J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood's Cold War

Notes

209 Notes The following archival abbreviations are used in the notes: AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library,Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,Beverly Hills, California BRTC Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center CC “Charlie Chaplin,” Federal Bureau of Investigation File Number 100–127090, FBI Freedom of Information Act Reading Room, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C. COMPIC “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry,” Federal Bureau of Investigation File Number 100–138754, FBI Freedom of Information Act Reading Room, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C. DIES RecordsoftheU.S.HouseofRepresentatives,SpecialCommitteeonUn-American Activities (Dies), Record Group 233, National Archives,Washington, D.C. FBI ICF Federal Bureau of Investigation, Investigative Case Files of the Bureau, 1908– 1922, Record Group 65, Microfilm series M1085, National Archives, College Park HANL “Hollywood Anti-Nazi League,” Federal Bureau of Investigation File Number 100–6633, FBI Freedom of Information Act Reading Room, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C. HGRC Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University HUAC Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC), Record Group 233, National Archives, Washington , D.C. JBMP J.B.Matthews Papers,Rare Book,Manuscript and Special Collections Library, Duke University LAPD RS Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee on UnAmerican Activities (Dies), Exhibits, Evidence, etc., Re: Committee Investigations , Los Angeles Police Department Radical Squad, Record Group 233, National Archives, Washington D.C. MQC Martin Quigley, Sr. Collection, Georgetown University Library NACP National Archives, College Park, Maryland OHP Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles OWI Office of War Information, Bureau of Motion Pictures, Record Group 208, National Archives, College Park, Maryland SISS Records of the U.S. Senate, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Record Group 46, National Archives, Washington, D.C. TL NYU Tamiment Library and Robert F.Wagner Labor Archives, NewYork University WCFTR Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison INTRODUCTION 1. Report,Special Agent in Charge (SAC),Los Angeles to FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover, August 7, 1947, COMPIC, FBI 100–138754–218. On the contributions of Maltz, Trumbo, 210 NOTES TO PAGES 2–3 and Wilson, see Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story behind America’s Favorite Movies (New York: New Press, 2002), 359–60. 2. Although the subject of Hollywood’s red scare has received wide attention, the motives of the anti-Communists remain underexplored. The foundational books on this topic, though excellent, nevertheless focus more on the Left than the Right. These books, which make only passing mention of the FBI, suggest that anti-Communists seized on Hollywood because of the political activism of several screenwriters and because it was a surefire way of attracting attention for the anti-Communist cause, but they neglect the role that fear of Communist propaganda, however unfounded, played. The authors of these books also reasoned that since the studio system left control over screen content in the hands of producers, Hollywood films were never radical and the uproar over propaganda was nothing but“hoopla.”See, for example, Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), intro. and chap. 9; Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York:Viking Press,1980),xv,300–301; Nancy Lynn Schwartz,The Hollywood Writers’Wars (New York: Knopf, 1982), 285. 3. Previous studies of the FBI in Hollywood consist either of articles or parts of books. See, for example, James Naremore, “The Trial: The FBI vs. Orson Welles,” Film Comment 27, no. 1 (1991): 22–27; John A. Noakes, “Bankers and Common Men in Bedford Falls: How the FBI Determined that It’s a Wonderful Life was a Subversive Movie,” Film History 10, no. 3 (1998): 311–19; John A. Noakes, “Official Frames in Social Movement Theory: The FBI,HUAC,and the Communist Threat in Hollywood,”Sociological Quarterly 41,no.4 (2000): 657–80; John Sbardellati and Tony Shaw,“Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America,” Pacific Historical Review 72, no. 4 (2003): 495–530; John Sbardellati,“Brassbound G-Men and Celluloid Reds: The FBI’s Search for Communist Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood,” Film History 20, no. 4 (2008): 412–36; Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), chap. 6. There are also several notable...