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Hollywood Exiles

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A story of glamour, duplicity and the FBI's battle against communism in Hollywood

Host Oona Chaplin guides listeners through the period known as the Red Scare - an ideological battle that implicated Hollywood’s biggest stars, including her grandfather, Charlie.

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Hollywood Exiles: 8. The un-Americans

10/04/2024 GMT

8. The un-Americans

BBC - Hollywood Exiles, 8. The un-Americans

The Hollywood Ten hit a legal brick wall as the blacklist era begins

The Hollywood Ten's legal strategy fails disastrously. They run out of options. More widely, writers such as Norma Barzman begin to feel they’re being censored.

Hollywood producers gather at the Waldorf Hotel to plot strategy. They push back against allegations of “subversive” content. Motion Picture Association of America president Eric Johnston makes the case that movies are a force for moral good. He also calls for a hardline: he pushes studios to purge communists and sympathizers from their payrolls. This marks the beginning of the so-called “blacklist” era in Hollywood. Screenwriter Norma Barzman recalls this as a repressive period, when creative people were self censoring their political beliefs

Archive:
Recordings of House Unamerican Activities Committee by Paramount Newsreels 
The Hollywood Ten, directed by John Berry, 1950
Dalton Trumbo interviewed for Hollywood on Trial, directed by David Helpern, Corinth Films, 1976

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