Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC , and the Birth of the Blacklist

Film and Culture Series

by Thomas Doherty

In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over nine tumultuous days in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. The blowback was profound: the major studios pledged to never again employ a known Communist or unrepentant fellow traveler. The declaration marked the onset of the blacklist era, a time when political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the entertainment industry. Hundreds of artists were shown the door--or had it shut in their faces.

In Show Trial, Thomas Doherty takes us behind the scenes at the first full-on media-political spectacle of the postwar era. He details the theatrical elements of a proceeding that bridged the realms of entertainment and politics, a courtroom drama starring glamorous actors, colorful moguls, on-the-make congressmen, high-priced lawyers, single-minded investigators, and recalcitrant screenwriters, all recorded by newsreel cameras and broadcast over radio. Doherty tells the story of the Hollywood Ten and the other witnesses, friendly and unfriendly, who testified, and chronicles the implementation of the postwar blacklist. Show Trial is a rich, character-driven inquiry into how the HUAC hearings ignited the anti-Communist crackdown in Hollywood, providing a gripping cultural history of one of the most transformative events of the postwar era.

Genres: History, Film, Nonfiction, Politics, Media Tie In, American History

424 pages, Hardcover

Published April 10, 2018

Reviews

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 1 out of 5]

NETGALLEY # 12

Many thanks go to Thomas Doherty, Columbia University Press, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

This book was so dry and dull, I regret that I can not recommend it. It's not the subject matter that's the problem. I'm still interested in that. It was the writing style. There was nothing inviting about it. It was cold, rote, full of awkward abbreviations, which really may not be helped. I just felt like I was not properly prepared for the meat; I was just thrown into the pool without knowing how to dog paddle. Maybe a front section introducing the main players? Maybe that would help? I just think I could have learned more from this book if there had been a better presentation.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to be more of a history looking in on the trials and the impact on American life rather than a tick-tock of the actual hearings. After a few days, much of what was said is the same, and there really was no shocking surprises. The committee smeared the unfriendly nineteen without implicating all of Hollywood, and some of them resented Hollywood for not sticking up for them in a manufactured crisis to attack the New Deal and FDR's legacy. I think there should have been more analysis and more of Mr. Doherty trying to paint a broad picture into how this affected Hollywood rather than having 40 or so pages at the end to rush through everything. Not the worst book, but I felt it could have been structured differently.

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book for people to supplement their knowledge of HUAC's "investigation" into Communism in Hollywood, not a starting point. Pretty much for obsessives, not for people who want an overview.

Note also that the author states it as fact that pretty much everyone HUAC called a Communist WAS a Communist and stayed a Communist, and denigrates much of their work as toeing the Party line and nothing more. Try Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo for a much more in-depth and nuanced picture of Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In October 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood when the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) held nine days of hearings, searching for alleged Communist subversion in Hollywood. The subsequent firings and blacklisting of directors, actors, writers and film technicians lasted into the early 1960s. Doherty ("Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939") breaks his book into three sections: background conflicts between liberal unions and conservative studio heads; the 41 witnesses who testified during the nine days; and a summary of the careers affected by the blacklist and the decades-later resurrection of several of the "hostile" witnesses.

Doherty smoothly marshals his material and sets the stage well with colorful and knowledgeable backgrounds on all those involved. At this point in HUAC's history (before the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy), there are few villains to be found--just people scared of losing their careers, film empires and the trust of a very fickle and easily scared movie-going public. The book's middle section is its most compelling, as studio heads and "expert witnesses" like Ayn Rand comment on Mission to Moscow and Song of Russia as pro-Soviet propaganda films. These were the first hearings of their kind, and the public was fascinated, listening to Ronald Reagan, Adolphe Menjou and Ginger Rogers's mother find Communists under every bed. Meanwhile, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Billy Wilder and the U.S.'s most decorated soldier, Audie Murphy, spoke out against the committee.

Doherty's concise background and the actual testimonies of the witnesses freshen the book. Show Trial is an important and valuable study that illuminates a dark period of American history.

Doherty's SHOW TRIAL details the fledgling days of Washington's war on Hollywood and communism, and the birth of the blacklist.

