In the summer of 1947, studio executives read with horror about how Great Britain planned to encourage the development of its domestic film industry by imposing a steep tax on American movies that would give 75 percent of profits to the royal government. By effectively closing the profitable British market to American films, the tax threatened to lower the revenue of the entire industry by 20 percent, which would, in the view of Samuel Goldwyn, bring “the complete end of independent motion picture production.”Footnote ¹ The implications of such a tax went beyond the financial ruin of the industry, Goldwyn told President Harry S. Truman. “It means a definite deterioration in the quality of pictures which will represent the American way of life not only at home but abroad.” The president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Eric Johnston, agreed with Goldwyn about the dangers such a tax could cause both the industry and the pursuit of democracy in the postwar world. Comparing the British tax to “the old system of restrictions and trade barriers which so long was responsible for international economic confusion and chaos,” Johnston reminded the president that such regulations on international trade threatened the new world order that the United States had fought for in World War II.Footnote ² Another angry opponent, Walt Disney, also drew on the memory of war, reminding President Truman that since Hollywood studios voluntarily supported the “common problems of the United States and Great Britain in critical times,” the U.S. government should ensure the flourishing of the Marshall Plan and the “free enterprise system” by eliminating the discriminatory trade barrier set up by the United Kingdom.Footnote ³

Just as Truman had addressed Congress with bold anticommunist rhetoric to pass the Marshall Plan earlier that year, so too did Hollywood executives appeal to him using the same language to emphasize the importance of movies in achieving victory in Europe that the president deemed so essential to democracy’s survival. Each industry spokesman reiterated the valiant and patriotic role Hollywood played in World War II and reminded Truman of the overriding importance of the industry to secure peace, democracy, and capitalism in war-torn Europe. While economic interests drove Hollywood leaders to protest the tax, anticommunism emerged as a powerful ideological framework that the increasingly conservative industry used to assure that the motion picture industry retained its place in American economic and political life.

Driven by financial concerns, industry spokesmen used anticommunist rhetoric to solidify a place for Hollywood in postwar American politics. Rather than upholding an age-old cliché previously popular in Tinseltown that there were three types of people: men, women, and actors—celebrities underwent a concrete effort to legitimize the profession by translating camera skills into ammunition against communism.Footnote ⁴ Since its inception, the motion picture industry had faced opposition in American society as an industry whose commitment to entertainment, consumption, and personality threatened Victorian-based values.Footnote ⁵ While during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the industry as an invaluable resource to spread wartime propaganda and his New Deal liberalism, Roosevelt’s death and the rising tide of anticommunism brought public distrust of the manipulative power of entertainers in politics. Similar to businessmen across the country, while professing a commitment to “consensus,” Hollywood leaders carefully crafted postwar political networks that simultaneously dismantled the ideological pillars of the liberal welfare state by promoting free-market ideas, traditional morality, privatization, and a desire to export American values and products that sometime led to partnerships with government it otherwise demonized.Footnote ⁶ In a domestic and international campaign to boost the box office and assert celebrities as respectable public leaders, the newly organized Motion Picture Industry Council (MPIC) emerged as a key institution to spread Hollywood’s messages of economic freedom and morality to civic organizations and individuals across the country.Footnote ⁷ By strategically organizing anticommunist publicity campaigns that promoted entertainment as the savior of American freedom and democracy, MPIC exposes the strategy that corporate Hollywood used to ensure profits at a time of financial duress.

Developed in 1948 as a public relations organization dedicated to intra-industry cooperation in the wake of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation on the communist infiltration of the industry, MPIC worked diligently to enhance box-office returns, create positive media coverage, and improve relations between production studios and local communities. But, while promoting the entertainment industry, MPIC also sold philosophies of privatization and free enterprise that were intertwined with national Cold War politics. MPIC helped to make Hollywood products, personalities, and, most important, business sense central to American life by promoting the notion of private industry with a social responsibility. While scholarship has focused on how the film industry upheld and promoted anticommunism efforts—from glorifying the informer in movies like On the Waterfront to depicting the subversive tactics of communists in films like My Son John—these works continue to show the film colony, shaken by intimidation and internal divisions created by the HUAC investigation, under constant political pressure to adhere to the Cold War consensus.Footnote ⁸ However, an examination of the MPIC reveals a different version of Hollywood during the 1950s. MPIC records demonstrate how industry leaders, rather than being weakened executives scared to offend the national consensus, actively pushed the government and the American people to appreciate the importance of entertainment in civic life and foreign policy. In the process, MPIC used the “red scare” to thrust Hollywood into American politics.

