1938
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) is formed by Congress to investigate communist activity in the United States.
1941
On May 28, 1941, hundreds of animators from the Screen Cartoonists Guild called a strike and walked out on Disney Studios. Walt Disney blamed communist agitators, and informed the FBI about “communist infiltration” at his studio. Some trace the roots of the Hollywood Blacklist to this moment.
1944
Conservative Hollywood leaders form the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, decrying communist sympathizers in the film industry and calling for a Congressional investigation.
1946
1st HUAC formal hearings on Communist influence in motion picture industry.
1947 – The Hollywood 10 and the Beginning of the Blacklist
11.24 The Hollywood Ten (screenwriters and directors), called by HUAC to testify about their own communist activities, refuse. They are supported by much of Hollywood, including through Hollywood Fights Back broadcasts on ABC radio opened by Judy Garland, and the Committee for the 1st Amendment — including Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Ira Gershwin, John Huston, Danny Kaye, and Gene Kelly, many of whom flew to Washington D.C. to try to stop the hearings. The Ten were sent to jail for contempt of Congress.”
11.17 Under the new leadership of Ronald Reagan, the Screen Actorsʼ Guild requires all members to take an oath of loyalty to the US government.
11.25 Industry executives issue the “Waldorf Statement” censuring the Ten, refusing to hire them or anyone else with alleged Communist sympathies, and instituting compulsory loyalty oaths from all movie industry employees.
1949
9.23 President Truman announces the Soviet Union has detonated an atomic bomb.
12.49 Nationalist China falls to Communists, and Chaing Kai-shek flees to Taiwan.
1950
2.9 McCarthy Anti-Communist Crusade Begins: delivers speech in Wheeling, West Virginia attacking Communists in the State Department, marking the beginning of his anti-communist crusade.
6.17 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are arrested for stealing atomic bomb secrets for the Soviets.
6.22 Red Channels pamphlet identifies 151 entertainment industry professionals as “Red Fascists and their sympathizers.”
1951
April 25 In a second round of hearings on communism in the film industry that are televised, director Edward Dmytryk became the first “Hollywood Ten” to cooperate with the committee.
People who are named as communists include Charlie Chaplin, Katherine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Orson Wells, Leonard Bernstein, Lena Horn, Langston Hughs, and Harry Belafonte. Those identified in Red Channels were blacklisted unless and until they cleared their names, generally by testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and name names of people they suspected of communist or progressive views, which the vast majority refused to do.
There were 490 writers under contract at the major studios in 1945, 147 in 1950, and only 67 in 1955.
But the blacklist was rarely made explicit or easily verifiable, as it was the result of numerous individual decisions by the studios and was not the result of official legal action.
1952
9.18 Charlie Chaplin, trying to re-enter the US after touring England, is barred by J. Edgar Hoover on the grounds he is a Communist sympathizer.
1953
4.23 Screenwriters Guild allows producers to remove screen credits of any suspected communists.
1954
3.25 Ian McLellan Hunter wins the screenwriting Academy Award for “Roman Holiday,” which he fronted for blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. Academy members did not know they were honoring a blacklistee. Hunter was himself later blacklisted.
12.2 the Senate votes to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion
1956
6.21 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller, subpoenaed to appear before HUAC, refuses to name names, saying “my conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person and bring trouble to him.”
Excerpts from Arthur Miller’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee
6.26 After humorist John Henry Faulk’s CBS radio show, Johnny’s Front Porch, loses Libby’s Frozen Foods sponsorship following AWARE listing him as having suspected communist ties, he sues AWARE (with financial support from CBS News correspondent Charles Collingwood). The case eventually helps break the blacklist, although it takes 6 years to get to trial and isn’t resolved until 1962, with him unable to work all that time.
1957
1.19 HUAC releases revised list of “Subversive Organizations and Publications” — adding 157 to the 1951 list, for a total of 733.
1.21 “High Court Takes ‘Blacklist’ Case”: The Supreme Court agrees to hear a challenge to the Blacklist by 23 writers and actors invoking the 5th in Michael Wilson, Gale Sondergard, Abraham Lincoln Polansky et al vs. RKO, Paramount, Warner Bros, Samuel Goldwyn Studios, L.B. Mayer, Howard Hughes, et al (“Wilson vs. RKO”).
