Meg Mundy, actress: There seems
to be a great deal of confusion over having one’s name in one of the several
anti-communist publications of the 1950s and actually being blacklisted, that
is, unable to find work as an actor.
Despite what is written, Mundy’s film career wasn’t ruined by backlisting
because she had no film career prior to the supposed blacklisting era. In fact,
in her entire career, she was in only seven films, all in the 1970s and 1980s,
in which she had bit parts.
Mundy, who was named in Red
Channels as a communist, has a total of 38 film credits to her name, one before
1950 and 9 after 1959. Twenty-eight of her film credits were made between 1950
and 1959 when she was supposedly blacklisted in Hollywood. She made 7
television appearance in 1950 and no films. She made 4 television appearances
in 1951, 2 in 1952, 3 in 1953, 2 in 1955, 5 in 1956, 8 in 1957. She also took
off a year in the fifties to give birth to her son. Between motherhood and her
television career, she was also a fashion editor at a fabric house as well as a
beauty editor at Mademoiselle magazine. Munday was predominately a stage
actress. Between 1934 and 1940, she appeared on Broadway in eight plays.
Between 1950 and 1958, she appeared in three more Broadway productions.
Just because someone’s name
appeared in Red Channels, that doesn’t mean they were blacklisted. It just
means there name appeared in Red Channels.
Just because a person said they
were blacklisted doesn’t mean they were. Many people in Hollywood have lied
about being blacklisted over the years.
If a person was actually blacklisted…and not
many were actually blacklisted….it was the studios and TV sponsors who
blacklisted them. Not the United States federal government.
If a person claims the blacklist
ruined their career, they should be able to prove they had a career before the
blacklist.