Summary
Hollywood blacklist
Two books and a videotape examined the Hollywood blacklist, a period characterized by an alleged conspiracy to integrate anti-American ideas into films. The works examined the struggles to unionize the motion picture industry, political ideologies and efforts to promote racism in Hollywood. The association between radical ideology and social-problem films was also discussed. In addition, the impact of blacklistees on the American television was examined.See the full content of this document
Extract
The way they really were.
For fifty years the period of the Hollywood blacklist has been written about extensively. Much of that lively discussion, unfortunately, has been disingenuous. This applies both to the contention that there was a conspiracy in Hollywood to inject anti-American ideas imported from abroad into motion pictures and the response that getting any ideological messages through the studio system was impossible. Recent films, two new books, and public statements by some of the surviving blacklistees have underscored the need to reevaluate the prevailing assumptions regarding the art and politics of the Hollywood reds.
Even in the 1990s, Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten, has continued to assert the view that the Communist orbit in Hollywood was mainly a social rather than a socialist phenomenon. Such protestations bolster the view advanced even by nominal sympathizers that the Hollywood reds had not been genuine Communist...See the full content of this document
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