers of these seven women--and on American film and theater and culture in general.