Still Playing: Hollywood Blacklist Controversy

Re “‘Hollywood Whitewash of the Cold War’s Shameful Red Stain,” Commentary, Feb. 6: Roy Brewer admonishes the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (and me) for failing “to tell the full truth” about the domestic Cold War in the U.S. Certainly, Communist Party members defended a reprehensible regime. Equally certainly, according to the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, they had a protected right to do so. Individuals who found this stance repugnant regularly disassociated themselves with communists, as was their right. Equally certainly, hundreds of communists engaged in espionage, sending all manner of classified information to the Soviet Union. But there is no evidence that communists in Hollywood had infiltrated the movie-making process, dripped red hues into Hollywood movies or sent film-making secrets to Moscow.

The blacklists were nothing more than institutionalized, politicized attempts to censor those critical of the Cold War and silence dissent. And those in Hollywood who informed did so to save their jobs, not because they believed the communists they named were threats to the security of the United States.

Larry Ceplair

Santa Monica

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Brewer’s commentary on the McCarthy era, while pointing to needed discussion, remains partial at best. Whether the Red hunting of the McCarthy era had a core of justification or not, there is no question that it quickly fell victim to massive excesses. It hurt many people, and the country, far more than it helped.

The academic field of philosophy, for example, suffered numerous losses and was distorted in ways that persist unchecked to this day--yet there is no evidence that a single clandestine communist philosopher was ever exposed by McCarthyite forces.

The academy is to be congratulated on its exhibition. We have a long way to go before these ghosts are exorcised. (I am the author of “Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era.”)

John McCumber

Professor, Germanic Languages

UCLA

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I am certain you will get letters complaining about Brewer’s commentary. Recast it like this: Change “Communist Party” to “Nazi Party” and see how the story now reads. It is only the very odd view that communism was a wonderful policy that makes this “blacklist” seem terrible. In view of the fact that communism helped no one, murdered tens of millions (that fact is beyond dispute) and was eventually rejected by the people it governed after leaving them in poverty, it is indeed sad that anyone, anywhere, would defend support of and association with such a group.

If we had acted on the desires of these writers and directors and established such a regime, how many of us would have been murdered?

Michael Cregan

Santa Barbara