The 1950s Hollywood Blacklist Was an Assault on Free Expression
As the writers’ strike continues, we should look back at the Hollywood blacklist. The blacklist didn’t just ruin many workers’ careers — it narrowed the range of acceptable movies and contributed to the conservatism of the 1950s.
Film director and one of the “Hollywood Ten” Edward Dmytryk with actress and wife Jean Porter on May 17, 1948 in New York, New York. (Irving Haberman / IH Images / Getty Images)
Screenwriters have always been the sharpest thorn in the side of movie executives, the motion picture labor union with the greatest propensity to strike. The current walkout is their eighth, not including a threatened strike in 1941 that secured their first collective bargaining agreement with the studios.
The Screen Writers Guild (SWG), founded in the early 1930s, was by far the most activist labor union in Hollywood; constituted the bulk of the membership of the Hollywood Communist Party; stood in the forefront of what was called progressive politics in the ’30s and ’40s; and represented the majority of those blacklisted during the ’40s and ’50s.
The current writers’ guild, Writers Guild of America, though not politically radical, is fierce in defending its financial rights. And its ongoing strike provides a perfect occasion to look back on the blacklist era, which torpedoed the careers of countless workers in Hollywood and indelibly shaped the output of movie studios.
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