Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted after being convicted of Contempt of Congress. Trumbo, a member of the communist party, was put on trial for being communist. As a result of being placed on the blacklist, for years, Trumbo was forced to work under pseudonyms. In 1960 Trumbo had beat the black list by discrediting it. Trumbo successfully paved the way for an end to the red scare and an end to anti-communist xenophobia in the United States. After the end of the Second World War in 1945 another war, the Cold War, emerged. The Cold War was a power struggle between communism and capitalism. Many capitalist Americans were terrified of Communists and the chance of being hurled into a nuclear war. The American fear of communism, “the red scare”, caused many citizens to become paranoid. This paranoia led many Americans into accusing other Americans of being communist. This …show more content…
Before his congressional hearing, Trumbo wrote Roman Holiday and gave it to Ian Hunts McLellan so a studio would pick it up. After the hearing, Trumbo was sent to jail for contempt of congress. He spent ten months in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, KY. When Trumbo returned home he began to write scripts for various production companies under different pseudonyms. Between 1947 and 1960 Trumbo wrote seventeen screenplays without a single credit. Trumbo wasn’t given a screen credit under his real name until 1960, when director Otto Preminger publicly announced that Trumbo had written Exodus. Shortly after, actor Kirk Douglas insisted Trumbo be given credit for the screen play for Spartacus. The disclosure that Trumbo wrote these films was a watershed moment, signaling the beginning of the end of the blacklist. Trumbo would later receive full credit for all of the movies he wrote during the backlist. He would also receive his Oscars for Roman Holliday and the Brave One in 1975, making the final blow to the red
During the 1950’s, Australia had experienced its very own cold war drama, which came to be known as the Petrov affair. An event shrouded in a veil of secrecy along with a convoluted romanticism that painted a picture of democracy being triumphant over the evils of communism. This affair provides a platform to examine Australia’s cold War Psyche, revealing a level of existing paranoia that was further intensified by these revelations of spy rings infiltrating the annals of the Australian political system. However, the extent of Soviet espionage activities within Australia during this period becomes arguable, when considering that the communist hysteria was being driven by the Menzies government, fervently pushing the ‘Red’s Under the Bed’ wheelbarrow
In the 1950’s, America just came out of World War 2. The economy was prosperous, many soldiers were creating families, and communism was a widespread fear for Americans. The Red Scare was the fear of the threat of communism arising in America. The Federal government took many measures to make sure communism didn’t spread in America. In 1949 there was word of Russia making nuclear tests.
By the end of the Cold War, Americans analyzed each other for traces of communism. When a guilty culprit arose, Americans stripped them of freedom and bound them to life in a cell. Fear of subsisting as one of these guilty culprits crept into the lives of Americans, creating the Red Scare (History.com Staff). The Red Scare dared Americans to strive for distinguishing factors between themselves and communists. Soon Americans used the Christian title to rule out any traces of communism against them.
After WWII and during the cold war the fear of a nuclear conflict helped to raise the crusade of the second red scare that was also known as McCarthyism (Schultz, 2013). The campaign was built on the concept of fighting against communism within the United States. However, this movement extended its influence by lessening civil rights and ending the political warfare for any and all groups or individuals no matter their position. President Truman fearful of allegations that there were communists within the US government, implemented the process of investigating the background of all public employees and would not hire anyone that was deemed a security risk. Another fear was the concern of the government being overthrown, and Senator Joseph
Dalton Trumbo is one of the Hollywood Ten, and he was blacklisted from Hollywood in 1947. He was a very accomplished screenwriter and writer that worked on various films such as “Spartacus,” “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” and “Roman Holiday.” He didn’t start writing professionally until the 1930’s; before that he was a journalist and a writer, eventually moving on from novels to movie scripts. He began writing for the entertainment company Warner Bros. and his career took off from there. He quickly became a well-known, sought after writer in Hollywood, while writing novels on the side.
