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Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s

K. Lloyd Billingsley

4.14 · Rating details · 50 ratings · 7 reviews

In the fall of 1997 some of the biggest names in show business filled the Motion Picture Academy theater in Beverly Hills for Hollywood Remembers the Blacklist, a lavish production worthy of an Oscar telecast. In song, film, and live performances by stars such as Billy Crystal, Kevin Spacey, and John Lithgow, the audience relived a time some fifty years before, when, as th ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published October 28th 1998 by Crown

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Oct 07, 2018 Hugh Murray rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There is much interesting material in Billingsley's party book, but after reading it, I am convinced it should have covered much more. For example, Billingsley practically begins his account with the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL), a communist-front group in 1936. However, the Depression began in 1929, and by the early 1930s, the Communist Party made strident efforts to organize sharecroppers in the South; to organize the unemployed into councils that would restore the furnit There is much interesting material in Billingsley's party book, but after reading it, I am convinced it should have covered much more. For example, Billingsley practically begins his account with the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL), a communist-front group in 1936. However, the Depression began in 1929, and by the early 1930s, the Communist Party made strident efforts to organize sharecroppers in the South; to organize the unemployed into councils that would restore the furniture of evicted tenants into their former homes; to organize unions beyond the AFL's craft associations; and especially to appeal to Blacks to end lynching and racist “justice” in the South. One case illustrated the Party's new militancy regarding Southern injustice – the Scottsboro, Ala. rape cases that began in 1931. The Communist-front International Labor Defense (ILD) wrestled the liberal National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to defend the 9 “boys” accused of raping two young white women while riding a freight train, on which they were all hoboing. Eight of the 9 were quickly found guilty and sentenced to death; the 14-year-old merely received a long sentence. ILD attorneys appealed to the US Supreme Court, and when they won new trials, the ILD hired Samuel Leibowitz, a Democrat and noted attorney to defend the youths.
At the same time they provided a high-powered legal defense, the ILD and the Communist movement turned the case into a world-wide cause celebre, even having the mother of 2 of the boys tour Europe to expose America's racist justice. In 1932 Mother Wright addressed radical gatherings in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Britain, and Moscow, urging support for the young Blacks who might again face the death penalty. Petitions demanding freedom for the defendants were signed by many of the leading literary figures of the time, as well as Albert Einstein, Mme. Sun Yat Sen, and in America, Chief Red Cloud. Poetry from Muriel Rukeyser and Langston Hughes celebrated the Scottsboro boys. A play, “They Shall Not Die!” almost recreating one of the court rooms with testimony, ran on Broadway with a lengthy, rave review from the New York Times. But there was no Scottsboro movie.
At the 2nd trial, one of the 2 white women “victims,” recanted her accusations of rape against the Blacks; now maintaining that the jazz found in her by the doctor was the result of a tryst with her white boy friend the night before the train ride, in a hobo camp in Chattanooga. The other woman stuck to her story that she had been raped by 6 of the Blacks. She proclaimed she was a victim, even when Atty. Leibowitz tried to punch holes in her story. When pressed under oath about certain details, Victoria Price simply “disremembered.”
During the trial, the attending physician asked to speak with the judge in private. While officers held the door to the men's room shut, the doctor explained to the judge why he thought that the 2 women had not been raped. They had semen in them, but during the examination they were giggling and laughing, not the normal reaction after being raped by 6 strangers each. The judge, James Horton, instructed the doctor to repeat this on the stand under oath. The doctor explained that to do so would ruin his reputation and his practice. He would not so testify, and if called to the stand he would lie about it. The doctor was not called. The jury found the Black defendant guilty. However, Judge Horton voided the verdict, and there would have to be a 3rd round of Scottsboro trials. The government found a new judge, and Judge Horton was defeated in his bid for re-election, undoubtedly a consequence of his voiding the popular guilty verdict.
