The Hollywood Ten

 

n 1947, the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, started an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people were interviewed voluntarily and were known as ‘friendly witnesses.’ During their interviews, they named nineteen people who they said held left-wing views.

   Ten of those people refused to answer any questions during the hearings thus became known as the Hollywood Ten. They were Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr.,  John Howard Lawson,  Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo. The ten men claimed that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to refuse to answer questions about their beliefs. The HUAC and, subsequently, the courts disagreed and all ten men were found guilty of contempt of congress. Each of them was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.

   In June 1950, Red Channels, a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers was published by three former FBI agents and a right-wing television producer named Vincent Harnett. They claimed all 151 people had been members of subversive organizations before the Second World War, although none had been blacklisted yet. The names were collected from FBI files and from a detailed analysis of the Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the American Communist Party.

   A free copy of Red Channels was sent to employers in the entertainment business. All the people named in the pamphlet were eventually blacklisted until they appeared in front of the HUAC and convinced its members their radical past had been renounced.

   Edward Dmytryk, one of the original Hollywood Ten, previously had financial problems because of divorcing his first wife. When he was faced with having to sell his plane, he was encouraged by his new wife to try to get his name removed from the blacklist.

   On April 25, 1951, Dmytryk went before the HUAC again. This time he answered all their questions including the naming of 26 former members of left-wing groups. Dmytryk also told the committee how people such as John Howard Lawson, Adrian Scott and Albert Maltz had put him under pressure to make his films express the views of the Communist Party. This was extremely damaging to those members of the original Hollywood Ten because they were involved in court cases with their previous employers during that time. Once these men refused to name names, their own names were added to the blacklist that had been drawn up by the Hollywood film studios.