Hollywood on Trial

By Michael Freedland

Hollywood on Trial tells the story of how the politicians took Tinseltown to task in the late 1940s and 1950s.

On a crisp March morning in March 1951, Larry Parks kissed Betty Garrett goodbye, and caught a flight from Los Angeles to Washington. They were one of Hollywood’s golden couples – but their iconic status was to be short lived. For Larry Parks’ visit was to appear before the notorious HUAC – the House Un-American Activities Committee – and his tearful testimony was to signal the end of their careers.

As the Cold War with the Soviet Union began in earnest, so the Second World War alliance with Stalin gave way to paranoia about the spread of communism – and a desire to root out the potential enemy from within. This search for ‘reds under the bed’, later led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, was felt most keenly in Hollywood, where the investigations were carried out under the full glare of flashlights.

This fascinating book reveals the true story behind one of cinema’s darkest episodes and charts the generation of actors who found their livelihoods ruined and the writers forced to hire ‘fronts’ in order to work; how Arthur Miller was offered the chance to have his hearing dropped in return for a photo-opportunity with Marilyn Monroe; and how Kirk Douglas’s naming of Dalton Trumbo as the writer of Spartacus signalled the end of this extraordinary era.

Painstakingly researched and drawing on numerous interviews, Hollywood on Trial is the definitive account of how political paranoia shaped cinema for a decade; it will fascinate film fans and social historians alike.