Exploring MPIC activities illuminates not only how Hollywood has intersected with American politics in subtle and nuanced ways beyond the obvious electoral campaigns, but also how the motion picture industry, frequently perceived as the bastion of American liberalism, has a fiscally conservative impulse that shaped its political mobilization in postwar politics. During the 1920s, figures like Louis B. Mayer attempted to forge personal relationships with national politicians, in particular Herbert Hoover, as a way to advance the business interests of the developing industry.Footnote ⁹ While Hollywood, along with the rest of the country, overwhelmingly turned to Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership during the Great Depression and World War II, as the gunshots faded and tensions with the Soviet Union escalated, industry leaders, particularly those in Mayer’s MGM studio, looked for opportunities to take advantage of the country’s shift to the right. A nonpartisan council that included Democrats and Republicans, MPIC activities illuminate the complex nature of political activism in Hollywood as the council crafted marketing, public relations, and economic strategies that ultimately led several prominent entertainers toward the Republican Party. As an industry particularly susceptible to public opinion and fearful of government regulation, its prominent figures found a flexible and pragmatic political outlook essential. As such, the MPIC reveals how a practical political stance dominated despite Hollywood’s public commitment to the ideological Cold War. Moreover, during the 1950s, many MPIC council members, most notably George Murphy and Ronald Reagan, emerged as credible public spokesmen, first as “ambassadors of goodwill” for MPIC and then as partisan resources for the Republican Party.Footnote ¹⁰ Along with nourishing Reagan’s political development, MPIC more broadly opened new doors for the entertainment industry to negotiate opportunities for economic and political advancement—which ultimately benefited the Republican party electorally and philosophically—in exchange for its ideological support, on and, most important, off the screen during the Cold War.

While personal and economic interests reigned supreme in Hollywood’s politicization in the postwar period, public relations departments in Hollywood studios worked diligently to present to the public a kind, moral, gracious, and religious image of the industry. Thus, in 1950, studio executives angrily read a renowned anthropologist’s account of the greed, selfishness, and superficiality that permeated Hollywood and threatened to contaminate American values.Footnote ¹¹ Hortense Powdermaker’s Hollywood: The Dream Factory aroused significant public interest and praise extended from academic circles to the New York Times.Footnote ¹² Powdermaker’s strident critique of the oppressiveness and hollowness of the movie industry made studio executives fear the ramifications of a book that at times compared the studio system to chattel slavery of the Old South and concentration camps from Nazi Germany. The Motion Picture Industry Council, however, stood poised to refute what it saw as the malicious and biased charges in the book. In an effort to dismantle Powdermaker’s assessment of Hollywood as a totalitarian system that negatively influenced American society, the MPIC put into gear its plans for a “Movietime U.S.A.” tour where actors and actresses would travel the country to show celebrities as true-blooded, ordinary American citizens. Eric Johnston, Ronald Reagan, George Murphy, and Walter Wanger led the “Movietime U.S.A.” offensive that attempted to sway organizations such as “Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, Veterans’ organizations, PTA clubs, Knights of Columbus, women’s clubs and even churches of every denominations through personal contact” to raise their awareness about the importance of the motion picture industry in their local towns.Footnote ¹³ The MPIC-sponsored tour showed Hollywood not as an avaricious industry that viewed moviegoers as “suckers whose emotional needs and anxieties can be exploited for profit,” as Powdermaker claimed in her account, but rather as an industry dedicated to a compassionate capitalism, high morals, and a constant commitment to democratic ideals.

