HOLLYWOOD ON TRIAL, AN EXCEPTIONAL ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION COPY INSCRIBED BY PAUL ROBESON

(ROBESON, Paul) 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. $4200.

First edition of Gordon Kahn's important contemporary account of the writers and directors known as the "Hollywood Ten," an extraordinary association copy inscribed by Paul Robeson, a friend of of a number of the ten and a fellow victim of the HUAC hearings, "All best wishes & thanks. Paul Robeson April 28 - '48."

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.

Paul Robeson's signature on this book is singularly appropriate. By the time of these first HUAC hearings on communists in Hollywood, Robeson had already become a symbol—perhaps the symbol—of the dangerous influence of communist sympathizers (and outright communists) in American popular culture. When actor Adolphe Jean Menjou, a star witness, was asked by committee member Richard Nixon "what test he would apply to determine whether someone was a communist, Menjou replied, 'Well, I think attending any meetings at which Mr. Paul Robeson appeared, and applauding or listening to his Communist songs in America'" (The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: Quest for Freedom, 1939-1976, 127). As recounted in Hollywood on Trial, Menjou said "he 'would be ashamed to be seen in an audience doing a thing of that kind'" (51). Robeson himself was unofficially blacklisted, and it was difficult for many years to even see any of the films he had acted in. In 1956, it was Robeson's turn to testify before HUAC, where he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and managed to direct the committee's questions back on the committee itself, turning a "discussion of Paul's 'communist problem'… into a discussion of America's 'race problem' (Undiscovered, 254). Robeson maintained relationships over the years with a number of the Hollywood Ten, specifically with John Howard Lawson, who had "become a dean of America's left-wing culture" over the years; Robeson attended Lawson's 70th birthday celebration, where "Lawson was moved to tears by [Robeson's] highly personal tribute" (Undiscovered, 343).

Book fine, dust jacket with mild toning to spine, a bit of chipping to extremities. A wonderful association copy.