In 1941, the animators at Walt Disney's Studio went on strike. The business had grown from a few people to a 1200 person working place, but in all that time the wages had stayed quite low for all but a few at the very top. Were you to check the credits of any of the cartoons from this period, you would notice that not a single animators name was credited, only Walt Disney himself.

Later that year, Walt Disney paid for a full page advertisement in Variety, stating that the strike was a result of communist subversion. It was still early in the red scare, but he had already begun the conservative practice of looking at a group of people struggling to feed their familes, and finding communism. The charges didn't appear to have a great deal of impact at the time.

Then, on December 7, 1941, a massive attack was commenced on Pearl Harbor. Up to that point America had tried to keep its distance from the war overtaking Europe, but now events in the rest of the world could no longer be ignored by anyone.

Soon the entire country mobilized and sent a generation of young men off to fight in war, while those at home made do with rationing. The nations views hardened as they had to cope with fear.

In 1947, World War II ended, the Russians refused to give up ground in they had taken in Germany, and instead of liberating countries they had seized on the Eastern front, they kept control and established a communist regime. So began the cold war.

It was in November of that same year that a group of Hollywood scriptwriters and actors were called before the House on Unamerican Activities. The press called them the "Hollywood Ten." The Committee didn't state that they had broken the law. HUAC simply stated that they were accused of being Communists.

The ten refused to testify. They were eventually jailed. It was in this moment, only months after the Russians seized control of a large part of Eastern Europe, that the Committee connected people on the left in America with Communists. Whether they had ever actually attended a meeting or not, it was easy to state that someone was a Communist, and by implication was prepared to attack Americans, or was connected with the authoritarian assault committed oversees.

Hollywood studios are usually portrayed as being afraid of Congress at this time, but I suspect its more accurate to say that they were afraid of unions. Whichever was the case, they were quick to state that "unamerican influences" would not be tolerated, and the blacklist began. In short order, more than 300 people lost their jobs simply because they were called to testify. Most were never able to work in Hollywood again. The committee continued doing the same thing for many years.

While many people's lives were destroyed, its real effect was the chilling effect which the arrests had on the movie industry. Where before people occasionally voiced support for workers organizing for better wages, now people were afraid to say anything that might be considered Communist.

The Hollywood Ten were eventually sentenced to one year prison terms. One of the ten, Edward Dymytryk, publicly announced that he had once been a Communist and was prepared to give evidence against others as well. Not only was he given early release from jail, but his career recovered. The idea that being a Communist was a criminal offense was now well solidified in the mind of the public.

Many of those convicted had worked in their chosen career for years and had no other way to support their family. Some of the blacklisted writers adopted pseudonyms and continued writing under a different name for drastically reduced pay. Actors didn't have even that option.

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Hollywood blacklist had long gone hand in hand with the Red-baiting activities of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Adversaries of HUAC such as lawyer Bartley Crum, who defended some of the Hollywood Ten in front of the committee in 1947, were labeled as Communist sympathizers or subversives and targeted for investigation themselves.

In the 1950s, the FBI tapped Crum's phones, opened his mail, and placed him under continuous surveillance. As a result, he lost most of his clients and committed suicide in 1959.

Intimidating and dividing the left is now seen as a central purpose of the HUAC hearings. Fund-raising for once-popular humanitarian efforts became difficult, and despite the sympathies of many in the industry there was little open support in Hollywood for causes such as the African American Civil Rights Movement and opposition to nuclear weapons testing.

In time, work written by scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo was nominated for an Academy award, and he was hired to write Spartacus. In a sense, the blacklist was broken when Kirk Douglas wrote Dalton Trumbo's name, not his pseudonym, on a book stating that he was allowed on the premises. Even that little step got pushback as the studio asked him what he was doing.

Douglas later stated brazenly to journalists that Trumbo had written the script. A massive media attack was organized by people favoring the blacklist, and the studios wanted to capitulate. Kirk Douglas was tremendously powerful in Hollywood at the time, and his contract for Spartacus gave him the power to prevent the movie from ever beeing seen at all. The studio didn't want to lose its investment, so they were forced to move forward.

Many movie theaters refused to show Spartacus when it first came out. Spartacus was a huge hit, and when it did well across the country, theater owners decided that refusing to show movies was bad business.

The blacklist died a slow death. HUAC didn't go away, but over time being called before it lost all meaning because what it was doing came to be known as a shameful thing.

According to many of those of the time, most of the Hollywood Ten had in fact been Communists. Almost all of them said that they were not when called by HUAC, except Dalton Trumbo. Sometimes movies glamorize people who didn't deserve it, but in this case, Trumbo doesn't go nearly far enough to show just how courageous he was. He was one man against the machine.

Almost all his friends, who were also named and blacklisted, said they weren't Communists. By doing so, they reinforced the message that suggested it was a crime to be one.

Despite that, Trumbo never backed down. When found in contempt of court, he said to reporters that he did indeed hold the court in contempt.

When Kirk Douglas used Trumbo's name instead of his pseudonym, he had a great deal of power, but most people in his position probably wouldn't have done it. As respected as he was, it also meant that he had more to lose. If things had turned out differently his decision could have destroyed him. Even the rich and powerful can be taken down by the sort of people that he made enemies of.

Douglas himself was one of the most successful stars of that era. He made a few bad movies, but he made some great ones too, and he had far more range than many of his costars. Despite that, ending the blacklist was the best thing he ever did.

When people heard about the circumstances of all those people whose careers had been ruined, opinions began to change. HUAC had acted against virtually every sort of left leaning organization, accusing each of them of being Communists. Progressives were silenced by fear, and for almost a decade, progress stopped. His decision to fight the blacklist helped change America.

From the beginning of the red scare to the end, there was no substantial change to any law. The only things different were the ideas given by one American to another. Real change is only finalized by the law. Before you can make the law, you must make them believe.