Home ⇒ 📕Сочинения на английском языке ⇒ The House Un-American Activities Committee

The House Un-American Activities Committee

The American mood darkened even further with the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which kicked into full gear in 1947. The results were disastrous for film as an art form, and equally grave for those caught in the net of hysteria and suspicion. The HUAC had been around since 1938, when a former Communist, James B. Matthews, named James Cagney, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Miriam Hopkins, and even Shirley Temple as actors whose work unwittingly served Communist interests.

At that time few people took the charges seriously. But in 1944, Walt Disney, aggravated by the 1941 animators’ strike at his studios, helped to form the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, aided by director King Vidor, actors Ward Bond, Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, and John Wayne, novelist Ayn Rand, and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and matters began to get more serious.

In 1946, HUAC decided to hold formal hearings on the issue of Communist

infiltration in Hollywood. At the dawn of the Cold War, with the Soviets gradually extending their influence throughout Eastern Europe, it was difficult to remember that Hollywood had produced films lauding the American-Soviet alliance during the war at the behest of the U. S. government. Now these films would be cited as proof of Communist influence in the motion picture industry. Those associated with the productions were brought to task by HUAC, creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust throughout Hollywood. When the committee asked him why he had participated in the making of Song of Russia, Robert Taylor said crisply that he had made the film under protest as an MGM contract performer. Subsequently Taylor became one of the first “friendly witnesses” to testify at the HUAC hearings on Communist infiltration in the film capital.

In May 1947, the committee held ten days of closed hearings in Los Angeles, where Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, and Jack Warner, as well as Leila Rogers, Ginger Rogers’s mother and a virulent anti-Communist, all testified to the wide extent of Communist infiltration in Hollywood. Shortly

thereafter, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) instituted a loyalty oath that all members were asked to sign, although at this early stage participation was voluntary.

In October 1947, HUAC held more hearings in Washington, where Walt Disney, as well as actors Robert Montgomery, Gary Cooper, George Murphy, and Ronald Reagan, testified to the immediate danger to the film community from Communist infiltration. Meanwhile, another group of actors, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, and Sterling Hayden, as well as lyricist Ira Gershwin and director John Huston, formed the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the hearings. The protests were soon drowned out by a chorus of disapproval, and Bogart and the others soon realized that the atmosphere of fear developing around the hearings could ruin their careers. Shortly thereafter, the Committee for the First Amendment was disbanded, and its former members returned to Hollywood to disavow their stand against HUAC.


1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5,00 out of 5)

Схожі твори:

