Hollywood Ten

The Hollywood Ten were ten motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, otherwise known as "HUAC", in October of 1947. HUAC had been investigating people for possible communist affiliations during the era of McCarthyism, and had taken to Hollywood to find possible suspects. These ten men (Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo) had been asked by HUAC if they had ties to communism. All of them chose to denounce HUAC and their tactics instead of cooperating, and they were subsequently fined and sentenced to prison. Almost all of them were also blacklisted by the film industry.

Most of these men were unable to gain employment in Hollywood ever again. However, several of them successfully wrote scripts under pseudonyms. Most notably, Trumbo, as "Robert Rich", won an Oscar for best screenplay, for The Brave One (1956). Lardner would later go on to win an Oscar for M*A*S*H in 1970. Others were not so lucky. Bessie never worked in Hollywood again, scraping together money from several other jobs. Biberman's career in film was over, especially once one of his movies was investigated and banned by the FBI for eleven years. Cole, who had written at least forty screenplays prior to the blacklist, only managed to write three more after. Dmytryk, although able to escape the blacklist, was so haunted by what had happened that he wrote a novel about it. Lawson, after having one of his scripts denounced as well, wrote only two screenplays after serving his HUAC sentence. Maltz had to wait until 1970 to receive on-screen credit for a movie. Ornitz's future in Hollywood was ended, despite successfully publishing a book later. Scott worked while blacklisted, but was uncredited for his work, and later died of lung cancer.

These ten men, who were brave enough to defiantly stand up for themselves, were placed in the national spotlight during these events, at center stage. The debate over the wave of anti-Communism was controversial at the time, but the Hollywood Ten inspired many Americans, who were able to realize the fallacies in the arguments of people like Joe McCarthy. Eventually, the McCarthyism era came to a close, and in the 1960s, the blacklist did not exist any longer. Trumbo and company could write under their own names once again.





Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/hollywood-ten
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/trumbo/who-were-the-hollywood-ten/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hollywood-Ten
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/hollywood-ten-men-who-refused-839762/item/alvah-bessie-1904-1985-839779