HUAC: Communist Activities “Rampant” in Hollywood
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established a little more than two months earlier, on May 26, 1938, wasted no time going after alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. On this day, a committee investigator charged that “all phases of radical and communist activities are rampant among the studios of Hollywood.” Moreover, “film celebrities are using their large salaries to finance communistic activities.”
One undercurrent of the attack was hostility to the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, organized on April 26, 1936, which was prominent in opposing Nazi pressures on the film industry to fire Jews, and which had a number of left-wing individuals among its leaders.
The HUAC attack on Hollywood began in earnest after World War II on October 27, 1947, with highly publicized hearings involving the so-called “Hollywood Ten,”a group of screenwriters and directors who refused to cooperate with the committee,. They were all subsequently cited for contempt of Congress, imprisoned, and then blacklisted from working in the movies (see the beginning of the blacklist, December 3, 1947).
The earliest and most famous victims of the Hollywood blacklist were screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and Ring Larder, Jr. (who wrote the screenplay for the original film version of M*A*S*H).
HUAC investigated Hollywood again in 1951 and the results were even more devastating. Because of the blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten and the failure of legal challenges to the committee, far more witnesses cooperated and named names. And as a result far more people were blacklisted.
Learn more: Thomas Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 (2013)
Read about HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)
Learn more about HUAC: http://www.history.com/
topics/cold-war/huac Read: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (1980)
Read: Kenneth O’Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace (1983)