I'd like to draw your attention to a new book by
Reynold Humphries, published by Edinburgh
University Press. Please forward this message to anyone who may be interested.
Hollywood's Blacklists: A Political and Cultural History
by Reynold Humphries
'Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?'
That question was to be repeated endlessly
during the anti-Communist investigations carried
out by the House Committee on un-American
Activities (HUAC) in the early 1950s. The
refusal of ten members of the film industry to
answer the question in 1947 led to the decision
by studio bosses to fire them and never to hire
known Communists in the future. The Hearings led
to scores of actors, writers and directors being
named as Communists or sympathisers. All were blacklisted and fired.
Hollywood?s Blacklists is a history of the
political and cultural factors relevant to
understanding the why and the how of the various
investigations of the alleged Communist
infiltration of Hollywood. What was HUAC? What
propaganda role did films play during World War
II and the Cold War? What values were at stake
in the confrontation between Left and Right that
saw the former so resoundingly defeated and
expelled from Hollywood? Answers to these and
other questions are offered via analyses of the
motives of the various players and of the
tactics deployed by HUAC to reward collaboration and punish dissent.
Key themes include:
The Cold War and concomitant hostility to all dissidence
The consequences for Hollywood: the collapse of
the liberal-Communist consensus; naming names;
exile for many and the use of ?fronts? by blacklisted writers.
Anti-Semitism and Nazism, Hollywood anti-Nazi
propaganda films and the patriotic war effort
Trade unionism in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s
Reynold Humphries is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Lille III
September 2008
Hb 978 0 78462455 3
£50.00
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