UNSPECIFIED - JULY 30: American producer Walt Disney (1901-1966) c. 1945 (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)

Hollywood Anticommunists During The Golden Age

in History

Once upon a time, Hollywood conservatives did not hide in the closet, recoiling at pro-Communist influence in Hollywood but keeping their criticisms private. Instead they organized and publicly proclaimed their allegiance to the Constitution.

Their organization was called The Motion Picture Alliance for The Preservation of American Ideals, founded seventy years ago. The tide was against them, and was as formidable as the one today that drives conservatives underground.

1943 was the high tide of communist influence in Hollywood owing to the Soviet Union being an ally of the United States against Hitler. Films glorifying the Stalin regime such as Mission to Moscow (which supported the Purge Trials), Song of Russia (dancing in the Soviet streets), and the North Star (which studio head Sam Goldwyn joked as painting such a rosy picture of the Soviet Union that “Stalin watched it when he was depressed”) were onscreen.

Individually, conservatives could do little, for communists were in more powerful positions. And the Party used this power ruthlessly, implementing their own blacklist system. Dalton Trumbo, who would argue so eloquently against the blacklist, bragged of how he exercised his own:


As editor of the Hollywood-based Screenwriter magazine, Trumbo was quite open about his view of civil liberties when he rejected an article criticizing the Party in Hollywood by screenwriter Richard MacCauley:



For instance, a man gets a key position in the studio and has charge of the writers. When you, as a director or a producer, are ready for a writer you ask for a list and this man shows you a list. Well, if he is following the Party line his pets are on top or the other people aren’t on it at all. If there is a particular man in there that has been opposing them they will leave his name off the list. Then if that man isn’t employed for about two months they go to the head of the studio and say, “Nobody wants this man.” The head is perfectly honest about it and says, “Nobody wants to use him, let him go.” So a good American is let out. But it doesn’t stop there. They point that out as an example and say, “You better fall in line, play ball, or else.” And they go down the line on it.



The members—among them, Walt Disney, John Wayne, Morrie Ryskind—all had personal run-ins with Party members. Disney’s life was actually threatened by picketing Party members at his studio. Wayne attended Party meetings with director Edward Dymtryk and was shocked at how Hollywood communists defended the repressive policies of Stalin.




Then and now, Hollywood leftists promoted a two-period thesis for tinsel-town n World War II. During the war, when Hollywood communists had significant influence, democracy reigned. After the war, repression was enacted with the blacklist.

But the story of the MPAA complicates this simplistic portrait. During the war, they were blacklisted. After the war, they gained influence. Thus, there was a blacklist in Hollywood earlier than presented; only the victims of it changed.

The MPAA also shows how timid Hollywood conservatives have become in the age of Obama. Buffetted by the same atmosphere Hollywood has today, 40s conservatives did not duck their heads in the sand, but proudly organized.


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