|
Foreword
In October 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) cited ten
Hollywood writers and directors for contempt of Congress. The leading organs of the daily press were outspoken and unhesitating in their criticism of the Committee's purposes and methods. Those of us who had been cited were heartened by
the popular support.
About a week later, a cold-war Congress voted overwhelmingly to uphold the
contempt citations. A short time after that, the Motion Picture Producers Association met in New York City and produced what became known as the Waldorf Astoria Decision. This document was a "white paper" formally instituting the
blacklist in Hollywood. Somehow the mood had changed very rapidly. The recently indignant defenders of the First Amendment made no editorial comment on these latter developments. The news was merely "objectively" reported.
The first book to tell what actually happened at the HUAC hearings was titled Hollywood on Trial (Boni
and Gaer, New York, 1948). It told who supported us, and who opposed us; it spelled out the consequences for both sides. The author was Gordon Kahn, a film writer and journalist who was one of the nineteen men originally subpoenaed by HUAC
(although he was never actually brought to the stand). Kahn's book closed the subject, as far as we ten were concerned, for eight years. Then in 1956, a two-volume Report on Blacklisting appeared. Volume I covered the movies, volume II
radio and television. The author was John Cogley, executive editor of Commonweal, and the book was sponsored by the Fund for the Republic. The back-cover blurb says that Cogley was commissioned to prepare a factual report on the
situation. He did — selectively and with discretion. To my knowledge, none of us was consulted about the facts as we knew them.
Over the next twenty-five years, about a dozen more books appeared. At first
the authors, if they examined us at all, looked upon us as creatures somewhere between villains and fools — or more generously just as freaks and misfits. Later on, for reasons which will be discussed in the text, we became subjects for
more serious young scholars. But they, too, had prejudices and preferences; their political biases also showed, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. While some of the writing has been accurate and well crafted, all of these works have been
written from the outside. As a result, the political dimensions of the Hollywood Ten have never been personally penetrated. The books have been neither personal nor political.
This story will be personal and political. In the writer's opinion, there
can be no separation. Those "on the outside," the historians and investigative reporters whose works comprise most of the literature on the Hollywood Ten, could not have known (although some pretend to) the feelings and thoughts of
those who were cited for contempt, fought the convictions all the way to the Supreme Court, and went to prison after a three-year struggle. Outsiders could not convey to the reader the conflicts we experienced — with others, with our
families, and within ourselves — as we held fast to principle and firmly held convictions, only partly aware at the time of the pain, humiliation, heartache and punishment that lay ahead.
What were those convictions that I so deeply cherished?........
Copyright © 1981, 2009 Estate of Lester Cole
|