  1. American Mavericks On a more commercial front, the boundaries were also being tested. Russ Meyer’s Vixen! (1968) pushed soft-core pornography to new extremes, while Roger Corman, who began the decade with a series of inventive horror films loosely based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, such as The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), ended the decade […]...
  2. Cinema Cinematography is one ofjhe wOTidersofthemodern workj Its possibilities are really unlimited, it gives pleasure to millions of people. Now it is a very popular kind of arfwhich has celebrated its 100th anniversary. There are cinemas in cities and towns. For most of people cinema is the means of entertainment and rest. You know thattife is […]...
  3. Ответы на аглийском по теме: cinema 1. Do you like the cinema? Yes, I do. I am fond of cinema, because it’s one of the ways of entertainment. 2. Which films, feature or documentaries do you prefer? I like both. Feature films are made especially to entertain the public and documentaries are based on real facts and usually show the true […]...
  4. Thomas Ince Another major figure during this formative era was Thomas Ince, who perhaps more than any other producer, except for Edison, put the motion picture industry on the map as a business. Ince got his start working for Carl Laemmle, perhaps the most industrious of the independent producers, one who would challenge Edison’s domination of the […]...
  5. Hollywood “Hollywood” is the name of a Los Angeles district which appeared in 1910, and it also stands for American cinematography. It is a pan of American entertainment industry. American cinema was born in the East when “Patent Cinema Company” was formed in 1908. It included 8 cinema-making firms. In the twenties American film industry blossomed. […]...
  6. Walt Disney Walt Disney was born on 5th December, 1901, in Chicago. His father was Irish – Canadian, and his mother was German – American. Disney attended McKinley High School in Chicago, and left at the age of 17 to become an ambulance driver in the First World War. In 1919 he moved to Kansas City and […]...
  7. The new American cinema Another important school of noncommercial filmmaking was the New American Cinema, a loosely knit group of artists who made experimental or underground movies in 16 mm on nonexistent budgets. These movies nevertheless profoundly influenced the language of cinema, in everything from MTV videos in the 1980s to television commercials, as well as the editorial and […]...
  8. African American voices The first African American woman to direct a major feature film, Dash expresses a vision that is at once poetic and deeply outraged, conveying centuries of oppression and inequality in a brief but brilliantly executed period piece. Dash’s characters, the Gullah, descendants of slaves who lived on islands off the coast of Georgia and South […]...
  9. Sir Charlie Chaplin Sir Charlie Chaplin is one of the beloved comedians of the world. Years after his death, the comic films of movie actor and director Charlie Chaplin continue to be popular. He is one of the greatest comic actors who achieved greater, widespread fame in his own lifetime than perhaps anyone else in the history of […]...
  10. Carl Laemmle and the trust Carl Laemmle was the first to fight back. The future founder of Universal Pictures, Laemmle created the Laemmle Film Service, later known as the Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), and began a bedrock campaign to shake nickelodeon owners out of their torpor and challenge the Edison Trust. One of the claims that the Trust made […]...
  11. American Theatre The American theatre is over two hundred years old, but American drama became American only in the 20* century when such prominent playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Robert Sherwood and others began their creative work. The centre of the American theatrical world is in a section of New York City on and near Broadway. It is […]...
  12. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks Walt Disney, more than any other animator, made the cartoon short an integral part of the motion picture experience. He also pioneered the feature-length animated film with the ambitious Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Disney was not the sole creative force behind the production of his films, however. He started out teaming with […]...
  13. Fritz Lang in America Fritz Lang picked up his career in America after his rapid departure from Nazi Germany with Fury (1936), an anti-lynching melodrama starring Spencer Tracy. Lang originally wanted the protagonist, the intended victim of the film, to be African American, in order to expose the vicious racism he had observed in the American South. Although he […]...
  14. Доктор Хаус – House, M. D Everyone of us has their favorite sitcoms. And one of the most adorable and amusing sitcoms for me is “House, M. D.”. The protagonist of this medical drama is Dr. Gregory House who is an unconventional, maverick medical genius and heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. He has problem […]...
  15. Stephen Spielberg He is the cinema’s great enchanter. His films have enthralled the young and the old across the globe. Yet many in Hollywood dislike this man. They say he is a child who never grew up. They fear his influence and despite his box-office successes, they made him sweat for 25 years before giving him an […]...
  16. Кино в моей жизни – Cinema in my life I am keen on movies, that is why I am interested in everything that is connected with it. First some words about history of cinematography. In 1895 the Lumieres brothers made their first three minute film which was demonstrated to the public. It was almost a century ago. Nowadays cinema is probably the most popular […]...
  17. The new American documentary film The documentary film that set the pace for the new decade was Primary (1960), which covered the 1960 U. S. presidential race, made by four men who would become the key players of the new, handheld, sync-sound documentary tradition: Albert Maysles, Robert Drew, D. A. Pennebaker, and Richard Leacock. Working as Drew Associates, the four […]...
  18. The move to sound But behind the scenes in the late 1920s, a revolution was brewing. Lee de Forest, the pioneer inventor who created the vacuum tube, the television picture tube, and the modern optical sound track system that was used in talking pictures for most of the twentieth century, was busily working in his small laboratory to bring […]...
  19. The Collapse of the studio system In 1944, the U. S. Supreme Court handed down what became known as the de Havilland decision, ruling that the standard seven-year contract then given to most actors could not be indefinitely lengthened by suspensions caused when an actor balked at appearing in a particular project. Olivia de Havilland, best remembered for playing the sweet […]...
  20. The Road West This was another major change from the days of Edison-film production was now firmly anchored on the West Coast, and by the time D. W Griffith produced Intolerance in Los Angeles in 1916, 60 percent or more of the industry was located there. New York, however, remained a powerful force in the financing and distribution […]...
  21. American Corporate Culture This corporate culture is also called Anglo-American. It appeared at the beginning of the 20th century before the Great Depression of 1920-1930. Now this kind of culture is spread widely in Americas, UK, in African countries and the Middle East. Anglo-American Corporate Culture is characterized with one lever of governance council. This very council also […]...