The new judge was not as lenient as Judge Horton. He would not allow any probing into the past history of the women or any implied insults against their character. Modern feminists might cheer his shielding of the female accuser from the harsh questioning by Atty. Leibowitz. The Daily Worker had a less favorable view of the judge who upheld the chivalrous notion of the “victim” - the DW called him Judge Ku Klux Callahan. Leibowitz was limited by the judge's rulings as to how far he could delve into Ms. Price's statements that sometimes contradicted other evidence. And the other woman, Ruby Bates, did not want to return to the hostile atmosphere in Alabama, so her previous testimony denying any rape was merely read into the record. In the summary before the jury, the new prosecutor of the case, Alabama's Atty General made the issue clear, “Don't sell Alabama justice to Jew money from New York.” The jury did not, and found the Blacks once again guilty. More appeals to the US Supreme Court, which the defense won. More trials. The case went on for years. But still no movie was made.
This was the major Communist issue from 1931 through 1934 and beyond. Billingsley quotes Communist screen writer Dalton Trumbo writing in 1946 that while communists usually had the power to veto production of films critical of the Party, they did not have sufficient power to have their own pro-communist films produced. (p. 92-93) The notion of a film where 2 white women falsely accuse 9 young Blacks of rape, and the Blacks are defended by Communists, - who would have made such a film in the 1930s? And who would watch such a film? Even around 1961 in New Orleans, “Raisin in the Sun” did not play the large white movie theaters, and when a white friend and I went to the Carver, a Black theater, to see it, they would not sell us tickets to enter.
However, Scottsboro and films would have wider repercussions. Hollywood was the center of the most popular films world-wide, but especially after the arrival of the talkies, national studios produced films for their constituents in their native languages, and dialects. Germany's Babelsberg had created some of the most important films of the silent 1920s, but continued into the sound era with “Three Penny Opera,” “Blue Angel,” and others. They continued to make startling films even after many from their film colony fled Germany for Hollywood. France and Britain were centers of the world's largest empires, and they both sought to quench the thirst for films about and in the languages of empire.
And on to the London stage, and shortly after, the British film stages, appeared the American All-American foot ball player from Princeton, valedictorian there, a man with a law degree from Columbia U. with a deep baritone voice he used to sing Negro spirituals amid his blossoming acting career. The Black American, Paul Robeson, would now star in British films about Africa. He would also befriend some of the extras in these movies, often young Africans studying at British universities. In this way Robeson encountered Nnamdi Azikiwe and Johnstone Kenyatta, and later in different contexts, Kwame Nkrumah and the Indian, Jawaharlal Nehru. It was the 1930s, the Scottsboro rape cases dragged on, and to publicize the injustice, a Scottsboro Defence Committee was organized in Britain, with 2 co-chairs: Paul Robeson and Johnstone Kenyatta.
In 1935 the Hollywood musical “Show Boat” would hit the screens. Robeson had been popular enough so that the character of Joe was written into the stage version and then the film version just for Robeson. He had played it on the New York and London stages, and now in the movie in which he sang “Old Man River.” In 1939 Robeson returned to the US, and in the early 1940s, starred in Othello, which proved to be the longest-running Shakespearean play on Broadway till that time (and that record may stand today). However, because of the Hollywood blacklist of Reds, when MGM remade “Show Boat” in 1954, Robeson the radical was replaced by another baritone. When Orson Welles produced a filmed version of Othello in 1951, the Moor Wells played was quite light skinned. A very black Robeson would have been as out of place in this production as his politics. A Soviet version of 1956 also de-emphacized the racial aspects of the play. In 1965 the British did make a filmed version of the play with a Black Othello, but the Black was Laurence Olivier in make-up. If Robeson was being denied movie opportunities because of the anti-red Blacklist, he was seeking for other opportunities.
When Robeson returned to America in 1939, he was quite popular. He sang a patriotic cantata, “What is America to Me?” (“The House I Live In” is the official title) on CBS to a wide audience. He was acting in Othello. And he was speaking to young Blacks recently organized as the Southern Negro Youth Congress (the first “snick”), which aimed to increase civil rights. (In 1949, SNYC would be placed on Pres. Truman's Atty General's list of subversive organizations.) During WWII Robeson's sympathies for the Soviets, who were fighting and finally defeating the German Nazis, was often warmly received. President Roosevelt rhimself eferred to Stalin as “Uncle Joe,” and FDR's Vice President, Henry Wallace, along with many others in FDR's administration were openly friendly to the USSR. For the presidential election of 1944 conservative Democrats demanded that FDR replace Wallace on the ticket, and after a struggle at the Democratic convention, Harry Truman won the nomination for vice-president on the ticket. Wallace was demoted to Sec. of Commerce. Soon after the election, Roosevelt died and Truman became president. Then VE day, followed a few months later by the atomic bombing of 2 Japanese cities and the entrance into the war of the USSR; Japan sued for peace.
