Hollywood's Blacklist Era: Revisiting House Un-American Activities Committee Testimony
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(Giving the charges some credence was the fact that the guild’s co-founder and first president, John Howard Lawson, was a well-known and lockstep party liner.) In 1936, led by MGM’s Irving Thalberg, the producers set up a more compliant alternative, the Screen Playwrights. The activities of HUAC, however, raised important constitutional questions. The Committee's constant probing into political behavior and belief led critics to charge that such forced exposure abridged freedom of speech and association, and punished citizens for their opinions.
The Cold War
Although it ceased issuing subpoenas that year, its operations continued until 1975. Its records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration as records related to HUAC. In 1945, HUAC was made a permanent committee and Democratic Party lawmaker Edward J. Hart became its chairman. The committee continued to investigate threats of treason or propaganda against the government. This time, its focus was largely on real and suspected communists in the US. Hamilton Fish III, an anti-communist, chaired the Fish Committee in 1930 to investigate suspected communist activities in the US.
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What Hollywood Lost in the Communist Purge - The New Yorker - The New Yorker
What Hollywood Lost in the Communist Purge - The New Yorker.
Posted: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The Dies Committee also carried out a brief investigation into the wartime internment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The investigation primarily concerned security at the camps, youth gangs allegedly operating in the camps, food supply questions, and releases of internees. With the exception of Rep. Herman Eberharter, the members of the committee seemed to support internment.
Unearthing a Forgotten Episode of Hollywood’s Blacklist Era, 75 Years Later
The work of the committee was influenced by the era of McCarthyism which sought to expose the perceived infiltration of prominent aspects of American society by communists who sought the overthrow and breakdown of American society. However, their work is now generally understood to have far exceeded their mandate, punishing people for their political beliefs. The atmosphere of the hearings changed when the committee called a number of Hollywood writers who had been accused of being communists. The group, which included Ring Lardner, Jr., and Dalton Trumbo, refused to testify about their past affiliations and suspected involvement with the Communist Party or communist-aligned organizations.
The Cold War: Investigating the Red Menace
These events initiated the studios’ practice of firing and blacklisting artists with suspected communist connections. The global environment of the Cold War (1945–91) after World War II allowed the committee to be particularly aggressive and manipulative in its tactics. Fear of communists, foreigners, and independent thinkers made the American public tolerant of HUAC's actions. As a result, many people were harassed, and some found their lives irrevocably changed as a result. The committee employed several controversial methods to accomplish its goal of ferreting out suspected Communists. Typically, an individual who raised the suspicions of HUAC received a subpoena to appear before the committee.
The committee was reconstituted under the leadership of a conservative New Jersey congressman, J. In 1947 an aggressive investigation began of suspected communist influence in the movie business. Dies, who had a flair for befriending influential journalists and attracting publicity, claimed communists had widely infiltrated American labor unions.
The Hunt for Communists In America
Over nine days, the committee questioned numerous individuals within the industry about their affiliations and beliefs, as well as those of their colleagues. Many opponents of McCarthyism felt that it was a blatant violation of civil rights and an example of overreach by the government. They believed the practices during this period infringed on individuals’ right to free speech, freedom of association, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. In 1947, the committee arranged a nine-day hearing for suspected communist activity and influence in the heart of the US film industry in Hollywood. The Hollywood Ten paid a high price for their actions at the HUAC hearings.
Major Facts about HUAC
Although the U.S. and its communist rival rarely confronted each other directly, they both attempted to extend their influence and promote their systems of government around the world. A number of Americans believed that their nation’s security depended on preventing the spread of communism, and this attitude created an atmosphere of fear and suspicion in many parts of the country. The end of HUAC came when it began to investigate opposition to the Vietnam War. Its 1967 and 1968 hearings investigating anti-war activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, both of whom attended the hearings at various times wearing a Santa Claus or a Revolutionary War patriot outfit, contributed to the rising unpopularity of HUAC. In 1969 its name was changed to the Internal Security Committee, and in 1975 it was abolished. Its investigations were the subject of several Supreme Court decisions that sought to define the scope of the constitutional power Congress had to hold hearings.
A conservative Democrat who had supported rural New Deal programs during Franklin Roosevelt's first term, Dies had become disillusioned when Roosevelt and his cabinet demonstrated support for the labor movement. The House Un-American Activities Committee was empowered for more than three decades to investigate "subversive" activity in American society. The committee began operating in 1938, but its greatest impact came following World War II, when it engaged in a highly publicized crusade against suspected communists. An investigative grand jury upheld the accusations and found the witnesses guilty as charged. The Hollywood Ten lost an appeal to an appellate court, and a conservative Supreme Court refused to hear the case. As a result, the Ten were forced to serve up to a year in a federal prison.
SWG activists swung back into action and petitioned for recognition by the NLRB. In 1938, after months of contentious hearings, the feds oversaw an election to decide whether the SP or the SWG would be the designated bargaining agent for Hollywood screenwriters. Henceforth, it would be the buffer between the screenwriters and the studios. What finally convinced the independent brokers to embrace the logic of strength in numbers was a series of draconian salary cuts implemented by the Depression-wracked studios. In 1933, a group of politically animated screenwriters, including future Hollywood Ten members John Howard Lawson and Lester Cole, decided the time was ripe to organize the ranks into a Screen Writers Guild.
In a flurry of activity, the newly formed committee, in 1938, began making accusations about communist influence in the United States. Sponsors of the motion to establish HUAC expected it to reduce the potential threat of foreign agents and subversive activities by communist and fascist interests. Under the leadership of Dies, however, the term “un-American” gained a broader definition, and many without communist or fascist ties were investigated.
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So, by the time of the HUAC hearings of October 1947, Lavery had had his patriotism impugned and faith questioned by Sam Wood, the Tenney committee, The Hollywood Reporter and Lea Rogers. He did not need to be subpoenaed to come to Washington to defend the guild and himself. In 1939, the committee investigated leaders of the American Youth Congress, a Comintern affiliate organization. Hearings to investigate the Yippies, the radical and irreverent political faction led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, in the fall of 1968 turned into a predictable circus.
The Dies Committee became a fixture in newspaper headlines as it held hearings focused on how politicians reacted to strikes by labor unions. In a press conference on October 25, 1938, Roosevelt denounced the committee's activities, in particular, its attacks on the governor of Michigan, who was running for reelection. HUAC is also occasionally confused with the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, more commonly referred to as the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS. Res. 366, 81st Congress to study and investigate internal security laws and subversive activities -- a similar enough mandate to HUAC that it is considered to be the Senate equivalent. Un-American Activities Committee, House a committee of the US House of Representatives (HUAC) established in 1938 to investigate subversives. It became notorious for its zealous investigations of alleged communists, particularly in the late 1940s, although it was originally intended to pursue Fascists also.
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