Red Channels
Encyclopedia
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
tract published in the United States at the height of the Red Scare. Issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack on June 22, 1950, the pamphlet-style book names 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others in the context of purported Communist manipulation of the entertainment industry. Some of the 151 were already being denied employment because of their political beliefs, history, or mere association with suspected "subversives". Red Channels effectively placed the rest on the industry blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
.
The case is made
In May 1947, Alfred Kohlberg, an importer of Chinese textiles and an ardent member of the anti-Communist China Lobby, funded the for-profit organization, staffed by a group of former FBIFederal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
agents, called American Business Consultants Inc., which issued a newsletter Counterattack, Kohlberg was also a founding director of the ultra-rightwing John Birch Society
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing....
, whose self-declared purpose was to "expos[e] the most important aspects of Communist activity in America each week". A special report, Red Channels: the Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, was published by Counterattack in 1950.
At this juncture, three founder members remained: John G. Keenan, company president and the businessman of the trio; Kenneth M. Bierly, who would later become a consultant to Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
; and Theodore C. Kirkpatrick, officially the managing editor of Counterattack, and the group's chief spokesman. A former Army intelligence major, Francis J. McNamara, was the primary editor of Counterattack. The introduction to Red Channels, running just over six pages, was written by Vincent Hartnett, an employee of the Phillips H. Lord
Phillips Lord
Phillips Haynes Lord was an American radio program writer, creator, producer and narrator as well as a motion picture actor, best known for the Gang Busters radio program that was broadcast from 1935 to 1957.-Early life:...
agency, an independent radio-program production house, or "packager". Hartnett would later found the anti-Communist organization AWARE, Inc. The tract, released three years after the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
began investigating purported Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
influence in the entertainment field, claims to expose the spread — by means of advocacy of civil rights, academic freedom, and nuclear weapons control — of that influence, in radio and television entertainment. Referring to current television programming, the Red Channels introduction declares that
"[S]everal commercially sponsored dramatic series are used as sounding boards, particularly with reference to current issues in which the Party is critically interested: "academic freedom", "civil rights", "peace", the H-bomb, etc.... With radios in most American homes and with approximately 5 million TV sets in use, the CominformCominformFounded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
and the Communist Party USA now rely more on radio and TV than on the press and motion pictures as "belts" to transmit pro-Sovietism to the American public."
Red Channels went on to describe how the Communist Party attracts both financial and political backing from those in the entertainment industry:
No cause which seems calculated to arouse support among people in show business is ignored: the overthrow of the Franco dictatorshipFrancisco FrancoFrancisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
, the fight against anti-Semitism and JimcrowJim Crow lawsThe Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
, civil rights, world peace, the outlawing of the H-Bomb, are all used. Around such pretended objectives, the hard core of Party organizers gather a swarm of "reliables" and well-intentioned "liberals", to exploit their names and their energies.
Red Channels served as a vehicle for the expansion of the entertainment industry blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
that denied employment to a host of artists it considered sympathetic to "subversive" causes, attempted to forestall criticism by claiming that the Communist Party itself engaged in blacklisting when it criticized anti-Communists, seeing to it that "articulate anti-Communists are blacklisted and smeared with that venomous intensity which is characteristic of Red Fascists alone."
The list is drawn
Without making any blatant, potentially libelous accusations, Red Channels lists 151 professionals in entertainment and on-air journalism who it clearly implies are among "the Red Fascists and their sympathizers" in the broadcasting field. Each of the names is followed by a raw list of putatively telling data, with the sources of evidence varying from FBI and HUAC citations to newspaper articles culled from the mainstream press, industry trade sheets, and such Communist publications as the Daily WorkerDaily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
. For example, under the heading for Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
, identified as Actor, Director, Producer—Stage, Screen, Radio, TV, the first three of a total of seven data points read:
Reported as: American Committee Signer of letter. Letter, 10/23/45. for Yugoslav Relief Chairman, Winter Clothing Campaign. Letterhead. 10/23/45. Committee for First First Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...Signer. Advertisement in protest of Wash- Amendment First Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...ington hearings. Hollywood Reporter The Hollywood ReporterFormerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, 10/2447, p. 5. Un-Am. Act. in California, 1948, p. 210. Coordinating Com- Representative individual. House Un-Am. mittee to Lift the Act. Com., Appendix 9, p. 670. Embargo Against Spanish Loyalist Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...Government
Many other well-known artists are also named, ranging from Hollywood stars such as Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
and Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
(who had already left the country), to literary figures such as Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
and Lillian Hellman
Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...