Billingsley points out, that the cold war began almost immediately. Billingsley connects the article by French Communist leader Jacques Duclos, echoing the thoughts of Stalin, that American CP leader, Earl Browder, had erred when he dissolved the CPUSA, and Browder was wrong when he implied that the friendliness of the wartime alliance would continue. Browder was ousted, and William Z. Foster, a hardliner replaced him as head of the American party. America was now viewed as incipiently fascist, and more determined Ccommunist struggle was required. So the Communist controlled unions in Hollywood looked for jurisdictional overlaps, where the red unions could push for open disputes with the non-communist organizations. The Cold War in Hollywood was evident by spring 1945 when the red-led CSU began a strike with picket lines to gain power in the film industry.
And in Europe, things were not returning to the pre-war era. Winston Churchill, who had led Britain throughout the war, was defeated at the polls by the Labour Party which discussed dismantling the British Empire! The chastened Churchill in 1946 visited the US and gave a speech asserting that an “iron curtain” had been thrust down by the Soviets, dividing Europe from Stettin to Triest. While many like Truman listened with interest, others like Sec. Wallace thought Churchill was simply trying to bolster the British Empire and promote rearmament at the expense of peace.
It was determined that the peace-loving Americans should take a stand, and to lead them, Henry Wallace showed his willingness. Truman fired Wallace from the Cabinet, and Wallace sought to create a new Progressive Party (PP), that would opposed the imperialisms of Britain, France, the Dutch, etc. It would strive for racial harmony, economic justice, even mild socialism. Above all, it would strive for peace with the USSR and hailed new “reform” elements fighting for power in China and elsewhere in Asia. To co-chair the new PP (which had the full support of the older, smaller, Communist Party, noted entertainer Paul Robeson accepted that post. The left-wing CIO unions supported Wallace, while the majority of the CIO stuck with Truman. Wallace gained the support of many civil rights organizations, the ILD, the National Negro Congress, SNYC, Robeson's Council on African Affairs, the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, etc. The NAACP, by contrast, had Democratic Pres. Harry Truman address its convention. When the only Black founder of the NAACP, W E B Du Bois, announced he was supporting Wallace rather than Truman, the NAACP fired Du Bois. With this purge, the NAACP essentially became a Democratic Party front group but it still pretends to be a non-partisan organization for tax purposes. Du Bois, openly Progressive, hostile to Western imperialism, supportive of anti-colonial revolutions, found that he was not even rehired at Atlanta U. The Progressive Party candidates campaigned in the South; it was the civil rights movement before the official movement. Many names of people involved in civil rights activities of the mid-1950s and 60s first came to prominence by partaking in civil rights connected with the campaign for Wallace and the PP. Even the enemies of civil rights. When PP Vice-Presidential candidate, Sen. Glenn Taylor visited Birmingham to campaign, he was scheduled to address a meeting of the SNYC, but Police Commissioner Bull Connor had him arrested when he entered the colored entrance of the building. Wallace, Taylor, Robeson were defying segregation laws when they campaigned in the South.
However, in November 1948 Wallace and the PP performed much below their expected vote (as did the anticipated winner, Thomas Dewey). Originally some thought Wallace might receive 5 to 8 million votes; he received only 1.1 million or 2.4%. Unions and organizations that supported the PP were now classified as subversive, and, especially in the South, jobs were lost. When Robeson scheduled a concert in a park outside of NYC, state troopers looked on as anti-Communists threw stones at the cars, blocking traffic, injuring many, and serving notice that Robeson, or any who sympathized with the Communists, would not be allowed to perform. The irony is that as Robeson thus began a period of isolation and lack of influence, blacklist, and denial of a passport, some of those whom he mentored were on the rise. Nkrumah was active in the Gold Coast, and when it declared independence from Britain in 1957, Nkrumah would become the first leader of the new nation of Ghana. Similarly, Robeson's friend, Azikiwe would soon be the leader of the new independent nation of Nigeria. It would take longer for Johnstone. He returned to Africa and was soon involved in a major uprising against British rule. But Johnstone, now known as Jomo, would give something back to the English – a new word, Mau Mau. When Hollywood made a film in 1957, “Something of Value,” it pitted 2 native Kenyans against