The Black List of Hollywood

The Black List of Hollywood

Alfred Hitchcock was the first to break the Black List's exclusion, recruiting the nominee Norman Lloyd.

The Black List of Hollywood was an informal catalog that was released to Hollywood cinemas during the early Cold War, illustrating artists who were considered members or influences of the Communist Party. Those included in the list were excluded from all work in the cinema and several US theaters, leading to professional and personal extermination.

This practice was part of the general climate of marauding of the days and was encouraged (indirectly but clearly) by the Commission of Anti-American Activities, a congressional body that had undertaken to curb the alleged Communist penetration of public life. It only stopped in the early 1960s, having led a large number of artists to destruction or self- extinction in Europe and Mexico.

Background 

The sense that the world of spectacle has been "pushed" by communists and liberals (unlike Europe, in the US the term liberal refers to the Left ) has been diffused since the middle of the 1930s. The truth is that the Soviet Union had captured a significant part of the American artistic world, proclaiming a world without exploitation, and later with the heroic resistance to the Eastern Front. Several have gone through the Communist Party, albeit usually for a short time. But it was an exaggeration that the Communists ruled in cinema, much less that they would use this dominant position to make systematic red propaganda.

During the Second World War, the US government itself had funded writing scripts and filming films with philosophical content. When the war was over and the Soviets again became competitors, the emotions changed. The Cold War brought Red Tremors, the politically cultivated psychosis of the American medium, that sooner or later the Soviet nuclear missiles would be fired for its own country. The public anticommunist feeling was expressed by the notorious Commission, which was investigating the "erosion" of American cultural production with questions such as "You are or have been former members of the Communist Party", "You know someone who is or was a member in the past" and the like - something that constituted a diversion, since KK. The US has never been illegal and participation in it was a legitimate right.

In this context, the feasibility of the conjuncture made socially acceptable even the most extreme violations of rights. Walt Disneys warned of the "serious threat" and denounced as Communists all the trade unionists of his companies. More auspicious, actress Antol Menchu told the Commission: "I'm a witch hunter if the Witches are Communists. I'm a red fisherman. I want to send them all to Russia".

The "Ten" 

The Black List began on November 25, 1947, with the release of the Ten. These are ten screenwriters and directors who had been accused of "contempt for Congress" beforehand because they refused to testify before the Commission on the grounds that they had no explanation for their personal political choices. The group included, initially and eleventhly, the author and poet Bertolt Brecht, who was presented to the Commission on 30 October and the following day he returned to Europe for the first time (a decision he had taken before he deposited).

One week after they stripped Ten, the representatives of all film companies issued a joint statement (Walldorf Declaration) according to which the legitimate rights of the Ten are not questioned, but their detriment was detrimental to their employers and made them useless for the film industry. They also pledged not to take them back, unless they swore that they were not communists, and no one would ever hire anyone like them. Earlier a few days earlier, the union of actors, headed by Western protagonist Ronald Reagan (the country 's later president), had forced the members of the union to give a similar oath.

Enlargement 

Until the late 1950s, the list was continuously enriched with the names of screenwriters, directors, actors, musicians, writers, and even technicians whose political views were considered dangerous or questionable. Some were indeed leftists, while others were in suspicion and rumors, for example, they were pre-war in a demonstration, had a love affair with a Communist student, donated orphan clothes to Eastern countries, to investigate the activity of their affiliates before signing a contract. Counterattack, a right-wing journal that had been contracted to publish public figures about the political action of filmmakers, had changed into fear and horror of the arts.

In order to break the blockade, some programmers used fantastic names or more commonly nicked persons, people - windows. Typical is the case of screenwriter Dalton Tramp, who won two Academy Awards with another name. The first time, in 1953 for the Holidays in Rome, he had used as a showcase a famous British colleague named Ian McLellan Hander, who also received the honorary statuette. In the second, in 1956 for the Brave, there was not even a scriptwriter to receive the prize, having used a pseudonym.

