THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST
By Susan King
September 28, 2022
9 Films | October 13th & October 20th

The infamous Hollywood Blacklist was back in the news recently with the death of actress Marsha Hunt at the age of 104 who had appeared in such films as 1940’s Pride and Prejudice, 1943’s Best Picture Oscar-nominee The Human Comedy and 1948’s Raw Deal.

She was the toast of Broadway in 1950 appearing in a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s “The Devil’s Disciple” and even graced the cover of Life Magazine. Before she went on a European vacation with her husband, Hunt had been offered her own TV series. But when she arrived home, she learned her career had come to a standstill.

The reason?

Her name appeared in “Red Channels: The Communist Influence in Radio and Television,” which listed names of alleged communists or those with communist influences in the entertainment industry.

The publication, she noted in a 2015 Los Angeles Times interview, “was sent to employers, networks, and ad agencies. It was like all the offers had never been made I couldn’t believe it.”

But Hunt was told, all was not lost. Her name would be removed from Red Channels if she simply apologized for going to Washington, D.C. in late 1947 as a member of the Committee for the First Amendment, which also included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, Danny Kaye and Paul Henreid. They had banded together to support the First Amendment rights of Hollywood Ten, the name given the producers, directors and writers who refused to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee regarding their supposed communist affiliations.

(Henreid was also blacklisted for his support.)

Several of the supporters like Bogart did apologize so they could keep working. In fact, Bogey’s apology “I’m No Communist” appeared in a 1948 Photoplay article.

But Hunt stood firm. “The group was so mistreated by that corrupt committee. I said ‘No.’ That’s an important statement I made. I’m not sorry I made it and went right on being backlisted.”

Lee Grant, who was blacklisted shortly after being Oscar nominated for 1951’s Detective Story, posted on Twitter: “Marsha was a great talent and a good friend. Her time on the Blacklist, and the longevity of that damage, still infuriates me. But she gave so much of herself to the screen, performances we’ll have forever.”

TCM is shining a spotlight on the 75th anniversary of this dark chapter in Hollywood history this October with programming three Thursday evenings beginning October 13 with 1952’s High Noon, 1954’s On the Waterfront and a new documentary short about these two films. The evening continues with Roger C. Memos’ acclaimed 2015 documentary Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity and her 1947 musical drama Carnegie Hall, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer of Detour (1945) fame.

“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?”

It was in October of 1947 that the Hollywood Ten- Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo- refused to answer HUAC’s questions citing their first amendment rights. The following month they were voted in contempt of Congress and in 1948 they were all sentenced to prison for six months to a year. While in prison director Dmytryk decided to cooperate telling HUAC about his communist affiliation and naming 26 other people.

It was just the tip of the iceberg. Fear and paranoia gripped the entertainment industry. Hundreds of people were affected. The blacklist ended careers, friendships and lives. In 1952 alone, John Garfield died of a heart attack at the age of 39, as did his 1947 Body and Soul co-star Canada Lee who was 45. There were several suicides including The Goldbergs star Philip Loeb who took his own life in 1955.

Jules Dassin, who directed such influential noirs as 1947’s Brute Force, 1948’s The Naked City” and 1949’s Thieves’ Highway,” fled to Italy in 1952. But the country quite literally gave him the boot calling him an “undesirable” alien.

Dassin won best director honors in 1955 at the Cannes Film Festival with his French caper noir Rififi. But fear took over the Hollywood attendees at the festival who didn’t want to be seen with him. The only U.S. movie star who talked to him was Gene Kelly.

Dassin told the L.A. Times in 2004 that “everyone else looked down at their toes as if a bug was crawling somewhere, or they would hide their faces.” He recalled that even on a receiving line the Tinseltown stars “all had their glasses in their hands because they were drinking something. The moment they saw me, all of their glasses were in front of their faces. It was tough. Tough.”

The movie studios wanted to tow the anti-Communist line producing such movies a 1949’s The Woman on Pier 13,” 1951’s I Was a Communist for the FBI, which though a narrative feature earned a Best Documentary Oscar nomination, and most notably 1952’s Big Jim McClain, starring the icon of conservativism John Wayne and James Arness as HUAC investigators sniffing out communists in organized labor in Hawaii.

And then were the allegories: 1952’s High Noon and 1954’s On the Waterfront.

When the Western High Noon was in production in 1951, Communist paranoia was at its epoch. The Soviet Union had the atomic bomb, the U.S. had sent troops to South Korea to help fight the North Korean forces. The Rosenbergs had been arrested for espionage and let’s not forget Alger Hiss, who was in prison for supposedly being a Russian agent.

