Authors: Thomas Doherty
ISBN-13: 9780231129527, ISBN-10: 0231129521
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Columbia University
Date Published: November 2003
Edition: 1st Edition
Thomas Doherty is a professor in the American studies department and chair of the film studies program at Brandeis University. He is the author of Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II; PreCode Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934; and Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s, and is associate editor of the film journal Cinéaste.
Though conventional wisdom claims that television is a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, Doherty argues that during the Cold War, through television, America actually became a more tolerant place. He examines television programming and contemporary commentary of the late 1940s to the mid-1950s -- everything from See It Now to I Love Lucy, from Red Channels to the writings of Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper. By rerunning the programs, freezing the frames, and reading between the lines, Doherty paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many black and white cliches.
Television was a provocative medium almost from its inception. It brought the horrors of McCarthyism into American homes-some claimed it abetted the effort-but it also allowed viewers an opportunity to see ethnic minorities (The Goldbergs) and watch political debate (Meet the Press). Ultimately, it aided the decline of anti-communist hysteria. "Television became an artery as vital to the pulse of American life as the refrigerator," writes Doherty, Brandeis University film studies chair. He simultaneously explores TV's wonders and skillfully exposes the power of pressure groups on the new medium, which acted out the psychosis that dominated the 1950s. Relying on thorough and enlightening research, Doherty notes the ironies, anti-Semitism and class prejudices that underlined Sen. Joe McCarthy's ascension on the heels of HUAC, the House Committee on Un-American Activities. TV and the blacklist were the weapons of choice for McCarthy-styled politicians, whose ambitions and paranoia assaulted the decencies and legalities America held dear. In its embryonic stages, TV needed to fill airtime, hence, Doherty reports, "commitment to free expression and open access was self-interest." Americans saw the Hollywood Ten testify, but they also saw African-American performers on The Ed Sullivan Show, solid dramas on Playhouse 90 and the first presidential press conference. Television brought Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's Life Is Worth Living into living rooms, tethering Catholics to Americanism. Edward R. Murrow's See It Now, coupled with McCarthy's disastrous attacks on the army and rumors of homosexuality, contributed to his downfall. Doherty chronicles the medium and its players with style and scholarship, breaking his subject down by theme and focusing on particular programs throughout. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Preface and Acknowledgments | ||
1 | Video Rising | 1 |
A Television Genealogy | 3 | |
Red and Other Menaces | 6 | |
McCarthy: Man, Ism, and Television | 13 | |
2 | The Gestalt of the Blacklist | 19 |
The Blacklist Backstory | 20 | |
Pressure Groups and Pressure Points | 24 | |
Institutional Practices | 34 | |
3 | Controversial Personalities | 37 |
The Goldbergs: The Case of Philip Loeb | 37 | |
I Love Lucy: The Redhead and the Blacklist | 49 | |
4 | Hypersensitivity: The Codes of Television Censorship | 60 |
Faye Emerson's Breasts, Among Other Controversies | 64 | |
Amos 'n' Andy: Blacks in Your Living Room | 70 | |
5 | Forums of the Air | 81 |
Egghead Sundays | 83 | |
Direct Address | 90 | |
The Ike-onoscope | 96 | |
6 | Roman Circuses and Spanish Inquisitions | 105 |
"Kefauver Fever": The Kefauver Crime Committee Hearings of 1951 | 107 | |
HUAC-TV | 116 | |
Writing the Neck of Reed Harris: The McCarthy Committee's Voice of America Hearings (1953) | 126 | |
7 | Country and God | 134 |
I Led 3 Lives: "Watch Yourself, Philbrick!" | 140 | |
Religious Broadcasting | 149 | |
Life Is Worth Living: Starring Bishop Fulton J. Sheen | 153 | |
8 | Edward R. Murrow Slays the Dragon of Joseph McCarthy | 161 |
TV's Number One Glamour Boy | 163 | |
Murrow Versus McCarthy | 168 | |
The "Good Tuesday" Homily | 172 | |
To Be Person-to-Personed | 177 | |
"A Humble, Poverty Stricken Negress": Annie Lee Moss Before the McCarthy Committee | 180 | |
McCarthy Gets Equal Time | 184 | |
9 | The Army-McCarthy Hearings (April 22-June 17, 1954) | 189 |
Backstory and Dramatis Personae | 190 | |
Gavel-to-Gavel Coverage | 195 | |
Climax: "Have You Left No Sense of Decency?" | 204 | |
Denouement: Reviews and Postmortems | 210 | |
10 | Pixies: Homosexuality, Anticommunism, and Television | 215 |
Red Fades to Pink | 219 | |
Airing that Cohn-Schine Affair | 224 | |
11 | The End of the Blacklist | 231 |
The Defenders: The Blacklist on Trial | 240 | |
Point of Order!: The Army-McCarthy Hearings, the Movie | 244 | |
12 | Exhuming McCarthyism: The Paranoid Style in American Television | 249 |
Notes | 261 | |
Index | 293 |