Who is going to speak out?
That’s the disturbing question being debated this week in response to the discordant noises from Washington. The advent of Donald Trump’s “Imperial presidency,” as The Economist terms it, is stirring an emotional response within the entertainment community because of its enemies lists and warnings of “retribution.” But it’s muted.
The results of the 2025 presidential election imparted the message to Hollywood that celebrity voices weren’t resonating. Voters were searching elsewhere for authoritative opinion.
That message seems especially relevant today because retribution has become a key tenet in Trumpdom – witness the enemies lists prepared by several appointees. Or the cancellation of security protection for figures ranging from Gen. Mark Milley to Mike Pompeo.
Even the Wall Street Journal expressed alarm this week about the consequences of revenge politics. Trump supporter Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) urged Trump to “revisit” his decisions on security protection, especially in view of threats from Iran.
“I don’t believe a Trump blacklist today would cancel careers in the entertainment industry, but it could spur retreat in terms of corporate policy and even network news.”
CEO of one major company
To some in Hollywood, today’s rhetoric reflects a throwback to the epoch of the backlist decades ago. Those who publicly defied the mandates of that moment faced job loss and even exile. “If you’re red, you’re dead,” said Dalton Trumbo, the great screenwriter whose career was terminated by his suspected politics.
Hollywood’s power players at first dismissed fears of the blacklist and even the then all-powerful William Morris Agency publicly scoffed at its relevance. Yet one of those ultimately exiled was William Morris himself who once had fostered a Soviet-American Friendship organization. By the late 1950s, Hollywood caved under the pressure and careers were destroyed, movies canceled.
The Trump administration appointees have now prepared their own list of “dissenters” and are systematically “canceling” them from the Justice Department and even the civil service.
“I don’t believe a Trump blacklist today would cancel careers in the entertainment industry, but it could spur retreat in terms of corporate policy and even network news,” said the CEO of one major company who requested anonymity.
Ironically, the original blacklist was traced to an executive order of the Harry Truman administration in 1947 that set up a “loyalty review board” to identify Russian sympathizers.
Sen. Joe McCarthy jumped on that list and recklessly augmented it to fuel his anti-Communist crusades of the mid 1950s.
Abe Lastfogel, then boss of the William Morris office, was dismissive of the “red baiters” until clients like Judy Holliday, Edward G Robinson and even Milton Berle became enmeshed in the charges and counter-charges. Hollywood powers were so intimidated that Jack Warner and Louis B Mayer, head of MGM, paraded before congressional committees to defend their patriotism.
The patriotic noise became so deafening that the American Legion was considering a boycott of Hollywood movies. The Hollywood Reporter ran a front-page editorial calling Hollywood “a Red beach-head.” Walter Winchell screamed “Wake Up America” on his top-rated show.
Ronald Reagan was so alarmed when Nancy, his new girlfriend, turned up on a blacklist that he asked a reporter for the New York Times for help. I was that reporter. “Who are these self-appointed crusaders putting names on lists?” he asked me. “Why don’t you expose them?”
Nancy’s name was removed. At stake at the time were jobs, not potential “hit jobs.”
