1950 The American right-wing media have never liked movie actors who get involved in politics, whether it’s radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh attacking Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J. Fox for exaggerating his tremors to get sympathy for a campaign for stem cell research, or Fox TV’s Bill O’Reilly laying into Martin Sheen for backing Jesse Jackson for president. These days the actors don’t mind; they can use the publicity.
But back when the red scare followed Russia’s first test nuclear bomb test (see 19 June), actors, producers and writers had the whole establishment against them – from the federal government right down to their own employers. From 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), originally formed in 1938 to gather information on communists, fascists and other threats to the American way of life, turned its attentions exclusively leftwards, with the Hollywood film industry squarely in its sights.
At first the committee subpoenaed screenwriters like Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner, Jr., Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo. Asked if they were, or ever had been, members of the Communist party, ten of the witnesses refused to answer, invoking the First Amendment in defence of free speech and the freedom of association. As a result they were formally charged with contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in prison. These became known as the ‘Hollywood Ten’. Instead of backing their workers, the studio bosses announced that the Ten would be fired without compensation, and would never work in Hollywood again.
Three years later, on this day, the HUAC published its ‘Red Channels’ blacklist, prelude to a second, more comprehensive wave of hearings. This time the victims were chosen to enhance the committee’s press coverage. Now actors figured alongside writers and producers – among them José Ferrer, Sam Jaffe, Zero Mostel and Orson Welles – and in place of screenwriters of whom no one had ever heard, celebrity playwrights like Arthur Miller (see 24 January) were subpoenaed.
Ironically, when right-wing actors go into politics, no one seems to notice. Charlton Heston was president of the very political National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003. As president of the Screen Actors’ Guild, Ronald Reagan double-crossed his own members by supporting moves to blacklist them. Thirteen years later, in a notorious letter to Playboy editor Hugh Hefner, he either denied – or more likely forgot – that there had ever been a blacklist. Yet he served two terms each as Governor of California and President of the United States.