Hollywood and Mccarthy

Hollywood experienced the wrath of Senator McCarthy in many different ways. Research papers on Hollywood and McCarthy illustrate that Hollywood was a tool for McCarthy. Have Paper Masters research and report on the affects of McCarthy's policies against communism in a custom written research paper.

Hollywood and McCarthy research papers illustrate that one socially-based external factor that was critical to Senator Joseph McCarthy's success was the widespread, voluntary (or coerced) cooperation with his agenda. In Hollywood in 1950, for example, self-interested film studios and television and radio industries voluntarily subscribed to a special 213 page list for Hollywood industry use, called Red Channels, that exposed the names of musicians, actors, writers and radio and TV entertainers who were suspected of Communism, or later, who were merely deemed suspicious. The list was used voluntarily by film studios and the broadcast industry to blacklist and fire people. Corporations, government agencies and foundations also subscribed to listings for their industries. The figure of only 150 or so people who went to prison as a result of McCarthy's investigations does not accurately reveal the extent to which his public hearings affected people. The "Hollywood 10", ten writers who refused to answer questions when they were called to the hearings, are well-known victims of McCarthy hearings, but there were at least 10,000 others who lost their jobs for political reasons, and that figure does not count applicants who were black-listed, resigned under duress, or were given an ostensible, other reason for being fired. Suicides resulted from the pressure to either inform on long-time friends, called "naming names" or to be revealed and blacklisted. The Hollywood 10 included the following:

• Alvah Bessie (c. 1904-85)
• Herbert Biberman (1900-71)
• Lester Cole (c. 1904-85)
• Edward Dmytryk (1908-99)
• Ring Lardner Jr. (1915-2000)
• John Howard Lawson (1894-1977)
• Albert Maltz (1908-1985)
• Samuel Ornitz (1890-1957)
• Robert Adrian Scott (1912-73)
• Dalton Trumbo (1905-76)

This passivity or self-interest that kept Americans from protesting or stopping McCarthy immediately was arguable not due to his personal influence, it was a symptom of an American tendency at the time to accept government and FBI authority, to obey instructions, to "avoid trouble", as one studio executive explained. Again, McCarthy was relatively unimportant as a danger to American freedom, but the American tendency to witch-hunt and punish, coupled with a naive belief in government and politicians and a lack of true Constitutional patriotism deserves to be remembered as something to avoid.