Baa Baa Blacklist Part IV : Ten Angry Men

Of the estimated three hundred and twenty people that suffered directly at the hands of the HUAC's cleansing process, a few brave souls in the names of Abraham Polonsky,  Dalton Trumbo and Howard De Silva, refused to cooperate or pander on any level, although one of the ten would ultimately deceive his lot; Edward Dmytryk- he would name John Berry who made the film The Holywood Ten in Dymytrk's defense no less. Elia Kazan, Sterling Hayden, Robert Rossen (another of the original nineteen) and others paraded through the witness box and John Garfield received his marching papers. Zero Mostel, Larry Parks, Gale Sondegaard, Jeff Corey and several others. Actors and actresses remained unemployed. Top rated writers and directors like Joseph Losey, Carl Foreman and Berry himself, who had been named but vehemently refused to testify, left for Europe.

But for those writers who decided to stay put in the States; as Polonsky and Trumbo did, it was business as per usual. Producers and directors still went to the writers they knew were competent. A writer could use the name of a friend, which more often that not would create problems. Or he could use a pseudonym. Dalton Trumbo penned The Brave One in 1956 under the nom de plume Robert Rich and unbelievably received an Oscar for it. Another golden boy would be awarded to the screenplay for 1957's The Bridge on the River Kwai, written in tandem by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson but attributed to Pierre Boulle, the French novelist of the original work.

The Brave One, made a bold move and was rewarded with a  golden fellar.

In the 1960's, some of the Ten had their own names back on the silver screen. Trumbo was the first to come out of hiding in 1960 when Otto Preminger gave him screen credit for Exodus. Herbert J. Biberman had directed the independent film, Salt of the Earth (1954), but did not reemerge until 1969 with Slaves. Lardner had to wait until the year 1965 for his official screen credit on The Cincinnati Kid, and then went to sctipt M*A*S*H (1970). Lawson had retreated to Moscow.

J Parnell Thomas in 1954

J. Parnell Thomas himself ending up joining the Ten in prison, when he served an unfair sentence for fraud. Yet, HUAC continued its investigations until it was formally wound up in 1975. after having been renamed the Internal Security Committee in 1969. It would darken the film industry's doorstep for years as well a television and radio and to some extent the theater. It had curtailed the string of social melodramas that followed the war years. Had it uncovered any subversive elements ? If there was 'subversion' in Hollywood in the post-war years, it was either implicit in the pessimism of the film noir or explicit as in the societal-problem movies that dealt with racism and allied subjects.

Dalton Trumbo during bath time.

Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire, for example had the intention of being an examination of homosexuality, but would shift its focus to anti-Semitism. The subject of Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949) was changed from hatred of the Jews to hatred of the blacks. In more sentimental form, oppression of Jews surfaced on Elia Kazan's groundbreaking Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which was mostly concerned to s how that Jews are exactly like everybody else. Race also formed the dramatic problem in Kazan's subsequent Pinky (1949), a story of a black girl (Jeanne Crain) who tries to pass for Caucasian.

Benedict Arnold, oops I mean Edward Dmytryk

The idea that it might be hard to adjust to peace, a thought utterly taboo in wartime, came to the surface in 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives. Political corruption, once completely verboten as a topic by the trusted Production Code, was highlighted in Robert Rossen's All The Kings Men (1949) and also formed the subject of Kazan's Boomerang (1946)

Double exposure for Ring Lardner.

Essentially the resurgence of interest to social conscience had minimal political content. It was an extension of the black mood of crime melodrama and was perhaps just as romantic by its nature. These films would reflect a pervasive pessimism rather than activism; they broached the subjects instead of analyzing them. The Production Code would not soften until the Fifties, in the American remake of Marcel Carne's Daybreak. - which featured Jean Gabin's poignant depiction of a doomed fugitive.