Learn About the Hollywood Blacklist at This New Jewish Museum Exhibit
November 2, 2018History Magazine
Rally for the Hollywood Ten, 1950; photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Learn About the Hollywood Blacklist at This New Jewish Museum Exhibit

An exhibit at Jewish Museum Milwaukee casts new light on a dark period in Hollywood history

BY Matthew Prigge
Nine men charged
with contempt of Congress, 1947.
The Hollywood blacklist period, roughly 1947 to 1960, was as tense and mysterious as the best noir thrillers of the day. No one knows for sure how many writers, directors, actors, musicians, journalists and film professionals — disproportionally of Jewish or immigrant backgrounds — lost their livelihoods during the Red Scare whipped up by Wisconsin’s own Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Beginning with the blacklisting of the so-called Hollywood Ten – writers and directors called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to answer for Communist ties or supposedly subversive activity – the industry covertly banned scores of people from working because of their political leanings.

Jewish Museum Milwaukee is exploring the issue and its impact in a new exhibit, “Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare,” that includes lectures, biographical features on blacklisted performers, HUAC hearing footage, films declared “subversive” by the FBI and more.

“After three years in the making, Jewish Museum Milwaukee is looking forward to finally sharing this exhibit with the public,” says the museum’s education director, Ellie Gettinger.

On Nov. 1, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel will speak about High Noon, the classic Western that doubles as a morality play, and how its screenwriter, Carl Foreman, was blacklisted during its production. The museum will host other lectures, events and screenings during the exhibit, which runs through Feb. 10. For a full program list, visit jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/events.

A HUAC meeting, Oct. 21, 1947

Red State?

Wisconsinites were haunted by the Blacklist

ORSON WELLES: Born in Kenosha in 1915, the writer, director and star of Citizen Kane had long been a politically active leftist by the time the Red Scare took hold. There is evidence that he was blacklisted in the late 1940s because of his “radical” beliefs and left the U.S. in 1947 for Europe in order to keep working.
Welles
GERDA LERNER: After fleeing the Nazis in her native Austria, Lerner eventually landed in Hollywood. With her husband, film editor Carl Lerner, she became active in the Communist Party. After being blacklisted, the Lerners worked in secret on various film projects and co-wrote and directed the 1964 film Black Like Me. Lerner eventually joined the faculty at UW-Madison, where she became a pioneering professor and scholar of women’s history and taught feminist film history.
Lerner
NICHOLAS RAY: The director of the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause grew up in La Crosse and fell in with a circle of left-wing artists during the Depression. Ray joined the Communist Party in the post-war years and made a name for himself in Hollywood by directing a string of socially conscious films. Ray eluded the blacklist by secretly naming names to HUAC investigators, continuing to work while others could not.
Nicholas Ray, advising his young actors, including James Dean

“Red and Black” appears in the November 2018 issue of Milwaukee Magazine.

Buy a copy at milwaukeemag.com/shop or find the October issue on newsstands, starting Oct. 29.

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Matthew Prigge

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