HUAC, the Blacklist, and the
Decline of Social Cinema

BRIAN NEVE

The Origins of the Blacklist

The on Un-American Activities (HUAG) to hold hearings on communism in Hollywood. The committee had been formed in 1938, but only became a standing committee of the House of Representatives in 1945, at the prompting of notorious anti-Semitic Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi. Thereafter, in the years of an emerging Cold War politics, HUAC became a vehicle for politicians who opposed the New Deal tradition of social democracy and reform. The committee followed the example of the joint Fact-Finding Committee of the California legislature (the Tenney Committee), which had held hearings on Communist influence in Hollywood since 1943. The November 1946 elections had returned Republican majorities to both houses of Congress, while the ground for ideological conflict within the film capital had already been prepared by the founding...