Hollywood Party

More about the book

In the fall of 1997, Hollywood Remembers the Blacklist brought together major stars in a lavish production that celebrated the courageous writers and actors who resisted a destructive witch-hunt. However, a more complex and dramatic story remained untold, one that Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley finally reveals. Using neglected public records, personal files, and Soviet archives, he uncovers the Communist Party's strategic plan to control the movie industry during its golden age, a plan that nearly succeeded. The book details how the Party influenced Hollywood politics in the 1930s and 1940s, raising funds from unsuspecting liberals and conscripting industry figures into supporting Stalinist causes. Billingsley presents the shameful truth about Communist artists who, despite their wealth, posed as proletarian wage slaves while promoting a brutal regime. From the Popular Front era through the Nazi-Soviet Pact and beyond World War II, they remained loyal to a regime that rivaled Nazi brutality. By the mid-1950s, their plans crumbled, yet they shaped the popular memory of the blacklist. This work chronicles the overlooked aspects of this history, changing perceptions forever. Critics praise it as a meticulous exploration of the Hollywood blacklist and the Communist Party's role, asserting that it provides a necessary, nuanced account of this pivotal period in film history.