The McCarthy period remains one of the darkest in our nation's history and the Hollywood blacklist is one of the most frequently discussed topics in the history of American cinema. All of this makes Thomas Doherty's Show Trial a welcome addition to this scholarship as perhaps the most comprehensive, thoroughly researched account of the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ 1947 hearings on Communist influence in American movies.

The double meaning of Show Trial hints at the particular slant that Doherty takes in his account of these events. On the one hand, the title captures HUAC's interest in targeting show business as an institution that exerted a great deal of influence over public opinion. On the other, it also connotes the degree to which the hearings themselves functioned as a form of spectacle, one in which the guilt of the accused was predetermined and the proceedings were stage-managed to maximize media coverage.

Doherty's book is organized in three parts. The first section sketches out the now familiar “beats” that set HUAC on a collision course with liberal Hollywood. These include the rise and fall of the Popular Front in the United States, the Dies Committee's initial visit to Hollywood in 1940, the production of films to support our Soviet allies during World War II, the creation of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals to counter the influence of Hollywood leftists, labor strife that resulted in pickets and violent protests at film studios, and the 1946 midterm elections that placed Congressional investigative authority in Republican hands.

The second section of the book mostly provides a day-by-day account of the hearings themselves. All the faces familiar from old newsreels appear here: the Hollywood Ten, stars like Gary Cooper, and studio brass like Jack Warner and Walt Disney. Although Doherty's focus is on the drama's main players, he also devotes space to those who filled out supporting roles: screenwriters Fred Niblo Jr. and Richard Macaulay, who reported a litany of abuses committed by Communists in the Screen Writers Guild; Oliver Carlson, a Michigan college instructor and ex-Communist, who served as the committee's expert on propaganda; and Louis J. Russell, a HUAC investigator who surveilled Soviet consuls’ movements within Hollywood, providing the “smoking gun” that legitimated the committee's charges against the film industry.

The last section details the fallout from the hearings, both short-term and long-term.

Perhaps the most bracing chapter in Show Trial is the one devoted to those who felt victimized in one way or another by the hearings. The hundreds of industry personnel blacklisted are, of course, the most notable victims. Yet Doherty's evenhanded treatment of the hearings’ impact shows that there were plenty of regrets to go around. James K. McGuinness believed he lost his post as an MGM story editor because he was too forthright in his assessment of the studio's tolerance of Communists on the lot. Morrie Ryskind, who had written screenplays for such comedy classics as A Night at the Opera (1935) and My Man Godfrey (1936), claimed that he never received another job offer in Hollywood after his testimony as a “friendly witness.” All of these stories confirm the fundamentally apolitical nature of Hollywood. Producer Samuel Goldwyn famously said, “Pictures are entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” Studios largely heeded this advice by shunning extremists on both sides.

Although Doherty's historical narrative is quite edifying, Show Trial has one major quirk. It makes only scant reference to the voluminous literature on the blacklist that's already been published. I mention this not to gainsay Doherty's impeccable research or his reasons for this editorial decision. As the author explains in a bibliographic note, he based much of his account on the Congressional Record, supplementing as much as possible with other contemporaneous sources as needed. His rationale for this approach is twofold. First, many memoirs of the period contain obvious historical inaccuracies. Second, much of the secondary literature bears a political slant that divides the players into “stand-up guys on the one hand and craven finks on the other” (356). Still, the effect on readers can be disarming. The book reads as though Show Trial were written in an alternative universe where books by Victor Navasky, Larry Ceplair, and Paul Buhle simply don't exist.

If that sounds like a complaint, it's a minor one. By and large, Show Trial proffers a gripping yarn masterfully told. For readers new to the literature on the blacklist, Doherty's book may be the one essential volume to have. Yet there is something here for everyone, even scholars very familiar with the subject. In an era when the optics of politics are treated like a reality show, Doherty's incisive portrait of the 1947 HUAC hearings demonstrates that today's media circus has many precedents.