Hollywood Ten

Hollywood Ten, in U.S. history, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in October 1947 and refused to answer questions regarding their possible communist affiliations. As a result, they were mostly blacklisted by the Hollywood studios and were convicted and imprisoned for contempt of Congress. They had been summoned to Washington, D.C., in the early years of the Cold War, a time of growing fears about Soviet influence in the United States, and their persecution was a part of what became known as the Second Red Scare. The Hollywood Ten were Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo.

Background

Congressional committees had investigated Hollywood for political subversion on several earlier occasions. These included a predecessor to HUAC, known as the Dies Committee for its chair, Rep. Martin Dies, Jr., which in the late 1930s and early ’40s conducted several inquiries, including into film workers’ suspected membership in the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). A separate probe, beginning in 1941 and led by isolationist Senators Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye, investigated Hollywood’s alleged role in advocating for the U.S. entry into World War II and for creating anti-Nazi propaganda.

The United States and the U.S.S.R. became short-lived allies (1941–45) during World War II, and there was a reprieve from congressional scrutiny for several years. Even so, in 1944 conservatives in Hollywood—including such notables as Walt Disney, Sam Wood, and Clarence Brown—formed the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI), which sought to combat what it perceived as the growing influence of totalitarianism, especially communism, in the film industry. In addition, in July 1946 William R. Wilkerson, the founding editor of The Hollywood Reporter trade magazine, began publishing columns denouncing alleged communist influence; eight of the eventual Hollywood Ten were named in Wilkerson’s first article. After the Republican Party gained control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections, the new chair of HUAC, Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, initiated a renewed investigation into communist influence in Hollywood.

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Investigation and hearings

Thomas interviewed industry leaders, including members of the MPAPAI, in May 1947 in Los Angeles and announced shortly afterward that he suspected that “90 percent of Communist infiltration” had occurred among film screenwriters. He also claimed to have found evidence that the wartime Franklin D. Roosevelt administration had exerted pressure to create pro-Soviet films, including Song of Russia (1944). In September HUAC sent subpoenas to 43 potential witnesses, including both anticommunists and 19 people under suspicion of being CPUSA sympathizers or members.

In advance of the hearings, the 19 so-called “unfriendly” witnesses met to discuss their strategy. They ultimately settled on a plan to refuse to answer the committee’s questions and instead argue that their freedom of speech under the Bill of Rights meant that they were not required to discuss their personal political beliefs. They expected that position to be supported by constitutional law governing legislative investigative powers, including the Supreme Court case Kilbourn v. Thompson (1881), which held that Congress may not inquire “into the private affairs of the citizen.”

The HUAC hearings began on October 20. In addition to calling on industry leaders, including studio heads Jack Warner, Disney, and Louis B. Mayer, Thomas ultimately called 11 of the 19 unfriendly witnesses to appear. Of that group, only the German playwright Bertolt Brecht answered the committee’s questions and explicitly denied ever being a communist. (Brecht, who was not a U.S. citizen, left the country on the day following his inquest.) The remaining 10 generally refused to confirm or deny their affiliation with the CPUSA and instead attempted to read statements contesting the legitimacy of HUAC’s inquiry. The hearings at times devolved into shouting matches between the witnesses and Thomas and other committee members. Notably, after Trumbo was dismissed from the stand, he declared, “This is the beginning of an American concentration camp!”

Convictions and formation of the blacklist

As a result, the 10 men were held in contempt of Congress on November 24 by a tally of 346–17. That same day the Motion Picture Association of America convened a meeting of film industry leaders. The following day the group released what became known as the Waldorf Statement, which said that the employers of the Hollywood Ten “will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ, and we will not re-employ any of the 10 until such time as he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a communist.” That marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist.

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Over the following years the Hollywood Ten were ultimately convicted in federal court and given sentences of six months to one year in prison. After his release from prison, in 1951, Dmytryk broke with the rest and agreed to cooperate with HUAC, admitting to having been a communist and giving the names of 26 others, and he was allowed to work in Hollywood again. The other nine were severely blacklisted by the film industry. Most were never again employed in Hollywood, although some did write scripts under pseudonyms. As “Robert Rich,” Trumbo won an Academy Award for best motion picture story for The Brave One (1956); he was recognized as the rightful recipient of the award in 1975. In addition, in 1993 Trumbo was posthumously awarded a second screenwriting Oscar, for Roman Holiday (1953), which had originally been credited to Ian McLellan Hunter.

After a pause HUAC resumed hearings into communism in Hollywood in 1951, creating bitter divides between those who testified and “named names”—famously including director Elia Kazan—versus those who refused to do so. The blacklist remained in force until the early 1960s. Thereafter Trumbo and Lardner wrote screenplays under their own names.