Hollywood and the Reds: HUAC & McCarthyism

Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow looks to bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy.

A brief look at The Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and directors charged of contempt of court after challenging the House of Anti-American Activities and their controversial and self-incriminatory questions during the red scare. With that act of defiance, they were sentenced to one year in prison simply for speaking their minds and exercising their constitutional rights as concerned citizens. This is their story, their version of the facts and their opinions.

In Pittsburgh, PA, an F.B.I. agent works to undermine the Communist party, but his brothers and his teenage son think he's a real Red.

In 1953, a cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

Returning to Hollywood 1951 after working in France, a movie director meets McCarthyism head-on.

During the 1950s, a small-town librarian is shunned by the locals after she refuses the City Council's request to remove a book on Communism from the library's shelves.

A recently-deposed European monarch seeks shelter in New York City, where he becomes an accidental television celebrity and is later wrongly accused of being a Communist.

Four 1950s icons meet in the same hotel room and two of them discover more in common between them than they ever anticipated.

Herbert Biberman struggles as a Hollywood writer and director blacklisted as one of The Hollywood Ten in the 1950s.

A town Marshal, despite the disagreements of his newlywed bride and the townspeople around him, must face a gang of deadly killers alone at "high noon" when the gang leader, an outlaw he "sent up" years ago, arrives on the noon train.

So called snake oil salesmen at carnivals are often used as the symbols of hoaxters. There are much more globally sinister hoaxters in the form of world leaders of totalitarian regimes, leaders such as Adolf Hitler, who promised of a bright new world in order to gather support. A longer term hoax than that of Naziism is Communism, the two which, despite being on a different political spectrum, are compared for their ideological similarities, including being anti-religion, being one party systems, advocating violence as a means to an end, and treating their general populace as slaves. Since the beginning of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union, their government has changed their "west friendliness" policy seven times, each time a measured change to reach their goal of global domination. Since that latest change, the end of WWII, steps taken by freedom striving nations, most specifically the United States, are told in combating that goal of Soviet Communist global rule, advancing the ideal of freedom at home and abroad, and preventing WWIII.

The story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who led a rebellion against the corrupt, oppressive dictatorship of President Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century.

An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.

Mexican workers at a zinc mine call a general strike. It is only through the solidarity of the workers, and importantly the indomitable resolve of their wives, mothers, and daughters, that they eventually triumph.

The documentary analyzes a dark period in Hollywood's history due to the Red Scare of the 1940's and 1950's, when actors, writers and directors were persecuted and investigated by the House of Un-American Activities Committee after being considered suspects of committing Anti-American acts by preaching the Communism in their films and television shows.

An unfiltered, unflinching document of the notorious 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, compiled entirely from raw TV footage (with no narration, music, or added scenes).

The long-term effects of the House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation into Hollywood's Communist activities in the 1940s and 1950s.

A dramatization of the life of Joe McCarthy, the alcoholic senator from Wisconsin whose tactics of accusing prominent people of Communist sympathies were initially designed to give him a national power base when he later planned to run for President.

As ruthless lawyer and power broker Roy M. Cohn lies dying of AIDS in a private hospital room, ghosts from his past visit him as he reflects on his life and loves.

Follow legendary news reporter/commentator from his radio broadcasts from the rooftops of London during the Blitz to his TV documentary series "See It Now" and his confrontations with the Senator from Wisconsin that helped put an end to the witch-hunts.

In 1950s America, an FBI agent and a blacklist victim uncover a plot to smuggle Nazi war criminals into the country.

After the murder of his older brother, a New York history student is hounded by shadowy government agents on the trail of a Nazi war criminal who is trying to retrieve smuggled diamonds.

In 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer gets into a car accident, loses his memory and settles down in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son.

During post-WWII McCarthyism, a diametrically opposed couple come together only to find out that genuine friendship and physical attraction is not enough to overcome fundamental societal beliefs.