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A Lawless Agency: The FBI and the "Hollywood Ten"

In October 1947, ten subpoenaed Hollywood writers, producers, and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) about their membership in the Communist Party.1 The so-called Hollywood Ten based their refusal on First Amendment grounds. Challenging HUACs right to inquire about their political beliefs and associations, they condemned this inquiry as a witch-hunting attempt to censor artistic freedom. HUAC responded aggressively, first introducing evidence that the Ten held Communist Party membership cards and then citing them for contempt of Congress. On November 24, 1947, the full House approved the contempt citations, and in April-May 1948 the Justice Department successfully prosecuted two of the Ten, John Lawson and Dalton Trumbo. (Defense and government attorneys had agreed to postpone the trials of the remaining eight pending court review of Lawson's and Trumbo's verdicts. Both sides agreed that the final court rulings would govern the cases of the remaining eight.) Lawson was convicted on April 19, 1948, and Trumbo on May 5,1948. On June 13,1949, the Circuit Court of Appeals upheld their convictions and in April 1950 the Supreme Court denied certiorari. Not only had the Hollywood Ten's First Amendment strategy failed to prevent their conviction, but their refusal to admit or deny Communist Party membership rendered them vulnerable to the charge that their real purpose was to mask their involvement in a foreign-directed conspiracy. Indeed, the same month that the Congress voted to approve HUACs contempt citations, film industry executives suspended the Hollywood Ten without pay and announced that none would be rehired until "he had purged himself of contempt or been acquitted or declared under oath that he was not a Communist." The film executives also affirmed their