`Are you a member of the Communist Party, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"
That question struck fear in the minds of practically anyone who worked in the film industry during the late 1940s and early '50s. And how you answered meant the difference between having a thriving career in Hollywood or never working in that town again.
Lee Grant, Charles Chaplin, Arthur Miller, Melvyn Douglas, Jeff Corey, John Garfield, Zero Mostel, Frances Farmer and Dashiell Hammett are among the scores affected by the Hollywood blacklist.
"For almost 15 years, a congressional investigation into communist subversion tore the motion picture industry apart, and reshaped Hollywood movies," actor Alec Baldwin says near the end of "Blacklist: Hollywood on Trial," a 90-minute documentary that premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on the American Movie Classics cable network.
Hosted by Baldwin, the special delivers a meticulous and fascinating account of the events leading up to the blacklisting of hundreds of actors, producers, directors and writers. Archival film and photography, movie clips of the work of people who were shunned, and interviews with some of the people who were blacklisted all greatly enhance "Blacklist." Also helping are letters from some of the blacklisted, read by such celebrities as Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and Morgan Freeman.
It was a time when paranoia gripped the country, and the "Red Menace" was seen as an underhanded, negative force practically everywhere. Several actors, producers, directors and writers were known to have some ties to the Communist Party, whether big or small, and the fear was that if these people churned out movies with their "un-American" messages planted in them, the minds of millions would be poisoned.
The government responded to this "threat" with the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose mandate, according to Chairman J. Parnell Thomas, was "exposing and spotlighting subversive elements wherever they exist."
The good stuff comes when footage of those hearings is shown on "Blacklist." It's great seeing defiant Hollywood artists argue down government bureaucrats, who are banging their gavels and yelling at these guys while trying to gain some order and get their questions answered.
Dalton Trumbo, one of the so-called "Hollywood 10" who spent time in prison for refusing to answer the committee's questions, is portrayed as a hero. That's partly because he so blatantly defied the committee, and partly because he was one of the first to break the blacklist when, under the name Robert Rich, he won a 1956 Academy Award for writing "The Brave One" (Trumbo collected his Oscar in 1975, a year before he died.)
Those happy musicals of the 1950s like the Doris Day-Rock Hudson romp "Pillow Talk"? It's theorized they were made by people too scared to put out anything resembling a relevant social message, lest they be labeled a communist.
What "Blacklist" does well is highlight an aspect of the era that doesn't get much attention.
"There were those who no longer spoke to each other, friendships were broken, marriages split up, jobs were lost," says Marsha Hunt, a popular actress of the 1930s and '40s who was blacklisted for speaking out against the government committee. Others left the country, received hate mail and death threats.
Most compelling is the story of director Edward Dmytryk, who went to prison in 1950 as one of the Hollywood 10 who refused to answer the committee on his communist ties. Dmytryk talks freely on the documentary about his stance, and there is some good footage of his testimony.
Then it's revealed that Dmytryk, who directed such films as "Confessions of Boston Blackie," "The Falcon Strikes Back" and "The Caine Mutiny," renounced his communism, testified during a second round of committee hearings in 1951, and gave up the names of those who had communist ties.
Dmytryk today defiantly stands up for what he did to get out of jail and have his name removed from the blacklist: "Why the hell should my family suffer? Why should I suffer? Why should I be a martyr for a cause I didn't believe in?"
Where's the remote: In what may be a first for NBC's "Law & Order," the suspect in a crime from a past episode makes a return appearance. Standup comedian Larry Miller (late of NBC's short-lived comedy "The Pursuit of Happiness") was both wickedly evil and funny early last season, when he played a sleazy New York comedy club owner accused of having his wife murdered. He beat that rap, but during the last minutes of the episode, new evidence showed that maybe Miller wasn't so innocent after all.
Miller's character is back in trouble in Wednesday's episode, which is on at 9 p.m. on WMAQ-Ch. 5. This time, he's accused of killing his second wife.