How did the Red Scare affect Hollywood in the late '40s and '50s? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

The Red Scare came along at a time when the studio moguls were feeling most vulnerable financially and politically. Hollywood had been a huge profit center before and immediately after World War Two—-something like 90 million people a week went to movies in 1946, but those numbers soon began to tail off. People were moving to the suburbs while the old movie palaces remained downtown, the Supreme Court forced the studios to divest themselves of their hugely lucrative movie theater chains and TV was starting to have an impact. At first when the House Committee on Un-American Activities launched its hearings on alleged Communist infiltration of the movie business in 1947, the studios resisted—-they didn’t want a bunch of politicians dictating who they could hire and fire and what kind of films they could make. But when the committee came back for a new set of hearings in 1951, the atmosphere was very different. The Cold War was raging (plus a hot war in Korea) and the studios were under intense pressure. And even though the American communist party was very small and insignificant by 1951, the studios pledged to fire and blacklist anyone who refused to cooperate with the investigation. Hundreds of people lost their jobs, friendships and business partnerships were destroyed, movie-makers were much more reluctant to take on stories with any kind of social message. Hollywood became a much more anxious and timid place. Great movies were still made—-check out High Noon, On the Waterfront, From Here to Eternity, etc.—but lots of creative people found themselves on the sidelines.

Glenn Frankel is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of High Noon and The Searchers.

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