Naming Names

With a New Afterword by the Author "An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness. A book of stunning insights and suspense." —Studs Terkel Half a century later, the investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Committee on Un-American Activities still haunts the public conscience. Naming Names, reissued here with a new afterword by the author, is the definitive account of the hearings, a National Book Award winner widely hailed as a classic. Victor S. Navasky adroitly dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify—among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller— Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency. "The moral issues that continue to haunt the Hollywood blacklist generation have never been fully explored. This book is the first serious attempt to capture the painful history of not only the blacklist's victims, but also the men and women who 'named names,' who cooperated with the 'degradation ceremonies' of congressional committees investigating Hollywood during the 1950s. Some of these people were influential and well known--Sterling Hayden, Lee J. Cobb, Elia Kazan, Budd Schulberg, Larry Parks; others, less famous, were caught equally in the vise of the times. Victor S. Navasky has unabashedly asked them--and their children, lawyers, therapists, and agents--why did they do what they did? His brilliant book about their answers is an extraordinary moral detective story. The subject is cold-war Hollywood, but Mr. Navasky goes far beyond that small town and brings the subject right up to the present. For the issues posed during this peculiar episode in American history continue to reverberate through many central aspects of American life and culture. What happens to a society when the state pressures its citizens to betray their fellows? Mr. Navasky's dramatic essay in the sociology of indignation--combining oral history, interviews, and research, from gossip columns to the literature of social psychology--traces the consequences of what he calls the state's adoption of the Informer Principle, according to which the informer became, for a brief and inglorious time, America's cultural hero and prophet."--Dust jacket

With a New Afterword by the Author

“An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness. A book of stunning insights and suspense.” —Studs Terkel

Half a century later, the investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Committee on Un-American Activities still haunts the public conscience. Naming Names, reissued here with a new afterword by the author, is the definitive account of the hearings, a National Book Award winner widely hailed as a classic. Victor S. Navasky adroitly dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify—among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller—Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency.

"An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness."-Studs Terkel

"Half a century later, the investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Committee on Un-American Activities still haunts the public conscience. Naming Names, reissued here with a new afterword by the author, is the definitive account of the hearings and a National Book Award winner now widely hailed as a classic. Victor S. Navasky dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify - among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner, Jr., and Arthur Miller - Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency."--BOOK JACKET Foreword A Note on Vocabulary Contents Introduction: The Informer As Patriot 1. The Espionage Informer 2. The Conspiracy Informer 3. The Liberal Informer Part I: Naming Names 4. HUAC in Hollywood 5. The Collaborators 6. Guilty Bystanders Part II: Stars, Stripes, and Stigmas 7. Elia Kazan And The Case for Silence 8. The Reasons Why 9. The Reasons Considered 10. Degradation Ceremonies Part III: Victims 11. The Intended Victim 12. The Community as Victim 13. The Informer as Victim Part IV: Lessons 14. The Question of Forgiveness 15. The Question of Obedience 16. The Question of Candor Notes on Sources Acknowledgments Index