The Cold War came early to Hollywood. Only a year after Winston Churchill famously declared in 1946 that an iron curtain had descended across Europe, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began an investigation into the supposed infiltration of communist activity in the Hollywood community. Before the fears and terrors of the McCarthy era, Hollywood experienced its own red scare in which the threat of communist subversion spurred a repression of film content and generated a blacklist barring hundreds of individuals with suspected communist affiliations from employment, tainting careers and ruining lives. These hearings in many ways resembled those of the later McCarthy era: both centered around sensationalized trials which featured an accusation-based, informant mentality and both skimmed over constitutional rights and proper protocols for presenting evidence allowing fears of imaginary threats to run rampant. However, a historically-grounded analysis of the Hollywood climate at the time of the HUAC hearings also reveals significant differences in the sociopolitical forces involved in comparison to later red scares. Whereas McCarthy era, red-scare hearings often saw the furthering of personal political ambition through the exploitation of social fears, the Hollywood hearings reflected a power struggle in the shifting Hollywood hierarchy, involving the “big five” studios and the unionized Screen Writers Guild. Indeed, the investigation into communist activity in the Hollywood community and the subsequent blacklist were not so much a manifestation of the McCarthy-style paranoid fear of communism as they were a manifestation of the ongoing screenwriters war, as the once-dominant Hollywood studios battled to maintain their slowly-loosening grip over the film industry.
On October 20th, 1947 the Los Angeles Times reported that the House Committee on Un-American Activities would start hearings to determine the degree of communist penetration into the film industry and its output. The paper referred to the group of subpoenaed witnesses as a “star-studded” cast and compared the preparations of the hearings to the staging of a movie premier. This bit of journalistic narrative, however sensationalized, did successfully foreshadow the theatrical atmosphere of the committee’s investigation, as, over the next ten days, thirty-nine witnesses would testify in a witch-hunting circus of sorts, grounded more in dramatic displays and accusations than in hard evidence. The first seven days of the proceedings saw the testimony of witnesses deemed “friendly” by the committee; these witness were those who cooperated with the committee, divulged names of suspected communists, and provided their evidence or suspicions regarding communist activities within the film industry. These suspicions were the basis for the next group of witnesses called to testify. They were the alleged communists, deemed “unfriendly,” and at the end of the proceedings, ten of these unfriendly witnesses had been singled out for refusing to answer the vital question, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” These ten witnesses, consisting mostly of screenwriters, along with a few directors and producers, became known in their defiance of HUAC as the Hollywood Ten. The Hollywood industry responded by issuing the Waldorf Statement, refusing to employ the ten individuals, generating the beginnings of an extensive blacklist that would eventually bar hundreds of individuals tainted with communist suspicion from employment in the film industry.
The Hollywood Ten chose to cite the First Amendment of the constitution as their primary defense in refusing to answer questions pertaining to their communist ties. This strategy failed, and in addition to being restricted from employment, the Hollywood Ten were further indicted for contempt of Congress and ended up serving prison terms of between six to twelve months. When released in 1951, they emerged just in time for a new round of HUAC hearings, as the committee had returned once again to Hollywood to investigate communist subversion in the industry. This time, hundreds with suspected communist affiliations were called before the committee. There they were faced with the choice of going to prison, being blacklisted, or informing on others. Many, of course, chose to name names, catapulting even greater numbers of screenwriters, actors, producers and directors in front of HUAC, who, faced with the same choices, often yielded further persons to be examined under the inequitable scrutiny of the committee. Those who chose not to name names most commonly sought protection under the Fifth Amendment, realizing that the First Amendment had failed for the Hollywood Ten. This strategy succeeded in protecting them from going to jail; however, any refusal to answer questions by taking the Fifth was interpreted by the Hollywood industry as an admission of guilt and warranted blacklisting. In this manner, the blacklist grew to encompass hundreds of individuals restricted from employment, and many on the blacklist found themselves not only out of a job, but at the end of their careers. The blacklist remained in effect, recognized by Hollywood producers and employers, until 1960 when Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, received screen credit for the film Exodus and officially broke the blacklist.