[Susan Amper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Blaclist, HUAC, and the attempted takedown of Hollywood's most illustrious stars are the subject of SHOW TRIAL.
I have always been fascinated by the Blacklist of the late 40s into the 50s. How could something like this happen in America? Well, it's 2022, and SHOW TRIAL is a must-read for anyone who thinks "we don't do this in America." We do, we did, we will.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lawson ended his length indictment by calling Thomas "a petty politician serving more powerful forces" who were "trying to introduce Facism into this country." [Lawson stated] Thomas and his henchmen understood "that the only way to trick the American people into abandoning their rights and liberties is to manufacture an imaginary danger, to frighten people into accepting repressive laws which are supposedly for their protection."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. There were plenty of parallels to draw between the HUAC hearings of the 40s and 50s and today, and this quote really stood out to me.

This book gets very specific about a few days of Hollywood HUAC hearings in the 1940s, then broadly covers the creation of the blacklist, and ends on an extremely brief summation of the hearings of the 1950s. I think I wanted more about the broader cultural impact, rather than the detailed hissy fits of J. Parnell Thomas and his crew of henchmen in a kangaroo court doing whatever it could to seize control and censor the motion picture industry under the guise of wanting out oust Communists (or any liberals/leftists whose politics they disliked.)

It's ultimately not what I was looking for, but an interesting read nonetheless given today's political climate.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a rather more detailed account of the HUAC trials than I expected. As another reviewer on Goodreads rather aptly put it, “Pretty much for obsessives, not for people who want an overview”. The author has certainly done his research. Many of the trials are quoted verbatim, and this makes the book an important and valuable historical document. Unfortunately it doesn’t make for a particularly entertaining read, as inevitably it all becomes somewhat repetitive after a while. As does the author’s determinedly chirpy writing style. So an excellent work of historical importance but, for me, not an especially enjoyable read.

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two out of Five Stars

I received a free Kindle copy of Show Trial by Thomas Doherty courtesy of Net Galley  and Columbia University Press the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as the subject matter and the description sounded very interesting.  It is the first book by Thomas Doherty that I have read.

I had high hopes for this book, but the author's writing style (dull, unengaging, text book style) made what should be a fascinating subject into a slow druderrgy of a read. As the subtitle indicates, it is about the House Unamerican Activities Committee and the creation of the Hollywood Blacklist. The most interesting parts of the book were when the author was using direct qoutes from the hearings. The book is well researched as the use of footnotes shows, but it makes reading on a Kindle a bit of a challenge at times.

I cannot recommend this book. There must be others out there on this subject that would make for a much more interesting read.

[Patrick DiJusto · Rating 5 out of 5]

There never was a communist invasion of Hollywood. it is true that in the 1930s, in the depths of the Great depression, when it appeared that capitalism truly had failed, a great many young and artistic people turned their attention to the Communist party. It is also true that some of them got jobs as Hollywood screenwriters. It is also also true that they would, on occasion, make the bad guy in their stories be an unrepentant capitalist. But it is also also also true, that the studios were run by unrepentant capitalists, who would never have put up with outright communist propaganda in one of their movies.

That didn't stop ambitious congressman like j Parnell Thomas from pretending that there was Communist indoctrination running rampant through Hollywood, a situation he deemed worthy of congressional investigation.

With 70 years hindsight, author Thomas Doherty explains the whys and wherefores of the red panic, and hints that the biggest mistake Hollywood ever made was to take congressman Thomas seriously at all.

[Paul Wilner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, he's thorough. Seems like his heart is most in it when he's exposing the hypocrisies of the pro-Stalinist left; less so on the indignity and immorality of the hearings in the first place. Would be more convincing if he thought that pro-Nazi sympathizers in Congress or figures like Joe Kennedy should have been summoned before a committee and imprisoned if they didn't want to cop to their mistakes, or think they had erred. I guess it's a revisionist response to Navasky's "Naming Names'' or Hellman's admittedly self-serving account. This may not have been the dawn of Fascism, as the unfriendlies put it, in typically inflated terms, but it wasn't nothing, either. People's lives were ruined, for no good cause. Not all were suckers for Stalin; many were well-intentioned progressives caught up in the times. Ironic that many had the last laugh, with successful careers after the blacklist ended. But that didn't make it right.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Doherty has produced a clear, calm book on the most important HUAC investigation of the movie industry. He carefully lays out the issues that led up to the 1947 hearings, he covers the hearings day by day, and he resists the temptation to go for easy judgments on heroes and villains. Also, he does a good job covering the fallout from these hearings

