The Fifteenth Pair of Pants-- The Cold War and HUAC

Let me start off by saying that if you like film and you don't check out www.imdb.com, you should.  The story updates they have on there is pretty interesting.  I get updates and little news stories from the site that intrigue me.  http://www.imdb.com/news/ni9866427/, for some reason I find this interesting... apparently James Franco is loaded with degrees and is now going to go get his second Ph.D.  I can respect that, he's an award winning actor and has a stable career and still goes off to school and gain his degrees.  That's something I would wanna do, even if I had a career, never stop my studying, as much as I hate going to school, I love learning, and I'd love to teach too (thus is by backup career path), but enough about me...

For those of us who weren't around for The Cold War, the communist scare of the 1950s through the 80s is slightly ridiculous.  Why America took the idea of "commies" as seriously as they did is a bit hard to understand, primarily due to the fact that our biggest threat now is terrorists (and in my opinion radical religious fundamentalists are a bit more frightening than a political ideal) and not communists.  I mean, there are only a few communist countries left and our biggest rival, The Soviet Union, has fallen (although China is suddenly becoming more of a threat).  The Cold War and the "communist scare" affected everyone back then, even Hollywood and one of it's biggest opponents was known as HUAC or The House Un-American Activities Committee, whose sole job was to investigate people's relation to communism.

HUAC had a chance to investigate the Ku Klux Klan but decided not due to the the fact that the KKK is an American institution and instead looked for communists in America.  Due to this, HUAC started to blacklist Hollywood, claiming that communist propaganda has infiltrated Hollywood.  The Committee asked questions of Hollywood "hot shots" and convicted them with contempt of Congress after they refuse to answer the questions.  These writers, producers and directors were known as "The Hollywood Ten" and were the first to be blacklisted by HUAC.



The "Hollywood Ten" are...
Alvah Bessie
Herbert Biberman
Lester Cole
Edward Dymtryk
Ring Lardner Jr.
John Howard Lawson
Albert Maltz
Samuel Ornitz
Adrian Scott
Dalton Trumbo

After some time, over 300 members of the entertainment industry were blacklisted and forced out of jobs due to claims of their association with communism.  HUAC didn't go unchallenged, John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye started the Committee for the First Amendment to attempt to protect themselves and their fellow artists.  They tried to prove that HUAC was unconstitutional (and they were since being a part of the American Communist Party isn't and never has been illegal).  Some of you may be asking, 'why does this matter?" well, tons of people would never be hired again as soon as they were accused of communist (that's right, the country's hatred was that strong... similar to terrorists and generic arab people now).

In 1950, a film was made called The Hollywood Ten, the film consisted of each of the blacklisted members giving a speech about McCarthyism and HUAC and blacklisting.  Unfortunately, the director of the film, John Berry, was blacklisted after making the film.



"Red Channels" was a pamphlet released in 1950 that listed all of the "supposed" communists in the broadcasting and entertainment industry.   Some of the well known names on this pamphlet were Orson Welles, Burgess Meredith,  Arthur Miller and Edward G. Robinson, among many others. Walt Disney, agitated the communist concerns by declaring in a magazine that communism was the reason for a cartoonist strike (yet another reason to hate Disney).  As HUAC kept going through the 50s, many other names were blacklisted and not allowed work in the US, names like Luis Bañuel.  In order to keep working, many members of the entertainment industry would flee the country or work under assumed names.  The Writer's Guild are still, to this day, trying to correct false screen credits.

HUAC did horrible things to Hollywood in the 50s and early 60s.  Yet great movies were still made (most foreign).  If you're interested, please look up more information.  The Cold War in Hollywood is a very interesting subject and I was intrigued when learning about it in my high school english class for the first time.  There's a start for you though, have a nice day.