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PETER FROST looks back seventy years to the start of Hollywood’s darkest hour
J Edgar Hoover, first head of the FBI

THIS spring marks 70 years since the start of the notorious red-baiting and blacklisting that hit the US entertainment industry so hard and destroyed the careers and often the lives of so many talented individuals. 

In many ways it started with the publication of a little booklet called Red Channels: the Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. The booklet written by Ted C Kirkpatrick, a former FBI agent, and Vincent Hartnett, a right-wing television producer, listed the names of 151 writers, directors and performers. 

Those names had been assembled from two main sources – first from what were supposed to be secret FBI files and also from scrutinising back copies of the American Daily Worker. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
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