The McCarthy Era That Affected The Russians in Hollywood - Essay Example

McCarthyism in Hollywood Joseph McCarthy was the Republican US senator from Wisconsin, from 1947 until his death, ten years later. He was the face of an aggressive anti-Communist campaign, which coincided with the Cold War, and had commenced even before the McCarthy tenure. He claimed that there were many Soviet spies and sympathizers in the government, in industry, and even in the entertainment field in Hollywood. A sustained campaign was carried out against these people, which caused many of these unfortunates their livelihood in Hollywood, and led to heart attacks and suicides.

(Freedland, Michael) The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held a series of showbiz trials, the aftermath of which is recorded by Freedland in his book, Hollywood on Trial. Careers of more than 400 people in Hollywood were destroyed, and they were blacklisted by film producers, as they were not able to satisfactorily answer the question of whether they then were, or had ever been, Communists. This was a weird situation, as the Communist Party itself was not banned in the US, and its newspaper The Daily Worker continued to be published.

Those who were hauled up for questioning had three options—that of perjury (denial of links that they had with the Communist Party), taking refuge under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which protected them from implicating themselves, or invoking the rights to free speech granted by the First Amendment. Edward Dmytryk, of Ukrainian origin, was one among the ‘Hollywood 10’ who were imprisoned and harassed. After spending some months in prison, on account of refusal to cooperate, he later relented, and testified.

He admitted to a briefly held membership of the Communist Party in 1945, and revealed the names of fellow members of the Party from the film industry. He stated that John Howard Lawson, Adrian Scott, Albert Maltz and several others had pressurized him to include Communist propaganda in his movies. Dmytryk, after a while, moved to England, where he made some low budget films, and then went on to direct films for top studios like Columbia, 20th Century Fox, MGM and Paramount Pictures. Later, in the seventies, he entered academia, teaching at universities.

(Freedland, Michael) The other nine—of the Hollywood 10—were Alvah Bessie, Herbert J Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner Jr, John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo. Most of these ten were forced to leave the film industry and do other jobs like working in restaurants or teaching. Several produced scripts for movies under pseudonyms to escape the witch-hunting perpetrated by the HUAC (Old Sea Dog- Website) Apart from these ten, there were many others who suffered.

Screenwriter Arnold Manoff’s wife, Lee Grant, who had been nominated for an Oscar, was blacklisted for refusing to testify against him. Writers Martin Berkeley and Leo Townsend implicated themselves and hundreds of others. Ex-Communists Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan named several others. Morris Carnovsky who acted in The Life of Emile Zola (1937) refused to admit or deny that he had been a member of the Communist Party, and was blacklisted. Albert Matz who had written the screenplay for Destination Tokyo (1944) and the script for an Oscar winning documentary Moscow Strikes Back (1942) was also blacklisted for not cooperating.

He was sentenced to a year in jail. He contributed anonymously to scripts, but received credit for them only in 1967. (Old Sea Dog-Website) Michael Freedland’s book, Hollywood on Trial records a shameful period in American history, when democracy failed to be protected. The failure is that of the people, who did not stop elected legislators from misusing their powers. And the loss is also theirs—the loss of the creative energies of many of these Hollywood martyrs. Works Cited Freedland, Michael, Hollywood on Trial.

The Old Sea Dog Website, The1947 Investigation of Communist Infiltration , retrieved on 10th Dec, 2008