(1) Edward Dmytryk, interviewed by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (25th April, 1951)

John Howard Lawson settled all questions. If there was a switch in the Party line, he explained it. If there were any decisions to be made, they went to John Howard Lawson. If there was any conflict within the Communist Party, he was the one who settled it. We had a third meeting at which Adrian Scott brought Albert Maltz, who was a more liberal Communist, to defend us. These meetings ended in a stalemate.

Albert Maltz had been concerned about the lack of freedom of thought in the Communist Party for some time, and this was the trigger for the article he wrote for the New Masses on freedom of thought which was so widely discussed. So he wrote the article which he later had to repudiate or get out of the Party, and he chose to repudiate it.

 

(2) Edward Dmytryk wrote about his decision to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee in his autobiography, It's a Hell of a Life (1978)

I had long been convinced that the fight of the Ten was political; that the battle for freedom of thought, in which I believed that I was being forced to sacrifice my family and my career in defense of the Communist Party, from which I had long been separated and which I had grown to dislike and distrust. I knew that if it ever got down to a choice between the Party and our traditional democratic structure I would fight the Party and our traditional democratic structure I would fight the Party to the bitter end.

 

(3) Larry Parks agreed to talk about his own involvement in the Communist Party but was at first unwilling to give the names of other former members when he testified in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (October, 1947).

I would prefer, if you would allow me, not to mention other people's names. Don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer. I have two boys, one thirteen months, one two weeks. Is this the kind of heritage that you would like to hand down to your children.

 

(4) Statement issued after a meeting of the Hollywood Motion Picture Producers (24th November, 1947)

Members of the Association of Motion Picture Producers deplore the action of the 10 Hollywood men who have been cited for contempt. We do not desire to prejudge their legal rights, but their actions have been a disservice to their employers and have impaired their usefulness to the industry.

We 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.

On the broader issues of alleged subversive and disloyal elements in Hollywood, our members are likewise prepared to take positive action. We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or by illegal or unconstitutional methods. In pursuing this policy, we are not going to be swayed by hysteria or intimidation from any source. We are frank to recognize that such a policy involves dangers and risks. There is the danger of hurting innocent people. There is the risk of creating an atmosphere of fear. Creative work at its best cannot be carried on in an atmosphere of fear. To this end we will invite the Hollywood talent guilds to work with us to eliminate any subversives, to protect the innocent, and to safeguard free speech and a free screen wherever threatened.

 

(5) Richard Collins was interviewed by Victor Navasky when he was writing his book, Naming Names (1982)

I don't think that anyone on either side came off very well. But my feeling was that I had been out of the Communist Party for a great many years and had a certain hostility toward the Soviet Union (but certainly not toward the men whom I had been in with, because I understand them and I knew that in the main they were very well motivated). I hadn't actually worked except under the table since 1947. So it was not for me a matter of, "Well, I'm going to bounce back and go to work." It turned out that that's what happened finally, but that was not the primary consideration.

 

(6) Dalton Trumbo, speech to the Screen Writers Guild when accepting the Laurel Award in 1970.

The blacklist was a time of evil, and that no one on either side who survived it came through untouched by evil. Caught in a situation that had passed beyond the control of mere individuals, each person reacted as his nature, his needs, his convictions, and his particular circumstances compelled him to. There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides.

When you who are in your forties or younger look back with curiosity on that dark time, as I think occasionally you should, it will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims. Some suffered less than others, some grew and some diminished, but in the final tally we were all victims because almost without exception each of us felt compelled to say things he did not want to say, to do things that he did not want to do, to deliver and receive wounds he truly did not want to exchange. That is why none of us - right, left, or centre - emerged from that long nightmare without sin.

 

(7) Albert Maltz, one of the Hollywood Ten, was interviewed by the New York Times in 1972.

There is currently in vogue a thesis pronounced by Dalton Trumbo which declares that everyone during the years of blacklist was equally a victim. This is factual nonsense and represents a bewildering moral position.

To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.

Adrian Scott was the producer of the notable film Crossfire in 1947 and Edward Dmytryk was its director. Crossfire won wide critical acclaim, many awards and commercial success. Both of these men refused to co-operate with the HCUA. Both were held in contempt of the HCUA and went to jail.

