In the summer of 1950, a booklet called "Red Channels" shook up the East Coast media structure -- radio and TV networks as well as advertising agencies. "Red Channels" listed the "subversive" activities of over 150 writers, directors and performers, from Orson Welles to Lena Horne. If you were named in the book, you were guilty until proven innocent and you ran the serious risk of being unemployable on radio or TV. The blacklist triggered by "Red Channels" lasted for much of the 1950s, seriously affecting and even ruining the lives of innocent people. In the first of two parts, we look at how the blacklist began and how it was abetted by cowardly TV and radio producers and advertisers.
Sources:
A History of Broadcasting in the United States: 2. The Golden Web, 1933-1953, by Erik Barnouw
The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume III, by Erik Barnouw
"15 Entertainers Who Were Labeled Communist in the Red Channels List," Eliza Berman, time.com, June 22, 2015
"Gypsy, Scott and Wicker in Red Denials," Billboard, September 23, 1950
"Blacklist Still Snarls AM-TV," Variety, September 13, 1950
"Ireene Wicker Hammer Dies, 86; Storyteller to Millions of Children," Nan Robertson, The New York Times, November 18, 1987
Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition, by Griffin Fariello
Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theatre and Film in the McCarthy Era, by Milly S. Barranger
With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830, by LeRoy Ashby
Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television's Conquest of America in the Fifties, by Eric Burns
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