Artists vs. McCarthyism

The Red Scare was on the rise! After World War II, the anti-communist sentiments were raging as a political stance known as McCarthyism, after Joseph McCarthy, led the charge. McCarthyism was first described as the widespread sentiment of anti-communism in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s, but today it has come to mean generally the practice of publicizing accusations of political disloyalty or subversion without sufficient evidence. During a span of about fifteen years, hundreds of innocent people were blacklisted. Some were imprisoned, while others were suspended from their work. One of the only valuable results that came from the McCarthyism was the influence it had on some of the great artists of the day, who, inspired by the accusations made against them and their fellow artists, created significant works that are still held in high regard today.

One government organization spurred on greatly by McCarthyism was the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was established in 1937 for the purpose of investigating subversive and un-American activities. During the 1950s, HUAC began an investigation into the Hollywood motion pictures industry, and created a blacklist of 320 people, including geniuses such as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Arthur Miller, who were suspended from their jobs, some for ten years. In the case of these three artists, some good did come of this terribly frustrating and unjustified act against them. Inspired by the events caused by McCarthyism, their art reflects vividly the experiences they had.

In September 1947, Charlie Chaplin was summoned to appear before the HUAC. Little did he know that the FBI had a 1,900 page file on his political activities. When getting ready to return from a stay in London in 1952, he found that his entry permit had been revoked, and that he had been denied the right to live in the United States. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, “My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a communist I refused to fall in line by hating them." He responded to the blacklist by making the film A King in New York, a satire starring Chaplin as a deposed king of “Estrovia” who flees to America where he is persecuted by McCarthy style investigations. Unsurprisingly, the film was not released in the U.S. It wasn’t until 1959, when the accusations were lifted, that the film was released to the American public.

On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet called Red Channels was published with the names of 151 writers, director, and performers whom they claimed had taken part in subversive activities before the Second World War. Criticized for his work in the 1930s with Marc Bliztstein, a Marxist composer, on The Cradle Will Rock, Orson Welles’s name was on in the list. He didn’t make another movie until 1958.

Although Arthur Miller, like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles, was blacklisted by the HUAC, this did not stop his plays from being performed, since Broadway, in contrast to Hollywood, did not impose the blacklist. Miller was distressed to see his friends’ careers being rent apart by the accusations of communist involvement, especially when friends betrayed information about other friends.  He determined to write a play based on these events. At the time, Miller was reading The Devil in Massachusetts, a book about the Salem Witch Hunts of 1692, which brought to his attention the many similarities between the Salem Witch Hunts and the Red Scare—or the Communist Witch Hunts. Out of this idea was born The Crucible. Because of its background, the play was not well received. Miller reminisced years later, “"I have never been surprised by the New York reception of a play. . .What I had not quite bargained for, however, was the hostility in the New York audience as the theme of the play was revealed; an invisible sheet of ice formed over their heads, thick enough to skate on. In the lobby at the end, people with whom I had some fairly close professional acquaintanceships passed me by as though I were invisible." Ironically, The Crucible still won the Tony Award at the end of the year and is still performed all of over the world today.

Overall McCarthyism brought the Red Scare only more fear, injustice, and chaos, but there were a few glimmers of light that came from it. The work of Chaplin was surely affected by the McCarthyism, when his career in America was put on a temporary halt, after he was accused of subversive activities. Similarly the work of Arthur Miller, namely The Crucible, might never have been accomplished if it had not been for the McCarthyism blacklisting. If nothing else came from the ridiculous, inadequate, and unjust measures taken during the Red Scare, at least we gained a few great works of art from these artists and others like them.