Communist Threat by Association in Hollywood

Besides being named a communist by the United States government, being associated with a communist was probably the most dangerous position a person could find themselves in during the 1950s. Being associated with communists brought inerasable stigma that could ruin job prospects, families, and lives. The consequences of stigma by association are especially apparent in the Hollywood motion picture industry. Artists associated with communists or even suspected communists could almost guarantee a blacklisting and a personal investigation by the United States government. It is important to remember that in this respect, Hollywood was not that unique; every American feared being associated with communists. What made Hollywood different was that it was publicized all over the United States, as opposed to the personal and private lives of normal Americans.

This threat by association is most obviously revealed through the 1951 testimony of Paul Crouch, a former communist-turned informant, before for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Crouch ‘names names’ on dozens of suspected Hollywood communists and their associates. As a former communist himself, Crouch is asked by the House Committee to provide insider details into how the American Communist Party collects donations from members of the Hollywood elite. Crouch testified before the Committee that a current member of the Communist Party showed him a “list of about 300 names in Hollywood, giving street addresses and private unlisted telephone numbers, of various movie stars, directors, and others, including the names of Charles Chaplin, Edward G. Robinson, Sylvia Sidney, James Cagney, Clifford Odets, John Howard Lawson, and many others” (Crouch 1951, 4). Crouch is then battered with questions by the House Committee about the associates of these suspected communists, such as “Can you name any others who may have knowledge…whether they are or are not at present members of the Communist Party?”…”and, incidentally, you might mention the names of any other Hollywood personalities that you might have been told had contributed to the Party,” “could you…furnish us the names of any individual or individuals who might have knowledge of…that Communist Party?” (January 8, 1951 HUAC session, 7-13). The House Committee encouraged Crouch to not only name the most noteworthy members and contributors to the Communist Party, but also anyone who might have an association with these individuals. Associate Professor Elizabeth Pontikes writes that artists merely associated with suspected communists were unofficially blacklisted because no one wanted to have their names connected to a communist (Pontikes 2010, 458). She states: “in June 1950, American Business Consultants (an outfit run by a trio of FBI agents and funded by Alfred Kohlberg and the Catholic Church) issued a 213-page book, Red Channels (1950), that inaugurated the ‘graylist’ – 151 actors, writers, musicians, and other entertainers were names as communists on the basis of their ‘Red connections’” (Pontikes 2010, 461). Statistically speaking, Pontikes has discovered that mere association with an officially blacklisted individual dropped an artist's chances of finding work by tenfold (Pontikes 2010, 469).

The threat by association leads to what Pontikes dubs a moral panic. The Red Scare affected a wide breath of society – not just communists and anti-communist crusaders, and not just the federal government. Merely having an association with a suspected communist or blacklisted artist in Hollywood was enough to ruin a career. The idea of a moral panic is significant because it reveals the grave seriousness with which people took the Red Scare and the communist menace as a whole. The entire American population faced a moral panic, as revealed through the remarkably intimate testimonies before the House Committee and through articles written by The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and other prominent newspapers during this time. Because no one wanted to be named a communist themselves, people began ‘outing’ their friends and neighbors, just as Crouch did with Party members. Americans feared that they could be considered a communist if they associated with suspected subversive individuals. Hollywood can serve as a barometer of the responses of the American public, and can also act as a revelatory agency regarding the seriousness and panic during the Red Scare of the 1950s.