, to musicians such as Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
and Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
. Ex-leftist and HUAC informant J. B. Matthews
J. B. Matthews
Joseph Brown "Doc" Matthews, Sr. , best known as J.B. Matthews, was an American linguist,and a educator, writer, and political activist...
claimed responsibility for providing the listings; he would also work for the later discredited United States Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
(R-WI). By 1951, those identified in Red Channels were blacklisted across much or all of the movie and broadcast industries unless and until they cleared their names, the customary requirement being that they testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC).
One libel lawsuit was filed against Red Channels, by actor Joe Julian, who charged that Red Channels was responsible for his income plummeting from $18,000 the year it was published to barely $1,500 three years later. The case was dismissed on the specious basis of the tract's care in not making overt claims about specific individuals and its brief disclaimer: "In screening personnel every safeguard must be used to protect genuine liberals from being unjustly labelled."
CBS radio personality John Henry Faulk also sued. Faulk was a favorite target of Hartnett, who proudly proclaimed himself a coauthor of Red Channels. In 1953, Hartnett started Aware, Inc., an anti-Communist organization with its own bulletin focused on the entertainment industry. The bulletin said that, in the 1940s, Faulk had sponsored a pro-Communist peace rally, entertained at pro-Communist clubs, appeared at Communist front activities, and addressed a "Spotlight on [Henry] Wallace" event in "'the official training school of the Communist conspiracy in New York'" (pg. 232). More than one year after Faulk sued the blacklisters, CBS fired him. A 1962 jury award of $3.5 million in damages for Faulk prompted a telling cartoon, titled "Nailed", by Herblock
Herblock
Herbert Lawrence Block, commonly known as Herblock , was an American editorial cartoonist and author best known for his commentary on national domestic and foreign policy from a liberal perspective.-Career:...
, in which a huge hammer (labeled "Faulk Case Verdict") bangs a nail through the collar of a black-jacketed burglar (called "Blacklisters"). Although the damages were later reduced, the 1962 verdict marked, for most, the end of the blacklisting era.
For a complete tally of those named in Red Channels, see The Red Channels list.
Published
- Bernhard, Nancy E. U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960. Cambridge University Press, 2003
- "By Appointment", Time, September 11, 1950 (available online).
- Blue, Howard (2002). Words at War: World War II Era Radio and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4413-3
- Cogley, John (1956). "Report on Blacklisting." Collected in Blacklisting: An Original Anthology (1971), Merle Miller and John Cogley. New York: Arno Press/New York Times. ISBN 0-405-03579-9
- Doherty, Thomas (2003). Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12952-1
- Faulk, John Henry and Don Gardner. Fear on Trial (1964) University of Texas Press, 1983.
- Miller, Merle (1952). "The Judges and the Judged." Collected in Blacklisting: An Original Anthology (1971), Merle Miller and John Cogley. New York: Arno Press/New York Times. ISBN 0-405-03579-9
- "Who's Blacklisted?" Time, August 22, 1949 (available online).
- Schrecker, EllenEllen SchreckerEllen Wolf Schrecker, Ph.D. is a professor of American history at Yeshiva University. She is currently teaching and has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU....
(2002). The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0-312-29425-5 - Strout, Lawrence N. (1999). Covering McCarthyism: How the Christian Science Monitor Handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950–1954. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-31091-2
Online (authored)
- Schwartz, Richard A. (1999). "How the Film and Television Blacklists Worked". Part of the Florida International University website.
Online (archival)
- Guide to the American Business Consultants, Inc. Counterattack: Research Files 1930–1968 narrative summary and inventory of document holdings in the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives; part of the NYU–Elmer Holmes Bobst Library website
- Red Channels: The Blacklist links to many reproduced pages of the original book; part of the Authentic History Center website