each other – one, Rock Hudson, son of a white landowner, and the other, Sidney Poitier, a Black Kenyan who grew up on the land. Raised as brothers, they will end in a deadly struggle, one for Britain, the other for the Mau Mau. Of course, in the Hollywood film, the revolutionary Mau Mau leader looses. Yet, reality does not always follow Hollywood scripts. In time, Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta would be recognized as the leader of an independent Kenya. (In the 1950s and 60s, with the collapse of colonialism, most assumed that the newly independent nations would soon rise from the Third World to the prosperity and democracy of the First. However, for many of the new nations, independence would soon mean corruption, starvation, return to slavery, and slaughter.)
Just as Robeson had nurtured African students in Britain in the 1930s, the CPUSA had nurtured Black artists in New York and beyond. Richard Wright was encouraged to write by the CP, and included real Communists, like Mary Dalton, in some of his fiction. The party would review his books, help in finding publishers, etc. But by the end of WWII, Wright had turned against the CP, and one of his essays was included in the anti-communist volume, “The God that Failed.” Claude McKay had earlier left the CP for the Roman Catholic church. George Padmore had left the CP for a more Black Nationalist approach. C L R James, author of the important history of the slave rebellion in Haiti, was a Trotskyist, a heretic, and the CP sought to isolate and destroy his influence. But in New York there were those in the CP or close to it who would become influential – Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier. Some of these would shoot to stardom with the Civil Rights Movement of the late 50s and 60s. Did the CP have such a group to encourage Blacks in Hollywood? I suspect they must have had special outreach for Blacks and Hispanics, but there is no mention of this in Billingsley.
There were 2 films “inspired” by the Scottsboro case, but they they were not produced until the 1950s, and the case was camouflaged to the point of distortion. In the Southern Gothic “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), which centers on the white attorney, appointed by a local Alabama judge, to defend a Black man accused of raping a white woman. Gregory Peck played the attorney. Alabama in the 1930s and long after was a segregated society. At one point, Peck must sit guard at the jail, as local townspeople want to lynch his client. With some ice breaking by his young daughter, Peck is able to get the crowd to leave, and leave his client alone. But there are threats against Peck, too, for defending the Black. Peck's skills in court readily expose the contradictions in the woman's story. But when on the stand, the accused Black admits that she kissed him when he had helped her chop wood, a taboo was broken. The Black was found guilty. Soon Peck is informed that when being transferred to another jail, the Black was shot dead while trying to escape. Soon thereafter, at Halloween, Peck's children, in costumes, are attacked, by one, and then another man intervenes to help them. The father of the accusing woman is later found dead in that area of the forest; presumably he was trying to harm the children, while a mentally crippled neighbor came to their defense and saved them. This was a good story, set in 1930s Alabama, but a long way from the Scottsboro case. Though the Harper Lee novel is often assigned in schools, though it avoids many of the issues raised by Scottsboro, it does show the difficulties of achieving justice in the deep South of the 1930s.
A closer rendition of the Scottsboro case was made earlier, in 1955, when “Trial” starred Glenn Ford. The scene is 1947 California and a Mexican, Angel Chavez, who attends the same school as an Anglo sees her on the beach and they talk. She has rheumatic heart problems, and when his hands wander onto her, she collapses, dies. Chavez is charged with felony rape and murder. As she was underage, even if she had consented, it would have been rape, and she died, so felony murder. The locals want to lynch the Mexican, but authorities assure the crowd he will be executed after his trial. Meanwhile, Ford, a professor of law, is now required to gain court-room experience to retain his teaching post. The naive professor is hired by a small law firm led by Atty. Castle to defend the young Chavez. Castle enlists Chavez's mother to help in raising funds for the cause. He even demands Ford come to New York to appear at a rally. It is a large rally for the Peoples Party (Progressive Party), and a W E B DuBois character makes a rare appearance in a Hollywood film – as the senile de la Farge who is to keep the crowd awake droning the party line before the main event and while most are still finding their seats. The cynics then make pleas for this cause and that. Angel Chavez's is a new cause, so Ford's speech and the mother's will bring in the cash. Ford is suddenly aware he is dealing with Communists. Castle's secretary explains that Castle's goal is not to save Chavez, but to maximize the publicity when he is convicted, to show the world America's murderous, racist judicial system. ...more

