Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left

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Using material from Hollywood insiders, the authors trace the growth of the Communist Party from the 1920s, when stars like Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx toured the Soviet Union and came back converted, through the 1930s and the war years, when the party achieved critical mass in Hollywood.Until now, Hollywood\'s political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare. But Ronald and Allis Radosh show that the real drama of that era lay in the story of the movie stars, directors and especially screenwriters who joined the Communist Party or traveled in its orbit, and made the Party the focus of their political and social lives. The authors\' most controversial discovery is that during the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Hollywood Reds themselves were beset by doubts and disagreements about their disloyalty to America, and their own treatment by the Communist Party. Abandoned by their old CP allies, they faced the Blacklist alone.