Reticent Reds: Hollywood communists, the HUAC purge, and the seeds of social revolution (1935--1953)

Reticent Reds is not only a study of early Cold War Hollywood and the film industry, but it is a work that illuminates the devastation that the anti-Communist purge of the American Left had on Hollywood's progressive community. The House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation of the film industry (1938–1951) resulted in the creation of the infamous Hollywood “blacklist,” a development that cost hundreds of innocent Hollywood employees both their careers and their lifestyles. This work, although it touches on the effect that the blacklist had on the film community as a whole, focuses primarily on Hollywood's screenwriter's and the effort waged by a resolute band of these individuals to combat “The Committee.” This thesis argues that had the Hollywood “resistance” been successful in undermining HUAC, the evolution and scope of the subsequent era of repression known as “McCarthyism” might have been altered, and perhaps, less devastating. I also contend, in the final chapter, that the legacy of the Hollywood “resistance” played a direct role in the rise of the student-led “New Left” of the 1960's. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).