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Nov 10, 2011 Edward Waverley marked it as to-read

Shelves: cambria-will-not-yield

FROM CAMBRIA: First of all, the book’s title is a bit of a misnomer. It should be titled, “How Communism Failed to Seduce the American Film Industry in the ’30’s and ’40’s but Succeeded in Doing So in the ’60’s and ’70’s,” for what Kenneth Billingsley presents is a rather surprisingly ineffective campaign on the part of the communists to have a major impact on the type of films Americans viewed. Plenty of screenwriters did become communists, but they never could bring themselves to write the com FROM CAMBRIA: First of all, the book’s title is a bit of a misnomer. It should be titled, “How Communism Failed to Seduce the American Film Industry in the ’30’s and ’40’s but Succeeded in Doing So in the ’60’s and ’70’s,” for what Kenneth Billingsley presents is a rather surprisingly ineffective campaign on the part of the communists to have a major impact on the type of films Americans viewed. Plenty of screenwriters did become communists, but they never could bring themselves to write the communist propaganda that the Party demanded, mainly because the few propaganda pictures that did get into theaters bombed. Propaganda films were bad box office.

What Billingsley does document for us is the communist influence among Hollywood personalities in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It really is nothing different from what was going on at the universities at the time. The communists would seek out left-leaning liberals like Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart and get them to shill for nice-sounding organizations that were really communist front organizations. In fact, the majority of actors and writers at that time were to the left of center. Walt Disney, John Wayne, Adolph Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor, and Ward Bond were notable exceptions.

The book is a “just the facts, ma’am” type of book. The author doesn’t draw any conclusions but does present the reader with enough information to draw his own conclusions. The book is advertised as the “untold story,” but the story has been told often by conservatives, albeit not as often as the leftist version is told by the liberals. Which is why this book is useful: it sets the record straight about the so-called bad old blacklisting days.

However, I must admit that the facts as Billingsley presents them led me to conclude that the House Un-American Activities Committee was one of the stupidest ideas ever conceived. The 1960’s and 1970’s witnessed a huge increase in mainstream communist propaganda films because anyone who opposed them was tarred with the same brush as the ineffectual House Committee and McCarthy.

The old adage that you either have to kill a rat or let it alone should be applied to communists. Either kill them or let them alone. But don’t give them an opportunity to claim martyr status for having suffered a few anxious moments before a toothless board of inquiry.

Quite revealing is Billingsley’s account of the treatment accorded ex-communists who talked to the Committee. Men like Edward Dmytryk and Elia Kazan were victims of an anti-anti-communist blacklist that was far harsher than any so-called right-wing blacklist. Indeed, as Billingsley shows, there was no great persecution. Blacklisted writers could use assumed names, and repentant communists were welcomed back into the fold by the film industry. Only Ward Bond, tough guy that he was, was against letting even repentant communists back into the film industry.

The liberals have turned the blacklisting era into a major propaganda triumph, but this book shows any objective reader that there were real communists in Hollywood during that era who tried to use the film industry to advance their agenda. That they failed was more a tribute to the ’30’s and ’40’s moviegoer who preferred the movies of Alfred Hitchcock (a man hated by the communists) and Westerns to commie propaganda films. Yet, sappy propaganda films did capture the popular imagination during the 1960’s and 1970’s, so perhaps the inability to appreciate a good story goes hand in hand with communism.

This book is valuable in what it can elicit from the reader. I would hope that thoughtful readers would ask themselves why so many actors, directors, and creative people are leftist, and why conservative views do not seem to inspire creative types. I would suggest it is because 20th century conservatives lack a metaphysic. In centuries prior to the 20th, there were always men of the right in the arts and in the military willing to champion the cause of God, King, and country. But no one with any poetic instincts wants to champion free markets and greed. Marxism is a delusion from which great poets such as Whittaker Chambers eventually walk away. But it has an enduring appeal to the lesser poets who quite rightly see nothing inspirational in capitalism.

There is no question the seeds of communist dissension were being planted in the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s, but the Christian morality of the American populace had not been sufficiently contaminated to produce tangible results. Two things were necessary to make Americans more tolerant of communism. One was a breakdown in sexual mores, which did indeed take place in the 1960’s, and the second was a major change in the United States immigration policies, which also took place in the 1960’s. White technocrats make up the communist elite, but the major resistance to communism also comes from white people. When a nation is mongrelized, there is no longer any resistance to communism. ...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Michael rated it liked it

