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blackli st was, after a ll , instituted by the studi os out o f fear tha t the
public would stay away from their movi es a lready threatened with
loss of patronage by the ri se o f television . At the time of the
Holl ywood T en hearin g in 1947 , the mov ie indu stry, from its major
owners a nd executi ves to such sta rs as Sina tra a nd Bogart , initially
gave strong public suppo rt to those who defi ed the Committee, all of
them Communi sts ( though two were defec tin g) . The studios backed
off a nd blackli sted the T en onl y a fter Congress cited them for
contemp t a month la ter. Acco rding to Trumbo, the T en expected
no t onl y continuin g support from the indu stry but vindicati on by the
courts, which leads him to ques ti on th a t their sta nd was as heroic
a nd principled as it was late r made out to be. Four years-la ter , when
HUAC again turned its a ttenti on to H oll ywood , the political climate
was quite different : the United Sta tes was wagin g a n undecla red war
in Korea, Ameri can-Sov iet rela ti ons were a t their lowes t ebb , a nd in
Ru ss ia Stalin was pla nning a new purge with a nti-Semitic
overtones, whil e a t home Sena tor M cCarthy had become the feared
vo ice of demagogic a nd indiscrimina te ha rassment o f suspec ted
Communi sts a nd sympathi ze rs. Con tempt cita ti ons or blacklisting
were virtual ce rta inties fo r witnesses who rema ined sil ent before the
C ommittee, a lthough the industry was free to end the blacklist
whenever it chose, as it fin a ll y did a few years la ter. In conce ntrating
on the namers or eve n on HUAC, is there no mora l indi gna ti on to
be spa red fo r the studio head ? T he bl ackli st victims Navasky
\
inte rviewed seem to have di splayed little hes ita ti on in fl ocking back
to their hi ghl y pa id j obs under the same old capita list bosses though
the ir brows may still furrow when they hear E li a Kazan's name a nd
l
their eyes turn away from a few elderl y fell ow-empl oyees
encountered on the beach a t Acapulco.
In the opening secti on of the book, Navasky loca tes the
H ollywood story in the la rge r hi storical contex t of the Cold War,
Soviet espionage in the U nited Sta tes, R epublican e ffo rts to discredit
the New Deal, a nd "the wa r between the libera ls" pitting anti–
Communi sts aga inst "those who called themselves progress ives."
Even if one didn't know tha t Navasky was editor o f the
Nation,
one
would have to be very obtu se not to detec t hi s "rev isionist" view of
these events. H oweve r , he ma kes a n obvious effort to avoid extreme
tendenti ousness, although he expresses doubts a bout the guilt of
Hiss a nd the R osenbergs and thinks tha t Ameri can commitment to
the ideology of capitalism contributed to the C old Wa r. Several
factua l errors confirm tha t Navasky himself is too young to
