Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: April 26, 2020 11:15AM
Okay. From a brief go-through of the lists I found online:
Knew personally [they are all now deceased]:
Norman Corwin
Sanora Babb
James Wong Howe
Know "of" [because I never met either of them]:
Lillian Hellman
Dashiell Hammett
I don't know much about Norman vis-a-vis the blacklist. During the years when I knew him, I cannot remember the blacklist ever coming up in conversation (which doesn't necessarily mean it did not come up--just that I don't remember).
Sanora and Jimmy (who were married to each other): I have some VERY vague memories that Sanora and Jimmy had blacklist problems, but did not find out until today that it was because Jimmy inadvertently got caught up in all of the mess due to Sanora's political views. Mostly, I was aware that when they got married (and afterwards for a longish while; it was a real problem), it was illegal for a Caucasian to be married to an Asian--and they had to do all kinds of weird things to "kind of" live in the "same" place: different apartments in the same building, etc.--but these difficulties (in my memory) were entirely due to the anti-miscegenation laws--not Sanora's political views. It wasn't until I looked them up today, in the context of the blacklist, that I learned they DID have blacklist problems, and in this case, the problems were Jimmy's: he was being judged for his wife's views, with the always threatening anti-miscegenation and anti-cohabitation laws looming over them as obvious, and omnipresent, complications.
If you are going to do a study on this subject, I think you should consider researching the foundation of, and the complications which then arose, of the various entertainment industry guilds ["trade unions" within the entertainment industry].
I think screenwriters (regardless of whether they were writing for film, or television, or whatever) had it the worst--though this may be because I am a writer and I know the Writers Guild of America [WGA, or WGAw[est], or WGAe[ast] ] history better than I know the very similar problems of those who were members of the other guilds. My memory is that directors had it very bad as well. There were a lot of blacklist problems which were crushing people's livelihoods, and the actual lives of their spouses and children, back then--and I've heard anecdotal stories through the years of a fair number of betrayals as well. [Nothing I can remember, just that everyone was scared back then, and their fears were rational--and those who they thought they could trust, sometimes they really shouldn't have trusted.]
The histories of the guilds, as those histories unfolded during the blacklist era, might be of value to you. [You can Google "Directors Guild of America, blacklist" (etc.) to start your inquiries. There are also histories of that era, from the viewpoint of the various guilds, which have been written and published, and if you get in touch with each of the guilds, you will likely be able to access these published materials, either from the guilds themselves, or from somewhere like www.abebooks.com]
Be aware that, on a human level, many, many people's lives were destroyed back then, which means: if you do personal interviews with people who have some kind of close knowledge, as they talk or otherwise communicate with you, they may be having sudden, very real, problems with anxiety spasms and depression. I am thinking mainly of the offspring of that generation, and then THEIR children as well. Think "Holocaust," and tread as gently as you would if you were interviewing Holocaust survivors or their children, about the real incidents they lived through.
The blacklist wasn't to that same extreme of course, but it was, very frequently, terrifying. If you mentally think "Holocaust" as you are interviewing, it will probably elicit more productive results for you than would otherwise be the case.
Fair winds to you in your work.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2020 11:21AM by Tevai.