‘Artists struggled to survive’: the devastating impact of blacklisting Americans

A new exhibition looks back at the ‘anti-communist’ witch-hunt that affected many Americans, in particular the Hollywood TenThere’s no shortage of comparisons with the second Trump administration to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany, but perhaps the more apt comparison is to the Red Scare in postwar America. Blacklisted, a new show at New York Historical, profiles the lives of the so-called Hollywood Ten, who were creatives caught up in the Communist witch-hunt – to disastrous consequences affecting their lives for decades thereafter. It brings to mind suggestive, and uncomfortable, parallels with politicized persecution in the US today.“At this point, TV was just beginning to become influential,” said Anne Lessy, an assistant curator who coordinated the show. “There was a lot of anxiety around these mass entertainments and how much power they had, in part because the second world war effort had been so successful in propaganda. A lot of the blacklisted artists were important in those efforts.” Continue reading...

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