Hollywood´s blacklist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StormCenterPoster.jpg


Thomas: Are you a member of the Communist Party or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

Lawson: It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of Americanism.

Thomas: That's not the question. That's not the question. The question is—have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

Lawson: I am framing my answer in the only way in which any American citizen can frame his answer to...

Thomas: Then you deny it?

Lawson: ...a question that invades his...absolutely invades his privacy.

Thomas: Then you deny... You refuse to answer that question, is that correct?

Lawson: I have told you that I will offer my beliefs, my affiliations and everything else to the American public and they will know where I stand as they do from what I have written.

Thomas: Stand away from the stand...

Lawson: I have written for Americanism for many years...

Thomas: Stand away from the stand...

Lawson: And I shall continue to fight for the Bill of Rights, which you are trying to destroy.

Thomas: Officer, take this man away from the stand.

"HUAC Hollywood Investigation Testimony, October 1947: Unfriendly Witnesses—Howard Lawson (Screenwriter)". Authentic History Center. October 29, 1947. http://www.authentichistory.com/1946-1960/4-cwhomefront/1-reactionism/19471000_HUAC_Hollywood_Testimony.html. Retrieved 2010-10-14.

The transcript is an excerpt from the interrogation of screenwriter John Howard Lawson by HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas.
Lawson is one of the so called Hollywood Ten who were accused of being active members of a communist party in times of McCarthyism.

The Great Depression and the World War II caused an uprise of the communist party that was fighting for the rights of the poor and was involved in campaigns for the improvement of the welfare, unemployment and social security system. Two major strikes in the fim industry during the 1930s increased tensions between the Hollywood producers and the unions, particularly the Communist-accosiated Screen Writers Guild.
The U.S. government saw a great danger in the Communism tendency in Hollywood. Under chairman Martin Dies, Jr., the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) released a report in 1938 claiming that communism was pervasive in Hollywood.
In October 1947, a number of persons working in the Hollywood film industry were summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which had declared its intention to investigate whether Communist agents and sympathizers had been surreptitiously planting propaganda in U.S. films.^[9] The hearings began with several Hollywood professionals, including Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, testifying that the threat of Communists in the film industry was a serious one.

Forty-three people were put on the witness list, nineteen declared they would not give evidence. Eleven of these nineteen were called before the Committee. Interestingly enaugh, one of those eleven finally agreed to answer the question of the Committee. It was Bertold Brecht, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1941 to escape Hitlers regime and actually was a convinced Communist. The day after his testimony, were he had to deny his political conviction, he flew back to Europe after six years in America.

Still there were ten persons refusing to testify their "innocent minds" and were even accusing the Committee for its unconstitutional procedures . The Wikipedia-article summons the next events:

In light of the "Hollywood Ten" 's defiance of HUAC, political pressure mounted on the film industry to demonstrate its "anti-subversive" bona fides. Late in the hearings, Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), declared to the committee that he would never "employ any proven or admitted Communist because they are just a disruptive force and I don't want them around."^[14] On November 17, the Screen Actors Guild voted to make its officers swear to a non-Communist pledge. The following week, on November 24, the House of Representatives voted 346 to 17 to approve citations against the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress. The next day, following a meeting of film industry executives at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, MPAA president Johnston issued a press release on the executives' behalf that is today referred to as the Waldorf Statement.^[b] The statement declared that the ten would be fired or suspended without pay and not reemployed until they were cleared of contempt charges and had sworn that they were not Communists. The first Hollywood blacklist was now in effect.

Read the whole article to learn about the following activitys of the HUAC related to the Black List, that were reaching till the days in 1957.

What we learn of the accurance of the Hollywood blacklist is the following:
- the U.S. politics had a great impact on Hollywood structures in times of McCathyism
- the governmental strive for eliminating Communist tendencies attest the influence Hollywood has on the society and the formation of critical opinion
- the strive of Hollywood to get rid of governmental influence is one explanation for its left-leaning political opinion.

The first Hollywood movie to portray McCarthyism was Storm Center (see poster above) and appeared in 1956. Bette Davis plays a small-town librarian who doesn´t want to remove the book 'The Communist Dream' from the shelves when the local council valuate it subversive.