J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies

by John Sbardellati

Between 1942 and 1958, J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a sweeping and sustained investigation of the motion picture industry to expose Hollywood’s alleged subversion of “the American Way” through its depiction of social problems, class differences, and alternative political ideologies. FBI informants (their names still redacted today) reported to Hoover’s G-men on screenplays and screenings of such films as Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), noting that “this picture deliberately maligned the upper class attempting to show that people who had money were mean and despicable characters.” The FBI’s anxiety over this film was not unique; it extended to a wide range of popular and critical successes, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Crossfire (1947) and On the Waterfront (1954).

In J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies, John Sbardellati examines Hollywood’s key role as a cultural, political, and ideological battleground of the early Cold War, providing a new consideration of Hollywood’s history and the post–World War II Red Scare. In addition to governmental intrusion into the creative process, he details the efforts of left-wing filmmakers to use the medium to bring social problems to light and the campaigns of their colleagues on the political right, though such organizations as the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, to prevent dissemination of “un-American” ideas and beliefs.

Sbardellati argues that the attack on Hollywood drew its motivation from a sincerely held fear that film content endangered national security by fostering a culture that would be at best apathetic to the Cold War struggle at best, or, at its worst, conducive to communism at home. Those who took part in Hollywood’s Cold War struggle, whether on the left or right, shared one common trait: a belief that the movies could serve as engines for social change. This strongly held assumption explains why the stakes were so high, and, ultimately, why Hollywood became one of the most important ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War.

Genres: History, College, Nonfiction

264 pages, ebook

First published May 1, 2012

Reviews

[becca · Rating 2 out of 5]

read for a “Cold War culture” seminar

oddly lacking a point of view & compelling narration. often felt like an archive dump / enthusiast essay on 1940s film. not sure I ever quite bought that Hollywood was as influential as the author & hoover claimed — would loved comparable analysis to radio programs. the best chapter was the one on Hooverism and domesticity, which was unfortunately one of the shorter ones. I wanted more interpretative analysis of what it meant that communists were spoke about as diseased, depraved, sexually abnormal and racialized. there’s some tip-toeing around white supremacy as a guiding ideology but is not articulated explicitly. I enjoyed the delineation between “Randism” and “Hooverism” antiCommunist thought and tactics.

[Claire Keck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I vibe with this book ngl

[Karissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insight into the era but a lot of the information is just page filler. Skipping over every film plot summary doesn't cause the reader to lose the theme of the book. The conclusions were in line with the evidence presented and interesting ones at that.