04/01/2018 "The face-off between Washington and Hollywood staged in October 1947 seems preordained, a perfect storm converging with the predictability of an end-reel clinch." So says author Doherty (American studies, Brandeis Univ.; Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939), who cleverly frames the history of the infamous anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings as a media-friendly production, with a cast of characters acting out a high-stakes thriller. Though the actual reach of communism in America was limited, its outsized influence in Hollywood movies made it a prime target for postwar Red Scare paranoia. Doherty thoroughly chronicles the HUAC circus, with its parade of well-known stars—both defiant (screenwriter Dalton Trumbo) and reluctant (Humphrey Bogart)—and accusers, such as the bombastic and corrupt committee chair Rep. J. Parnell Thomas. Factions formed as studios and stars struggled with how to defend their own while also appearing "pro-American." More than "naming names," this is a story of labor relations, politicking, and persuasion in the court of public opinion, all of which Doherty captures with verve and an eye for the dramatic. VERDICT For readers who appreciate both Hollywood's golden age and the postwar politics that animated it.—Chad Comello, Morton Grove P.L., IL
02/12/2018 Hollywood historian Doherty (Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939) returns with a riveting, exhaustive look at the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee investigation into Communists in the film industry. Split into three sections, the book begins by outlining labor disputes in 1930s Hollywood, previewing the political clash to come with the “writers’ wars” between the conservative, studio-backed Screen Playwrights Inc., and the left-wing Screen Writers’ Guild. The second section moves day-by-day through the October 1947 HUAC hearings, and liberal Hollywood’s unsuccessful attempts to fight back with groups like the Humphrey Bogart–fronted Committee for the First Amendment. The third section details the hearings’ aftermath, including the blacklisting of hundreds of Hollywood figures and jailing of uncooperative witnesses, the so-called “Hollywood 10,” including screenwriters Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo. Doherty has a real gift for characterization, both of the Hollywood figures under scrutiny and their congressional interrogators, from studio head Jack Warner, “somehow... gruff and dapper at the same time,” to brawny anticommunist congressman Martin Dies, who “looked every inch the Texas lawman.” In the current era of legislative upheaval, Doherty’s vital, impressive history feels both relevant and urgent. (Apr.)
Written with breathtaking concision and all the intrigue of a spy novel, Doherty’s account of the 1947 House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) hearing frames the alleged subversion of Hollywood by Communists as the mirror image of the Moscow Trials.
Film Quarterly - Carrie Rickey
Thomas Doherty’s fans, of whom I am one, know he is a first-rate film historian with a sharp eye for political theater as well as a stylish writer with a knack for turning a phrase. Show Trial gives a thorough, well-contextualized, clear-eyed, and witty account of the 1947 HUAC “Hollywood Ten” hearings, full of pithy characterizations and choice bits of business.
Doherty's numerous biographical asides enhance the readability of his work while providing much-needed nuance regarding a complicated period of American history.
[Doherty] brings fresh scepticism to the many self-serving myths that have encrusted the tale. . . . It is impossible to read Show Trial without thinking about its relevance to the current situation in America. The country is again faced with a resurgence of nativism, racism and isolationism (ironically, it is now progressives who are warning about nefarious Russian influence) and a culture of believing figures in the public eye to be guilty until proven innocent. One can only hope for another pendulum swing, such as the one Thomas Doherty, in this engaging study, demonstrates happened over the Hollywood blacklist.
Times Literary Supplement - Phillip Lopate
A lively and highly readable account. . . . Show Trial provides a vivid picture of an episode in US history that, for a barely credible mixture of political ugliness and downright farce, has rarely been equalled. Or at least, not until recently.
Sight & Sound - Philip Kemp
Doherty proves there are still a few surprises, even after recent revisionist accounts exposed deeper ties than previously known between the Hollywood Ten and their Soviet controllers. In his fascinating Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist , Doherty doesn’t romanticize the Ten or try to justify the excesses of HUAC. Instead, he highlights a lesser-known aspect of the hearings: the dilemma of Hollywood centrists and liberals squeezed between the extremists on both sides. Like anti-Trump conservatives today, anti-Communist liberals in late 1940s Hollywood found that the middle could be a very lonely place.
Commentary - Mark Horowitz
A shameful interlude in American history highly relevant to today’s political divisions.
