Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312170467 ISBN 13: 9780312170462

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1997

More than thirty survivors of the blacklisting that took place in Hollywood in the late 1940s share their stories, in a study that includes interviews with Ring Lardner, Jr., and Martin Ritt, the director of The Front. 15,000 first printing.

Review:

Tender Comrades contains a series of in-depth interviews with people who suffered during the hysteria of the red scare in Hollywood. The McCarthy era has been studied for years, and although we may know the basic stories of how careers were ruined by accusations and innuendo, hearing the stories from the participants themselves is very moving. Interviewees range from people whose careers eventually rebounded, such as Martin Ritt, Walter Bernstein, and Ring Lardner Jr., to people who never again worked as writers or actors.

From the Publisher:

Praise for Tender Comrades:

"An acute portrait of that squalid time when the witch-hunt was on in Hollywood and of the thirty-six movie artists interviewed here who were deprived of a livelihood--even as hundreds of others lived in fear of the House Un-American Activities Committee--while havoc was strewn through their lives and their professions." --Norman Mailer

"This is not the usual book of remembrances--nostalgic, bittersweet, and all that. This is chapter-and-verse recall of our country's most shameful epoch....It is eloquent and revelatory, but most of all, it is a cautionary tale." --Studs Terkel

"Everybody in America should be entitled to their opinions, and in Tender Comrades, a rich, hefty book[,] we get plenty....McGilligan is the preeminent historian of Hollywood writers." --The Village Voice

"A rich compendium of Hollywood reminiscences...[It] provides the collective oral history of an unscrupulous industry's ethnic cleansing." --The Texas Observer