50 Fun Facts About McCarthyism

Which Hollywood star told HUAC in 1953 that she had registered to vote as a Communist in 1936?

Lucille Ball said she had done it only to please her socialist grandfather. Desi Arnaz then told an I Love Lucy studio audience the whole story before filming an episode.

Arthur Miller's play The Crucible attacked McCarthyism by retelling which historical hunt for hidden enemies?

The Salem witch trials gave Miller his allegory for accusation without proof. In 1957 a judge found him guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to name other people.

Which state did Joseph McCarthy represent in the Senate when he accused the State Department of harboring Communists?

Wisconsin voters first elected McCarthy in 1946, when he campaigned on an inflated war record. He held the seat until his death in 1957.

Which CBS journalist used a 1954 episode of See It Now to challenge Senator McCarthy's methods on national television?

Edward R. Murrow built the half-hour from excerpts of McCarthy's own speeches. The senator's televised reply weeks later only pushed his fading popularity lower.

Which silent-film legend had his US re-entry permit revoked in 1952 while sailing to a London premiere?

Charlie Chaplin, long accused of Communist sympathies, chose not to fight the order and settled in Switzerland. Hollywood gave him an honorary Oscar two decades later.

Which physicist who ran the wartime Los Alamos laboratory was stripped of his security clearance in 1954?

J. Robert Oppenheimer lost it after a hearing into his past Communist associations. The US Energy Secretary formally vacated that decision in 2022, long after his death.

Which blacklisted screenwriter secretly won two Academy Awards in the 1950s behind a front and a fake name?

Dalton Trumbo wrote the stories for Roman Holiday and The Brave One, and both won Oscars he could not collect. The second went to Robert Rich, a name borrowed from the producers' nephew.

Which Washington Post cartoonist used the new word McCarthyism in a March 1950 drawing of the Republican elephant?

Herblock lettered the new word on the top bucket of a teetering stack of tar buckets, which party leaders were pushing the elephant to climb.

Which Boston lawyer asked Senator McCarthy on live television in 1954 whether he had any sense of decency left?

Joseph Welch drew applause from the hearing-room gallery with the rebuke. Five years later he played a Michigan judge in the film Anatomy of a Murder.

Which Hollywood studio boss told HUAC in 1947 that Communist agitators were behind a 1941 strike at his studio?

Walt Disney named former animators as the organizers of the five-week walkout, which had followed heavy salary cuts and his sometimes high-handed handling of staff.

Which lawyer was Senator McCarthy's chief counsel in 1954 and decades later a mentor to the young Donald Trump?

Roy Cohn had helped prosecute the Rosenbergs while still in his twenties. New York disbarred him for unethical conduct in 1986, five weeks before he died.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for conspiring to pass which secrets to the Soviet Union?

Atomic bomb designs were the heart of the case against the couple. They remain the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War.

Which formal punishment did the Senate impose on Joseph McCarthy by a 67–22 vote in December 1954?

Censure passed with every Democrat present in favor and the Republicans split evenly. The press that had recorded his every statement then ignored him.

Which Maine senator denounced McCarthy's tactics in her 1950 Declaration of Conscience speech without ever naming him?

Margaret Chase Smith was backed by six fellow Republican senators. McCarthy mocked them as Snow White and the Six Dwarfs and removed her from his investigations subcommittee.

Which former State Department official, accused of spying by Whittaker Chambers, was convicted of perjury in 1950?

Alger Hiss could not be tried for espionage because the statute of limitations had expired. He fought the conviction until his death in 1996.

Which future president made his name on HUAC in 1948 by pressing the spy case against a State Department official?

Richard Nixon was a freshman congressman from California whose doubts kept the investigation alive. The fame carried him to the Senate two years later.

Which actor testified to HUAC in 1947 as president of the Screen Actors Guild, describing a clique in his union?

Ronald Reagan said a small group was using Communist-like tactics to steer the union. He added that he could not say whether its members were Communists.

Which president signed the Loyalty Order, the executive order that began screening federal employees for Communist ties?

Harry S. Truman signed it in March 1947, three years before McCarthy's rise. He hoped in part to quiet critics who called Democrats soft on communism.

In which West Virginia city did Senator McCarthy give his 1950 speech claiming a list of State Department Communists?

Wheeling hosted the Lincoln Day dinner of a Republican women's club. No audio recording survives, so historians still argue over whether he claimed 205 names or 57.

In which service branch did Joseph McCarthy serve in World War II, earning the campaign nickname Tail-Gunner Joe?

Marine Corps duty for McCarthy meant briefing dive-bomber crews as an intelligence officer. He volunteered for twelve flights as a gunner-observer, and those missions were generally safe.

Which future Democratic presidential candidate joined Senator McCarthy's subcommittee staff as an assistant counsel?

Robert F. Kennedy was hired at his father's urging, since McCarthy was a family friend. He resigned after about seven months but kept a fondness for the senator.

Senator McCarthy's staff was accused in 1954 of demanding special treatment for which drafted aide, a hotel-chain heir?

G. David Schine had been drafted as a private the previous November. The row over favors for him filled 36 days of televised hearings watched by an estimated 80 million people.

Whittaker Chambers briefly hid microfilm evidence inside which hollowed-out object on his Maryland farm in 1948?

A pumpkin held the rolls of film for a single night before he handed them to congressional investigators. The press named the whole cache the Pumpkin Papers.

Which 1960 Kirk Douglas epic helped end the Hollywood blacklist by openly crediting its blacklisted screenwriter?

Spartacus put its blacklisted writer's real name on screen. Anti-communist groups picketed cinemas, and the new president crossed a picket line to see the film.

What name is given to the purge of gay employees from the federal government during the McCarthy era?

