A01=Francis MacDonnell
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anti-communism
Author_Francis MacDonnell
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=APFA
Category=ATFA
Category=HBJK
Category=JPSH
Category=NHK
cold war
COP=United States
countersubersives
Delivery_Pre-order
DoreSchary
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Fredric March
Hollywood blacklist
J. Edgar Hoover
Language_English
Metro-Goldwin-Mayer
MGM
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
PA=Not yet available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
red scare
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780700637935
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Nov 2024
- Publisher: University Press of Kansas
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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In Policing Show Business, Francis MacDonnell explores the starring role played by J. Edgar Hoover in the development of the Hollywood blacklist in the 1940s and 1950s. As director of the FBI, Hoover poured resources into scrutinizing show business, a policy choice unjustified by any corresponding threat to public security. He detailed agents to write regular reports on actors, screenwriters, lyricists, singers, and studio executives. His frequent handwritten comments on papers inside the files of film industry personalities demonstrate a level of interest bordering on obsession.
Policing Show Business is not just another book about the Hollywood blacklist. MacDonnell approaches the Red Scare through biography using FBI records on such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Hedda Hopper, Adolphe Menjou, Lena Horne, Fredric March, Cecil B. DeMille, and Burl Ives to present in unexpected, surprising, and sometimes poignant ways the rich human dramas experienced by both targets of the bureau and its collaborators.
MacDonnell’s meticulously researched account, drawing on many newly available FBI files, evokes the passions and resentments; the courageous acts and calculated evasions; and the petty tyrannies and self-interested campaigns of an ignominious episode in the annals of American freedom.
Francis MacDonnell is emeritus professor of history, Southern Virginia University, and the author of Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front.