Doherty is one of the best, if not the best, writers in the American studies world today, and has produced an excellent book that will command a great deal of attention. Show Trial sheds new light on the story of the Hollywood Ten and HUAC and does it in fresh and exciting ways. One of the book’s greatest strengths is that it stays away from familiar academic debates that focus heavily on politics and instead tells a character-driven story using quotes from a wide variety of contemporaneous participants. Doherty places the personalities of the era—left and right—on center stage. This is easily the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of HUAC and the Hollywood Ten to date, and I predict it will become the book to read on this topic.
Thomas Doherty’s Show Trial is a uniquely pragmatic history of the Hollywood Blacklist—a big book on a big topic that ruthlessly defies and confounds orthodoxy at every turn. No book in print provides a fuller accounting of the hearings themselves. And no author to date gives his readers so much room to appreciate and understand who said what and why.
Engrossing. . . . The world suffers no shortage of books about the blacklist, but Show Trial stands out for telling its story without grinding axes.
Show Trial may not be the final word on HUAC and Hollywood but it will be the must-cite source wherever academic research encounters the HUAC and Hollywood nexus, especially concerning the year of 1947.
Senses of Cinema - Michael Kitson
An excellent introduction to the topic for a younger generation who may not have known that the Trump era is not the first in U.S. history to play fast and loose with the Constitution.
Archival Spaces: Memory, Images, History - Jan-Christopher Horak
The historian Thomas Doherty explains in yet another expertly crafted book on American movie history, that the combination of Hollywood and communism has always made for a great show.
Journal of American History
A difficult book to summarize, Show Trial reflects a lot of hard work and has interesting content almost page by page. The fresh research is fascinating, much of it from recently released HUAC documents revealing (partly) what went on backstage of the extravaganza.
Cineaste - Patrick McGilligan
Deeply absorbing, expertly researched, and thoroughly entertaining.
The New Republic - Noah Isenberg
Show Trial is a solid piece of reportage on a specific event that had shattering results. . . . We’ve all read accounts of this fateful showdown between Washington and Hollywood, but never in such depth or with such well-informed commentary.
Illuminating. . . . With accessible prose and astute academic insight, Doherty shows us that both the studios and the Hollywood Ten were victims of HUAC. His Show Trial is likely to become the standard authority on the genesis of the Hollywood blacklist.
The Washington Post - Christopher Yogerst
General readers will enjoy the rich anecdotal material and the bright and breezy style of Doherty's work. Scholars will also find in the narrative and the sources the raw materials of future work.
A shameful interlude in American history highly relevant to today’s political divisions.
2018-01-23 At the start of the Cold War, anti-communist fervor focused on Hollywood.In October 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by a "dapper martinet," New Jersey Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, held nine days of public—and much-publicized—hearings to investigate alleged Communist infiltration in Hollywood. Among the 41 witnesses were movie stars, studio heads, producers and directors, and writers and critics, all caught on newsreel and broadcast on radio, riveting the public's attention. Doherty (American Studies/Brandeis Univ.; Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, 2013, etc.) brings considerable authority to his detailed account of the hearings, featuring colorful portraits of the large cast of characters, some of whom were willing, if not eager, to cooperate; others, called the Unfriendlies, were decidedly hostile. Lead-off witness Jack L. Warner insisted that no hint of communist propaganda ever made its way into movies, even if some in Hollywood were members of the Communist Party. Among the few films HUAC cited as suspect was MGM's sentimental love story Song of Russia, released in 1944, when Russia was a valued ally. The steely Ayn Rand, called as an expert witness by virtue of having lived under communist rule, was adamant that the movie reflected the studio's communist sympathies, creating "a picture of how favorable life was under a totalitarian Soviet." The suave Adolphe Menjou, who charmed onlookers—as well as the interrogators—hinted at subtler infiltration: "a crafty actor could inject a subversive sentiment into a film with a gesture, a sidelong glance, or an arched eyebrow." Outrage and anger over the hearings was swift: a group of glamorous stars, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye, formed the Committee for the First Amendment to protest infringement of civil liberties. Their presence in the hearing's gallery drew enthusiastic fans. Although RKO chief Dore Schary asserted that competence, not political views, should determine hiring decisions, after the hearings ended, studio heads caved in to pressure, firing and blacklisting unfriendly witnesses.A thorough and lively chronicle of a shameful episode in American political and entertainment history.