The Lavender Scare borrows a senator's jibe about lavender lads in the State Department. A 1953 executive order barring gay federal workers led to about 5,000 firings.

Which 1950 law, passed over a presidential veto, forced Communist organizations to register with the government?

The McCarran Act also set up a board to investigate suspected subversives. The president's veto message called it a long step toward totalitarianism.

The Hollywood Ten refused to answer HUAC's questions in 1947 by citing which part of the Bill of Rights?

The First Amendment defense failed, and the ten began serving prison terms for contempt in 1950. Later witnesses fell back on the Fifth's shield against self-incrimination.

Which 1950 pamphlet named 151 actors, writers and broadcasters as supposed Communist influences in radio and television?

Red Channels came from a newsletter run by three former FBI agents. Within a year, those it listed were shut out of much of broadcasting and film unless they cleared their names.

Which actor directed and co-wrote the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck about a CBS newsroom taking on McCarthy?

George Clooney used only archival footage for the senator. Some test audiences, unaware of that, complained the actor playing McCarthy was overdoing it.

Which Gary Cooper western, shot as HUAC summoned its screenwriter, is often read as an allegory of blacklisting?

High Noon was first offered to John Wayne, who turned the lead down because he saw the story as an obvious attack on blacklisting, which he supported.

Which acclaimed director named eight former Group Theatre colleagues as Communists to HUAC in 1952?

Elia Kazan then took out a newspaper ad urging others to follow his example. When he received an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors chose not to applaud.

Which folk singer was convicted of contempt of Congress in 1961 for refusing to tell HUAC about his politics?

Pete Seeger was sentenced to ten concurrent one-year jail terms. An appeals court ruled the indictment flawed and overturned the conviction the following year.

Which singer and actor had his US passport voided in 1950 after criticizing his country's role in the Korean War?

Paul Robeson was told his criticism of the treatment of Black Americans should not be aired abroad. A Supreme Court ruling restored his right to travel in 1958.

Which hardboiled detective novelist went to prison in 1951 rather than name contributors to a left-wing bail fund?

Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade, was found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to six months in federal prison.

Which playwright wrote to HUAC in 1952 offering to testify about herself but not about other people?

Lillian Hellman's offer was rejected, and the committee dismissed her after she invoked the Fifth Amendment. Her lawyer then handed the letter to reporters, who covered it at length.

Which leading Harlem Renaissance poet was called before Senator McCarthy's Senate subcommittee in 1953?

Langston Hughes told the senators his politics were emotional rather than theoretical. He said he had never read the theoretical books of socialism or communism.

Which German playwright testified evasively to HUAC in 1947 and left the United States the very next day?

Bertolt Brecht was the one foreigner among the eleven witnesses called alongside the Hollywood Ten. He answered on legal advice, then left for Europe and never returned.

Which US government broadcaster was the first target of Senator McCarthy's subcommittee when he took the chair in 1953?

Voice of America came first, then the State Department's overseas libraries. Ordered to pull works by controversial authors, some of those libraries burned the books.

Which secret US codebreaking project, made public in 1995, decrypted coded Soviet intelligence messages from the 1940s?

Venona showed that Soviet spying inside the United States in the 1940s was substantial. Most of the agents it identified, though, were never named by McCarthy.

Which revered general, architect of Europe's postwar recovery plan, did McCarthy blame in 1951 for the loss of China?

George C. Marshall was Secretary of Defense when McCarthy attacked him in the Senate. The speech ran so long that it was published as a book.

Which Maryland senator led the 1950 committee that dismissed McCarthy's charges as a hoax, then lost his own seat?

Millard Tydings was beaten that November after McCarthy's staff circulated a composite photograph that seemed to show him beside a former Communist Party leader.

Which China scholar did Senator McCarthy accuse in 1950 of being the top Russian espionage agent in the United States?

Owen Lattimore endured years of hearings that never substantiated the charge. A federal judge later dismissed the perjury counts brought against him.

Which Vermont Republican introduced the 1954 resolution that brought Joseph McCarthy's formal rebuke by the Senate?

Ralph Flanders had already likened McCarthy to Adolf Hitler in a speech that June. He said a paid Communist agent could not have done a better job for the party.

Which columnist did Joseph McCarthy physically assault in the cloakroom of Washington's Sulgrave Club in 1950?

Drew Pearson had spent the year attacking McCarthy in his columns. The senator admitted the assault but claimed he had merely slapped him.

Which profession did Irving Peress practice, the drafted major whose 1953 promotion McCarthy turned into a scandal?

Dentist Irving Peress had answered loyalty questions on a military form by claiming constitutional privilege. He was promoted anyway, then honorably discharged.

Which Texas-born radio humorist won a record 1962 libel verdict against the firm that had branded him a Communist?

John Henry Faulk was awarded $3.5 million, then the largest libel judgment in history. His lawsuit helped bring the entertainment blacklist to an end.

Which member of the Hollywood Ten returned to HUAC in 1951, named names and went back to directing?

Edward Dmytryk had already served his prison term for contempt when he changed course. Hired again within a year, he went on to direct The Caine Mutiny.

Which New York hotel hosted the 1947 meeting where studio chiefs agreed to fire the Hollywood Ten?

The Waldorf-Astoria meeting of 48 film executives produced a two-page statement. In it the studios pledged never knowingly to employ a Communist.

Joseph McCarthy died in office in 1957 at age 48, with which illness listed on his death certificate?

Hepatitis, acute and of unknown cause, was the official wording. Some biographers say alcoholism caused or worsened it, and doctors had not reported him to be critically ill.

Which chief justice led the Supreme Court whose 1957 rulings helped rein in the McCarthy era's investigations?

Earl Warren was an Eisenhower appointee. One 1957 decision from his Court held that the power of Congress to conduct investigations is not unlimited.