Author: Lloyd Billingsley Publisher: Prima Lifestyles ISBN: 9780761521662 Category : Blacklisting of entertainers Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, betrayal, and violence uncovers the true face of communism in Southern California, and names writers and actresses who were seduced by the party's philosophy.
Author: Reynold Humphries Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 074863052X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
'Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?' That question was to be repeated endlessly during the anti-Communist investigations carried out by the House Committee on un-American Activities (HUAC) in the early 1950s. The refusal of ten members of the film industry to answer the question in 1947 led to the decision by studio bosses to fire them and never to hire known Communists in the future. The Hearings led to scores of actors, writers and directors being named as Communists or sympathisers. All were blacklisted and fired. Hollywood's Blacklists is a history of the political and cultural factors relevant to understanding the why and the how of the various investigations of the alleged Communist infiltration of Hollywood. What was HUAC? What propaganda role did films play during World War II and the Cold War? What values were at stake in the confrontation between Left and Right that saw the former so resoundingly defeated and expelled from Hollywood? Answers to these and other questions are offered via analyses of the motives of the various players and of the tactics deployed by HUAC to reward collaboration and punish dissent.
Author: Allan Ryskind Publisher: Regnery Publishing ISBN: 1621572064 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 530
Book Description
Allan Ryskind, son of Marx Brothers screenwriter Morrie Ryskind (Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera, Room Service), exposes the ugly truth about the Communists blacklisted from the film industry. Too often, the "Hollywood Ten" brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee are memorialized as victims of an unjust witch-hunt and heroes who stood up for free speech. The truth is shocking: Not only did these supposed liberal paragons adore Josef Stalin and take their orders directly from the Communist Party, but they also sympathized with Adolf Hitler. Ryskind, who grew up in the heart of the Hollywood scene and personally knew many of the key players in this real-life Hollywood drama, has penned a definitive, myth-busting account of the Hollywood Ten and Hollywood Blacklist that will forever change the way you think about the ideological battle waged in the movie capital of the world. With glossy photographs.
Author: Alan Casty Publisher: Scarecrow Press ISBN: 0810869489 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 376
Book Description
Much has been written about the history of Communism in America, including the Party's appeal to many in the Hollywood community of the 1930s and 40s. While several books have offered standard accounts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and the blacklist in the entertainment industry, Alan Casty provides a fresh and provocative perspective. In Communism in Hollywood: The Moral Paradoxes of Testimony, Silence, and Betrayal, Casty challenges the absolute dualisms of the period: cowardly informers and heroic martyrs. Drawing on newly available material, Casty illustrates the control by the international Communist movement and the role of the Hollywood Communists themselves in fomenting the intense hostilities of the period. Casty juxtaposes the actions and statements of those who testified and 'named names' before HUAC with Communists who refused to testify and remained silent about the atrocities of the Soviet Union. By providing a scrupulous account of the full scope of the Communist Party in Hollywood, this book presents a more accurate picture of the moral quandaries faced during this dark period in American history.
Author: Bernard F. Dick Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi ISBN: 1496805402 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
The Screen Is Red portrays Hollywood's ambivalence toward the former Soviet Union before, during, and after the Cold War. In the 1930s, communism combated its alter ego, fascism, yet both threatened to undermine the capitalist system, the movie industry's foundational core value. Hollywood portrayed fascism as the greater threat and communism as an aberration embraced by young idealists unaware of its dark side. In Ninotchka, all a female commissar needs is a trip to Paris to convert her to capitalism and the luxuries it can offer. The scenario changed when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, making Russia a short-lived ally. The Soviets were quickly glorified in such films as Song of Russia, The North Star, Mission to Moscow, Days of Glory, and Counter-Attack. But once the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, the scenario changed again. America was now swarming with Soviet agents attempting to steal some crucial piece of microfilm. On screen, the atomic detonations in the Southwest produced mutations in ants, locusts, and spiders, and revived long-dead monsters from their watery tombs. The movies did not blame the atom bomb specifically but showed what horrors might result in addition to the iconic mushroom cloud. Through the lens of Hollywood, a nuclear war might leave a handful of survivors (Five), none (On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove), or cities in ruins (Fail-Safe). Today the threat is no longer the Soviet Union, but international terrorism. Author Bernard F. Dick argues, however, that the Soviet Union has not lost its appeal, as evident from the popular and critically acclaimed television series The Americans. More than eighty years later, the screen is still red.
