To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Blacklisted Hollywood Ten’s testimony in front of the House Un-American Committee, WGF is co-sponsoring a special event featuring readings of the testimony by Blacklist survivors, family members, writers, and local activists. WGF Archive will also be on hand to exhibit items from the era.
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Confirmed readers include:
Actor Rosario Dawson, The Defenders, Luke Cage
Actor, James Cromwell, Marshall, The Green Mile
Actor Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Director and producer Robert Miller, All My Sons
Actor Ed Asner via video
Actress Kelsey Douglas, who will read a statement especially written for the Hollywood Blacklist Commemoration by her grandfather, Kirk Douglas
Activist/actor Mike Farrell, M*A*S*H
Actor Andrea Marcovicci, The Front
Actor Lee Grant (via specially made video)
Blacklisted actor Marsha Hunt, who witnessed the 1947 HUAC hearings
Blacklisted screenwriter Norma Barzman
Don Williams and Johnny Yoder, Art of Acting Studio
Howard Rodman, former WGAW President
Actor Ellen Geer
Actor Tania Verafield, granddaughter of blacklisted screenwriter Robert Lees
Bella, Jen, and Ava Stander, daughters of actor Lionel Stander
Mira Larkin, granddaughter of the Hollywood Ten’s Albert Maltz;
Lisa Gilford, daughter of Madeline and Jack Gilford
TV commentator Ellen Ratner, cousin of blacklisted screenwriter Paul Jarrico
Salam Al-Marayati, President Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Hector Villagra, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California
Justin Connolly, Southern California Director of Human Rights Watch
Steve Rohde, Death Penalty Focus Board Chair.
About the Hollywood Ten:
The Hollywood Ten’s HUAC testimony, which began on October 27, 1947, launched the Hollywood Blacklist and later McCarthyism. This was one of the most unjust, repressive eras in American history, enforcing censorship and trampling on constitutional rights.
Suspected of being “subversives,” artists and filmmakers were subpoenaed to testify before Congress. If the talents refused to inform about their political activities and associations, and on others, to HUAC, they were blacklisted. For members of the Hollywood Ten such as screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Spartacus) and some other “unfriendly witnesses”, such as Dashiell Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man detective stories), this meant prison and/or fines. For hundreds more actors, writers, directors, etc., who refused to “name names” and be informers, this meant being banished from working in the movie industry.
The goal of our HUAC hearings reenactment is to remind Americans about another despotic era in U.S. history when free speech rights were trampled on by HUAC and McCarthyism – so it never happens again.