By the late 1930s and early 1940s Sidney Buchman had become one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters — Oscar-nominated for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), winner for Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), and elected president of the Screen Writers Guild in 1941–42. Yet at the height of his prestige Buchman made a fateful stand during the postwar anti-Communist investigations: when called before the House Un-American Activities Committee he refused to provide the names of American Communist Party members. That refusal cost him dearly. He was charged with contempt of Congress, fined, given a year’s suspended sentence, and — most consequentially — blacklisted by the Hollywood studio bosses who, in concert with government pressure and the industry’s self-policing, used contract denials and informal edicts to exile targeted writers from major productions.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1940s
Sidney Buchman’s Courageous Refusal Before HUAC and the Studio Blacklist That Derailed a Golden-Age Career
Sidney Buchman / 1940s
By the late 1930s and early 1940s Sidney Buchman had become one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters — Oscar-nominated for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), winner for Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), and elected president of the Screen Writers Guild in 1941–42. Yet at the height of his prestige Buchman made a fateful stand during the postwar anti-Communist investigations: when called before the House Un-American Activities Committee he refused to provide the names of American Communist Party members. That refusal cost him dearly. He was charged with contempt of Congress, fined, given a year’s suspended sentence, and — most consequentially — blacklisted by the Hollywood studio bosses who, in concert with government pressure and the industry’s self-policing, used contract denials and informal edicts to exile targeted writers from major productions.
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