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Hollywood's Blacklists: A Political and Cultural Histoy. By Reynold Humphries. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. viii, 184 pp. $95.00, isbn 978-0-7486-2455-3.)
The Hollywood blacklist was a pivotal event in American movie history that at once reflected current political conflict (isolationists versus warmongers; loyal Americans versus Reds) and revealed Hollywood's penchant for using self-regulation as a method of public relations. To view the blacklist as solely ideological how, after all, can we distinguish the ideological from the economic in Hollywood? - or as solely a manifestation of postwar anricommunist hysteria is to miss its larger significance in the history of Hollywood work force struggles and content censorship.
Reynold Humph ries's Hollywood's Blacklists does well to explore the blacklist's myriad political and cultural roots. As he reveals, the House Committee on Un-American Activities...