  22. René Clair in England and America The career of René Clair followed a similar trajectory. After his initial sound films in France attracted international acclaim, Clair was lured to England in 1935 to direct the comedy The Ghost Goes West for producer Alexander Korda’s London Films. The film tells the tale of an eighteenth-century Scottish laird who dies with his honor […]...
  23. Winsor McCay Newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay, who created the famous “Little Nemo in Slumberland” comic strip in the early 1900s, broke into animated films with his 1911 short Little Nemo and then went on to animate Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), a short film in which the brontosaurus Gertie frolics through a series of prehistoric adventures. The film’s […]...
  24. Mass media – American Adverts in 18th-19th Centuries After winning independence the USA begin to catch up the Old World in all spheres of live including culture and art of advertising. The chronological period of the own American advertising culture is believed to have started from 1789. The founder of the advertising art off that period was John Dunlap, who started to publish […]...
  25. The production code collapses Another interesting aspect of Psycho was Hitchcock’s insistence to exhibitors that absolutely no one be admitted to the theater after the film had begun. By exerting this degree of control over his audience, Hitchcock managed to dictate not only every aspect of the film itself, but also the conditions under which it was viewed. Finally, […]...
  26. Калифорния – California California is one of the biggest states of the USA. California is always associated with Hollywood, Beverly Hills, film production, Los Angeles, big boobs, plastic surgeries, celebrities and the richest people in the world. California becomes a place where an American dream may come true. What is an “American dream”? I think it is a […]...
  27. Uniquely American Holidays 4 липня 1776 група американців, що представляли тринадцять Британських колоній на Атлантичному узбережжі Північної Америки, підписала документ, який заявляє, що ці колонії мають право бути вільними і незалежними. Цей документ відомий як Декларація незалежності. 4 липня святкується американцями як національне свято – День незалежності. У Філадельфії (штат Пенсільванія) є будинок, що називається Залом незалежності. Тут […]...
  28. Showmanship, scandal, and spectacle The era also saw the rise of the movie palace, as marble nickelodeons became splendid pleasure domes dedicated to public entertainment, such as Radio City Music Hall in New York and the Roxy in Los Angeles. Paramount began an aggressive policy of theater ownership to make sure that their films would find an appreciative audience, […]...
  29. A short history of film He drifted over to Columbia and was soon working as an assistant director until he got his first chance as solo director on the “B” film One Mysterious Night (1944). From then on, Boetticher made a name for himself as a reliable and inventive director in a variety of genres, especially with a remarkable series […]...
  30. American Music Оскільки Сполучені Штати Америки населені в основному європейцями, не дивно, що класична музика і народні пісні були запозичені ними з Європи. Бетховен, Брамс, Дебюссі, Чайковський, Стравінський, Бах, Моцарт і Верді – це всього лише кілька імен європейських композиторів, чиї твори завжди присутні в концертних програмах. Англійські, ірландські, шотландські народні пісні завжди були дуже популярні, і […]...
  31. Американские музыканты – American Musicians Луи Дэниэл Армстронг родился 4 июля 1900 года в Новом Орлеане, родине американского джаза. Его отец Вилли был рабочим. Его предки были рабами. В 1913 году он стал руководителем школьного ансамбля. Один музыкант научил его играть по нотам, когда он поступил в речной оркестр Миссисипи. В 1922 году он уехал в Чикаго, чтобы играть в […]...
  32. A short history of film the first “Movies” Working in Palo Alto, California, Muybridge’s most celebrated experiment took place near the beginning of his career, when he was hired by Leland Stanford, then governor of California, to settle a bet as to whether or not a horse had all four legs in the air during a race or relied upon one leg on […]...
  33. Problems with early sound Technological advances during this period were numerous. The first microphones for recording sound were clumsy and bulky and produced poor sound quality. Technicians insisted that the performers stand next to the microphones for optimal sound quality; this meant that both the camera and the actors stopped moving, resulting in static films that fans and critics […]...
  34. Edwin S. Porter While Alice Guy was blazing new cinematic advances in France and later in the United States, Edison was moving ahead with the development of the motion picture with the aid of Edwin S. Porter, whose films The Life of an American Fireman and particularly The Great Train Robbery revolutionized the cinema. The Life of an […]...
  35. Музыка Америки – American Music Поскольку Соединенные Штаты Америки населены в основном европейцами, неудивительно, что классическая музыка и народные песни были заимствованы ими из Европы. Бетховен, Брамс, Дебюсси, Чайковский, Стравинский, Бах, Моцарт и Верди – вот всего лишь несколько имен европейских композиторов, чьи произведения всегда присутствуют в концертных программах. Английские, ирландские, шотландские народные песни всегда были очень популярны, и многие […]...
  36. The Auteur Theory In the midst of all this technological tumult, a new group of American directors came of age, eager to embrace the shift to color and CinemaScope. They were also bolstered by the critical cheerleading of the French journal Cahiers du Cinéma, begun in 1947 by writer and theorist André Bazin (then La Revue du Cinéma, […]...
  37. Hitchcock in Hollywood Meanwhile, Alfred Hitchcock continued his string of suspense classics in England with The 39 Steps (1935), Secret Agent (1936), Sabotage (1936), and The Lady Vanishes (1938) before accepting an offer from producer David O. Selznick to come to Hollywood and direct Rebecca (1940), based on Daphne du Maurier’s novel. The film was an immediate box […]...
  38. Dorothyarzner In an industry that was deeply influenced by a group of women artists from the 1890s onward, only one woman survived the conglomeration of the industry in the late 1920s to direct during the sound era: Dorothy Arzner. Before Arzner, many women had been active as directors in early Hollywood, but nearly all had been […]...
  39. John Ford John Wayne (foreground) as the Ringo Kid in John Ford’s classic western Stagecoach (1939). Despite the fact that the studio moguls ran their empires like medieval kingdoms, using equal measures of fear, flattery, blandishments, and threats, some of the greatest directors in the history of cinema flourished under the Hollywood studio system. John Ford rapidly […]...
  40. Four the Hollywood studio system in the 1930S and 1940S One hundred brief films using Gaumont’s Chronophone system, which employed synchronized wax cylinders to record sound using a “Morning Glory” horn, a large acoustical “hearing aid,” to capture the voices of the performers. But the Chronophone and similar processes prior to the de Forest sound-on-film process lacked the obvious benefits of electronic amplification, which de […]...
The House Un-American Activities Committee
«
»