Doubtfully Blacklisted: Uta Hagen

Uta Hagen was a respected stage actress and acting teacher. She was never blacklisted. Hagen was married to actor José Ferrer from 1938 until 1948 and divorced, in some part, because of Hagen's long-concealed affair with black actor and renown communist  Paul Robeson, her co-star in Othello. Her association with Robeson, a poorly kept secret in Hollywood, had no effect on her career, in at least as being under suspicion of being a communist. Aside from bit parts, she had no film career to be blacklisted from  

1950

The Country Girl (Film)

Playhouse 90 (TV Series)

Kraft Theatre (TV Series)

The Country Girl (Stage Nov 10, 1950 - Jun 02, 1951)

A Streetcar Named Desire (Stage May 23, 1950 - Closing date unknown)

1951

Saint Joan (Film)

1952

In Any Language (Film)

Betty Crocker Star Matinee (TV Series)

In Any Language (Stage Oct 07, 1952 - Nov 15, 1952)

Tovarich (Stage May 14, 1952 - May 25, 1952)

Saint Joan (Stage Oct 04, 1951 - Feb 02, 1952)

1954

The Magic and The Loss (Film)

The Magic and The Loss (Stage Apr 09, 1954 - May 01, 1954)

1955

Island of Goats (Film)

Island of Goats (Stage Oct 04, 1955 - Oct 08, 1955)

1956-1957

The Good Woman of Setzuan (Stage Dec 18, 1956 - Jan 06, 1957)

A Month in the Country (Stage Apr 03, 1956 - May 13, 1956)

1959

A Month in the Country (Television)

Doubtfully blacklisted: Dorothy Comingore

If anyone can be blamed for killing Dorothy Comingore’s career, its Dorothy Comingore and not the supposed blacklist. Comingore, who was married four times, appeared in 23 films from 1938 through 1951. She was uncredited eight of those 23 films, and six of those 23 films were actually shorts. She was pregnant in 1941 and appeared in only one film between that year and 1944 when she became pregnant again and stayed out of films once again until 1949.

Warner Brothers used her largely as a model. She was signed by Columbia and tossed into a series of walk-on parts in low ball cowboys flicks and Three Stooges films. Her one memorable role was in Citizen Kane for which she was, justifiably, lauded.

A WASP with a long lineage, she had a reputation as a hothead with an ego and a leftist. Her father had been a leftist union organizer and her first husband. She became an enemy of the studio bosses by canvassing for union solidarity within the film business. She killed off most of her career by turning down films she felt were below her talents until finally, the offers stopped coming her way.

Called before the HUAC in 1952, she refused to admit that she was a communist, telling the committee that she was in a court fight with her ex-husband, screenwriters Richard J. Collins, for custody of her two children, then 8 and 11 years old, and being branded a communist could hurt her case.  

When, in 1947, Collins, a major figure in the LA-Hollywood communist party,  was told he would have to appear before the committee,  he declared himself an unfriendly witness and used the First Amendment to duck questions. However when he actually testified 1951, he had already left the party and his politics had changed and he became a cooperating witness. He went on to write the cult flick, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which he said was based on his experiences as a member of the Party.

On March 19, 1953, she was arrested for soliciting an undercover Vice officer in West Hollywood. Supposedly she agreed to confinement for two years in a mental ward in exchange for having the charges dropped.

Although the claim in Hollywood is that she was set up on the charge but the case against her was airtight.  Deputy sheriffs William Baker and Peter Escanilla arrested the 40-year-old actress in a parked car at Lexington and Gardner Avenue after she offered a cop oral sex in the car for $10,  in her words  "because I'm a little short of money right now."

She told a hearing judge  she was framed on the charge claiming that two plainclothes men offered her a ride from the bar at 8279 Santa Monica Blvd. to her home at 1251 North Fuller Avenue.  "Then," she told the court, "they stuck a marked $10 bill in my pocket and drove me downtown to the County Jail."

The cops reported that they drove Comingore from a bar on Santa Monica to another bar at 8279 Santa Monica Blvd. and that she suggested “Let’s find a dark place to go to” and they drove her to nearby Plummer Park where Deputy Baker asked, “How much?”, she gave him a price and he handed her a marked bill. When she took it, he arrested her.

