Transcript McCarthyism, Elia Kazan & On the Waterfront


American politician who served as
a Republican U.S. Senator from the state
of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.

Claimed there were large numbers of
Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers
inside the United States federal government
and elsewhere.

Granted almost unlimited powers to investigate
alleged communist subversion in the
government.

Ultimately, his tactics and inability to
substantiate his claims led him to
be censured by the United States Senate.

The practice of making accusations of disloyalty,
subversion, or treason without proper regard for
evidence.

(The 1952 Arthur Miller play The Crucible used
the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for
McCarthyism, suggesting that the process of
McCarthyism-style persecution can occur at any time
or place. The play focused on the fact that once
accused, a person had little chance of exoneration,
given the irrational and circular reasoning of both the
courts and the public. Miller later wrote: "The more I
read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off
corresponding images of common experiences in the
fifties.“)

An investigative committee of the United States
House of Representatives.

The committee's anti-Communist investigations
lead to the Hollywood Blacklist.

Blacklisted artists lost their jobs and were
ostracised by the entertainment industry, some,
like Charlie Chaplin, even fled America.
(No direct involvement of McCarthy)

Was a member of the American Communist
Party in New York, for a year and a half in the 30s.

Was called on by HUAC to identify Communists
from that period under oath.

He initially refused to provide names, but
eventually named eight former Group
Theatre members who he said had been
Communists.

Kazan later explained that he took "only the more
tolerable of two alternatives that were either way
painful and wrong"

"On the Waterfront'' was, among other
things, Kazan's justification for his decision to
testify before the HUAC. In the film, when a
union boss shouts, `You ratted on us, Terry,'
the Brando character shouts back: `I'm
standing over here now. I was rattin' on
myself all those years. I didn't even know it.'
That reflects what some feel was Kazan's
belief that communism was an evil that
temporarily seduced him, and had to be
opposed." (Roger Ebert)