Introduction:

​

A Witch-Hunt without Witches

 

“Wherever appears some allegation of subversive intent,

of conspiratorial menace, of concealed betrayal—just 

there the ‘witch-hunt’ label may be directly affixed.”

                       John Demos, The Enemy Within

​

 

 

            After 30 days of hearings before the United States Senate and a television audience of over twenty-million, counsel for the United States Army Joseph N. Welch angrily faced the gentleman across the table and said, “Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" And with those words, spoken on June 9, 1954, during what became known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings, the general public would have seared into their collective memories the idea that Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, was totally and singularly responsible for each and every hearing on un-American activities be they before the Senate or the House of Representatives. It was McCarthy, and McCarthy alone, who destroyed institutions and lives, and was responsible for the festering blacklist in the motion picture industry well into the 1960s, even if he was dead by then. Indeed it was Jack Valenti, long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America, who when discussing his friend Kirk Douglas’ role in the breaking of the blacklist in 1960, wrote in his memoir about hearings “conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, headed by Senator Joe McCarthy.”

            In the ensuing fifty plus years, historians and commentators of this period have dissected the many and varied components of these events. This book focuses on the events that affected the entertainment industry. Representative Martin Dies, Democrat from Texas, whose committee fired the opening salvo in the destruction of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration programs when he began the process of destroying the Federal Theatre Project. The most notable national dismantling of communist involvement in motion pictures began in earnest during the 1947 hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities which because of its acronym, HUAC, is continually, and incorrectly, referred to as the House Un-American Activities Committee. But then again so is the Dies Committee even though HUAC only became a standing committee of the House in 1945. HUAC is the committee that created the group that became known as the Hollywood Ten. It is also the committee that, over the next eleven years, sought out the publicity that comes from investigating the performing arts communities. 

            As the hearings continued, the eponymous Senator McCarthy, on rare occasions, also called members of the performing arts community although these hearings never reached the level of excitement of the aforementioned Army-McCarthy hearings. They also were not televised. However the name McCarthy-era and the term McCarthyism stuck to this period in spite of efforts by more conscientious historians, or perhaps more effectively because of the sheer disregard of others. And as the phrases and misused committee names found themselves more and more in the printed media, the terms and mistakes became an indelible part of the lexicon. Also most patently disregarded in the history of this period are women, leaving us with an image of a witch-hunt without witches, whose traditional/historical image is markedly female.

            This book puts women back into the picture, and by doing so it extends and deepens our understanding of what happened when the un-American committee investigations met the female of the species, and how this fits into the larger narrative of this period. In an attempt to refocus the lens of this particular history, women will be shown to have lives that include as well as go beyond home and family. They will be shown to have committed lives, political lives, lives with impact. Close to 100 women have been identified who testified before one of the numerous committees investigating subversion. Like the men, they will be shown to be diverse in their ideas and values. Writing women back into history does not mean putting haloes on their heads. Here are the women of the Federal Theatre Project who both defend and defile the program. Before the Hollywood Ten took the stage in 1947, two women appeared to “help” the committee: Lela Rogers, Ginger Rogers’ mother, who found communists in the most benign dialog, and objectivism’s greatest advocate, Ayn Rand, who strove to educate the committee on recognizing pro-Russian film propaganda. 

            In 1951, HUAC returned in full force having been legitimized by the failure of the Hollywood Ten to defeat their contempt citations in the courts resulting in all ten serving time in prison. HUAC, now under the chairmanship of John S. Wood, Democrat from Georgia, subpoenaed a number of very successful women: Gale Sondergaard, Academy Award wining actress who is usually identified only as the “wife of Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten;” fellow Academy Award winner Anne Revere, and then literary agent Meta Reis Rosenberg who received a telegram just prior to her appearance from writer/producer Richard Collins. It was read before the committee at the completion of her testimony. Collins wrote, “I trust this will convince you that politics is no business for a fetching girl. Politics is for flat-chested girls.” 

            Later, in September of 1951, the committee spent a most active time holding hearings about Hollywood, in Hollywood. They heard from fifty-one witnesses, thirty-four men and seventeen women. Of those questioned, nine men cooperated and twenty-five men didn’t, while five women cooperated and twelve didn’t, further belying any notion that one sex or the other might be more prone to certain behaviors. There were, however, some marked differences. For example, men weren’t asked to appear in order for their wives to continue working, but women were expected to fix things for their men. When the blacklist slowly ended, older male actors found they could re-establish careers, women were merely older.

            Hearings continued into 1952 and 1953, with the notable introduction, especially by women, of “role playing.” Judy Holliday brought her Academy Award winning character, Billie Dawn, into the hearing room mere months before Lillian Hellman’s Southern belle, the FBI’s “sweet little old lady” informant, Edith Macia, and the mother/daughter appearances of Lucille and Desiree Ball. These women and many more populate the pages of this book. Role playing reached its zenith with the 1955 hearings into the Broadway theatre, when the majority of the witnesses, including Sarah Cunningham (Randolph) and Madeline Lee (Gilford), got together to rehearse. Not to be ignored, committees were formed in a number of states including California and Washington, and the women who appeared there are included in this work. HUAC continued to hold hearings in 1956 and 1958. Included in this group was a return performance by Gale Sondergaard as well as an executive session with Olivia de Havilland. 

            Although HUAC continued as a standing committee until 1975, this is where our story ends save for a “whatever became of …” review. Other than playwright Lillian Hellman, a joint effort by the Mostels (Kate and Zero) and the Gilfords (Madeline Lee and Jack), and a short memoir from actress Rose Hobart who left out as much as she put in, none of the other women who appeared ever wrote a published memoir. There have been some interviews conducted by, among others, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Foundation. Meta Rosenberg sat for one of those interviews and when asked about this period and the blacklist, she refused to comment. I have also interviewed five of the women who appear in these pages. It just isn’t enough. The literature has given short shrift to this particular chapter of the history of these congressional investigations into the entertainment industry. Too many of these women have found themselves permanently on the cutting room floor. Their voices need to be heard, their experiences, including how the committees perceived and treated them, their perspectives, and lives deserve to be examined and recognized. This book fills in those blanks. As Gale Sondergaard commented in an interview in 1976, twenty-five years after she first appeared before HUAC, “I feel no bitterness. If you allow yourself to grow bitter, you only hurt yourself. I’m very proud to have been a part of the period. I am proud to have taken a stand and I’m proud to have been a part of holding it all back if I did. I don’t want to go on living in that period, but I realize that if I can understand it, then I must help other people understand...”