Although HUAC heavily exaggerated the potential influence of communism in the film industry, this is not to say that there were no communists in Hollywood; a party did exist in the industry, and indeed it had been flourishing since its formation in the mid 1930s. Hollywood communists participated regularly in progressive political organizations and the communist Popular Front in Hollywood became an important network for the intellectual progressives supporting Republican Spain and anti-fascist ideals. Hence the Hollywood communist chapter initially shared many democratic and patriotic goals, which, while initially suffering during the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939-41, were reinforced with America’s entry into the war on the side of the Soviets. The Hollywood communist chapter itself was different from most regular communist party chapters: they enjoyed laxer regulations, looser discipline, and more freedoms. Hollywood communists, in fact, raised more money than any other club in the country. These factors drew many individuals to support the communist chapter in Hollywood throughout the 1940s, and likely was part of the reason HUAC’s attention turned towards the district. However, while the party was flourishing, it did not necessarily influence film content, which is sufficiently demonstrated through the development of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) organization.
Film censorship was fairly relaxed in the early days of Hollywood’s development, with local communities often taking it upon themselves to regulate which movies could or could not be shown. However, in the 1920s, religious groups and other reformers, alarmed by the growth of “immoral” depictions in films, threatened massive boycotts of the industry, and Hollywood responded by creating the MPPDA. This self-regulating, self-censoring organization set production codes for Hollywood films, and additional pressure in 1934 by further religious groups led to a strengthening of censorship. Depictions such as white slavery, interracial marriage, sexual perversion, and ridicule of the clergy were outright banned, while depictions such as rape, drug use, murder techniques, and lustful kissing were strongly discouraged. Additionally, motion pictures enjoyed no First Amendment rights before 1952. In this atmosphere of strict social and political censorship, it would have been extremely difficult for any overt communist content to make it to the film screen.
The lack of real evidence of communist content in Hollywood films became starkly apparent during the initial hearings. One main target sought by the committee were films created during World War II containing pro-Soviet sentiments, such as Mission to Moscow or Song of Russia. Despite that these films had been created in an era of American-Russian alliance, the committee believed they had communist leanings and intended to find evidence of communist infiltration within them. However, the fact that Mission to Moscow was made at President Roosevelt’s request illustrates that the film had been intended as propaganda to promote the war effort and spur cooperation between the nations — an unarguably patriotic intention — and demonstrates how desperately the committee was willing to reach for “evidence” of communism. Another example came during novelist Ayn Rand’s testimony. When asked to provide corroboration of communist infiltration in Hollywood cinema, she cited scenes from Song of Russia in which Russian peasants were smiling. According to her, this emotion was unrealistic in Russia and constituted communist propaganda. Further “evidence” of communist infiltration in films constituted scenes negatively portraying anti-Semitism, negatively portraying fascism, or portraying American bankers as dishonest or greedy. And yet, despite their myriad efforts, HUAC could not find any real evidence of communist subversion. So when the committee returned in 1951, it changed its tactics. Instead of seeking evidence of communism in film content, it instead focused on the financial support the Communist Party gave to Hollywood. This made considerably more sense, as the Communist clubs in Hollywood were exceedingly wealthy. However, HUAC still failed to turn up any considerable evidence linking communist financing to the purpose of spreading communistic ideals.
A typical argument used to justify HUAC’s actions is that all the members of the Hollywood Ten were, at some point or another, members of the communist party, and as such indicted for good reason. The fact that the Ten were communists at some point or another is true, but the argument is flawed. Despite strong anti-Soviet attitude at this time in America, being a member of the Communist Party was not actually illegal. What HUAC sought to determine was if the film medium was being utilized for communist subversion, not simply whether Hollywood individuals were members of the Communist Party. However, the committee forwardly asked the friendly witnesses during the hearings if they would employ members of the Communist Party. Most of these friendly witnesses blatantly replied that they would not, as they saw communists as “a disruptive force.” The unfriendly witnesses that were in the Communist Party knew that answering the question about their membership would lead to loss of employment. The extent to which the witnesses were involved in the Communist Party is debatable, but at least several had only been loosely involved in the party and for a short period of time. An example of this is director Edward Dymtryk, who accepted an instructor’s position at an educational center teaching film production. Upon learning communists funded the school, Dymtryk became interested enough to attend meetings, but only for just over a year. However, even witnesses as loosely involved in the Communist Party as Dymtryk knew that if they admitted their past membership, they would be forced to name names, and endanger the employment status of others. So they, along with current Communist Party members, kept their mouths shut. Nonetheless, this strategy failed, and although the committee emerged from the hearings with no real evidence of communist subversion, it managed to indict these ten individuals for contempt of Congress.
