The Hollywood Reporter - The Hollywood Blacklist

The Hollywood Blacklist

Wilkerson believed that the Screen Writers Guild was one of the prime Communist strongholds in all of Hollywood. He used his TradeView column to publicize the "Communist Takeover" of the guild dating as early as 1938. Throughout the thirteen year Screen Writers Guild ban of its members advertising their services in trade papers, Wilkerson would not allow screenwriter credits in The Reporter's film reviews.

On Monday, July 29, 1946, Wilkerson published his TradeView entitled "A Vote For Joe Stalin". It contained the first industry names on what later became the infamous Hollywood Blacklist—Dalton Trumbo, Maurice Rapf, Lester Cole, Howard Koch, Harold Buchman, John Wexley, Ring Lardner Jr., Harold Salemson, Henry Meyers, Theodore Strauss and John Howard Lawson.

Wilkerson soon went after Cole, who was the first Vice President of the Screen Writers Guild. Here, Wilkerson would be the first to ask the two questions that would ring throughout the nation for the next decade: "Are you a member of the Writers Guild?" and "Are you a member of the Communist Party of the United States?" On Monday, August 19, 1946, Wilkerson wrote:

FOR THE PURPOSE of trying to tag the activity of the Screen-Writers Guild generally, and particularly its action proposing to our State Department that the U.S.-French film agreement be renegotiated to give "greater benefit" to the French film writers, we would like to ask Mr. Lester Cole, who authored the motion for SWG passage:

"Are you a Communist? Do you hold card number 46805 in what is known as the Northwest Section of the Communist party, a division of the party made up mostly of West Coast Commies?"

In an editorial entitled "RED BEACH-HEAD!" on Tuesday, August 20, 1946, Wilkerson took aim at Hollywood writer John Howard Lawson. On Wednesday, August 21, 1946, in an editorial entitled "Hywd's Red Commissars!", Wilkerson skewered John Leech, Emmet Lavery, Oliver H. P. Garrett, Harold Buchman, Maurice Rapf, and William Pomerance. On September 12, 1946, Wilkerson printed "the list" of names that would be plucked by The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) for their 1947 hearings. Wilkerson used two different colors to identify two different levels of participation in Communism. "Red" indicated that the individual was a card-carrying communist. "Pink" meant that an individual simply had communist sympathies. The list included:

• Edward Dmytryk
• John Howard Lawson
• Guy Endore
• Lester Cole
• Dalton Trumbo
• Albert Maltz
• Henry Myers
• Marian Spitzer
• Ring Lardner Jr.
• Jay Gorney
• E. Y. Harburg
• Boris Ingster
• Harold Buchman
• Gordon Kahn
• Howard Koch
• Alvah Bessie
• John Bright
• Howard Dimsdale
• Paul Jarrico
• Francis E. Faragoh
• Frank Tuttle
• Alvin Wilder
• Martin Berkeley

Known in the beginning as "Billy's List", it quickly became "Billy's Blacklist", referring to the color of the publisher’s magazine ink. Wilkerson's list would eventually evolve into the infamous "Blacklist" that became the backbone of the May 8, October 20 and 27 hearings. These hearings led to citations for contempt being issued by the United States on November 24, 1947. Wilkerson's campaign against purported Communists was widely believed to have sparked the Hollywood blacklist.