The Hollywood Ten - House Un-American Activities Committee.

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The Hollywood 10

The Hollywood Ten
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

The Committee which conducted anti-Communist "witch hunts" and strongly influenced film content in the late 1940's and late 50's. Beginning in 1947, this committee decided to investigate Communist influence in motion pictures. Over 100 witnesses, including many of Hollywood's most talented and popular artists, were called before the committee to answer questions about their own and their associates' alleged Communist affiliations.

The Hollywood Ten

In September 1947, 43 witnesses were subpoenaed to appear for hearings in Washington before the House Committee on un-American Activities (HUAC), which was investigating "communist" subversion in Hollywood. Nineteen of the witnesses, mostly scriptwriters, were expected to be "unfriendly." The hearings opened in October. A group of eight screenwriters and two directors refused to answer questions regarding their possible Communist affiliations. Those ten, known as the "Hollywood Ten," went to jail for their refusal to answer the committee's questions about their personal political beliefs. After their jail terms they were mostly blacklisted by Hollywood studios.

The Unfriendly 19
(Those in bold made up the Hollywood Ten):

John Howard Lawson Dalton Trumbo
Albert Maltz
Alvah Bessie
Samuel Ornitz
Herbert Biberman
Edward Dmytryk
Adrian Scott
Ring Lardner, Jr.
Lester Cole

Richard Collins
Howard Koch
Gordon Kahn
Robert Rossen
Waldo Salt
Lewis Milestone
Irving Pichel
Larry Parks
Bertolt Brecht

Waldorf Declaration

Named for the meeting conducted by the leading studio heads in a Waldorf-Astoria Hotel after the HUAC held the Hollywood Ten in contempt of Congress. In this meeting they published a statement in which they fired the members of the Hollywood Ten and expressed their support of the HUAC.

The studios, afraid to antagonize already shrinking audiences, then initiated an unofficial policy of blacklisting. Blacklisting in this case is the refusal of work to artists because of their alleged Communist beliefs or associations. Hundreds of people were fired from the industry, and many creative artists were never able to work in Hollywood again. Throughout the McCarthy Era, filmmakers refrained from making any but the most conservative motion pictures; controversial topics or new ideas were carefully avoided. Recently, screen credit has been given to many of these blacklisted artists.

Alvah Bessie 

American novelist and journalist Alvah Bessie wrote screenplays for Warner Brothers and other studios during the mid and late '40s. As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Story for the patriotic Warner's film Objective Burma(1945). No stranger to soldering, Bessie had been a member of the International Brigades, and fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1938. Upon his return, he wrote a book about his experiences, MEN IN BATTLE. His career came to a halt in 1947, when he was summoned before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He refused to deny or confirm involvement in the Communist Party, and in 1950 he became one of the Hollywood Ten when he was imprisoned and blacklisted. In 1965, Bessie wrote a book about his experience with the HUAC, Inquisition in Eden. He wrote another book in 1975, Spain Again, which chronicled his experiences as a co-writer and actor in a Spanish movie of the same name. His Spanish Civil War Notebooks, a diary of his activities while in Spain in 1938, have been recently published (2001). Unfortunately, his screenwriting career was ruined by the blacklisting, and he never returned to Hollywood. [Information provided courtesy of Dan Bessy]

   

 

  Northern Pursuit (1943)

  Hotel Berlin (1944) (uncredited)

  The Very Thought of You (1944)

  Objective Burma (1945) (uncredited)

  Smart Woman (1948)

  Hollywood on Trial (1976) Video/C 5751 

Herbert J. Biberman 

The socially conscious films of American director, screenwriter and producer Herbert Biberman are perhaps best known in Europe as he was blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten in 1950. Biberman was educated at the University of Pennsylvania. He also attended Yale and went to Europe. He then worked for a number of years in his family's textile business until 1928 when he joined the Theater Guild as an assistant stage manager, and quickly became one of the company's best directors. He entered films as a director and screenwriter of "B" movies in 1935. He was first accused of communist activities by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Biberman refused to confirm or deny the allegations and in 1950 was sentenced to 6 months in prison and banished from Hollywood. His primary accusers were Budd Schulberg and Edward Dmytryk. Biberman's wife Gale Sondergaard was similarly accused and she too refused to testify. In 1954, Biberman independently made Salt of the Earth a provocative, moving chronicle of the terrible working conditions faced by miners in New Mexico. Though the film was backed by the miner's union and employed real workers and their families, other unions refused to show the film because Biberman was still blacklisted. The film was shown once in a New York theater were it received terrific reviews. Biberman then released the film in Europe where it won awards in France and Czechoslovakia. In 1965, the film was finally released in the U.S. Four years later, Biberman made his last film, Slaves (1969), an adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Though it was not critically well-received in the U.S., it was highly regarded in France. -- Sandra Brennan [from the ]

   

 

  One Way Ticket (1935)

  Meet Nero Wolfe (1936)

  The Master Race (1944)

  Salt of the Earth (1954) DVD 682; vhs 999:266)

  Slaves (1969)

Lester Cole 

Screenwriter Lester Cole will go down in cinema history as a member of the original "Hollywood Ten," one of the first unfortunate people in the film industry to be black-listed by the House Anti-American Activities Committee in 1947. Cole, the son of Polish immigrants, began writing and directing plays at age 16 after he dropped out of high school. During the 1920s and '30s he worked as an actor on stage and screen before embarking on his screenwriting career. While in Hollywood, he was a union activist and became a co-founder of the Screen Writers Guild in 1933. He was later black-balled for challenging the committee's right to interrogate him about his political beliefs. He then served 1 year in prison, leaving behind an unfinished script that was later finished by John Steinbeck for Kazan's Viva Zapata (1952). Following his release from prison, Cole worked a series of odd jobs. In 1961 he went to London, but eventually returned to the states where he began collaborating on screenplays under an assumed name. He also taught screenwriting at the University of California, Berkeley -- Sandra Brennan [from the ]

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  Pinted Faces (1929)

  Invisible Man Returns (1940)

  Footsteps in the Dark (1940)

  Blood on the Sun (1945)

  High Wall (1947)

  If I Had a Million (1952)

  Operation Eichmann (1961)

  Hollywood on Trail (1967)

Edward Dmytrk 

A messenger boy at Paramount in the mid 1920s, Edward Dmytryk became an editor in the 1930s and began directing in 1935. By the mid '40s he had such impressive credits as The Devil Commands (1941) with Boris Karloff; the anti-fascist Hitler's Children (1943); ...

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The Hollywood Ten - House Un-American Activities Committee.
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