Abstract
"In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over 9 days in October 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in Hollywood. The immediate blowback from the October hearings was profound and long-lived. On November 25, 1947, the major Hollywood studios pledged never again to employ a known Communist. The declaration marked the formal onset of the blacklist era, a two-decade-long purgatory during which political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the entertainment industry. At the studios and the networks, hundreds of artists were shown the door or had it shut in their faces. Doherty tells the story of the first media-political spectacle of the postwar era, a courtroom drama starring actors, moguls, congressmen, lawyers, investigators, and screenwriters, all recorded under the lights of the newsreel cameras and broadcast over radio. After assuming increased cultural prominence during World War II, Doherty explains, 'the screen had become, in its maturity, integrated with the whole fabric of the national, and international affairs, with social, political and economic involvements,' leading to the centrality of Hollywood in Washington politics in the postwar era. Depicting this shift through testimonies and detailed public records, he provides a rich, character-driven cultural history that focuses on how and why the HUAC trial unfolded and ignited the anti-Communist strain in Cold War culture, serving as one of the most influential events of the postwar era"--