Reds and the Silver Screen
The high-school American history textbook The Americans, in its coverage of the communist infiltration of the American motion-picture industry in the 1930s and 1940s, had this to say about the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA)’s investigation of that influence: “Hollywood did have a substantial number of Communists, former Communists, and socialists.”
But the textbook soft-pedaled the seriousness of it all. “Since the Soviet Union had been a U.S. ally during World War II, Hollywood studios had produced pro-Soviet films. After 1945, when this wartime alliance cooled, some argued that such films proved that subversives were spreading Soviet propaganda.”
When HCUA issued subpoenas to some of those suspected of planting pro-Soviet propaganda into American movies, the textbook claims that these men, “known as the Hollywood Ten, decided not to cooperate.” Why did they refuse to cooperate? According to The Americans narrative, it was “because they believed that the hearings were unconstitutional.”
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