The campaign reflected the broader philosophy of Hollywood public relations as it relied on key stars to mingle with fans across the country to prove their respectability and to enhance box office returns. Although the MPAA had attempted to ward off moral criticism and attempts at censorship since the 1920s, the MPIC had a different objective more proactive in nature: to make the industry synonymous with Americanism for enhanced economic and political gain. The two organizations shared a common goal of advancing the entertainment industry at home and abroad, and in fact the MPIC emerged as a brainchild of the new president of the MPAA, Eric Johnston, who hoped to use the organization to force cooperation between unions and corporate studios and institutionalize relations between the industry and the government begun during World War II. A Republican with a strong business sense, Johnston claimed he relinquished his post as president of the Chamber of Commerce for the new, highly paid position of “movie czar” because he firmly believed in the potential of the motion picture industry to stimulate the country’s industrial economy and create what he called a “people’s capitalism.”Footnote ¹⁴ Johnston envisioned a utopian society where the labor and management worked together to produce goods that Hollywood could sell to the world. With the “most powerful medium for the influencing of people that man has ever built,” Johnston believed that “it is no exaggeration to say that the motion picture industry sets the styles for half the world.” In his address to Hollywood workers in the summer of 1946, Johnston urged the film industry to popularize the “doctrine of production” by setting new styles of living and thinking, a task that would make entertainment an important element in fueling the postwar economy. Footnote ¹⁵

Johnston entered the industry at a volatile time, when workers and management fought bitterly over wages and working conditions; however, the new president quickly countered labor radicalism and provided ideological fodder to unify disparate groups of conservatives and liberal anticommunists. During his previous years in Washington, Johnston had taken pride in his promotion of a “Middle Way” for American business. Johnston asked President Roosevelt to advocate more forcefully the interests of business and to curb the rhetoric of the New Deal, which divided labor unions from management. As president of the Chamber of Commerce, Johnston reasserted a positive reputation for business and worked to reclaim areas of agreement between capital, government, and labor. Johnston understood how the Great Depression had challenged the American people’s faith in the benefits of capitalism and the role of big business. Bankers on Wall Street emerged as “bloated plutocrats” and “capitalist exploiters.” The American people turned to labor unions, Franklin Roosevelt, and the federal government to alleviate the evils of the free market. As loans from corporations and industrial mobilization made the United States into the “arsenal of democracy” during World War II, business crept out of the doghouse and tentatively back into Americans’ good graces. Starting in 1942, when he assumed a national leadership role for promoting American businesses, Eric Johnston began publicly speaking and writing about the significant role of business not only to fight the war, but to preserve the American way of life that the Great Depression and the New Deal “collective” programs threatened. In articles for American Mercury, Nation’s Business, and Readers’ Digest, Johnston tried to transform the image of business in popular culture, and in 1944 he published a book, America Unlimited, that explored the central place of capitalism, free market, innovation, and private enterprise in the definition of “Americanism.”Footnote ¹⁶

Throughout his book, Johnston stressed cooperation between labor and business without government intervention in this relationship. “The common ground between labor and management,” wrote Johnston, “is invariably larger and more solid than the margins of disagreement.”Footnote ¹⁷ Friends meeting in “search of solutions” rather than enemies confronting one another “in search of lethal weapons” would force Americans to understand that everyone—the rich, the working class, and the poor—had a stake in a prosperous economy. Johnston saw the New Deal years as motivating a “spirit of vendetta and class warfare,” that emphasized mutual suspicions between labor and management and refused to “explore and exploit areas of agreement.”Footnote ¹⁸ During World War II, the diverse elements of American society came together to unleash their productive powers against Germany, Japan, and Italy, but questions as to the shape of this cooperation in postwar society permeated Johnston’s book. While wartime necessities allowed the government a place in planning the economy to ensure maximum output, the postwar period, in Johnston’s eyes, demanded a nation unhampered by federal power over labor relations, high taxes on individuals or profits, or an activist government. Creative production and innovation under a free market promised to bring freedom and opportunity not only to Americans but to potential consumers throughout the world. Free enterprise and individual responsibility, argued Johnston, could throw off the constraints of collectivism that the New Deal ushered in to unleash an “America Unlimited” unto the world.