"Show Trial" is one of the best books I've read on this subject. Strongly recommended to anyone interested in classic Hollywood or the early Cold War.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A straight ahead recounting of the HUAC hearings. It presumes a level of knowledge of 1949's Hollywood that I just don't have. And it lacked any sort of literary pizzazz that one might expect from a book about entertainment industry figures.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough, detailed, insightful account of events leading up to the blacklist era.

[tommie ☭ · Rating 2 out of 5]

some funny jokes, but largely underwhelming, anti-communist propaganda.

[Louis Giancola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but the larger issues get lost in the mountain of detail. Somewhat shallow treatment of multiple participantss.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of the hearings in 1941 and many of the key players.

[Evan Campbell]

Read this book to learn more about Elia Kazan. His situation was mentioned on page 716/717.

[Rick Burin · Rating 4 out of 5]

About as good an introduction to the story of the Hollywood blacklist as you could hope to find.

Doherty focuses primarily on 1947, and though he somewhat unconvincingly minimises the events of subsequent years, he does a fine job of explaining critical industry context that often gets overlooked: particularly the rancour that already existed between rival unions, and between different factions on the left.

The author also makes vivid sketches of previously neglected players like MPAA head Eric Johnston, whose principles were always subservient to his particular brand of business-minded pragmatism, and eschews the simplicity of many HUAC books, which see Stalinist bullies like John Howard Lawson frequently whitewashed.

Going back to primary sources wherever possible, and proving as witty and film-literate as ever, Doherty creates a fast-paced and credible study of the blacklist’s origins that’s perhaps lacking only in emotional charge and dramatic impact – which might be a shortcoming of his style, or just what happens when you replace the certainties of the usual HUAC discourse with something more ambivalent.

[Verity W · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm very interested in the blacklist era, but I found the writing on this very tough to get into. It's very very thorough, a long way into the weeds and not awfully forthcoming with the benefit of the doubt for the accused. If you're already an obsessive, it might work for you, if you're not and you just wanta bit of a taste of what was going on, try Trumbo by Bruce Cook or (even better) the Blacklist season from Carina Longworth's You Must Remember This podcast.

*****Copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review****

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been fascinated about HUAC as far back as I can remember, yet this is the first book that I recall reading about the subject.
I did not recognize many of the names of Congress but did know a lot of the Hollywood luminaries who took part and/or were affected by these events.
Seems scary that some parallels happenings in our government today.

[Glady · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The subject matter of Show Trial concerns an America gone awry. Post WWII brings out the anti-Semitic politicians who disguise their disdain for Jews as a hunt for Communists in Hollywood. Immigrant writers and other Hollywood elites were easy targets. Filmed hearings with nonsensical and uneven rules made it all too possible for ridiculous opinion statements to be viewed as facts. Naming names without evidence was viewed as a way to survive the investigation.

Amazingly, much of the vitriol voiced in this book could be from 21st century America. Find someone to blame for all the country's problems so you can hide your greed and ignorance.

Doherty writes of the beginning of the unions in Hollywood and their mob underpinnings. His writing reads a bit like a textbook so it felt like I was reading for a college course. The numerous footnotes indicate in-depth research but they made for awkward reading on a Kindle.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive study of the era of the Communist witch hunt in America, focusing on the anti-arts aspects. I intend to reread it and keep it as a source since it is accurate and exhaustive.

I think it is an excellent resource for my students in history and political science. Personally, having read many books about this era, I was very impressed by the scholarship and clarity of detail.

[Raychel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hollywood historian Thomas Doherty turns his attention to the movie industry's darkest era, the blacklist years.

I thought the book over all was a good read. At times I felt it could have skipped some parts as it became dull and drawn out. On a positive note the book is well researched and the author took his time making sure his facts were accurate.