As these initial comments may begin to point out, the forces involved in launching an investigation into the Hollywood community clearly did not arise from a real threat of communism. While the Hollywood Communist Party flourished, no proper evidence of communist subversion in film was ever discovered and heavy censorship would have restricted any communist attempt to influence film content. What forces then were involved in warranting a communist investigation? It is not likely to have been the paranoid fear of communism that marked the McCarthy era. It was still only two years after the war’s end. The Soviet Union had not yet developed the atomic bomb. China had not yet had its communist revolution. The Korean War was still a conflict far on the horizon. All these events, which were largely responsible for America’s susceptibility to the McCarthy-era paranoia of communist infiltration, had not yet occurred. The threat of the Soviet Union in 1947, while looming in many places across the world, had not yet really touched upon the cozy world of southern California.
Personal ambition often acted as a driving force behind red scares, particularly in the McCarthy era when politicians and other figures seized the opportunity to decry their opponents as communist traitors and shine the spotlight on themselves. This tactic was most infamously typified by Joseph McCarthy himself, resulting in his rise from an unknown Wisconsin senator to the most visible face in public politics during that time. This type of personal ambition similarly afflicted the Hollywood community, most notably when “friendly” witness Jack Warner, vice president of Warner Bros. Studio, named Howard Koch, a writer of Casablanca, as a communist although it was proven that Koch had no actual history or affiliation as a communist whatsoever. But Jack Warner personally disliked Koch because the writer had, during a recent strike, been vocally opposed to the studio. Such power plays are also evident in transcripts of the testimony of Ronald Reagan, another one of HUAC’s friendly witnesses. When asked by the committee if he had observed any communist organization attempting to exert influence on the guild, Reagan replied, “there has been a small group… which has consistently opposed… policy of the board… as evidenced by votes on various issues.” This vague response, naming no specific wrongs or names, equates the dissent of a minority opinion with being communist. Reagan goes on to state that he had no knowledge himself whether any of these dissenting guild members were communist, but that he had “heard different discussions” where some were “tagged as Communist.” Essentially, Reagan’s “evidence” for communist infiltration was based entirely on rumors and gossip against a group with a dissenting opinion in his guild. Clearly this was an attack on that group, an attempt to quell their dissenting opinion by labeling them as communist, as rumors and hearsay hardly qualify for admissible facts, and no evidence was ever found of communist subversion in the Screen Actors Guild.
While it is apparent that personal ambitions became caught up in the hearings and helped to perpetuate a cycle of accusations and feeble evidence, it does not help to explain what warranted HUAC’s investigation of Hollywood in the first place. Certain players had to be involved in initially arousing the committee’s attention, and if one seeks out the identity of such players, they are bound to come across the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI), which officially invited HUAC to Hollywood in May of 1947. Members of the organization included big Hollywood names such as Walt Disney, Ayn Rand, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne. The MPAPAI was formed in 1944 in order to, according to member James K. McGuinness, “combat… a growing menace within our own industry of Communists.” When HUAC came to Hollywood in May of 1947 to conduct private hearings regarding communist infiltration and build its case for the public hearings of that October, MPAPAI provided the witnesses willing to testify about communist infiltration in the industry. Eleven of the “friendly” witnesses who testified in those October hearings were members of the MPAPAI. Essentially then, HUAC investigated Hollywood upon the insistence of MPAPAI and built its case around the testimony of MPAPAI. With such controlling interests, the MPAPAI was essentially able to steer HUAC’s attention to any group it wanted; of which, the organization had some very specific targets in mind.
On October 21st, 1947 the headline of the Los Angeles Times exclaimed, “Communists Infiltrate Film Industry, Producer Tells House Investigators.” This producer was Sam Wood, the vice president of MPAPAI. The paper further reported that Wood claimed communists had made “a constant effort to get control” of the Screen Directors Guild and had “tried to get control of all the guilds and unions in Hollywood” and had particularly infiltrated the Screen Writer’s Guild. These claims were rather unsubstantiated. Wood merely named a few members of those unions who had Marxist or socialist-leaning views, but who were not necessarily communist members, and yet he immediately deemed their presence as “communist infiltration.” His comments displayed a more general sense of animosity towards Hollywood unions, with the indirect implication that only unions were susceptible to communist subversion. As demonstrated in many red-scare scenarios, accusations of communist tendencies in a group often were backhanded attacks upon those groups. In this case, it was clear the unions were under attack. Determining for what reason, and by whom, involves a brief foray into the history of Hollywood’s studio-dominated climate from its inception to the time of the HUAC trials.