And it was in this climate that High Noon went into production. Produced by Stanley Kramer, directed by Fred Zinnemann and penned by Carl Foreman, High Noon stars Gary Cooper as a town’s sheriff who must decide on his wedding day to leave the town with his Quaker wife (Grace Kelly) or stay and fight a group of vicious bandits arriving on the noon train. He soon learns that the townspeople can’t or won’t help him.

Nominated for seven Oscars, High Noon won four including Best Actor for Coop, Editing, Original Song and Best Music. It was one of the biggest films of the year with Leonard Maltin reflecting years later High Noon was a “morality play that just happens to be universal.”

But it’s also looked upon as an allegorical tale of the political mood at the time with Coop’s Will Kane the personification of Foreman, HUAC members as the bandits and the townspeople standing in for those in Hollywood turning a blind eye to what’s happening.

Foreman and his wife had joined the Communist Party in 1938, quit in 1943 when he joined the Army to serve in World War II and then briefly rejoined when he returned home. In the interim he had become a top screenwriter earning nominations for the Kramer productions Champion (1949) and The Men (1950).

According to Glenn Frankel’s 2017 book “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic,” before Foreman appeared in front of HUAC in Los Angeles in 1951, he told Kramer, who was an avowed liberal, that he was going to take the Fifth on the witness stand. Kramer told him ‘They’ll think you’re a Communist and they’ll suspect us as well.’ Foreman replied: ‘If they ask me about you, I’ll say you’re a fervent anti-communist, and won’t do anything to hurt you or the company….’ Their final meeting lasted more than two hours. The two friends would never speak again.

At his hearing, Foreman told HUAC he had signed a loyalty oath as board member of Writers Guild stating he was not a member of the party. But he took the Fifth when he was asked if he was a Communist before 1950, all he would say was “that if he had come across anyone with treasonous intentions against the United States, he would have turned them in.”

A persona non grata in Hollywood, Foreman moved to London for 25 years, earning Oscar nominations as writer and producer of 1961’s The Guns of Navarone. Foreman and Fellow Traveler Michael Wilson also wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay of David Lean’s 1957 Academy Award-winning epic The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Because the blacklist didn’t officially end until 1960, the screen credit went to Pierre Boulle, who wrote the book on which it was based.

The academy finally gave them their Oscars posthumously in 1984.

It was a much different story for director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg. Their film, On the Waterfront, a powerful drama about the corrupt union on the New Jersey docks and the ex-prizefighter who testifies against its ruthless boss, is considered Kazan and screenwriter Schulberg’s explanation as to why they were friendly witnesses. The film won eight Oscars including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor for Marlon Brando and Supporting Actress for Eva Marie Saint in her film debut.

When he was a young actor in the 1930s, Kazan was one of the founders of the left-wing New York theater company the Group Theater. He joined the communist party for about 18 months in 1934, quitting in what he called a protest over the party’s leadership’s campaign to gain control of the theater company. But he remained close with several still in the party.

When he was called in front of HUAC in January 1952, the acclaimed Oscar and Tony Award-winning director acknowledged his former membership in the party, but denied the Group Theatre was a front and refused to name names of former members of the company he knew were communists.

But a few months later, he heard from Spyros Skouras, the president of 20th Century Fox, the studio with whom he was contracted, that if he didn’t go back and cooperate, he would never work in pictures again. So, he did.

Later, Kazan stated that “there’s a normal sadness about hurting friends, but I would rather hurt them a little than hurt myself a lot.”

Though the film is viewed through an allegorical lens, Lee Grant begged to differ in a 2003 interview with the L.A. Times. “I don’t know how many times I have read apologizes for Schulberg and Kazan saying that this movie shows what a hero you were if you turned in people. That is not what it was all about. The hero turns in a gangster!”

Even 50 years after the birth of the blacklist, people were still angry with Kazan for naming names. There were numerous loud protests when the then-89-year-old Kazan was chosen to receive a 1999 honorary Oscar. Pickets were stationed outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and numerous audience members not only failed to stand when Kazan received the honor, they didn’t even applaud.

Michael Epstein, the director of the 2003 “American Masters” documentary Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan and The Blacklist: None Without Sin, told the L.A. Times why his actions are still felt today. “I think it enrages people not so much that he never said ‘I’m sorry,’ but he never said that the blacklist shouldn’t have happened.”