HOLLYWOOD ON TRIAL: The Story of the Ten Who Were Indicted by KAHN, Gordon - 1948

New York: Boni & Gaer, 1948. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. 8vo. Grey boards in green printed dust jacket. Moderate scuffing to jacket edges, minor creasing, spine sunned; light soil to rear panel. Spine ends bumped, pages toned. SIGNED by subject Adrian Scott to ffep. Very good in like jacket.

Written in collaboration with the Hollywood Ten: Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. All ten refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee regarding "alleged subversive influence in motion pictures," received prison sentences for contempt of Congress, and were blacklisted from the motion picture industry.

This copy bears the signature of Adrian Scott, a screenwriter and producer for MGM and RKO; Scott joined the Communist Party in 1944 and, like his nine colleagues, refused to answer questions when called to appear before HUAC in 1947. He was subsequently fired, divorced by his first wife, fined, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment, after which he eventually found work in England. Scott was implicated in 1951 by the testimony of his onetime creative collaborator, director Edward Dmytryk, another of the Hollywood Ten and the only one to later give in and name names. Scott never forgave this; as his widow Joan Scott later said: "Adrian's position was simple; he had contempt for informers and he never spoke to them."

With a forward by Thomas Mann, taken from his testimony before Congress on behalf of the Committee for the First Amendment. An essential document of American history.