Title: McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression: Evidence from the Hollywood Blacklist
Authors: Huiren Tan (NUS) and Tianyi Wang
Abstract:
From the late 1940s through the 1950s, the Communist witch-hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy created widespread political repression and infringement on civil liberties in America. Among the many targets of McCarthyism, hundreds of professionals in Hollywood and the entertainment industry were accused and put on a blacklist for their alleged Communist affiliations. This paper assembles a unique dataset to study the impact of the Hollywood blacklist on individual careers and film content. Using an event study design, we find that the accused actors and writers experienced a large and significant decline in their creative output, which lasted for almost a decade until the late 1950s when McCarthyism started to fade away. Exploring potential mechanisms, we provide evidence that the effects were primarily driven by supply- rather than demand-side forces. Moreover, through film content analysis, we show that the blacklist produced a chilling effect on the types of films being made: writers and directors who had previously collaborated with a future-blacklisted co-worker made fewer films with progressive themes, such as those dealing with class, race, and labor issues.