12. Hollywood began to fight back in the early 1950s
In the Cold War environment of the 1950s, the anti-communist hysteria reached its peak during and shortly after the Korean War. It produced the hearings led by Senator Joseph McCarthy (who had no relationship with the HUAC) and investigations into the US Army, State Department, Treasury Department, and other government offices. McCarthy relied on the extant anti-communist hysteria, much of it fed by the publicity generated by the HUAC and the Hollywood Blacklist. America First, the American Legion, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and other organizations argued Hollywood-based communists used film and the new medium of television to surreptitiously shape the morals and beliefs of American society.
Faced with the accusations from the conservative right, and the Southern Democrats, called Dixiecrats, in their own party, Democratic congressional leaders continued to investigate the entertainment industry. Yet very little, if any, evidence of communist influence shaping American films and television shows emerged. Hollywood fought back. Performers and scriptwriters appeared before the HUAC and attacked their methods as Un-American. Actor Lionel Stander, one of the busiest in Hollywood in 1951, blithely referred to the committee as a “group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States…” in his testimony before the HUAC. He found few producers willing to hire him in Hollywood following his comments before the committee.
