Postwar Hollywood and the Red Scare

Hollywood emerged from the Second World War as a powerful mass-entertainment industry whose studios had participated heavily in wartime propaganda and patriotic filmmaking. Los Angeles was also home to a remarkable community of European émigré writers, directors, actors and composers, many of whom had fled Nazi Germany and Austria.

At the same time, suspicion of Communist influence in the film industry intensified. Congressional investigation, studio pressure and public campaigns culminated in the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and the Hollywood blacklist, but the political climate that produced them was already developing in the immediate post-war years.