Senator McCarthy promoted blacklisting. As a result, people whose showbiz careers were derailed by the Blacklist. Screenwriter Walter Bernstein; screenwriter Norma Barzman; actor Cliff Carpenter; actress Lee Grant; actress Marsha Hunt; actress Jean Rouverol and actor/producer Kirk Douglas lost their work as a result of the Blacklist. It is this mechanism of the Cancel Culture that is at work today.
McCarthy had nothing to do with the “Red Channels” and American Legion list of communists who we identified before McCarthy’s subcommittee, who took the 5th, etc.
That came out of the entertainment industry who tried to clean up their red-infiltrated unions, SAG (Screen Actors Guild), and SWG (Scene Writers Guild).
Lee Grant was both an identified and admitted CPUSA member. I think Bernstein was too.
Kirk Douglas bragged that he “broke the blacklist” in the mid-50’s. He didn’t lose any work that I know of.
The whole early story on communist activities in Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry is found in the dozens of hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and started in 1947, “Hearings regarding communist infiltration of the motion-picture industry”, Oct. 20th - 30th, 1947 thru 1952. Some in 1953 by city/region such as LA Area (several hearings).
I’ll look up the other names if I can find my hearings and see if they were identified as CPUSA members (before Congress), took the 5th, or were shown NOT to be members of the CPUSA.
Read Morrie Ryskind’s “Hollywood Reds”, not just Victor Navasky’s CPUSA coverup propaganda in “Naming Names”. Robert Vaugh’s thesis/book, “Only Victims” is interesting and from a liberal’s view. Worth reading just to see how much research he did for the book, which I mentioned to him in a conversation about 15 years or so, ago. A very nice gentleman.
There is another book whose title is “Tender Comrades” - McGilligan and Paul Buhle (a Trotskyite historian). A goldmine of how the Communists lied their way through Hollywood internal investigations and even congressional hearings.
The issue of the “blacklist” (the communists had their own before the anti-Communists in Hollywood did, and one of their victims was actor Adolph Majheu. John Wayne saved Ward Bond’s career. I have a letter from Bond to a friend about Charlie Chaplin. It would singe your hair off.
Norma Barzman - admitted Communist Party member (In “Buhle et al).
Marsha Hunt - says she never was a communist party member and never subpoenaed by a committee. Still hardcore leftist sympathizer
Walter Bernstein - admitted CP member
Jean Rouverol Butler - admitted CPUSA member with her husband
She had a shitload of work in Hollywood. See Buhle for film credits.
The history of the “blacklist” issue is much more complicated than most think. McCarthy had damned little to do with it, if at all.
Again, McCarthy was a bastard. I am no fan of his. He caused more damage to the legitimate anti-communist cause that he may have done good.
By the way, according to ex CPer Herb Romerstein, the Party coined the term “McCarthyism” despite what other liberals claim.
The official blacklist was created in March 1947 by Harry Truman’s Attorney General under Truman’s authorization (Executive Order 9835), not the recently-elected Senator McCarthy, and it included Nazi and KKK fronts as well as Communist fronts. Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the Hollywood investigation, which was run by the House and started in 1938 before he was elected. Walter Bernstein sponsored a Soviet front group called the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions in 1949. Norma Barzman was a Communist Party member from 1943 to 1949. Carpenter got blacklisted after he defended Philip Loeb, who had helped Elia Kazan set up a Communist Party faction within the conservative-oriented Actors Equity Association in 1934. Lee Grant was blacklisted after defending J. Edward Bromberg, whom Kazan had named as a Communist Party member. Marsha Hunt was a member of a Communist Party front group called the Committee for the First Amendment, which duped a large number of actors. Rouverol and her husband joined the Communist Party in 1943; she and Carpenter later lived together. Kirk Douglas was brought to Hollywood with the help of Lauren Bacall, who along with Bogart was a member of the aforementioned Committee for the First Amendment. Bogart had been told there were no Communists on the Committee, and was outraged to learn he had been lied to; he and Bacall then denounced the group. In contrast, Douglas throughout his career remained close to Communist Party members and fellow travelers like Stanley Kramer (partner of Communist Party member Carl Foreman, whom Kramer broke off from after Foreman threatened to name him to HUAC as a CP member, falsely according to Kramer) and Dalton Trumbo.
Cry for your communists.