Three months later, in May of 1953, she willingly took part in a closed-door hearing before judge Harold Schweitzer in a Hollywood sanitarium where she had been held since her prostitution arrest. Several psychiatrists who had treated her testified that she was an acute alcoholic who started drinking in the early morning hours and that her alcoholism was responsible for her psychical and mental breakdowns in the past. She agreed to cooperate with the finding of the court, two of her former husbands were present when the hearing took place. Her lawyer also asked the court to confine her for treatment before her drinking killed her. Her alcoholism had already cost her custody of her two children as an unfit mother.

She spent the last half of her life in Eastern Connecticut, married to a mailman. She died in 1971 due to pulmonary issues brought on by alcohol addiction.  She died in 1971 at age 58.

Jean Rouverol was a  part-time actress (from 1934-1938)  and writer who fled to Mexico in when the HUAC tried to serve them with subpoenas and hid there for 13 years.  

She was never blacklisted. She nor her husband were never branded “subversives and dangerous revolutionaries.”

If they weren't spies, they really had no reason to run.

They didn’t suffer much in Mexico. In fact, she sold five screen plays to Hollywood when she was in self-exile. Her husband, a Canadian, sold seven scripts to Hollywood while in self-exile.  

Rouverol was the daughter of playwright Aurania Rouverol, who created the all American boy next door, Andy Hardy. She married screen writer Hugo Butler in 1940 and had four children. In 1943, the couple joined the American communist party. Rouverol died on March 24, 2017 at the age of 100.

Barney Ruditsky

In 1939, future LA private eye and Barney Ruditsky was enmeshed in a bribery scandal stemming from his in the NYPD’s Gangster Industrial Squad, which disbanded in 1933. A former Communist, Maurice L. Malkin, accused Ruditsky and other officers of corruption in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Malkin testified that the furriers union, which was controlled by Communists, borrowed $1.75 million from racketeer Arnold Rothstein to finance a 1926 strike, and that $110,000 of that went to members of the Industrial Squad, including Ruditsky. No action was taken against the officers. Similar charges had been made in 1927 by the American Federation of Labor, and the officers were exonerated.

Doubtfully blacklisted: Will Lee

Will Lee is probably best known as Mr. Hooper on the popular children's show Sesame Street. In the 1940s he joined the Actor's Laboratory, a West Coast front for the Communist party. He was called before the HUAC on February 20, 1948. Among other things Lee was asked if he had appeared in a production called “Fun in Hollywood” and he denied he did. At that, Richard Combs, the chief counsel said “This places (the communist newspaper) the People World in an embarrassing situation. It says you did” When he was dismissed’ a dumbfounded Lee remained in the witness chair until a policeman removed him.

According to endless accounts, at this point, Lee was blacklisted. But blacklisted from what? Almost his entire film and television career, what little of it there was, consisted of uncredited bit parts. He made no films or television appearances between 1957, after the supposed blacklisting era had ended, and 1962.

He had virtually no career even in the 1960s. From 1960 through 1969, he only worked in the years 1965,  (In minor roles in one made for TV movies and two TV shows) 1964 (He had two small TV roles for the entire year)  and one film role in 1963, as a waiter with no speaking role. In total, from 1940 through 1959, he made 18 appearance son film. He was uncredited in 9 of them and had no speaking parts in 3 more. How do you get blacklisted from a career like that?

 1940 Stage play Plat Heavenly Express

          Stage play Night Music

1941    Whistling in the Dark (His first film)       

1941    Melody Lane

1941    Babes on Broadway Shorty (Uncredited)

1941    Ball of Fire    

1942    Saboteur (Uncredited)

1942 Stage play The Strings, My Lord, Are False

          Stage play Lily of the Valley

1943-1944 US Army Service

1945     No productions (prior to supposed blacklisting)

1946     No productions (prior to supposed blacklisting)

1947    Brute Force   (Played a convict in Chow Line)   

           Stage Play As We Forgive Our Debtors

1948   Casbah (minor character)

1948   They Live by Night   (minor character)    

1948   A Song Is Born (Uncredited)

            Force of Evil  Waiter (Uncredited)

            Stage Play Strange Bedfellows

1949   The Life of Riley (Uncredited)

1949   The Lone Wolf and His Lady (Uncredited)

1950   Backfire (Uncredited)

1950   Shakedown (Uncredited)

1950   Dick Tracy (TV Show)        

1950   The Philco Television Playhouse  

1952    Stage Play: The Shrike (With Communists Howard DaSilva, Jack Gilford, Herschel Bernardi, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis

1953    Little Fugitive (Unnamed Photographer)

1954   No productions

1956    As the World Turns (TV)

1957   No productions

1958   No Productions

1959  Stage Play, Once upon mattress

Hollywood conservatives in the mid 1950s

Walt Disney

Hedda Hopper

Randolph Scott

Robert Young

Ward Bond

William Holden

Ginger Rogers

Jimmy Stewart

George Murphy

Gary Cooper

Bing Crosby

John Wayne

Walter Brennan

Shirley Temple

Bob Hope

Adolphe Menjou

Helen Hayes

Frank Capra

Fred MacMurray

How Conservative Hollywood Became a Liberal Town

How Conservative Hollywood Became a Liberal Town

by

Marcus Hawkins

While it may seem as though Hollywood has always been liberal, it hasn’t. Very few people today realize that at one point in the development of American cinema, conservatives ruled the movie-making industry.

 Santa Monica College Professor Larry Ceplair, co-author of "The Inquisition in Hollywood," wrote that during the ‘20s and ‘30s, most studio heads were conservative Republicans who spent millions of dollars to block union and guild organizing. Likewise, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Moving Picture Machine Operators, and the Screen Actors Guild were all headed by conservatives, as well.

Scandals and Censorship

In the early 1920s, a series of scandals rocked Hollywood. According to authors Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, silent film star Mary Pickford divorced her first husband in 1921 so that she could marry the attractive Douglas Fairbanks. Later that year, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was accused (but later acquitted) of raping and murdering a young actress during a wild party. In 1922, after director William Desmond Taylor was found murdered, the public learned of his lurid love affairs with some of Hollywood’s best-known actresses. The final straw came in 1923, when Wallace Reid, a ruggedly handsome actor, died of a morphine overdose.

In themselves, these incidents were a cause for sensation but taken together, studio bosses worried they would be accused of promoting immorality and self-indulgence. As it was, a number of protest groups had successfully lobbied Washington and the federal government was looking to impose censorship guidelines on the studios. Rather than losing control of their product and face the involvement of the government, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of American (MPPDA) hired Warren Harding’s Republican postmaster general, Will Hays, to address the problem.

The Hays Code

In their book, Thompson and Bordwell say Hays appealed to the studios to remove objectionable content from their films and in 1927, he gave them a list of material to avoid, called the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” list. It covered most sexual immorality and the depiction of criminal activity. Nevertheless, by the early 1930s, many of the items on Hays’ list were being ignored and with Democrats controlling Washington, it seemed more likely than ever that a censorship law would be implemented. In 1933, Hays pushed the film industry to adopt the Production Code, which explicitly forbids depictions of crime methodology, sexual perversion. Films that abide by the code received a seal of approval. Although the “Hays Code,” as it came to be known helped the industry avoid stiffer censorship at the national level, it began to erode in the late 40s and early ‘50s.

The House Un-American Activities Committee

Although it was not considered un-American to sympathize with the Soviets during the 1930s or during World War II, when they were American allies, it was considered un-American when the war was over. In 1947, Hollywood intellectuals who had been sympathetic to the communist cause during those early years found themselves being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and questioned about their “communist activities.” Ceplair points out that the conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals provided the committee with names of so-called "subversives." Members of the alliance testified before the committee as "friendly” witnesses. Other “friendlies,” such as Jack Warner of Warner Bros. and actors Gary Cooper, Ronald Reagan, and Robert Taylor either fingered others as “communists” or expressed concern over liberal content in their scripts.

After a four-year suspension of the committee ended in 1952, former communists and Soviet sympathizers such as actors Sterling Hayden and Edward G. Robinson kept themselves out of trouble by naming others. Most of the people named were script-writers. Ten of them, who testified as “unfriendly” witnesses became known as the “Hollywood Ten” and were blacklisted – effectively ending their careers. Ceplair notes that following the hearings, guilds, and unions purged liberals, radicals, and leftists from their ranks, and over the next 10 years, the outrage slowly began to dissipate.

Liberalism Seeps Into Hollywood

Due in part to a backlash against abuses perpetrated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in part to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1952 declaring films to be a form of free speech, Hollywood began to slowly liberalize. By 1962, the Production Code was virtually toothless. The newly formed Motion Picture Association of America implemented a rating system, which still stands today.

