America’s Media Is Enemy-Occupied Territory, by Paul Gottfried

Recently, I forced myself to reread (despite the accompanying torture) Lillian Hellman’s 1976 memoir, Scoundrel Time. Since its publication, this memoir has offered readers a progressive view of the film industry in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Hellman was a politically outspoken Hollywood scriptwriter who produced scripts for such films as Watch on the Rhine and Little Foxes, and was the longtime lover of fiction writer Dashiell Hammett.

In 1952, Hellman was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and asked about communists in the film industry. She stood her ground and refused to cooperate with what she considered to be a pack of anti-communist witch hunters. For several years thereafter, Hellman suffered as a blacklisted screenwriter. Supposedly others who testified before the Committee shared her views, but unlike Lillian they sacrificed their principles and treacherously turned on their friends. …

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