Dalton Trumbo

This week the Los Angeles Times's Web site carries the story "Kirk Douglas on the blacklist: Why Hollywood showed so little courage," referencing  the actor's recently released memoir.  The article also appears in today's Chicago Tribune print edition, titled "How Douglas took on blacklist with 'Spartacus.'"  Author Patrick Goldstein reports Douglas is particularly proud of hiring former Communist and unrepentant member of the Hollywood Ten Dalton Trumbo to write the movie "Spartacus."

Communist (and FBI informant) Dalton Trumbo, hero of the Red Scare. That's how New York Times reporter Michael Cieply portrayed him in Tuesday's Arts section story "Voice From the Blacklist, Through Voices of Others."

"Sixty years after a Congressional panel grilled 10 uncooperative writers, directors and producers about their supposed Communist connections, Hollywood still quarrels over the heroes and villains of its Red Scare."

Notice how the phrase "Red Scare" comes without quotation marks, as if that liberal term is the objective view.

"The propriety of giving Elia Kazan -- one who 'named names' -- an honorary Oscar in 1999 remains a contentious subject. And only five years ago Stanley Kramer's widow bitterly battled the makers of a television documentary that depicted her late husband using the blacklist to deny his former partner Carl Foreman a producer's credit on 'High Noon.'