October marked the 75th anniversary of the start of the Hollywood Blacklist. On Oct. 27, 1947, screenwriter John Howard Lawson, the first member of what came to be known as the “Hollywood Ten,” testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The contentious, testy testimony before a gavel-banging Congressman in Washington launched the Hollywood Blacklist, wherein members of the motion picture industry who refused to “cooperate” with HUAC by informing on themselves and others about their leftist politics were forbidden from working in the movies until roughly 1960, when the Hollywood Ten’s Dalton Trumbo received screen credits under his real name (instead of a pseudonym) for writing “Spartacus” and “Exodus.”
The Hollywood Ten served prison time and were fined for refusing to answer questions such as “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” and for declining to rat out others. This conservative cancel culture, enforced by the movie studios and the US government with the aid of the FBI, prevented about 300 talents from being able to earn a living – because of their politics and beliefs – in the cinema during the inquisition in Tinseltown. The Cold War era Hollywood Blacklist paved the way for the repressive Red Scare of McCarthyism during the 1950s.
Commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Hollywood Blacklist kicked off on Oct. 13, 2022, as Turner Classic Movies launched a film series with the premiere of the excellent short, “High Noon on the Waterfront.” This compelling 14-minute documentary, co-written/co-directed by David C. Roberts and Billy Shebar, shows how two artists ensnared in the Blacklist metaphorically expressed their stands regarding the motion picture purge through their films.
Elia Kazan, the quintessential informer who collaborated with HUAC and “named names” of other suspected radicals, directed “On the Waterfront,” a movie that justified informing. Carl Foreman, who was blacklisted and eventually moved overseas in order to be able to continue making movies, wrote the allegorical Western “High Noon,” with the frontier town of Hadleyville – where Gary Cooper is forsaken by the townsfolk and must take a stand against evil by himself – symbolizing Hollywood during the Blacklist. Using the actual written words of the talents, Kazan is voiced by John Turturro, while Ed Norton speaks Foreman’s lines. The short creatively intercuts between scenes of “High Noon” and On the Waterfront.
L.A.’s new Academy Museum, dedicated to film culture and history, is also reportedly planning a Blacklist series in Spring 2023. Oona Chaplin – whose grandfather Charlie directed and starred in 1957’s anti-HUAC “A King in New York” – is presenting a BBC podcast on the Blacklist in 2023. As book banning, school board prohibitions on teaching history, attacks on standup comics, etc., accelerate, it’s important for Americans to remember when the First Amendment was forgotten in Hollywood.
Stay tuned – and down with censorship!
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based freelance writer, film historian and critic. He was named after legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow because of his TV exposes of Sen. Joe McCarthy. Rampell majored in Cinema at Manhattan’s Hunter College. After graduating, Rampell lived in Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii and Micronesia, reporting on the nuclear free and independent Pacific and Hawaiian Sovereignty movements for: ABC News’ “20/20,” Reuters, AP, Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand, NewsWeek, Honolulu Weekly, etc. This first appeared at hollywoodprogressive.com.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2022
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