Hollywood Blacklist Essay

As the United States was returning home from World War II, there was a time of reflection upon the state of things back home. Feeling a sense of accomplishment and being unburdened of conflict, Americans had time to see what had happened in the meantime. Since so much of the entertainment industry was being provided by the movie theatre, inevitably that attention would be placed on the motion picture industry. There were eight companies greatly profiting from their studio system arrangement, and after years of fighting legal attempts to break up their monopolies, these companies were forced to divest their ownership in movie theaters in a decision now known as the Paramount decision. Hollywood’s reaction to the financial consequences of this decision along with a heavily reinforced postwar pro-American sentiment led to what is now known as the Hollywood blacklist. I believe the impact of these two courtroom decisions was a mass restructuring of how films are made in order to maximize distribution, rebrand the types of films being produced and to cull existing talent, all to turn a larger profit.
The Paramount decision forced the major film production companies to divest themselves of the exhibition portion of their investments. Their original business plan was a “structure that provided them with an
As we settled in to a long fight with our new enemies in the Soviet Union, the movie industry took advantage of the situation. “This cold war fueled an American cinema that was by design and necessity patriotic” (American Film 197) and since patriotism was the new market, anything seen as anti-patriotic was a corrupting influence. Once the House Committee on Un-American Activities was formed and began to interfere with Hollywood, the Hollywood blacklist began to be enforced and would lead to the last phase of Hollywood reinventing