October 27, 1947: Hollywood Fights Back

Bacall and Bogart, at the head of the marching actors in D.C.

That could be Bette Davis behind Bacall.

October 27, 1947: Members of The Committee for the First Amendment fly to Washington, D.C., as part of the "Hollywood Fights Back" movement against the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearings investigating Communist influence in the American film industry. They were attempting to defend screenwriters accused of Communist activity, a group known as The Hollywood Ten.

Members of The Committee included directors John Huston, William Wyler and Billy Wilder; songwriter Ira Gershwin (his brother George had died in 1937); singers Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne; and actors Myrna Loy (who founded the group with Huston and Wyler), Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz, Judy Garland & her director husband Vincente Minnelli, Groucho Marx, Edward G. Robinson, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Bette Davis, Melvyn Douglas, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster, Burgess Meredith, Jane Wyatt, Dorothy Dandridge and Marsha Hunt.

Many of them, including Wilder, Gershwin, Marx, Robinson and Kaye, were Jewish. So were half of the Ten: Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz and Samuel Ornitz. Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo were not Jewish, although Lardner's 1st wife, Sylvia Schulman, was. Regardless of religion, the artists saw this persecution as the sort of thing the Nazis would have done, and this fed their outrage.

Some of them were registered Republicans, but they couldn't accept this garbage. In particular, Lucy (a Republican) and Bogie (a Democrat) testified in such a way that it could only be described as an artful way of telling the HUAC members to go to Hell. (As Bogie's character Sam Spade said in The Maltese Falcon in 1941, "I won't play the sap for you!") That night, the actors bought a 30-minute special on ABC Radio, and did another a week later.

It ended up ineffective. Many of them found it impossible to get work in America, and moved to Europe. In 1960, Kirk Douglas asked Trumbo to write the script for the historical epic he wanted to star in, Spartacus, and that film's success helped break the blacklist.

Ring Lardner Jr., son of the famous sportswriter, was the last surviving member of the Hollywood Ten, living until 2000.

Marsha Hunt was able to make 2 movies in 1948, and 3 in '49, but none in '50 or '51, 2 in '52, none in '53, and just 1 each in '54, '55 and '56, before going into semi-retirement. In 1971, a year after Trumbo's death, she appeared in a film version of his novel Johnny Got His Gun. In 1987, she appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as an Admiral's wife. Her last role was in 2008, in The Empire State Building Murders.

She died on September 7, 2022, as the last surviving blacklisted actor. At the age of 105, she remained unrepentant, because she wasn't a Communist, and still believed that what had already been done, before she stepped in was unfair.

Marsha Hunt in 1947 (left) and 2020

One actor who did name names was Ronald Reagan, who wanted to protect his status as President of the only thing he ever should have been President of: The Screen Actors Guild. Yes, Reagan, the man who wrecked the labor movement in America 35 years later, ran a labor union.

I guess a later director and screenwriter, Christopher Nolan, was right: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

*

October 27, 1947 was a Monday. Baseball season was over. There was no Monday Night Football until 1970. The season of the Basketball Association of America, the league that would become the NBA, didn't start for another 16 days. The NHL season had started, but there were no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.