Johnston’s political and economic philosophy directly shaped the development of the Motion Picture Industry Council, a proposed trade association that would dedicate itself to curbing the radical extremist voices on the left and the right that had brought such negative publicity to the industry. In 1948, Johnston joined independent producer Walter Wanger, MGM executive Dore Schary, and Screen Actor Guild President Ronald Reagan to discuss how this organization could deal with postwar political and economic questions. Although Johnston officially removed himself from the committee to avoid a conflict of interest with his job as president of the MPAA, he attended the early meetings, shaped the council’s agenda, and offered advice and support for what he called the “very important endeavors” of MPIC.Footnote ¹⁹ Johnston urged the council to use Hollywood productions to stimulate consumption throughout the world and worked with the council to battle postwar trade barriers and attempts at political censorship of the medium.

Despite Johnston’s leadership and support, MPIC faced the difficult challenge of reasserting Hollywood’s necessity in national political and economic life to audience members who increasingly spent their time and money on caring for their homes and family in the post–World War II suburbs.Footnote ²⁰ Not only did the industry face a diminishing public, but the potential threat of television and the recent decision from the Justice Department that forced the breakup of studio and theater ownership also threatened the box office returns. This “divorce” made production, distribution, and exhibition into separate branches that anxiously competed with one another for a larger piece of the motion picture industry profits. MPIC hoped to curb distrust between studios and theaters about pricing, quality, and showmanship.

Along with shifting demographics and a changing business environment, MPIC faced the ramifications of recent labor disputes and the HUAC investigation, which had ideologically polarized the industry while also making the public suspicious of the manipulative ability of entertainment and celebrity political activists. Anticommunism definitively reshaped Hollywood’s political landscape because it emboldened the ideological fringes to emerge at the forefront of industry politics. World War II had deepened the connection between the industry and the New Deal administration as the Office of War Information and the Democratic National Committee welcomed progressive celebrity activists to extol Roosevelt’s New Deal ideology to the world. In response, a small group of Roosevelt opponents also made vocal waves on the right with their unbending anticommunism. The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals generated national attention by inviting and encouraging HUAC investigators to question progressive celebrity causes that they had watched flourish during the war.Footnote ²¹ The 1947 HUAC hearings that attracted national headlines have since captured scholarly attention on Hollywood’s place in the Cold War. However, this colorful and media-saturated battle pitted Hollywood’s ideological fringes against one another. As the MPAA went from pledging to defend the industry from inquisition to developing a blacklist of witnesses deemed “unfriendly,” the organization, along with the MPIC and other prominent industry spokesmen, developed a more pragmatic strategy of political activism that prioritized economic interests and valued personal relationships above all else.

MPIC emerged as an important vehicle for achieving such advantages and partnerships. Deeming economic success the first step to establishing the industry’s credibility, it first focused on intra-industry collaboration to enhance its image and maintain the productivity and efficiency of the studio system. Exhibitors and distributors joined producers in a public relations campaign to promote the “good” side of Hollywood, ward off local and state censorship efforts, and expand the appeal of films at home and abroad. Johnston argued that the new divisions between the studio and the local theater owners, who read constant news stories on the proliferation of communism, immorality, and celebrity greed, allowed a negative image of Hollywood to be perpetuated in their local communities, which hurt both the exhibitor and the producer in the pocketbook in the long run. Johnston urged exhibitors to “call off this feuding” with producers over contracts and prices. “We don’t need to dig our spurs in each other like two roosters fighting over one worm when there’s a hopper full of meat scraps just a saunter distance off.”Footnote ²² The goal, stressed Johnston in 1946, was to “enlarge the local theater audience,” and to “ensure a larger degree of sympathetic understanding interest and general liking.” In the next two years, box office returns fell drastically for the first time since the Great Depression, motivating MPIC to address the concerns Johnston previously voiced. MPIC initially focused on aligning the interests of the newly competitive exhibitors and producers on a volunteer basis. Johnston told MPIC members that “as a house divided, we are infinitely less effective in Washington than if we spoke with a united voice on matters in which we have a common interest.”Footnote ²³

After targeting these intra-industry concerns, Walter Wanger urged MPIC to move toward larger social problems. Along with stronger coordination between theater owners, distributors, and producers—such as regular meetings to “discuss admission prices of motion pictures, suitability of roles for actors, advertising, etc.”—the producer urged the committee to focus on improving the public image of actors.Footnote ²⁴ Wanger pushed Hollywood personalities to “take more interest in civic affairs.” If individuals associated with Hollywood could gain the respect of their local communities, “the rest of the people would not be so hard to conquer.” Wanger advised the council to spend time and money on a research branch that would collect positive stories about Hollywood to circulate to press contacts and exhibitors to defend the name of Hollywood in small and large papers across the country.

