Noir Talk

Brandeis professor Tom Doherty joins us to discuss his new book about the 1947 Congressional hearings that led directly to Hollywood's anti-Communist blacklist. We start by untangling a few terms often used to describe the events of the time--HUAC, McCarthyism, the Red Scare--and the overall timeline of events in and around the hearings (2:15). Then we discuss the perspectives and strategies adopted by each of the main factions from Hollywood who were involved in the 1947 hearings: the studio bosses and their industry representatives from the MPAA (19:20), the staunch anti-Communist conservatives of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (34:55), the activist anti-HUAC liberals of the Committee for the First Amendment (44:45), and the Communist party members and sympathizers known as the Unfriendly Nineteen, whose ranks were randomly culled to the Hollywood Ten (51:30). We finish with how the end of the hearings led rapidly to the blacklist (1:03:30), the role that film noir p