Our Leading Citizen

Hearings for the HUAC, the first I believe, brought in the film critic for the Daily Worker, a Communist paper. Howard Rushmore worked for the Daily Worker from 1936 to 1939. He testified that the script for Our Leading Citizen was leaked to the US Communist Party leader, VJ Jerome. Jerome disliked the message and so Rushmore dutifully panned the film and called for a boycott. He said the Party convinced progressive columnists and front organizations to slam Paramount. You must wonder during that time how many scripts were shelved that did not pass the litmus test of being friendly or at least neutral in regards to Communism. We all know of the horrendous blacklisting in the late 1940s and 1950s. The blacklisting of writers unsympathetic to Communism in the 1930s is less known, but part of Hollywood history. It's ironic that Lawson and Trumbo were blocking non-party line writers in the 1930s. You wonder if they considered the 1950s their comeuppance for doing the same 15 years earlier to fellow struggling writers.