Beginning in the early 1920s, a studio-oriented system emerged in Hollywood. Several studios conducted ruthless pursuits of vertical monopolization during this decade by purchasing theater chains so that they could control all means of film production, distribution, and exhibition simultaneously. Government intervention in the late 1920s mildly attempted to more evenly distribute control of the industry. However, the Great Depression drove the smaller, competing studios into bankruptcy, consolidating power over the industry into the hands of five main studios: Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, RKO, and Twentieth Century Fox, as well as three other minor studios. These studios colluded with one another to corner the market, achieving vertical and horizontal integration of the industry so that by 1930, the studios controlled ninety-five percent of all film-industry production. It was their golden age, and up through the mid 1940s, they ruled Hollywood in an autocratic manner, controlling every detail of film production. Actors were forced into oppressive multi-year contracts in which many aspects of their public and private lives became dictated by the studios. Directors were officially regarded as technicians and often experienced little artistic control. Screenwriters had little creative input and instead story departments developed plot lines, which screenwriters adapted to studio specifications. In response to this autocratic behavior, Hollywood in the 1930s saw the formations of several unions and guilds, such as the Screen Actors Guild and the Screen Directors Guild, to combat the studios’ domineering practices. These unions managed to wrestle some of the power away from the studios; however, the union which would cause the most trouble for the studios, and thereby designate itself as the main target of the HUAC investigation, was the Screen Writer’s Guild.
In April of 1933, John Howard Lawson, the first president of the Screen Writer’s Guild (SWG) and one of the future Hollywood Ten defiantly declared to an audience of screenwriters, “The writer is the creator of motion pictures!” It might as well have been a declaration of war, because as far as the studio movie-producers were concerned, they had absolute control over the creation of motion pictures, and it would be a long, bitter battle before they relinquished any significant amount of their power. What ensued over the next eight years was indeed considerably evocative of a war, as the SWG and the studios fought and engaged in numerous struggles over the rights of the screenwriter. Initially, the SWG rallied around the cause of seeking greater wages and more control over screen credits. In the film industry, a writer’s job reputation relied on receiving a screen credit in a film; the more screen credits received, the greater job security a screenwriter enjoyed. This situation was coupled with the unfortunate fact that producers could, at their whim, advance or suppress a writer’s career simply by adding or deleting their names from the credits. In fact, producers were known to often allocate screen credits to only a few out of the many writers who worked on a film script, and under some extreme cases, even attributed screen credits to personal friends and associates entirely unconnected to the film.
The studios refused to recognize the SWG, and so the screenwriters first struck in 1934 by boycotting the Academy Awards. Support for the SWG grew, until 1935 when a federal court declared the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, challenging SWG’s ability to unionize. Producers leaped at this opportunity to revise their policies, taking back the power SWG had wrestled from them, and blatantly ignoring requests made by the union in terms of screenwriter employment. This move only outraged many prominent writers of the era, driving them into the arms of the SWG and widening its support. Recognizing that they still needed leverage, the SWG forged a strong alliance with the writing guilds of the east coast, which empowered the union further. The SWG then flexed its boycotting muscle again at the 1936 Academy Awards. Meanwhile, the producers and studios rallied loyal writers, began a blacklist of SWG supporters, publicly denounced the east-west coast writers’ alliance, and threatened its current writers with severe consequences. Their tactics slowly drove a wedge into the SWG, and a split soon occurred. Several prominent, pro-studio writers, fearing that SWG was too radical, left the union and formed their own group, the Screen Playwrights (SP), which was embraced by the producers and became a company union. Lured by generous, long-term contracts and frightened by the studios’ threats, more and more of the SWG members defected and joined the SP, until the SWG was officially forced to dissolve. However, when producers continued to abuse their power over screen credits, many SP members realized they had been betrayed and the SWG was reformed. Concurrently in 1937, the Wagner Act of 1935 finally became enforced, outlawing company unions and securing the Guild’s right to negotiate with producers. For the next four years, however, the studio producers challenged the constitutionality of the Wagner Act, until the threat of a strike by the SWG in 1941 finally brought the producers to sign their first contract with the screenwriters union. The authority of the SWG seemed settled for good, until the studios found another way to strike back in 1947.
