Hollywood Ten

Date: 1947

Place: Hollywood, California

Significance: The refusal of these film industry figures to answer questions posed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their affiliation with the Communist Party led to their being jailed and blacklisted within the industry

The Hollywood Ten

• 1.Alvah Bessie (1904-1985), screenwriter
• 2.Herbert Biberman (1900-1971), director
• 3.Lester Cole (1904?-1985), screenwriter
• 4.Edward Dmytryk (1908-), director
• 5.Ring Lardner, Jr. (1915-), screenwriter
• 6.John Howard Lawson (1894-1977), screenwriter
• 7.Albert Maltz (1908-1985), screenwriter
• 8.Sam Ornitz (1890-1957), screenwriter
• 9.Robert Adrian Scott (1912-1973), writer-producer
• 10.Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976), screenwriter

The struggle between the House Committee on Un-American Activities (also known as the House Un-American Activities Committee, or the HUAC) and the Hollywood Ten embodied, in a theoretical sense, the struggle between the right to national security and the right to believe, think, and speak without restraint and fear of reprisal. The case also involved the rights of a congressional committee to gather facts versus witnesses’ rights not to disclose information.

Background

In the United States membership in the Communist Party was bolstered in the 1930’s and 1940’s when Joseph Stalin asserted an antifascist stand and when the Soviet Union was a U.S. ally during World War II. With the end of the war, the not entirely unfriendly political climate between the United States and the Soviet Union gave way to the Cold War, a global confrontation between the ideologies of the two nations and, in the United States, between the subsequent conflict between guardians of internal security and protectors of civil rights. In February, 1944, Sam Wood and prominent Hollywood anti-Roosevelts formally founded the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, pledged to fight any effort to divert the loyalty of the film industry from American ideals. On May 9, 1947, J. Parnell Thomas, the chair of HUAC, arrived in Los Angeles and interviewed “friendly” witnesses. Their accusations created indignation in some and fear in others.

The Hearings

On September 21, 1947, Thomas subpoenaed forty-three members of the Hollywood film industry as witnesses before the committee in its October hearings in Washington. In reaction to this assault on civil liberties the Committee for the First Amendment was formed and included some of the most famous names in Hollywood. Among the forty-three were several witnesses eager to cooperate and nineteen commonly viewed as uncooperative. Of these, eleven proclaimed they would not testify. Of these, Bertolt Brecht testified only that he had never been a communist and subsequently fled the country. The others became known as the Hollywood Ten.

Alvah Bessie, a screenwriter who had collaborated on such screenplays as The Very Thought of You (1944), Hotel Berlin (1945), and Objective, Burma! (1945) was an active communist who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Herbert Biberman, who had directed such films as Meet Nero Wolf (1936) and The Master Race (1944), was active in the Communist Party. Lester Cole was a credentialed screenwriter, having worked on thirty-six films. He was running for reelection of the Screen Writers Guild executive board. Edward Dmytryk had directed twenty-four films, including two that were anti-anti-Semitic, Crossfire (1947) and Hitler’s Children (1943). He had left the party in 1945. Ring Lardner, Jr., had coauthored the Academy Award-winning screenplay Woman of the Year (1942) and was moving away from the party at the time of the hearings. John Howard Lawson, who had founded and was first president of the Screen Writers Guild, was also head of the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. He had written two of the most celebrated films depicting World War II, Action in the North Atlantic (1943) and Sahara (1943). Albert Maltz was an O. Henry Award recipient whose short stories had been widely anthologized. Among his screenplays are This Gun for Hire (1942), Pride of the Marines (1945), and Destination, Tokyo (1943). Sam Ornitz had written twenty-five film scripts, not as notable as those of the others. Robert Adrian Scott was a writer-producer whose career was beginning. With Dmytryk he had produced Crossfire (1947) and Cornered (1946) and Murder, My Sweet (1944) on his own. Dalton Trumbo was the highest paid writer in Hollywood. His films included Kitty Foyle (1940), Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944), and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945).

Before appearing the ten planned a joint strategy: each would read a prepared critical statement; sidestep questions about their political affiliation under the guise of giving testimony; and only, if necessary, resort to the Fifth Amendment. HUAC’s strategy, however, shattered their hopes for a dispassionate airing of controversial views. Thomas commenced the hearings by calling friendly witnesses who volunteered the names of communists and defended Hollywood against the charge of subversion. They were followed by some of Hollywood’s top leading men, who cast themselves as concerned patriots defending Hollywood against a conspiracy.

The first of the ten called, Lawson, was not allowed to read his statement. He was gaveled into silence for anything beyond a direct response to the question posed to him and cited for contempt of Congress when he refused to answer a question about his political affiliation. Louis J. Russell then testified to Lawson’s communist affiliation. This routine was followed with the other nine.

Aftermath

On November 24, 1947, Congress confirmed the committee’s contempt citations. Lawson’s trial was first with Trumbo’s following. When both were convicted, the remaining eight agreed to accept for themselves the final verdict in these trials after all appeals were exhausted. All appeals failed, and in April, 1950, the U. S. Supreme Court refused to hear the cases. On June 11, the two writers began their one-year prison sentence. The others soon followed. Ironically, Thomas, later convicted of fraud, served time in the same prison with Cole and Lardner. Except for Dmytryk, who later reversed his position, the ten became virtually unemployable. On November 24, 1947, fifty producers met in New York and drafted a document deploring the action of the ten and indirectly encouraging blacklisting and denunciation that would rock Hollywood and curtail civil liberties into the 1960’s. In 1951 a second wave of HUAC hearings were held.

Bibliography

Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund’s The Inquisition in Hollywood (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980) argues that despite renewed interest in the repression of radicalism in the Hollywood film industry little attention has been paid to the prior history of the men and women denounced and blacklisted. It gives the background and aftermath of the 1947 hearings. John Cogley’s Report on Blacklisting (New York: Arno Press, 1972) is a reprint of his 1956 report on blacklisting practices in the radio, television, and motion picture industries. This report attempts to present all points of view. Stefan Kanfer’s A Journal of the Plague Years (New York: Atheneum Press, 1973) concentrates on those left out of most histories of the period—the blacklisters, their collaborators, and the victims. The case of the Hollywood Ten has a prominent position. Victor S. Navasky’s Naming Names (New York: Viking Press, 1980) explores how the HUAC hearings transformed the naming of names, once strongly regarded as morally reprehensible in American culture, into an act of nobility. Members of the ten have also left autobiographical accounts, including Ring Lardner, Jr.’s The Lardners: My Family Remembered (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), Alvah Bessie’s Inquisition in Eden (New York: Macmillan, 1965), Edward Dmytryk’s It’s a Hell of a Life But Not a Bad Living (New York: Times Books, 1978), and Dalton Trumbo’s The Time of the Toad (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)