Author: Larry Ceplair Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252071416 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 28
Book Description
"Although this thirty-year period of American history is marked by widespread targeting of leftists in all areas of life, those in the film industry - predominately screenwriters - were considered to be in positions of great potential indoctrinating power, and found themselves under intense scrutiny as the cold war hysteria mounted. Ceplair and Englund trace the history of political struggle in Hollywood back to the formation of the Screen Writers Guild in 1933. Many of the blacklisted filmmakers were members of the Communist Party and all of the graylisted filmmakers had expressed their sympathy with progressive (mainly anti-fascist) causes."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Thomas Doherty Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231547463 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 637
Book Description
In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over nine tumultuous days in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. The blowback was profound: the major studios pledged to never again employ a known Communist or unrepentant fellow traveler. The declaration marked the onset of the blacklist era, a time when political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the entertainment industry. Hundreds of artists were shown the door—or had it shut in their faces. In Show Trial, Thomas Doherty takes us behind the scenes at the first full-on media-political spectacle of the postwar era. He details the theatrical elements of a proceeding that bridged the realms of entertainment and politics, a courtroom drama starring glamorous actors, colorful moguls, on-the-make congressmen, high-priced lawyers, single-minded investigators, and recalcitrant screenwriters, all recorded by newsreel cameras and broadcast over radio. Doherty tells the story of the Hollywood Ten and the other witnesses, friendly and unfriendly, who testified, and chronicles the implementation of the postwar blacklist. Show Trial is a rich, character-driven inquiry into how the HUAC hearings ignited the anti-Communist crackdown in Hollywood, providing a gripping cultural history of one of the most transformative events of the postwar era.
Author: Brian E. Birdnow Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 144084996X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 140
Book Description
A riveting chronicle of Communist Party efforts to propagate Communism in the United States, concurrent with Hollywood's "Golden Age" of creativity that came to define classical Hollywood cinema. From the Great Depression through World War II, the American Communist Party tried to take control of the motion picture industry. This comprehensive and chronological account of Communist influence in Hollywood surveys the topic from the Popular Front's fight against Fascism during the 1930s to the height of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in the late 1940s. Birdnow, an established historian and chronicler of domestic Communism, outlines Communist International's organizational efforts promoting international communism, focusing on the work of Communist political activists such as Willi Münzenberg, a media mogul with an international network; Gerhart Eisler, patron of a Hollywood composer; and Otto Katz, a high-profile publicist of the party line involved in movies in the 1930s and 1940s. The book explores the covert ways in which Hollywood Communists and Soviet sympathizers attempted to tailor movie scripts to suit the Soviet agenda and discusses Communist front groups such as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in great detail. Final chapters offer convincing proof that the directors, producers, and screenwriters blacklisted by studios for their possible Communist affiliations, known as the Hollywood Ten, were members of the Communist Party.
Author: Glenn Frankel Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1620409488 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Searchers, the revelatory story behind the classic movie High Noon and the toxic political climate in which it was created. It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just thirty-two days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favorite film, celebrating moral fortitude. Yet what has been often overlooked is that High Noon was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his former membership in the Communist Party. Refusing to name names, he was eventually blacklisted and fled the United States. (His co-authored screenplay for another classic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, went uncredited in 1957.) Examined in light of Foreman's testimony, High Noon's emphasis on courage and loyalty takes on deeper meaning and importance. In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel tells the story of the making of a great American Western, exploring how Carl Foreman's concept of High Noon evolved from idea to first draft to final script, taking on allegorical weight. Both the classic film and its turbulent political times emerge newly illuminated.
Author: Larry Ceplair Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 9780520048867 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 572
Book Description
"The Inquisition in Hollywood examines the suppression of radical political activity in the film industry from the days of the Great Depression through the tumultuous House Un-American Activities Committee era to the waning days of the infamous blacklist." "Although this thirty-year period of American history is marked by widespread targeting of leftists in all areas of life, those in the film industry - predominately screenwriters - were considered to be in positions of great potential indoctrinating power, and found themselves under intense scrutiny as the cold war hysteria mounted. Ceplair and Englund trace the history of political struggle in Hollywood back to the formation of the Screen Writers Guild in 1933. Many of the blacklisted filmmakers were members of the Communist Party and all of the graylisted filmmakers had expressed their sympathy with progressive (mainly anti-fascist) causes."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Lloyd Billingsley
Author: Reynold Humphries
Author: Allan Ryskind
Author: Alan Casty
Author: Bernard F. Dick
Author: Larry Ceplair
Author: Thomas Doherty
Author: Brian E. Birdnow
Author: Glenn Frankel
Author: Larry Ceplair