HOLLYWOOD ON TRIAL, AN EXCEPTIONAL ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION COPY SIGNED BY AUTHOR GORDON KAHN AND NINE OF THE FAMED HOLLYWOOD TEN: HERBERT BIBERMAN, LESTER COLE, JOHN HOWARD LAWSON, SAMUEL ORNITZ, ADAM SCOTT, EDWARD DMYTRYK, ALBERT MALTZ, RING LARDNER JR., & ALVAH BESSIE

KAHN, Gordon. Hollywood on Trial. The Story of the 10 Who Were Indicted. New York, Boni & Gaer, 1948. New York: Boni & Gaer, 1948. Octavo, original gray paper boards, original dust jacket; housed in a custom clamshell box. $3500.

First edition of Gordon Kahn's important contemporary account of the writers and directors known as the "Hollywood Ten," an extraordinary association copy signed on the title page by Kahn, along with the signatures on the initial blank leaf of: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitzk Adam Scott, Edward Dmytryk, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner jr., and Alvah Bessie.

Hollywood on Trial provides a detailed early account of the beginnings of the Hollywood blacklist and the 1947 hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee that ended with ten Hollywood screenwriters and directors being charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to testify; in addition to all serving prison sentences for their refusal to testify, these ten became the first Hollywood professionals to be blacklisted from working for motion picture studios, a group that over the years would expand to include scores if not hundreds of individuals. The "Hollywood Ten"—Herbert J. Biberman, Lester Cole, John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Edward Dmytryk, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr., Alvah Bessie and Dalton Trumbo—would not officially find work in the movie industry in Hollywood for another 15 years, although some continued to have their work produced in Hollywood under different names or fronted by different writers; Trumbo's script for the 1953 Audrey Hepburn movie Roman Holiday, for example, won an Academy Award for best screenplay, but his work was attributed to another writer, Ian McLellan Hunter (who was himself later blacklisted), who was presented with the award. The author of Hollywood on Trial, Gordon Kahn, was not one of the initial Hollywood Ten, but was listed as one of "Nineteen Unfriendlies" in those first hearings but was not called to testify, and soon after lost his job at Warner Brothers. Together with an early printing of Dalton Trumbo's The Time of The Toad, his own contemporary account of the hearings, subtitled "A Study of Inquisition in America By one of the Hollywood Ten." Trumbo is the only one of the ten not to have signed this book.

Dust jacket with mild toning to spine, a few chips along top edge; book fine.