13 Facts About Hollywood Ten

1.

Hollywood Ten blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood Ten, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War.

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2.

Blacklist lasted until 1960, when Dalton Trumbo, a Communist Party member from 1943 to 1948 and member of the Hollywood Ten, was credited as the screenwriter of the film Exodus, and publicly acknowledged by actor Kirk Douglas for writing the screenplay for Spartacus .

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3.

Hollywood Ten blacklist was rooted in events of the 1930s and the early 1940s, encompassing the height of the Great Depression and World War II.

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4.

In contrast, other leading Hollywood Ten figures, including director John Huston and actors Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland and Danny Kaye, organized the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the government's targeting of the film industry.

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5.

HUAC hearings failed to turn up any evidence that Hollywood Ten was secretly disseminating Communist propaganda, but the industry was nonetheless transformed.

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6.

Hollywood Ten was released early from jail; following his 1951 HUAC appearance, in which he described his brief membership in the party and named names, his career recovered.

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7.

Hollywood Ten was immediately blacklisted after Edward Dmytryk and fellow filmmaker Frank Tuttle named him to HUAC in 1952.

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8.

The author Kenneth Billingsley, writing in Reason magazine, said that Trumbo wrote in The Daily Worker about films which he said communist influence in Hollywood Ten had prevented from being made: among them were proposed adaptations of Arthur Koestler's anti-totalitarian works Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar, which described the rise of communism in Russia.

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9.

In 1952, the Screen Writers Guild – which had been founded two decades before by three future members of the Hollywood Ten – authorized the movie studios to "omit from the screen" the names of any individuals who had failed to clear themselves before Congress.

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10.

Hollywood Ten was scrutinized by AWARE, Inc, one of the private firms that examined individuals for signs of Communist sympathies and "disloyalty".

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11.

Public support for the Hollywood Ten wavered, as everyday citizen-observers were never really sure what to make of them.

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12.

Hollywood Ten claimed to have left the Communist Party before having been subpoenaed, defining himself as the "odd man out".

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13.

Hollywood Ten condemned the Ten's legal tactic of defiance, and regretted staying with the group for as long as he did.

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