13. Hoover’s FBI and the American Legion swung into full gear in the mid-1950s
American Legion members picketed films which their leadership found offensive to true American sensibilities. Among the films picketed were Moulin Rouge, On the Waterfront, and High Noon, all considered classics today. Attorneys who represented actors and others before the HUAC found themselves the targets of surveillance by the FBI. In 1952 the Screen Writer’s Guild directed producers of films to remove the screenwriting credits for writers who refused to testify before the HUAC. The classic film The Robe, a tale of a Roman Centurion who witnessed the death of Christ had been written by Albert Maltz. Maltz, one of the Hollywood Ten, wrote the screenplay in the late 1940s. Upon release in 1953, his name did not appear in the credits.
Hoover’s FBI provided information to the American Business Consultant’s newsletter Counterattack, and to newspaper and magazine columnists covering the entertainment industry. Several of these columnists, including Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell, exposed those suspected of communist leanings in their writing. Hopper openly urged some performers be placed on the blacklist. Hopper, who at her peak could boast of 35 million readers, openly attacked performers including Charles Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor, Joseph Cotton, and Kirk Douglas, as well as director Otto Preminger. She served as one of the primary sources of information to the HUAC concerning Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr. She also published her suspicions of Trumbo returning to screenwriting, under pseudonyms, in the 1950s. The FBI investigated and found them correct.
