How, when and where John “Skins” Miller was blacklisted isn’t
clear and he most likely wasn’t blacklisted at all. Miller had been part of the
infamous vaudeville team of Miller and Mack before turning to films in 1931. It
wasn’t much of a career. He was uncredited
as a bit player in almost every film he made.
In 1953, Martin Berkeley, a
Hollywood and television screenwriter, told the HUAC that for a short time he
belonged to a communist cell, or group that was run by Miller and his wife Patricia.
Miller made his last film appearance that year and suffering from chest cancer
he retired and died in 1956.
As for Martin Berkeley, he collaborated
with the House Un-American Activities Committee after being identified as a
commie by screenwriter, Richard Collins. Berkeley admitted he had been a party
member and agreed to cooperate with the committee's investigation. One study of
the period says he gave up 155 names, others say he named 161 people. Among those
he named were Dorothy Parker, Edward Chodorov, Michael Gordon, and Dashiell
Hammett. He also gave a highly negative portrait of writer John Howard Lawson
as the "grand Poo-Bah of the Communist movement" who "speaks
with the voice of Stalin and the bells of the Kremlin."