The MPIC’s official charter declared its intention to uphold the industry’s responsibilities “not only to a major economic enterprise, but also to an important social institution.”Footnote ²⁵ As the council gathered reports, speeches, and testimonials about the important place of the movies in sustaining the national economy and enhancing the lives of Americans, it planted articles in the popular press, such as the Kiplinger Magazine’s account, “Hollywood fights back.” “The film people,” announced the magazine, “are fed up with criticism of their morals, politics, and pictures.” For those who assert that Hollywood “is immoral, dominated by the Reds, subservient to Wall Street, trembling before the onslaught of television, and lacking the guts to turn out good pictures, their answer is simple: Look to the facts.”Footnote ²⁶ Documented by MPIC’s research wing, the article also relayed details about industry divorce rates, educational achievements, charity contributions, and political affiliations. The statistical averages, declared the article, showed that Tinseltown was similar to small towns across the country. The difference, proposed the magazine, was the “Stromboli complex”: the overwhelming number of press correspondents looking for scandals and publicity at the expense of telling the truth about Hollywood.

Stories about why Hollywood had such a bad reputation and the statistics refuting this image appeared in editorials, speeches, and feature articles across the country. MPIC flooded media outlets in an effort to expand audience interest in Hollywood personalities and to refute misconceptions about the influence of communists or unfit role models on the screen. A 1949 MPIC conference concluded that the media push must be aided with “good will tours” with a purpose “to answer criticism in forthright fashion and to point out services rendered by the industry to each particular city and to the American community in general.”Footnote ²⁷ After the conference, the publication of Powdermaker’s study further motivated the MPIC to organize what would culminate in the “Movietime U.S.A.” tour that celebrated the important place of the motion picture industry in American society over the past fifty years.

The “Movietime U.S.A.” tour attempted to revive the struggling industry by exerting its political, economic, and cultural role in American civic life. Reagan, Johnston, Murphy, and Wanger traveled to small towns across the country and joked about the ridiculous Hollywood stories of “legends of leopard-skin couches and incense” made popular by “rabble-rousers,” “rumor mongers,” and “self-seekers.” Speakers refuted these stories and disseminated the basic MPIC message of the high moral character of Hollywood.Footnote ²⁸ Conservative moral, political, and economic messages, simultaneously being advocated by public intellectuals, underlay the public relations campaign. MPIC used entertainment to educate surrogate speakers and the American public about the importance of religion, volunteerism, free market, consumption, and anticommunism.

MPIC vigorously publicized the religiosity of top celebrities. Various stars joined Father Patrick Peyton’s nationally syndicated radio show, “Family Theater of the Air.” Peyton posed for pictures with celebrities in well-publicized garden parties and used these celebrity meetings to spread his message that “the family that prays together stays together.” In turn, MPIC found that the relationship of Hollywood stars to Father Peyton promoted its message of Hollywood morality.Footnote ²⁹ The Catholic press also utilized MPIC’s resources, statistics, and story lines to sell its Christian message that linked the family, religion, and the nation. “Yes, people still live by faith in Hollywood,” the Catholic World assured its readers.Footnote ³⁰ “They believe in the country of which we are a part and they also believe, in varying ways, that this is a God above and beyond us, in whose image we are all created.” While the mainstream press highlighted the scandalous behavior of a few individuals, many people in Hollywood attended church and raised money for religious organizations across Los Angeles, declared the Catholic World. Even its films, carefully monitored by the Catholic Legion of Decency since the early 1930s, continue to show that “Hollywood is alert to the existence of spiritual values.”

