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Hollywood's Blacklists
A Political and Cultural History
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Book Presentation:
'Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?' That question was to be repeated endlessly during the anti-Communist investigations carried out by the House Committee on un-American Activities (HUAC) in the early 1950s. The refusal of ten members of the film industry to answer the question in 1947 led to the decision by studio bosses to fire them and never to hire known Communists in the future. The Hearings led to scores of actors, writers and directors being named as Communists or sympathisers. All were blacklisted and fired.
Hollywood's Blacklists is a history of the political and cultural factors relevant to understanding the why and the how of the various investigations of the alleged Communist infiltration of Hollywood. What was HUAC? What propaganda role did films play during World War II and the Cold War? What values were at stake in the confrontation between Left and Right that saw the former so resoundingly defeated and expelled from Hollywood? Answers to these and other questions are offered via analyses of the motives of the various players and of the tactics deployed by HUAC to reward collaboration and punish dissent.
Key themes include:
• Trade unionism in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s
• Anti-Semitism and Nazism, Hollywood anti-Nazi propaganda films and the patriotic war effort
• The Cold War and concomitant hostility to all dissidence
• The consequences for Hollywood: the collapse of the liberal-Communist consensus; naming names; exile for many and the use of 'fronts' by blacklisted writers.
Press Reviews:
The book is written with passion and insight, based on solid research and a strong understanding of film. It is all a reader can ask.– Gregory D. Black, University of Missouri-Kansas City, American Studies Journal
The book is written with passion and insight, based on solid research and a strong understanding of film. It is all a reader can ask.– Gregory D. Black, University of Missouri-Kansas City, American Studies Journal
The book is written with passion and insight, based on solid research and a strong understanding of film. It is all a reader can ask.– University of Missouri-Kansas City Gregory D. Black, American Studies Journal
The finest overview currently in print of the blacklist era.– M. D. Whitlatch, Buena Vista University, Choice
The finest overview currently in print, of the blacklist era... He also provides one of the best explanations this reviewer has read of the tactics the Hollywood Ten used at 1947 hearings and how their behavior before the House Un-American Activities Committee led many of their supporters to abandon them. The endnotes are excellent. Summing Up: Essential. All readers.– M. D. Whitlatch, Buena Vista University, Choice
Humphries’s book is insightful and innovative in its approach. The author’s readings of films as presented in Hollywood’s Blacklists testify to his admirable critical acumen and encourage readers to explore further the historical period along the lines staked out in his book. Owing to the interdisciplinary character of his interpretations, Humphries’s book will be useful to readers interested in contemporary film studies and to those interested in American cultural studies.– Kate Watson, European Journal of American Studies
Humphries’s book is insightful and innovative in its approach. The author’s readings of films as presented in Hollywood’s Blacklists testify to his admirable critical acumen and encourage readers to explore further the historical period along the lines staked out in his book. Owing to the interdisciplinary character of his interpretations, Humphries’s book will be useful to readers interested in contemporary film studies and to those interested in American cultural studies.– Kate Watson, Cardiff University, European Journal of American Studies
I recommend Hollywood’s Blacklists as a concise introduction to a turbulent period in American history both on and off the screen.– Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara, Journal of American Culture
At a time when neo-conservatives have been enjoying great success in rewriting America's long history of Red Scares as crusades of freedom against tyranny Reynold Humphries's assiduously researched book Hollywood's Blacklists: A Political and Cultural History is a brave and salutary corrective... Hollywood's Blacklists, for all its historical acuity, has an unintended subtext that most acutely concerns the present, not the past.– Kenneth Wright, Product
Hollywood's Blacklists is an invigorating piece of political and cultural history. This well-written and thoroughly researched book provides excellent insight into one of the most turbulent time periods of American history... an exceptional resource.– Thomas Salek, New York University, Screening the Past
Hollywood's Blacklists is an elegant study of the florid anti-Communist repression of the American film industry as this affected the lives of the victims and the content of Hollywood films. But it is also living history, a history that comes back to haunt us in a time when the "terrorist" is inserted into the role of Satan in the wake of communism's collapse. Because the persecutory beast was never put down then, it arises anew, and we see all the same themes replayed in different costumes and sets. Reynold Humphries has not only, then, written a fine history, but also a cautionary tale for a new epoch of reactionary repression.Joel Kovel, author of Red-Hunting in the Promised Land– Joel Kovel, author of Red-Hunting in the Promised Land
A fascinating, well-researched and lucidly written volume that deserves wide circulation and discussion. An important contribution to the literature on the Hollywood Left, the Blacklist, and the failures of American liberalism.– Paul Buhle, Senior Lecturer, Brown University
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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