When Dmytryk emerged from his prison term he did so with a new set of principles. He suddenly saw the heavenly light, testified as a friend of the HCUA, praised its purposes and practices and denounced all who opposed it. Dmytryk immediately found work as a director, and has worked all down the years since. Adrian Scott, who came out of prison with his principles intact, could not produce a film for a studio again until 1970. He was blacklisted for 21 years. To assert that he and Dmytryk were equally victims is beyond my comprehension.

 

(8) Budd Schulberg was interviewed by Victor Navasky when he was writing his book, Naming Names (1982)

These people (those he named), if they had it in them, could have written books and plays. There was not a blacklist in publishing. There was not a blacklist in the theatre. They could have written about the forces that drove them into the Communist Party. They were practically nothing written. Nor have I seen these people interested in social problems in the decades since. They're interested in their own problems and in the protection of the Party.

 

(9) Abraham Polonsky, explained in an interview with Victor Navasky, what he felt towards the people who named him as a member of the Communist Party.

In most cases the informers picked a route that seemed to them an easy solution to a difficult problem; in other words, they could handle their own friends, whom they testified against, better than they could handle the U.S. government harassing them. Schulberg just has to explain one thing: Why did he become an informer when they forced him to? And why didn't he become an informer before they forced him to? The reason was that before, he thought it wasn't a good thing to do. The Nazis pointed a gun up against his head and said, "Look, give us some names," and he says, "Yeah, I hate those guys anyway."

I wish they had acted better, but they're not all Adolf Hitler's. That's all. I myself don't want to have anything to do with them. After all, I was on the ship and they got off and let us go down. In fact, the only way they could get off was by putting us down. That's the peculiar feeling: it wasn't only that they took the lifeboats from the Titanic, you know; they pulled the plugs.

 

(10) Michael Wilson, speech at a meeting of the Writers Guild of America (1976)

I don't want to dwell on the past, but for a few moments to speak of the future. And I address my remarks particularly to you younger men and women who had perhaps not established yourself in this industry at the time of the great witch hunt. I feel that unless you remember this dark epoch and understand it, you may be doomed to replay it. Not with the same cast of characters, of course, or on the same issues. But I see a day perhaps coming in your lifetime, if not in mine, when a new crisis of belief will grip this republic; when diversity of opinion will be labeled disloyalty; and when extraordinary pressures will be put on writers in the mass media to conform to administration policy on the key issues of the time, whatever they may be. If this gloomy scenario should come to pass, I trust that you younger men and women will shelter the mavericks and dissenters in your ranks, and protect their right to work. The Guild will have the use and need of rebels if it is to survive as a union of free writers. This nation will have need of them if it is to survive as an open society.

 

(11) Larry Ceplair, Screen Actors Guild and the Motion Picture Blacklist (1998)

From 1947 to 1961, your ability to work in Hollywood's motion picture industry strictly depended on whether or not your name appeared on a list of suspected Communist activists or sympathizers. The blacklist. Based on the growing threat of Communism at that time; the era was a full-scale assault on individuals and groups who had promoted political change and social reform in America since the start of the Great Depression in 1929. This attack on personal freedom was led by the Congress of the United States. It was strongly supported by an alarmingly diverse band of helpers ranging from our government's executive branch to the AFL-CIO to church groups, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and employers in America's media, information, and educational industries.

Dozens of citizens were jailed, hundreds moved to other countries, and thousands lost their jobs. Several of the accused died from the stress and strain of having their personal beliefs and opinions ominously questioned by their own government and the labor unions to which they belonged. Those who were not personally or professionally persecuted became self-censoring and timid in order to keep their paychecks and avoid being publicly condemned and denounced. As a result, a pall of mediocrity settled over cultural and artistic production in America.

The quality of American movies produced during the blacklist era did not suffer simply because several hundred screen artists were denied work in their chosen professions for well over a decade. The blacklisted were not necessarily the leading or most proficient practitioners of their individual crafts. There were hundreds of other artists just as capable of doing their work, and, as always, many younger artists eager to take work wherever it could be found. Nor did the content of domestic films decline because of the absence of the blacklisted. The quality of movies suffered because studios and producers were simply afraid to make movies that appeared in any way critical of the United States, and artists, mainly writers, began censoring themselves. To regain the favor of HUAC and Congress, the studios started turning out dozens of manipulative anti-Communist movies and films celebrating American military power like Bombers B-52.

 

McCarthyism in America

McCarthyism