Recommends it for: American historians, film historians, poli sci students

Recommended to Michael by: Serendipity

Shelves: media-studies, popular-history, politics

I read this shortly before I entered grad school, so it got a bit of a pass, since my critical faculties weren't yet as developed. It is better than one might expect for a popular work pushing a political agenda, and some good points are raised in terms of the "usual" story presented in mass media regarding the Hollywood Blacklist and/or "McCarthy era." While academic historians may be more careful, it is not uncommon in the mainstream to hear McCarthy’s name connected with the Hollywood Seven ( I read this shortly before I entered grad school, so it got a bit of a pass, since my critical faculties weren't yet as developed. It is better than one might expect for a popular work pushing a political agenda, and some good points are raised in terms of the "usual" story presented in mass media regarding the Hollywood Blacklist and/or "McCarthy era." While academic historians may be more careful, it is not uncommon in the mainstream to hear McCarthy’s name connected with the Hollywood Seven (he was in no way involved in that case), or to hear generalizations about how the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) hounded people for information, imprisoned them and prevented them for working for decades, with the blame going to people like Elia Kazan, who “named names” and betrayed his fellow artists. This version of the story is, of course, ridiculously oversimplified, and Billingsley’s intention is to complicate it for us.

Billingsley’s thesis is pretty well summarized in his subtitle: Cold War-era concerns about Communists in Hollywood were justified because the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) had, in fact, infiltrated heavily into the industry and established a great deal of control before the Second World War. This is not simply a right-wing conspiracy theory, it is certainly true that the Communist International (Comintern) had a budget for propaganda in the United States, and that by the 1930s, they had shifted strategy away from efforts at mass recruitment and toward a more limited “vanguard” approach that would influence American popular attitudes in a more subtle manner. Billingsley finds that the efforts were most successful in the Writers’ Guild and more limited among actors and directors, particularly during the period of the “Popular Front,” when Comintern policy was to make common cause with progressive, socialist, and left-liberal organizations and individuals, with especial focus on combating the spread of fascism. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 brought this to an end, with only the most die-hard Communists willing to support a movement that whitewashed the betrayal of Poland and reversed its line on Hitler. The CPUSA rapidly lost power, but fought a rear-guard action to retain as much influence as it could on American mass media.

As far as this, the alternative narrative Billingsley proposes is reasonable enough. In some of the details, however, he leans a little too far to the other side, and seems to use his sources questionably in places. He quotes extensively from Kazan’s memoirs in support of his argument that his actions were not “betrayals” of decent people, but rather were reasonable actions against people who had acted against Kazan, but he ignores passages in which Kazan denies that organizations like “the Group” were Communist fronts and insists that many types of people joined. For Billingsley, a great many organizations are front groups, simply because they supported Popular Front causes and included a few Communist Party members (guilt by association). Similarly, his use of the term “blacklist” and his assertion that these were introduced by the Communist Party to Hollywood seems questionable at times. He cites archival sources to claim that the Communists were able to “blacklist” Leni Riefenstahl and prevent her from working in Hollywood, but it is unclear from his citation that she actually wanted to, or that the source confirmed that this was done, or merely talked about between Communist Party members. In order for a blacklist to be effective, the holders of the list must actually have the power to deny jobs, and it is not always clear that this was so.

Ultimately Billingsley’s book is too imprecise to be completely convincing, but it's worth a look for those who are interested in the period. Certainly for those with no knowledge of the actual power of the Comintern and the early CPUSA will find much here of interest, but for specialists there will be little new, and the book’s primary appeal is its accessibility and sensational subject matter. ...more

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May 08, 2012 Shea Mastison rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was an interesting challenge to the accepted narrative concerning the "persecution" of Communists in Hollywood during the Cold War. One chapter of the book, entitled "Those Witches Did Not Exist; Communists Do" pretty much sums up the entire thrust of the author's argument. Many noted stars and film-making hands were influenced or affected by the congressional hearings covering the Communist infiltration of Hollywood; and many are convinced nowadays that they were an unfairly persecuted gro ...more

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Oct 24, 2015 Frederick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a very interesting book and well worth the read. If you are a fan of Hollywood movies, and I mean the great movies of the past like Spartacus, East of Eden, Splendor in the Grass, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and many, many more this book will hold your interest from beginning until the end. The influence of the Communist Party in Hollywood since the 1930's is astounding. Thoroughly cited, great appendices, and index this book delivers the goods it promises. I recommend i ...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: anti-communism

Why do you suppose we had HUAC, the Red Scare of the 1950's, McCarthyism, etc.? Because before there was a blacklist, and all the cruelty and suffering that came with it, there really was an organized attempt by Communists to impart their ideology through motion pictures.

Did you know that decades before today's Hollywood imposed a voluntary variety of political correctness on much of its political product, there was a time when Communist writers actually submitted their scripts to a Party censor ...more

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