Our country was in fear of communism and was afraid that it would spread. The rumors sparked a witch hunt that many people supported because they feared it. Whether they thought it was communism or being a witch, they thought they found the root to their problem so they supported it. In both cases if you didn’t support the hunt then you were accused of being one of them. For example, “My face?
In the late 1940s and during the 1950s Americans suffered from both a cultural and political hysteria that was caused by panic and anxiety about the Soviet threat. Many Americans believed that there were communists working within America to weaken the country. Thousands of Americans citizens, from teachers, actors and trade unionists to high level government officials, were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers, and were investigated and questioned in front of government committees and agencies. Their association with communism was often exaggerated and many people lost their jobs or were imprisoned based on inconclusive and at times fictitious evidence. The ‘Red Scare’ that occurred in the United States during this period in
However, providing only the fact of the situation Alwood failed to give any analysis and left this task completely in the hands of the reader. He also neglected to provide any historical context for the events mentioned in the book, perhaps assuming that those who would be interested in reading his book would already have prior knowledge of the situation, such as those already studying journalism or the history of media in the United States. Of course, within his account of the “witch-hunt” in the press, he established a timeline in the form of listing events which pertained to the issue one by one as they occurred, but he failed to explain what caused this anti-communist epidemic. In the end, his book is nothing more than a meticulously researched historical study, which while summarizing and accounting for the history of events within the press during the red scare, would not suffice for a regular reader interested in the impact of McCarthyism on America (for a significant amount of the events listed in his book can be considered to be an excess of painstaking
Rumors cause controversy in every society no matter what the day and age is. This is very true for the case of Joseph McCarthy in the Red Scare. In this article about the Red Scare involving Joseph McCarthy the 1950’s It is reported that “During the speech, McCarthy held up a list of people he claimed were known traitors. McCarthy never made the list of names public.
John Garfield was a famous actor during the time of the red scare, mostly known for movies such as, “They Made Me a Criminal” (1939), and “Juarez” (1939). He made a net worth of 12 million dollars, 3 children, a spouse he loved dearly, and a very massive home. But he lost almost all of that when he was blacklisted for being accused of a communist and when called in to testify against people for his safety, he chose not to. It’s been rumored that he later passed away due to a heart attack because of the stress of the persecution at age 39. Charlie Chaplin was another actor who was blacklisted until testimony, he was one of the very few actors during the time that went in and testified.
He goes to work as a pseudonymous screenwriter for the low-budget King Brothers Productions. Over time, industry suspicion of Trumbo's ghostwriting develops, but he is careful not to confirm it. In 1960, actor Trumbo is recruited to write the screenplay for Spartacus. Right before its release, the head of the productions threatens a mass protest of Spartacus unless Trumbo's name is removed. When the Universal head refuses, he threatens it will be the end of his studio.
The end of film shows Dalton Trumbo accepting an award in March 1970, where he
Many were in fear of minority groups, as they were seen as a group that could possibly be communist, because they are commonly separated from majority groups their culture is not well understood. Harry Bridges was subjected to trial after trial in an attempt to drive him back to his native land of Australia. (Miller, 2000, pg 2). William Remington, was murdered by an inmate in hopes to reduce his sentence by killing a convicted communist. This “phobia” within the United States is easily comparable to The Crucible as many people were accused of being communist.
From 1950 to 1956, America’s experience of fear began what we still fear today: communism. The Cold War entertained this “virus”, the fear of communism, which settled into the Americans. Politicians and citizens of the United States began questioning who they hold close to trust and how they determined to classify the people who sided against the American dream, and their winning in the war. They searched for things to prove if you sided with communists or not. This sounds like something else that existed in American history: The Crucible.
The main accuser during this time was Joseph McCarthy. The people who were accused were just everyday people. Joseph McCarthy said that he knew people who are members of the communist party working for the government, he may have done this because he didn’t like those people. This scared everyone, primarily because during the years that followed WWII everyone feared communist. So after McCarthy made these statements, it almost made like a ripple effect by having everyday people, being accused of people that “suspected” that they were communists as well.