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Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and this is Frame By Frame,
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and today I want to talk about a very serious subject: the Hollywood blacklist of the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
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The blacklist has its roots in the Great Depression, which was the result of the 1929 crash.
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By 1933, 25% of America's workforce were out of work. Jobs simply weren't available.
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Thus there was the rise of labor unions, and particularly in Hollywood the major studios resisted this...
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because they had been using non-union labor for so long that they viewed any attempt to organize as "communistically" inspired.
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At the same time that this is happening, we have Hitler rising to power in Germany,
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and the conditions in Europe becoming more and more unstable.
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In 1936, the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees for the first time manage to organize unions and close shops...
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at studios like Warner Bros., Paramount and MGM.
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In 1937, the Supreme Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act, giving them the right to collectively organize and bargain.
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In 1938, Congress formed the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to investigate unionization...
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basically at the behest of the studios and large corporations that were against this.
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And in 1938, we have the first wave of HUAC's accusations against people.
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A former communist named James B. Matthews came forward, and this is his only appearance of any note in history...
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claiming that James Cagney, Bette Davis, Clark Gabel, Myriam Hopkins and Shirley Temple were all communist sympathizers...
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and at the time nobody took him very seriously.
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But then in 1939, Stalin and Hitler signed a non-agression pact on the eve of World War II.
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And then Hitler momentarily after that attacked Poland and Chekloslavikia.
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We, of course, got into the war in 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7.
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And at that time the Soviet Union just more or less sat by between 1939 and 1941.
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It was only in 1941 that they came into the picture on the side of the Allies.
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And during WWII, the Soviets were our allies, but they were very uneasy ones.
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Winston Churchill once said, "I would make a deal with the devil in a fight against Hitler."
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And that's exactly what was happening here, but for a while the Soviets were our allies.
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But what happened, of course, after the war was that Stalin immediately began enslaving all of eastern Europe,
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and everybody became extremely afraid of the "Communist Threat."
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In 1941, we have an event which leads into this, and that's the great animators strike at Walt Disney.
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The Disney studio was a non-union shop, and in 1941 the animators struck seeking better pay, the right to unionize and better working conditions.
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Disney resisted and finally left the country because he was so angry about this, and convinced that it was a communist plot.
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The strike was settled 5 weeks later, but Disney was extremely bitter, and so were the employees.
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And this was really the beginning of the blacklist.
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In 1946, the HUAC held formal hearings on the communist influence on the motion picture industry.
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And in 1947, the HUAC held 10 days of closed hearings in Los Angeles.
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Robert Taylor, Lila Rogers (the mother of Ginger Rogers), Jack Warner and Adolph Mangue were the principle witnesses, or "friendly" witnesses.
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In 1947, the Screen Actors Guild signs the Loyalty Oath Agreement... you have to sign a loyalty oath, and if you don't, you don't work.
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In 1947, formal hearing begin with Gary Cooper, Walt Disney, Robert Montgomery, George Murphy and Ronald Reagan testifying as friendly witnesses before the House committee.
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RONALD REAGAN: We have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people's activities curtailed.
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In 1947, the HUAC charged the "Hollywood Ten," who included Howard Beberman, Edward Demetrik (who was a very famous Noir director), and Dalton Trumbo with contempt of Congress for refusing to answer their questions.
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Also in 1947, a series of Hollywood stars tried to fight against this. They called themselves the Committe for the First Amendment.
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And they flew to Washington to try to stop the hearings.
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And these people included Lauren Baccall, Humphrey Bogart, Ira Girshwin, Sterling Hayden, John Huston, Danny Kaye and Gene Kelly.
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But soon they realized that the forces were just so overwhelming that there was nothing they could do to stop the HUAC.
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They folded their tents and went home.
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I'm going to read a list of some of the people the HUAC identified as communists.
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Edward G. Robinson, who was a fixture at WWII bond rallies, selling bonds...
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Charlie Chaplin, Katherine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles, Leonard Bernstein... the composer and conductor...
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Will Gear, who wound up later on "The Waltons" playing Grandpa Walton...
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Lena Horne, the African American singer,
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Langston Hughs, the writer,
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Joseph Lowese, the director who fled to England,
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Harry Belafonte, Louis Bunelle, the brilliant Spanish director... and the list goes on and on.
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When the Hollywood Ten were sent to prison in 1951, Edward Demetrik was the first to crack. He simply couldn't stand the conditions.
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He got out and he named names.
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And as a result of that, he was put back to work directing "Sniper" and later "The Caine Mutiny."
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Elia Kazan, in 1952, also gave friendly testimony before the committee...
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And in 1952, Charlie Chaplin leaves the country for England for a promotional tour for his film, "Limelight."
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When Chaplin tried to re-enter, J. Edgar Hoover sees to it that he is not allowed to re-enter the United States...
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on the grounds that he is a Communist sympathizer, and Chaplin is effectively barred from the U.S.
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In 1953, the Screen Writers' Guild allows producers to remove screen credits of any suspected communists.
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In 1957, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, excludes anyone on the Hollywood blacklist for consideration for an Oscar.
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In 1958, the Supreme Court of the United States rejects the argument that the Hollywood blacklist violated employee rights.
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But in 1959, the tide finally starts to turn.
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decides that screen writers and actors on the blacklist will no longer be prohibited for consideration for Oscars.
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In 1960, Dalton Trumbo does the screenplay for Otto Premiger's "Exodus,"
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and becomes the first person who was blacklisted, since the beginning of the blacklist, to get a screen credit.
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In 1970, Dalton Trumbo delivers his famous "Only Victims" speech before the Screen Writers Guild.
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In 1972, Robert Vaughn, best known as "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," writes a brilliant book called "Only Victims,"
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which is a study of show business blacklisting, which is the first major book and still is one of the best on that.
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In 1972, Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since 1952, to receive an honorary Academy Award for his life's works.
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CHARLIE CHAPLIN: Oh, you're wonderful sweet people. Thank you.
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in 1976, Martin Ritt directs "The Front" with Woody Allen, which is about screenwriters who are forced to work under false names,
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and they get "fronts" to front for their work. This is in 1976.
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WOODY ALLEN: I don't recognize the right of this committee to ask me these kind of questions.
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In 1991, producer Irwin Winkler directs "Guilty By Suspicion" starring Robert DeNiro, which is probably the best account of the blacklist.
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But all in all, the blacklist put a lot of people out of work, many of whom were entirely guiltless and were basically just the victim of a vendetta.
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But I'm going to leave the last word to Dalton Trumbo who was one of the victims of the blacklist, but who wrote very movingly about it.
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And this is part of his very famous "Only Victims" speech.
