J.E. Smyth commemorates a landmark anniversary of forgotten screenwriter and guild president, the sharp-tongued, blacklisted Mary McCall. [_link] pic.twitter.com/tFmGaDbfGd

— Los Angeles Review of Books (@LAReviewofBooks) November 18, 2022

Credit at last for female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history | The Guardian - 14 July 2024 |

To screenwriters in the 1950s, she was a major power player, fighting for pay rises and striking rights. To the Hollywood studio heads, she was "the meanest bitch in town".

Now, a new book aims to restore Mary C McCall Jr's reputation as one of the film industry's most important figures, a trailblazer who was airbrushed from history after getting on the wrong side of movie moguls.

McCall was targeted by right-wing men who didn't like the amount of power she had had during the 1930s and 1940s and they were going after her ...

"The Hollywood blacklist cleaned a lot of women out of the industry, and she was one. Then historians and film critics erased her, because all they've ever cared about is great male directors ...

At McCall's death in 1986, aged 81, archives did not even want her papers, and she has simply been forgotten. Material relating to women was just deemed not worthwhile."

Ronald Reagan Important McCarthy-Era Document Re: Communists In The Film Industry!

In 1947, Ronald Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which had targeted the Hollywood film industry. Actors, writers, and producers alike were summoned to appear before the committee and provide names of colleagues who may have been members of the Communist Party.

In the early 1950s, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy investigated suspected communists in the U.S. government, military, and civilian society as chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

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