The Hollywood Blacklist
The Hollywood Blacklist was when some individuals working in the American film industry were questioned, tried in court, convicted to one year in jail, fined a thousand dollars each, and marked down on lists known as the Hollywood Blacklist as an outcome of the Anticommunist fervor of the Cold War Period that was ongoing in the United States in the period 1940s to 1950s.
The blacklist was as a result of investigations that were carried out in October 1947, by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which kicked off its hearings in Washington, D.C. The hearings were to specifically investigate the communist influence in the movie industry. A number of people in the industry including actors, directors, writers and other industry participants were subpoenaed to come before the Committee and ordered to “give
names” to save themselves by snitching on their colleagues.
This thereafter led to April 1948,when ten filmmakers, commonly known as The Hollywood Ten: producer/writer Adrian Scott, director Edward Dmytryk, produce/director Herbert Biberman and screenwriters Alvah Bessie, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr.,John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Samuel Ornitz and Albert Maltz were taken to trial in the Federal court in Washington, D.C. They were all
convicted for contempt of Congress and given a maximum sentence of a year each in jail plus a
fine of one thousand dollars. The defiant ones were down on lists, the Hollywood Blacklist.
The Hollywood Blacklist ruined the careers of those who were listed in it for decades. They could only be able to get some work either by going abroad or to Mexico and also by using fictitious names. Some had to give up their dreams for a while before they make comebacks into the industry. Those who had already established their names in the industry were able to recover, unlike those who had their careers kicking off and were thereafter left with very options.
Scriptwriters had an overhand in the wake of the blacklist period as they could use pseudonyms and continue working while actors and directors could not change their faces nor wear masks hence was an obstacle to working. Some actors and directors thereafter switched to writing for example “Abraham Polonsky, Walter Bernstein, and Arnold Manoff wrote most of the You Are There segments, a series of historical events recreated for television with a strong focus on cultural martyrs such as Socrates, Galilee, Joan of Arc, and the Salem witches.”(Buhle and Georgakas 2)
The Hollywood Blacklist started in 1947 and went on all the way to the late 1950s. The very first hearing by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was in October 1947 in Washington, D.C. “HUAC returned for a second Hollywood round in 1951 but the proceedings were not true Investigations.” (Buhle and Georgakas 2)
Over three hundred people working in the film industry were blacklisted during this period.
Dalton Trumbo set off his career as a journalist and later on a novelist. Trumbo was a very good screenwriter whose work was exemplary having written his first screenplay in 1922. Trumbo supported the labor movement and had become a member of the communist party in 1943. This was a major factor for being included I the Hollywood ten. Trumbo lost his job at MGM studios as a screenwriter after he was convicted and served a period of one year in prison for contempt of congress. Trumbo was blacklisted and had to disguise his name and use false
identities for his scripts to be produced. “In GUN CRAZY (1949), Millard Kaufman had served as a front for Trumbo. . . . . Ian McClellan Hunter has said that Trumbo made the original story for William Wyler’s film ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.” http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/trumbo.htm
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