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- Albert Einstein
During the 1930s and 1940s, communists and left wing screen writers, directors and actors had great roles in creating progressive movies in Hollywood.
About 1500, critical and progressive movies were produced which still are making rounds in different TV channels.
Directors and screen writers like Albert Maltz, Irwin Shaw, Sidney Buchman, John Bright, Francis Faragoh, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Ring Larder Jr., Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz, John Howard Lawson, and Carl Forman are among those who were members, sympathizers or supporters of the US Communist Party. The same conducts were seen amongst actors and actresses like Katherine Hepburn, Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth, Olivia de Havilland, Betty Davis, Lucille Ball, Danny Kaye and Lloyd Bridges.
After WWII and with the intensification of the US Government repression and in the advent of McCarthyism, the creation of progressive and critical movies still continued to some degree. But the wrong direction of socialism in the Soviet Union had more negative impact for the cause of socialism in the US and particularly in Hollywood.
In recent years an increasing number of articles and books are addressing this subject. One of them is: Radical Hollywood – The Untold Story Behind America’s Favourite Movies! , by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, published by New Press, 2002.