But if such solutions were feasible for screenwriters or musicians, they were impossible for directors and actors. There, the only way to "cleanse" one's name was to strive for the Commission's goals, ie practically to tort his colleagues. It is known the example of Elias Kazan who named Zyl Dasin, leaving the latter to leave the country.

In addition to not hiring the suspects, film companies have been making an effort to persuade them about their attachment to American values by releasing films such as:

• Red threat. An American becomes a Communist for the sake of his love. When he discovers the impasse of his ideology and tries to break out of the Party, he becomes the target of spies.

• Red planet Mars. A Soviet and a Nazi scientist deceive an honest and naive couple of American scientists and with them all humanity, pretending to be the voice of God speaking from Mars.

• I married a Communist. A moral shipping agent, in his youth a docker and a left, is threatened by Communist Vining that he will reveal his past unless he blows up the San Francisco shipyard.

• I became a Communist for the FBI. A young man has been intruding for a period of nine years in a communist group and reports to the FBI about her action (though a fiction film, the Cold War era was so intense that she was nominated for an Oscar Documentary in 1951 ).

• Big Jim McLane. John Wayne is Jim McLean, an agent who drives communists into the trade unions of Hawaii.

The end 

The first rupture of the Black List artists' exclusion came from the TV. In the autumn of 1957, Alfred Hitchcock hired actor Norman Lloyd as co-producer for the third cycle of the series"The Hitchcock Presents". Several other individual cases followed in television productions.

The change in cinema, which was the main litigation, began in 1960. Early in the year, Otto Premerger publicly announced that he would turn Exodus into a Tramp's scenario. A few months later, Kerk Douglas said the script of his long-awaited new film (Spartacus, Scott Stanley Kubrick ) was also Tramp. So, when Spartacus was premiered on October 6th, it was the first time since November 1947 that a scribe saw his name to the actors without making a statement of repentance or betraying his colleagues. This triggered a series of developments: Conservative citizens organized protests outside the country's halls asking for a ban on the film, while on the other hand dozens of artists began to speak openly against the list. The issue had divided the country to the moment when newly elected President John Kennedy made a high symbolic move: He appeared outside a cinema, surpassed the protesters and watched the film, demonstrating his intention to end with these practices.

The final end of the Black List came in 1962 on the occasion of a conviction by an investigative agency that fed the companies with data, as well as its principals. In his decision, the court classed them as legally guilty for the personal and financial harm suffered by their victims. Since then the practice has been abandoned, but many careers have already been destroyed. It is estimated that only a tenth was able to re-enter cinema production.

Valuation 

It is no exaggeration that the Black List period changed the character of Hollywood forever, altering it from a field of creativity and commerciality to a hard-working industry.

From the cinematographic point of view, the average quality of production was lowered. The list of the American film industry produced everything - from "art strips" to digesting mass consumption films. The expulsion of the most enlightened and intellectual minds from the studios led to the almost complete disappearance of the first class. Legends of the seventh art, such as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Wells, John Houston and dozens of others, have exiled to Europe to be able to make movies.

Even worse, things were for scriptwriters who were massively fired because their scenarios were highlighted and controversial. Even non-planners were afraid to include humanitarian and universal messages, under the Damocles' sword that one would call them communist propaganda and would remain unemployed. The themes of the films turned to patriots (such as spies and westerns) or neutral subjects (sentimental comets or blockbusters of the Ben Hur type). American cinema could boast of its technical excellence, but it had lost its soul - the new home of "art cinema" became Europe.

But the worst result was the rupture of the inner unity of the artistic world, the dominance of a climate of suspicion, and fear that everyone could be stamped red, except for those who demonstrate patriotism by betraying colleagues in the Commission of Anti-American Affairs. Friendships and collaborations have spoiled forever - when Elijah Kazan received an honorary Oscar in 1999 for his (unquestionable) contribution to cinema, many attendees left the ceremony reminding him of his role as a traitor 47 years earlier.