1951 April 25

Hollywood Director Edward Dmytryk “Rehabilitates” Himself: Gives HUAC 26 Names

 

When the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating alleged Communist influence in Hollywood in 1947, film director Edward Dmytryk was one of the “Hollywood Ten,” who famously refused to cooperate with the committee (see October 27, 1947). He was convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison.

On this day, as part of the 1951 HUAC investigation of Hollywood, Dmytryk reversed course and “named names” to HUAC. As a result, he was able to resume his career as a film director. He was subsequently vilified by many in Hollywood for compromising his principles in order to salvage his career.

HUAC conducted a second set of investigations of Hollywood in 1951 and 1952, with over 30 days of hearings. The 1951-52 investigations were far more damaging than the Hollywood Ten hearings in 1947. Members of the Hollywood Ten lost the court appeals of the contempt citations and were sentenced to prison. No court decisions had established a First Amendment right to refuse to testify before an investigating committee. As a result, many witnesses in 1951 cooperated with HUAC and provided names of people they said were communists. Far more careers were destroyed than in 1947. A number of witnesses left the country to work in England or Europe.

Why did people name names? The famed actor/director Orson Wells observed that “Friend informed on friend not to save their lives but to save their swimming pools.”

Two noted Americans who refused to name names by asserting the First Amendment were folk singer Pete Seeger, on August 18, 1955, and playwright Arthur Miller, on June 21, 1956.

Read Dmytryk’s Memoirs: Edward Dmytryk, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (1996)

Learn more about the degrading “naming names” ritual in the Cold War: Victor Navasky, Naming Names (1980)

Read the fascinating book about HUAC, Hollywood and the blacklist: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)

Read about the history of HUAC: Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (1968)

Learn more about HUAChttp://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac

 

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