Attacks on Hollywood Came in Red Scare Waves, Starting in 1919
Historian Larry Ceplair describes the attacks on Hollywood as arriving in waves. The first came during the initial Red Scare of 1919, two years after the Russian Revolution’s success.
By 1934, the Production Code Administration was pressuring productions with alleged subversive content, including films that never saw release. MGM cancelled a production of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here—a story about a fictional fascist takeover of the United States—after the group critiqued its script.
Anti-communism also became a Hollywood campaign theme. As a young actor, Ronald Reagan was elected leader of the Screen Actors Guild on a platform of purging communist influence.
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The 1934 case is the most revealing: a script could be killed before any audience saw it.
Reagan’s SAG campaign suggests anti-communism was also a way to build a career inside Hollywood, not just a response to outside pressure.