The Hollywood Ten were members of the motion picture industry accused of association with communist organizations in 1947.
The Hollywood Ten consisted of screenwriters Alvah Bessie; Lester Cole; Ring Lardner, Jr.; John Howard Lawson; Albert Maltz; Samuel Ornitz; and Dalton Trumbo;
Directors Herbert Biberman and Edward Dmytryk; and producer Adrian Scott. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) cited these men for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions during investigations into communist activities in the motion picture industry.
Congressional conservatives used HUAC to accuse liberals and radicals in government, the diplomatic corps, academia, and Hollywood of harboring communist sympathizers. In particular, HUAC tried to prove that communists sought to infuse movie scripts with propaganda. Referring to the movie industry, conservative congressman John Rankin claimed, “Unless the people in control of the industry are willing to clean house of Communists, Congress will have to do it for them.”
Many Hollywood studio executives, artists, and union representatives bristled at HUAC’s proposed actions. They argued that very few “fellow travelers” worked in Hollywood, many having been disillusioned with Marxism-Leninism years earlier. Furthermore, they claimed that a motion picture was the product of collaboration, impenetrable to the political whims of writers and directors. Several actors, including Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, organized the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the impending “witch hunt.” Although they were not communists themselves, these artists wanted the witnesses to declare their political affiliations proudly and to denounce further government interference. The Hollywood community appeared united against HUAC with only a vocal minority of anticommunists encouraging the investigation.
Undeterred, in September 1947, HUAC issued subpoenas to 43 studio executives, labor leaders, and filmmakers, evenly divided between “friendly” and “unfriendly” witnesses. Together, the accused hired their own counsel and debated their legal strategy. Although a few wanted to proclaim their political beliefs, others believed this was foolhardy given the cold war’s charged atmosphere. Trumbo and Lardner argued that witnesses could challenge HUAC’s inquiry into an individual’s personal politics by asserting their Fifth Amendment right to prevent self-incrimination. They reasoned that the First Amendment prevented Congress from investigating or legislating political party affiliation. Eventually, 10 of the witnesses considered unfriendly to HUAC believed they could effectively resist the committee by answering questions in their own way.
On October 20, Representative J. Parnell Thomas, chairman of the committee, convened the hearings by calling “friendly” witnesses to testify. Among them, Louis B. Mayer, Walt Disney, and Gary Cooper asserted that although Hollywood’s “red” minority existed and caused trouble, members of this group did not control film
Hollywood screenwriters and directors (left to right) Samuel Ornitz; Ring Lardner, Jr.; Albert Maltz; Alvah Bessie; Lester Cole; Herbert Biberman; and Edward Dmytryk walk up steps of federal courthouse to face trial on charges of contempt of Congress for their defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1950. (Library of Congress)
Content. When asked, they offered up the names of suspected communists.
HUAC called the first 10 unfriendly witnesses and asked each in turn about past and current affiliations. After invoking their First Amendment right guaranteeing free speech, some responded to the interrogation with sarcasm, some lectured the committee, and all appeared antagonistic. In one dramatic instance, Thomas ordered police to restrain and remove Lawson as he charged HUAC with “Hitler tactics!” Members of the Committee for the First Amendment were especially upset with the Ten’s daring refusal to answer questions. Rather than being martyrs, the Hollywood Ten appeared like rowdy radicals even to their defenders. “It was a sorry performance,” director John Huston later wrote, “I disapproved of what was being done to [them], but I also disapproved of their response.” Hollywood’s united front dissolved.
Feeling emboldened, HUAC sought contempt citations against the Ten on November 24. The next day, 50 top Hollywood executives issued their own condemnation and foreshadowed the blacklisting to come. A communist would find no employment until he declared under oath that he was not a communist. The executives promised “to eliminate any subversives.”
For the next six months, the Hollywood Ten embarked on a legal struggle to keep their jobs and stay out of prison. By May 1948, all 10 had been tried, convicted, fined, and sentenced to prison. In June, an appeals court ruled that because of the “chaotic times” and the fact that Hollywood “plays a critically important role in the molding of public opinion” as “a potent medium of propaganda dissemination,” Congress had a right to investigate “whether or not they are or ever have been communists.” Likewise, the Ten’s breach of contract cases against the studios failed. In April 1950, the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeals. In June, the Hollywood Ten prepared for prison sentences ranging from six months to one year.