In 1969, following the release of Easy Rider, directed by liberal-turned-conservative Dennis Hopper, counter-culture films began to appear in significant numbers. By the mid-1970s, older directors were retiring, and a new generation of filmmakers was emerging. By the late 1970s, Hollywood was very openly and specifically liberal. After making his last film in 1965, Hollywood director John Ford saw the writing on the wall. “Hollywood now is run by Wall St. and Madison Ave., who demand ‘Sex and Violence,’” author Tag Gallagher quotes him as writing in his book, “This is against my conscience and religion.”

Hollywood Today

Things are not much different today. In a 1992 letter to the New York Times, screenwriter and playwright Jonathan R. Reynolds lament that “… Hollywood today is as fascistic toward conservatives as the 1940s and '50s were liberals … And that goes for the movies and television shows produced.”

It goes beyond Hollywood, too, Reynolds argues. Even the New York theater community is rampant with liberalism. “Any play that suggests that racism is a two-way street or that socialism is degrading simply won't be produced,” Reynolds writes. “I defy you to name any plays produced in the last 10 years that intelligently espouse conservative ideas. Make that 20 years.”

The lesson Hollywood still has not learned, he says, is that repression of ideas, regardless of political persuasion, “should not be rampant in the arts.” The enemy is repression itself.

Conservative Hollywood: Mary Pickford

The actress Mary Pickford was a lifelong conservative

Doubtfully blacklisted: Ella Logan

Singer/Stage actress Ella Logan had virtually no film or TV career at all.

1954

The Red Skelton Hour (TV Series)

Guest Vocalist

Film: What Goes Down, Must Come Up

 Guest Vocalist

 1938

Film: The Goldwyn Follies

1937

Woman Chases Man

Top of the Town

1936

Flying Hostess

 In 1945, she sang “a left-leaning song and J. Edgar Hoover himself ordered surveillance against her. A single song seems to be a  very doubtful reason for the director of the FBI (who was a personnel friend of Logan’s) to launch a flown blown surveillance that would have had to have lasted until 1959.  In the 1950s, when she was supposed to have been blacklisted, the 4 foot 11-inch Scots-born Logan was booked almost exclusively as an international nightclub performer.

Doubtfully blacklisted: Aline MacMahon

If Aline MacMahon, a bit actor, was blacklisted at all, its difficult to tell when exactly that was. McMahon’s career was steady and changed little between 1940 and 1970 (She retired from acting in 1964)  She had 8 film/TV credits to her name between 1950-1959, along with four Broadway credits. Mac Mahon was born in 1899. She was 51 years old in 1950 a deadly age for Hollywood actresses.

1950

Repertory Theatre (TV Series)

The Flame and the Arrow

1952

Celanese Theatre (TV Series)

Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (TV Series)

1953

The Eddie Cantor Story

1954

Play: The Confidential Clerk (Feb 11, 1954 - May 22, 1954)

1955

The Man from Laramie

Play: A Day By The Sea (Sep 26, 1955 - Oct 15, 1955)

1956

Play: Pictures in the Hallway (Sep 16, 1956 - Nov 04, 1956)

1957-1958

Studio One in Hollywood (TV Series)

Play: I Knock at the Door (Sep 29, 1957 - Nov 10, 1957)

1959

Play of the Week (TV Series)

She had ten film/TV credits to her name between 1960-1969, only two more than the decade before.

In 1940-1949 she had 1 film/TV credits and at the height of her career, 1930-1939, she had 25 credits to her name

They're not all nut in Hollywood.

50’s Teen idol and movie star Tab Hunter was a Republican and supported the campaign of Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.

They're not all nuts in Hollywood

 

Actor Barbara Stanwyck, who was born into poverty and spent several years in foster care but went on to become one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. Barbara opposed the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and believed people could  prosper without government intervention or assistance.

She was an early member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA) after its founding in 1944. The mission of this group was to "... combat ... subversive methods [used in the industry] to undermine and change the American way of life."

 She publicly supported the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee and encouraged her husband Robert Taylor to appear before the committee as a friendly witness. It was Stanwyck who persuaded Jack L. Warner at Warner Bros. to buy the rights to The Fountainhead.

Doubtfully blacklisted: Robert Shayne

Robert Shayne was an actor  mostly known for his work as Inspector Bill Henderson in the television series Adventures of Superman. Shayne’s father was one of the founders of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

According to Phyllis Coates, who played Lois Lane on Superman said, "Bob at one time had been a card-carrying communist. “ and may have been interviewed by the FBI on the set.