2.6 HUAC opens 3 days of closed hearings on communist infiltration of the entertainment world.
2.18 Arthur Miller is indicted for refusing to answer questions in June of 1956; he pleased not guilty on 3.1.
The Academy excludes anyone on the Hollywood Blacklist for consideration for an Oscar.
2.19 Writers Guild West protests the elimination of Michael Wilson as a nominee for best screenplay adaption.
3.14 Hollywood Reporter’s Mike Connelly reports that one HUAC member reportedly received money to clear a show-business personality of charges of being communist, later determined to be Carl Foreman, after which Foreman signs a lucrative contract with Columbia Pictures.
3.26 Folksinger Pete Seeger is indicted for contempt.
3.27.57 Dalton Trumbo wins an Oscar under the pseudonym of Robert Rich, for “The Brave One,” in what quickly grows into a scandal when no Robert Rich can be found to exist.
4.9.57 HUAC opens more hearings in NY on subversion in the entertainment field.
5.2 Joseph McCarthy dies at age 48 of alcoholism 2-1/2 yrs after his condemnation and censure.
5.14 Arthur Miller Trial Opens, attracts crowds hoping to see his wife, Marilyn Monroe.
5.17 At the Cannes film festival, a crowd whistles disapproval when “Friendly Persuasion” wins the Golden Palm Award. Director William Wyler and Allied Artists had invoked the 1953 “credits escape clause” to strip credit from blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson out of fear that right-wing groups would boycott the movie.
5.31 Arthur Miller is found guilty. On July 19, fined $500 and given a suspended one-month jail sentence for contempt of Congress, which he vows to appeal.
6.17 The Supreme Court, in Watkins v. United States (argued 3.7) overrules the contempt conviction of labor leader John Watkins for refusing to name names—placing restrictions on Congress’s investigatory power. The decision provokes a scold from HUAC Chairman Frances Walter and a vow that Congress will pass legislation even the Court will understand.
6.28 HUAC Chairman Walter finally yields to the Congressional ban on televising hearings, which HUAC had been defying since 1952.
9.1.57 A successful Soviet test of an ICBM and their explosions of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons are reported.
10.4 Soviets launch Sputnik.
11.10 Alfred Hitchcock helps undermine the Blacklist by hiring blacklisted Norman Lloyd as an associate producer for his TV series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” This is the date Lloyd’s first episode airs.
1958
1.4 The Supreme Court rejects the argument in Wilson vs. RKO that the Blacklist violates employee rights.
3.26 “The Bridge on the River Kwai” wins Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, given to Pierre Boulle, the novel’s French author who spoke no English, rather than blacklisted Michael Wilson.
1959
1.13 Academy decides that screenwriters and actors on the blacklist will no longer be prohibited for consideration for Oscar.
3.? Gossip columnist, Walter Winchell, outs Trumbo as the screenwriter for Kirk Douglas’s “Spartacus.”
4.6 Nedrick Young wins a screenwriting Oscar for “The Defiant Ones” under the name Nathan E. Douglas, with Harold Jacob Smith.
1960
1.20 Director Otto Preminger’s publicly announces that Hollywood 10 Dalton Trumbo, who had been working under pseudonyms for the past 16 years, was the screenwriter of his film “Exodus”—the first time that any writer who defied HUAC received screen credit without first clearing his name. The studio executives respond saying they will continue their policy of not hiring writers who refused to cooperate with Congressional investigating committees.
8.7 Universal-Internationa announces that Trumbo will receive full screen credit for writing “Spartacus,” becoming the first major movie studio to give screen credit to a blacklisted writer since 1947.
1961
2.4 President John F. Kennedy publicly ignored a demonstration organized by the American Legion and went to see “Spartacus.”
1972
Charlie Chaplin returns to the US for the 1st time since 1952, to receive an honorary Oscar for his life’s work.
1975
HISC (formerly HUAC) is abolished and its functions transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.
1997
The Writersʼ Guild of America restores screenwriting credits on 67 films written by blacklisted screenwriters during the 1950s and 1960s.