Prison life, the blacklist, and protracted lawsuits placed an overwhelming financial burden and social stigma on the Hollywood Ten. Only Dmytryk renounced his past activities. He published an open letter and appeared before Hollywood’s Rehabilitation Committee, a group formed to show publicly Hollywood’s commitment to ANTICOMMUNISM. Headed at one time by Ronald Reagan, this panel cleansed the repentant communists. After appearing once again before HUAC to “name names,” Dmytryk won a studio contract. The others sporadically worked by employing pseudonyms and ghostwriting. Trumbo, using the name Robert Rich, even won an Academy Award for the best screenplay of 1956. The blacklist effectively endured for the Hollywood Ten and hundreds of other victims until 1960, when a new generation of producers and directors insisted on changing the practice.
Further reading: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisi-tion in Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
—Andrew J. Falk
Hoover, J. Edgar (1895-1972) director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
A staunch anticommunist crusader, J. Edgar Hoover headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), building it into a highly effective arm of federal law enforcement.
Hoover was born in Washington, D. C., on January 1, 1895. He studied law at George Washington University, where he earned his Masters of Law in 1917, the same year he joined the Department of Justice as a file reviewer. In 1919, he became special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, overseeing the mass roundup and deportation of suspected communists following World War I. With the formation of the American Communist Party in 1919, Hoover found his lifelong calling: a self-styled crusade to destroy COMMUNISM in the United States. He began labeling anyone who disagreed with his rigid views—labor leaders, civil rights workers, and antiwar protesters—as communists. To root them out, he compiled files on radicals or anyone who dared to criticize him and developed a network of anonymous informants.
H oover was named director of the FBI in 1924. Although the FBI was officially subordinate to the attorney general, Hoover successfully gained and ferociously maintained control of the operation. He built a reputation for efficiency by reorganizing the agency. He recruited agents and instituted rigorous methods of selecting and training personnel. He also established a fingerprint file, a scientific crime lab, and the FBI National Academy, which provided special training for selected individuals.
He also organized well-publicized captures of famous bandits such as John Dillinger, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and “Baby Face” Nelson to earn his reputation as the ultimate G-man, the nation’s indefatigable crime fighter. Although
Hoover was never actively involved in the arrests, he arrived just before the news photographers. Thus, he could argue that his successful pursuit of the “10 Most Dangerous Public Enemies” required ever-greater budgets. The arrest of Dillinger as well as the capture of Bruno Hauptmann, convicted kidnapper of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby, brought much prestige to the organization, and enhanced Hoover’s reputation, making the FBI virtually untouchable. Ironically, Hoover failed to seriously take on organized crime and went so far as to deny the existence of a Mafia. His hands-off policy allowed the Mafia to conduct illegal operations free of FBI surveillance.
Beginning in the 1940s, Hoover resurrected the specter of the early days as he pursued his lifelong crusade against communists. The FBI brought JULIUS AND Ethel Rosenberg to trial for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Not only did he bask in the favorable publicity that accompanied the Rosenberg case but he also built alliances with red-baiters in Congress, such as Richard M. Nixon, who, with the FBI’s assistance, pursued Alger HiSS, accusing him of being a communist. Hoover provided Joseph R. McCarthy with information and witnesses, helping McCarthy continue his witch hunt of suspected communists in government. FBI agents even wrote speeches for the Wisconsin senator. In return, McCarthy attacked Hoover’s enemies.
Hoover’s hatred toward radicals of every kind led him to openly attempt to discredit the Civil Rights movement. He portrayed movement leaders as communists, calling Martin Luther King, Jr., “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” Hoover collected
J. Edgar Hoover (Library of Congress)
And maintained a damaging file on King’s private life, which he used to thwart the movement.
Hoover ruled the FBI through fear. He had files full of embarrassing if not incriminating evidence of all presidents other than Harry S. Truman, who admired Hoover. In 1971, Richard M. Nixon, a former collaborator with the director, asked Hoover to put the bureau at the president’s disposal to investigate his own personal enemies and got a flat refusal. As a result, Nixon tried unsuccessfully to fire Hoover.
Hoover refused to be challenged; anyone who dared to do so was placed on the enemies list and hounded. While Hoover’s ostensible intent was to build an efficient crimefighting agency, 96 percent of the bureau’s efforts were directed at investigating communists and left-wing radicals as defined by Hoover. He retained his post, however, until his death at age 77.
Further reading: Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York. W. W. Norton, 1990).
—Gisela Abels
World History
