Hide in Plain Sight: The Hollywood Blacklistees in Film and Television, 1950-2002 - Softcover

Buhle, Paul; Wagner, Dave

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1403966842 ISBN 13: 9781403966841

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005

Synopsis

Hide in Plain Sight offers a powerful examination of the effects of Hollywood's blacklist era, taking up the question of how blacklistees fared after they were driven out of the mainstream. A good number entered careers in television, with many finding work in children's and family programs, writing for shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle, Lassie, and Flipper. Many also wrote adult sitcoms such as Hogan's Heroes,The Donna Reed Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, M*A*S*H, Maude, and All in the Family. Ultimately, many returned to Hollywood in the sixties and seventies to work creatively on films that contained a dose of the radical politics found in communism, films that influenced the creative outburst of that decade. The list of impressive films from the survivors of HUAC includes Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Midnight Cowboy. Hide in Plain Sight completes Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner's trilogy, which includes Tender Comrades (1998) and Radical Hollywood (2002). Together these books provide a thorough and disturbing portrait of the McCarthy era's impact on an important aspect of American culture and society.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Buhle founded the Oral History of the American Left archive at NYU. Dave Wagner has co-authored a number of books with Paul Buhle, including the recent Radical Hollywood.

From Publishers Weekly

This encyclopedic, riveting study of the Hollywood blacklist's impact follows the careers of targeted individuals to explore the blacklist's effects on the arts in America and Europe in the last half-century. As Buhle and Wagner (coauthors of Radical Hollywood) demonstrate, expulsion from the mainstream took these artists and their crafts in new directions. Directors like Joseph Losey and screenwriters like Norma and Ben Barzman fled to Europe to work, where aesthetics like neorealism and the subversion of traditional genres (e.g., the western into the "spaghetti western") opened new modes of expression. Many blacklisted artists who didn't emigrate started working in New York's television industry, which was eager for quick, low-priced talent. Thus, as Hollywood restricted itself to "safe" topics, TV started exploring themes of "the outsider" (Maverick, The Fugitive), multiculturalism (The Dick Van Dyke Show) and social justice (The Defenders). By the late 1970s, "the subtle articulation of politics as ethical sentiment" was now "the very oxygen of liberal television." Besides sitcoms and kids' shows, leftists went into B movies, particularly science fiction and horror genres, where themes of human mutation, nuclear holocaust and alien invasion served as (sometimes clunky) vehicles for political messages. The authors conclude with in-depth looks at several blacklistees, including Carl Foreman, Jules Dassin, Dalton Trumbo and Lillian Hellman. Still, is it all just history, as mainstream Hollywood recites its mea culpas, and the key players all die off? No, Buhle and Wagner conclude; Hollywood's potential as a "democratic art form returning the embrace of its vast audience" remains.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1403966842
• ISBN 13: 9781403966841
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352