Kirk Douglas Quotes

[Dalton] Trumbo wrote this incredible pamphlet, almost on the level of Tom Paine's 'Common Sense,' called 'The Time of the Toad.' It's an exquisitely written treatise regarding the black list era.

I worked with Dalton Trumbo, who served time for refusing to give up names of people that were accused of being Communists. I've always admired him.

When something so unjust as the black list happened, [Dalton Trumbo] would come to life in a certain way.

When I first came to Hollywood, the blacklist was just starting, and they were having hearings in Washington. What most people don't know is the judge of these hearings himself was later convicted of misappropriation. 'Spartacus' helped break the blacklist, because Spartacus was a real character.

I have waited a while before saying anything about the Un-American Activities Committee's current investigation of the Hollywood film industry. I would not be very much surprised if some writers or actors or stagehands, or what not, were found to have Communist leanings, but I was surprised to find that, at the start of the inquiry, some of the big producers were so chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry.

I did my Doctorate on the House Un-American Activities Committee's effect on the American theater.

It's never been written about, but before the blacklist of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, there was a de facto blacklist by Communists in the movie industry, and there were a lot of them.

I was blacklisted and overnight my TV appearances dried up. Ed Sullivan called to cancel my appearance and said he'd help me when he could, and a year later he did. Only a few wackos wanted the blacklist. It was a protection racket.

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials.

I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that.

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.

The witch-hunting McCarthy era found Hollywood's view of the press growing bleaker along with the decade's view of everything else.

Many of my friends were blacklisted. America should be ashamed of it forever.

If communism in Hollywood is now mythical, it is only because this Committee conducted three investigations to bring it about. The industry itself did certainly not accomplish this.

If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand. Adrian Scott was the producer of the notable film Crossfire in 1947 and Edward Dmytryk was its director. Crossfire won wide critical acclaim, many awards and commercial success. Both of these men refused to co-operate with the HUAC. Both were held in contempt of the HUAC and went to jail. When Dmytryk emerged from his prison term he did so with a new set of principles. He suddenly saw the heavenly light, testified as a friend of the HUAC, praised its purposes and practices and denounced all who opposed it. Dmytryk immediately found work as a director, and has worked all down the years since. Adrian Scott, who came out of prison with his principles intact, could not produce a film for a studio again until 1970. He was blacklisted for 21 years. To assert that he and Dmytryk were equally victims is beyond my comprehension.

No one took H.U.A.C. [House Un-American Activities Committee] seriously until it was too late.

In the McCarthy era, people were losing their jobs--there was this blanket feeling that no one should not say anything about anything, McCarthy and his people were just sitting around calling meetings, calling up people before them, and ruining their lives.

In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good. The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA.

I don’t think that they would have allowed me to make The Best Years of Our Lives just a few years after I made it [in 1946].

I knew people who were real Communists but never made it onto the blacklist and kept on working. There were also people reputed to be Communists who weren't.

I have a big mouth, and I never met a petition I didn't like, so of course in the McCarthy days I got in trouble.

The blacklist against people in the entertainment industry that show up for [Donald] Trump is worse than that blacklist you heard of in Hollywood back in the forties and fifties.

Hedda Hopper was a better direct opponent to [Dalton] Trumbo. We wanted to use Trumbo's battles to represent the larger battles, so the audience could understand the personal sacrifice he went through and the personal damage to his family. The choices were about who were the best representations of his antagonists, which is why we chose as we did.

Joe McCarthy and his Senate hearings were like witch-hunts.

The aftermath of the war is what inspired us to write many of our plays. The whole reason for our writing Inherit the Wind was that we were appalled at the blacklisting. We were appalled at thought control.