By the late 1940s, the Golden Age of the studios was over, and the studio system itself was undergoing rapid decline. Several factors contributed to this. First, the advent of network television in the 1940s provided the Hollywood film industry with its first real competition. Second, the studios experienced increasing antitrust pressure to break their monopoly over the exhibition sector of the industry, which was responsible for generating three-fourths of the studios’ revenues. When a federal suit forced the studios to divest themselves of their theater chains and allow competition in the exhibition sector for the first time in thirty years, the studios’ power was exceedingly crippled. Third, labor unrest in the mid 1940s had increased production costs and after 1946 the number of movie-goers started to decline. With their power steeply declining, the studios naturally sought methods to hold onto it. They could do little to fight the success of network television and hold off federal antitrust pressure. Labor unions, however, already historically marred by red tendencies, were an easy target, with the troublesome Screen Writers Guild especially so.
It is no coincidence that out of the ten witnesses indicted for contempt of Congress during the 1947 HUAC hearings on communist subversion in Hollywood, eight of them were screenwriters. It is also no coincidence that out of the first three “friendly” witnesses to testify in the HUAC hearings, two of them, Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, were both heads of one of the major five studios. The HUAC hearings had thus become another platform for the war being waged between the studios and the Screen Writers Guild. Transcripts show that when asked by the committee what group in the film industry had to be watched more carefully than the rest, Sam Wood replied, “The Writers.” HUAC insisted that the script was “the principle medium through which Communists have sought to inject their propaganda.” In addition to being asked by the committee if they were a member of the communist party or not, most witnesses were also asked if they were a member of the Screen Writers Guild. The Hollywood Ten refused to answer this question, knowing that answering it was just as condemning as affirming one’s membership in the Communist Party. These all demonstrated the strong SWG bias within the hearings, and exemplify that the hearings were not so much about uncovering communist subversion as they were about the studios’ attempts to discredit the SWG by associating it with communism, thereby invalidating much of the power the union had gained in the previous decade.
Sam Wood’s comments as reported by the Los Angeles Times are consequently far more understandable when viewed in light of this history of studio-union tensions. His suggestion of communist infiltration in “all the unions” in Hollywood makes much more sense as an attempt by the ailing studios to regain control over labor unions than it does as a feasible reality. Thus, the HUAC investigation should not be regarded as an attempt to uncover actual communist activity, or even as a manifestation of McCarthy-era paranoia. Rather it should be viewed as the death-cry of the studios, who, in the slow dissolution of their vertically-integrated monopoly, lashed out at the unions encroached upon their power, and made a fierce effort to recuperate some of their former clout. Ironically enough, the effort backfired. Because mere socialist views could get one blacklisted, filmmakers in the following era carefully avoided any controversial topics. Consequently, films within this era were marked by an excessive conservatism. The resulting stagnation pushed movie-goers away and helped contribute to the decline of the major studios, eventually allowing for many smaller studios to slowly edge their way back into the competition.
And yet, even after the demise of the studio system and the breaking of the blacklist during the HUAC debacle, the screenwriters’ war was far from over. The organization has continued to battle for the rights of its members up to the current day, most notably in the recent SWG strike in 2008, in which screenwriters made headlines and inconvenienced millions of television viewers when they refused to go to work. But the Screen Writer’s Guild is hardly the only union in America that has spent the better part of its historical lifetime struggling against some conglomerate or cooperative foe, or experienced oppression because of real or imagined communist associations. Unions, in their emphasis on solidarity and the empowerment of the common worker, have historically often aroused suspicion of communist involvement within their ranks. The Red Scare of the early 1920s cast multiple labor strikes in terms of Bolshevik agenda and crippled the power of labor unions for years to come; indeed, it was only by this precedence that the Hollywood studios could employ similar tactics and initiate a red scare decades later. In a certain sense, however, the general success of the unions in penetrating the Hollywood hierarchy and eventually vanquishing the HUAC blacklist demonstrated that, even despite the temporary mix-up of studio agendas and communist threats, Hollywood was never truly hindered by any communist threat, but rather was simply progressing beyond the studio system.
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