Reporters Gary Baum and Daniel Miller have written extensively in this week's issue about The Hollywood Reporter's role in the Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist of the late 40's and 50's. Sixty-five years ago, a group of studio chiefs decreed a ban on employing 10 members of the film industry who had refused to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. That led to the "blacklisting" of many more—merely because they were publicly accused of Communist sympathies — often in a front-page column in the Hollywood Reporter. World War II was over, Joseph Stalin was no longer a US ally, and anti-Communism had re-emerged as a full-blown movement. Southern California was a "garrison state for the Cold War" that was just beginning. We update the story with California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr, blacklisted actress Marsha Hunt and Willie Wilkerson
, son of the Hollywood Reporter's founder.
Screenshot of Marsha Hunt from the trailer for the film "Pride and Prejudice"
Nat Segaloff producer of "Hollywood Fights Back ... Again!"
with actress Marsha Hunt, who appeared in the original broadcast
Photo courtesy of the ACLU of Southern California