The Hollywood Blacklist Myth : July 2020

John Wayne famously called High Noon “the most un-American thing I’ve seen in my whole life”

The film, written and co-produced by Carl Foreman, premiered on July 24, 1952 in New York City. Foreman was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during production., admitting being a member of the Communist Party in the early 1940s, but refused to provide names of other members and then fled to England (where he wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai).

High Noon was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, and received 4 (Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Score, Best Song). John Wayne accepted the Best Actor Award for the absent Gary Cooper and said that he was going to ask his “business manager, agent, and producer and writers” and find out why “I didn’t get High Noon and Coop did.” In fact, Wayne was offered the film first, but refused, as he believed “Foreman’s story was an obvious allegory against blacklisting.”

HUAC on film

Driven by Fear of Communist Reprisals, Pyonyang Koreans Flee, Scrambling Over the Twisted Grids of a Bombed-Out Taedong River Bridge”, Published in LIFE Magazine, Dec 18, 1950

This is tomorrow

Hollywood Hero:Thomas Leo McCarey

Thomas Leo McCarey (October 3, 1898 – July 5, 1969) was a three-time Academy Award winning film director, screenwriter and producer who was involved in the production of over 200 films including:

Duck Soup

Make Way for Tomorrow

The Awful Truth

Going My Way

The Bells of St. Mary's

My Son John

McCarey testified as a friendly witness early on in the hearings of the Un-American Activities Committee in Congress and made the popular anti-communist film My Son John (1952) and the equally anti-communist films Satan Never Sleeps (1962)

The problems we have with the Hollywood left

The problem we have with the Hollywood left is it's the notion that accepting differences is no longer good enough, you have to be complicit in them. The problem we have with the Hollywood left it's the notion that any differing opinion is a threat to your very way of existence but never the opposite. The problem we have with the Hollywood left is the blatant hypocrisy of claiming to care about democracy well on abashedly striving to take control of every step of the political process. The problem we have with the Hollywood left is the notion that any idea or opinion outside of your own ideology is morally repugnant and therefore needs to be silenced. The problem we have with the Hollywood left is the notion that your goals must be achieved using everyone resources regardless on whether they agree. The problem we have with the Hollywood left is their supporting of rights situationally when convenient and the outright rejection of those rights when it's in it's the inconvenient for you. The problem we have with the Hollywood left isthat somehow you know what's best for me enough to allow the government to make that choice for me The problem we have with the Hollywood left it's their failure to see the irony in labeling anyone different than yourself as an extremist or a fundamentalist. Originally written by Jason Blood. Edited for this page.

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.

For the most part, front organizations assumed the character of either a mass or membership organization or a paper organization. Both solicited and used names of prominent persons. Literally hundreds of groups and organizations have either been infiltrated or organized primarily to accomplish the purposes of promoting the interests of the Soviet Union in the United States, the promotion of Soviet war and peace aims, the exploitation of Negroes in the United States, work among foreign-language groups, and to secure a favorable viewpoint toward the Communists in domestic, political, social, and economic issues. The first requisite for front organizations is an idealistic sounding title. Hundreds of such organizations have come into being and have gone out of existence when their true purposes have become known or exposed while others with high-sounding names are continually springing up. J. Edgar Hoover on the subject of Communist front organizations. March 26, 1947