Hollywood in Transition, 1949–55

Abstract

While television had the most obvious impact on the kinds of film that were made in the 1950s, its rise coincided with the Cold War era during which Hollywood came under politically motivated investigation. Although the political doings of the Senate’s House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) have no direct place in this study, its massively publicised investigations of alleged left-wing activity in Hollywood had an economic impact in that, once again, the spectre of a boycott of movies raised itself in the minds of industry executives. It did so because HUAC’s interrogations of Hollywood personnel came at a time when the idea that Communist powers had a demonic capability to infiltrate the minds of a freedom-loving American people had itself deeply infiltrated those minds. It was a time of engulfing social paranoia, and HUAC showed itself willing (if not always skilfully) to heighten popular fears. The argument ran that Hollywood personnel had all the techniques required to make them dangerous propagandists — their pro-government activities in the war just ended proved this. Since there were Communists in Hollywood (this had been true between the 1930s and the start of the Cold War), it followed that the studios were a likely site for fifth-column infiltration to start.