Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950 : Moguls, Mobsters

"This book is destined to be a bombshell in the field and perhaps far beyond the field." -Paul Buhle, coauthor of Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist As World War II wound down in 1945 and the cold war heated up, the skilled trades that made up the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) began a tumultuous strike at the major Hollywood studios. This turmoil escalated further when the studios retaliated by locking out CSU in 1946. This labor unrest unleashed a fury of Red-baiting that allowed studio moguls to crush the union and seize control of the production process, with far-reaching consequences. This engrossing book probes the motives and actions of all the players to reveal the full story of the CSU strike and the resulting lockoutof 1946. Gerald Horne draws extensively on primary materials and oral histories to document how limited a "threat" the Communist party actually posed in Hollywood, even as studio moguls successfully used the Red scare to undermine...