Frank Sinatra Denounces Political Smears by California Un-American Activities Committee
The popular singer Frank Sinatra on this day denounced the California legislature’s Un-American Activities Committee (generally known at the Tenney Committee), which had accused him and hundreds of others in the entertainment industry of having “followed” the “Communist Party line” “over a long period of time.”
The California Tenney Committee was modeled after the House Un-American Activities (HUAC), and engaged is a similar pattern of baseless accusations of communist beliefs or associations. The 709-page report issued by the committee on this day also named actress Katherine Hepburn, singer Lena Horne, director Orson Welles, actor Gregory Peck, and the Nobel Prize winning author Pearl Buck.
None of the hundreds of people named had ever been accused, much less prosecuted, for the national security crimes of espionage or sabotage. A number were or had been associated with liberal or left-wing causes, but in the style perfected by HUAC, the Attorney General’s List of Subversive organizations, and others, “association” became the same as guilt.
The Tenney Committee, officially the California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American activities, operated between 1941 and 1949.
Sinatra grew up as a poor Italian-American, and after he became a huge singing star, he was active in support of many liberal causes, including civil rights. In the early 1960s, however, he had a major falling out with President Kennedy over his connections to organized crime. Kennedy severed all contact, and Sinatra gradually became politically more conservative. He became a supporter of President Richard Nixon, for example.
Learn more about the Tenney Committee here
Read: James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman (2015)
And more: J. Randy Taraborreli, Sinatra: Behind the Legend (2015)