Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era (review)

{ 293 } Book Reviews \ \ Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era. By Milly S. Barranger. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. xviii + 197 pp. $37.50 paper. The culture war has many battlefields but perhaps none as contentious as the patriot game, where the Left and the Right have skirmished for a century now over who is more “Ameri­ can.” From the Palmer Raids to Joe McCarthy to CIA torture sites, the rhetoric is repetitive and simplistic, but the stakes are enormous . Can the essence of the Constitution be preserved in the face of national traumas—real and imagined—or must we from time to time suspend the rule of law in order to preserve the republic? With each new revelation from former Eastern-­ bloc spy agencies that “Hiss was guilty,” or that “Ethel Rosenberg was innocent,” we are embroiled again in the spy drama that poses as history, ferreting out the appropriate traitors and patriots while ignoring the vast “collateral damage” of real bodies, careers, and reputations. Milly Barranger chronicles that collateral damage among what she terms “McCarthy’s women,” those courageous actors, directors, and writers who refused to cooperate with the various congressional committees investigating communism in the performing arts industries. Unlike many of their male counterparts , who made headlines with celebrity appearances and highly publicized confessions, the women here were uniformly uncooperative and clung to their Fifth Amendment rights even though they knew that such pleas would endanger , if not doom, their careers. They were brave in the face of the terror, and they were scared. Judy Holliday spoke for most when she recalled, “You think you’re going to be brave and noble. Then you walk in there and there are the microphones, and all those Senators . . . it scares the shit out of you. But I’m not ashamed of myself because I didn’t name names” (31). Nor did Anne Revere , Margaret Webster, Kim Hunter, Uta Hagen, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman , and others. Each suffered, of course, in the blacklisting that followed their defiance. Kim Hunter won an Oscar for Streetcar, but Warner Brothers did not pick up her option and no other studio called. Holliday promised not to reveal her testimony in Senator Pat McCarran’s closed hearing, but she was dropped as a panelist on What’s My Line and The Name’s the Same anyway. Anne Revere, who had a successful career in films such as National Velvet, Body and Soul, and A Place in the Sun, could not find work in Hollywood and finally resorted to giv- { 294 } Book Reviews ing theatrical readings of Salt of the Earth, the controversial pro-­ union film produced by Paul Jarrico, Herbert Biberman, and other blacklisted artists. Barranger contends that the women were not only punished for their behavior but, for the most part, they were also silenced, and she is determined to reclaim their voices. Using interviews, congressional testimony, letters, and documents, she undertakes “an act of restoration of the political histories, the damaged careers, the heartbreaks and triumphs” of these “unfriendly” women (xiii). While the seven case studies that make up the core of the book are compelling and revealing—the chapter on Hellman and Parker is especially interesting given the linkage of their professional and personal careers—Barranger also describes the institutions that propelled the black and“gray”lists. She reveals how the election of Mady Christians to the Actors’ Equity Council in 1941 erupted into a furor of communist name-­ calling that reverberated in the union for two decades. Actors’ Equity was courageous and denounced Hollywood blacklisting when the Screen Actors Guild and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees would not, but given the mounting pressures even Equity was forced in 1953 to adopt a non-­ communist loyalty oath. Barranger also invokes the infamous Ruth Shipley, who ruled over the U.S. Passport Office and controlled foreign travel for Ameri­ can artists. Shipley’s treatment of luminaries like Paul Robeson and Arthur Miller is familiar, but Barranger’s account of the way Shipley made Margaret Webster write a “life story” denying communism or any communist affiliations is appalling. Shipley also lectured Webster on joining too many organizations and...