When Shayne was called before the HUAC in September of 1951, he told reporters that he was “utterly puzzled” by the subpoena and that for the hour that he was questioned he  answered every question he was asked. The executive hearing was informal and conducted in a Hollywood hotel room

Interviewed again under more formal settings in 1952, Shayne said that he "must have signed a card or an application" with the Communist party in New York in 1935, but "I have never been interested or at all active in any Communist party activity since the spring of 1936." He said he had never participated in communist affairs since he moved to California. Other questioned that day supplied the committee with the names of others  known to be members of the communist party in LA.

Stephanie Shayne, the actors daughter, said  “The fact is that Dad was turned into the House Un-American Activities Committee as a result of accusations made by his jealous ex-wife. That was precipitated by Dad's leaving her for a woman twenty-one years her junior (my mother, Bette).”

The rumor persists that Shayne was blacklisted in Hollywood and unable to find work because he appeared before the HUAC but the record shows otherwise. From 1934 through 1959, Shayne made 83 films and/or television appearances. Thirty three of those were between 1934 and 1949. Fifty were made from 1950 through 1959, during the time when he was supposedly secretly blacklisted  

1950

Dynamite Pass (1950) - Jay Wingate

Customs Agent (1950) - West Coast Chief Agent J.G. Goff

Rider from Tucson (1950) - John Avery

State Penitentiary (1950) - Stanley Brown

Federal Man (1950) - Chief Agent Charles Stuart

When You're Smiling (1950) - Jack Lacey

Big Timber (1950) - Dixon

Experiment Alcatraz (1950) - Barry Morgan

1951

Missing Women (1951) - Cincotta

The Dakota Kid (1951) - Ace Crandall

Criminal Lawyer (1951) - Clark P. Sommers

1952

Indian Uprising (1952) - Maj. Nathan Stark

Without Warning! (1952) - Dr. Werner, Police Psychiatrist

And Now Tomorrow (1952)

The Ring (1952) - Jimmy - Aragon's Manager

Mr. Walkie Talkie (1952) - Capt. Burke

Adventures of Superman (1952-1958, TV Series) - Inspector Launay / Police Inspector Bill Henderson

1953

Marshal of Cedar Rock (1953) - Paul Jackson / Fake John Harper

Prince of Pirates (1953) - Prime Minister Treeg

The Blue Gardenia (1953) - Doctor (uncredited)

The Lady Wants Mink (1953) - Cecil

Invaders from Mars (1953) - Dr. Bill Wilson (uncredited)

The Neanderthal Man (1953) - Prof. Clifford Groves

Sea of Lost Ships (1953) - Executive Officer (uncredited)

Flight Nurse (1953) - Surgeon (uncredited)

1954

Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954) - Maj. Conroy

The Desperado (1954) - Prosecutor (uncredited)

Tobor the Great (1954) - General #1 (uncredited)

1955

Murder Is My Beat (1955) - Police Captain Bert Rawley

The Eternal Sea (1955) - Cmdr. Dean (uncredited)

Double Jeopardy (1955) - Mr. Ross (uncredited)

King of the Carnival (1955) - Jess Carter

1956

Indestructible Man (1956) - Prof. Bradshaw

Rumble on the Docks (1956) - Judge (uncredited)

Accused of Murder (1956) - Doctor (uncredited)

Dance with Me, Henry (1956) - Proctor

Hot Shots (1956) - Pierre M. Morley

1957

Kronos (1957) -Air Force General

Footsteps in the Night (1957) - Fred Horner

The Giant Claw (1957) - Gen. Van Buskirk

Spook Chasers (1957) - Police Lt. Harris

Death in Small Doses (1957) - FDA Chief Insp. Frank Ainsley (uncredited)

1958

War of the Satellites (1958) - Cole Hotchkiss

Teenage Cave Man (1958) - The Fire Maker

How to Make a Monster (1958) - Gary Droz

The Lost Missile (1958) - Air Force General (uncredited)

Revolt in the Big House (1958) - Mickey (uncredited)

I Mobster (1958) – Senator

1959

The Rebel Set (1959) - Lt. Cassidy

North by Northwest (1959) - Larry Wade (uncredited)

Battle Flame (1959) - Lt. Norris

cartoon

cartoon