HUAC Hollywood Hearings Begin, Studio Executives Cooperate as "Friendly Witnesses"

The House Un-American Activities Committee opens its first postwar hearings on October 20, 1947, investigating alleged Communist influence in Hollywood with Chairman J. Parnell Thomas presiding and Robert E. Stripling serving as chief counsel. Drawing upon lists provided in The Hollywood Reporter, HUAC subpoenas 42 persons working in the film industry to testify. Because of prehearing publicity, more than one hundred news agencies are present, along with three major radio networks and eleven newsreel and television cameras stationed above the witness table. The committee includes Representatives John McDowell of Pennsylvania, Richard Nixon of California, Richard B. Vail of Illinois, and John S. Wood of Georgia.

During the hearings’ first week, friendly witnesses mainly consisting of studio executives are called to testify before the committee. The October hearings begin with appearances by 14 friendly witnesses including Walt Disney, Jack L. Warner, Gary Cooper, Ronald Reagan, Robert Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, screenwriter Jack Moffitt, and MGM producer and story editor James K. McGuinness. These friendly witnesses cooperate fully with HUAC, providing names and expressing anti-Communist positions that legitimize the committee’s investigation. Studio executives testify that they are vigilant against Communist infiltration and willing to cooperate with Congress to purge suspected radicals from the film industry. Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, testifies that the guild has “done a pretty good job of keeping those people’s activities curtailed,” establishing his early credentials as an anti-Communist crusader that will later serve his political career.

During the second week, nineteen witnesses mainly consisting of writers are subpoenaed, with the first suspected communist to appear being John Howard Lawson on October 27, 1947. Ten of these “unfriendly witnesses” - Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo - refuse to answer questions about their political affiliations, invoking the First Amendment rather than the Fifth Amendment and arguing the government has no authority to interrogate citizens about their beliefs. The Hollywood Ten represent a cross-section of the industry’s creative elite: established screenwriters and accomplished directors who know how to operate inside the studio system. On November 24, 1947, the House of Representatives votes 346 to 17 to approve citations against the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress. The HUAC hearings establish the template for systematic political persecution using anti-Communist rhetoric, with corporate studio executives’ cooperation demonstrating how business interests willingly participated in suppressing dissent and establishing ideological conformity that serves their economic interests by restricting politically challenging content.