blog post by Peggy Alexander

Seventy years ago today, October 20, 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began hearings into Communist influence in the motion picture industry, the result of which was the Hollywood Blacklist. This post features materials related to these hearings and the blacklist within collections of UCLA Library Special Collections.

James Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976) was a screenwriter who became one of the Hollywood Ten and was blacklisted by the motion picture industry (1947). He was one of the first blacklisted writers to emerge from the underground when he received screen credit for his work on the 1960 releases of Spartacus and Exodus. The collection consists of materials related to Trumbo's career as a screen writer and novelist including this address book which documents his business and personal life. Note that some of the entries have been crossed out. Could the reason for this be that these persons were "friendly witnesses" to the House Un-American Activities Committee???

Dalton Trumbo Address Book

Nat Segaloff is a film historian, documentary producer, and author of over a dozen books including biographies of directors Arthur Penn and William Friedkin, and writers Harlan Ellison and Stirling Silliphant. He is the author (with Daniel M. Kimmel and Arnie Reisman) of the play The Waldorf Conference, a comedy-drama that speculates what happened in the infamous 1947 meeting that began the Blacklist. It was produced in 1993 by LA Theatreworks and aired on National Public Radio. Nat is also a Blacklist scholar whose collection is found in UCLA Library Special Collections.

HUAC at 70  (pdf)

by Nat Segaloff - Special to UCLA Library Special Collections ©2017 Nat Segaloff

This slideshow features materials related to these hearings and the blacklist within collections of UCLA Library Special Collections.