The article in the Catholic World constituted a written version of the speech prepared for celebrities to use when discussing the morality of Hollywood on their public relations tours. As speakers promoted the importance of religion to famous movie figures, they also celebrated family values. Stories of the low divorce rate, happy marriages with homes and children, coincided with press releases of pictures of Dorothy Lamour acting as hostess for her son’s fifth birthday party and Rosalind Russell smiling at home with her family above a caption that read: “Everyone here is not always getting divorced.”Footnote ³¹ The speeches and written stories fulfilled MPIC goals of reasserting Hollywood’s moral integrity, while also giving unsolicited support to the domestic Cold War reassertion of religion and family life into American values.

Along with publicizing Hollywood’s religiosity, MPIC depended deeply on the industry’s tradition of charity and philanthropy to assert Hollywood’s importance in American society. This promotion of a more compassionate capitalism, moreover, sowed important seeds in small towns and suburbs across the country that would reinforce libertarian messages of privatization that Ronald Reagan and conservative political leaders soon began to articulate.Footnote ³² Constantly referring to the Permanent Charities Committee, which raised money for an umbrella of national and local charities, and the Hollywood Coordinating Committee, which coordinated talent for these fund-raisers, MPIC speakers and articles hammered home the long tradition of volunteerism and civic duty in Hollywood. In a typical month, Reagan told readers in the Hartford Times, “176 actors gave their time and talents at 73 events, including military hospital tours, trips to entertain troops overseas and charity benefits for many worth while causes.”Footnote ³³ MPIC speeches extolled the work of Mrs. Spencer Tracy and the John Tracy Clinic for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children and Mary Pickford’s work for the elderly. “I think we have some of the best citizens in America, who think America is the best place in the world,” speakers told audiences.Footnote ³⁴ “Let us all join hand in helping the ill and needy, to build a stronger and better America and world. It doesn’t matter whether a town is called Hollywood or Topeka. In that all of us decent people agree, don’t we?”

MPIC relied on the industry’s history of public service to show how the private business of entertainment was essential in aiding the “ill and needy.” Hollywood had assumed the social role of generating dollars and facilities for the underprivileged, which the MPIC felt enhanced its status. Across the country, a bond developed between civic organizations and the industry, with one Kiwanis member in Detroit expressing shock when he learned the connection between the “Kiwanis and Hollywood ideals.”Footnote ³⁵ Promoting “Hollywood’s heart” did more than generate goodwill for the industry in local communities; it relayed a constant message about the importance of the private sector in providing for the public good. Speaking before Congress, California Senator Sheridan Downey reiterated the importance of the MPIC and the industry it represented in extolling the contributions of a “private industry” to American society. “I believe I state only a simple truth,” announced Downey, “when I say that I doubt if any other private institution of all of our history has ever made such sacrifices for the good of our country.”Footnote ³⁶ At a time when the federal government assumed more responsibilities for the public welfare, the MPIC message subtly provided an alternative solution to poverty and sickness: the private sector. In an effort to curb negative publicity, MPIC reminded the public that “decent” individuals and businesses, not the government, had the responsibility and means to build a “stronger and better America and world.”

Promoting the kindness and social responsibility of corporations was central to the MPIC message, not only because it elevated the status of Hollywood but also because it perpetuated one of the industry’s main goals: to remain unregulated. Since its inception, Hollywood engaged in political and judicial struggles against local, state, and national efforts to censor the material played on the silver screen. In 1934, Eric Johnston’s predecessor, Will H. Hays, developed a self-censorship office that scanned scripts and finished productions for “morally offensive” material. The move toward self-censorship cooled the debates about federal control over the screen; however, in the wake of the HUAC hearings, many critics, wary of the newly recognized power of film unleashed by World War II, urged the government to assume more control over screen content to protect the valuable means of communication from communist control.

Determined to protect the industry from government regulation, Eric Johnston and MPIC consistently discussed the importance of freedom of the screen in Cold War terms. However, unlike leftists and communist sympathizers in Hollywood who fought against the anticommunist investigations by invoking First Amendment rights, the MPIC leaders explicitly linked freedom with selling goods and democratic ideals. “The screen must be free to portray faithfully and to explore intelligently the whole realm of human knowledge and activity,” declared Johnston following World War II. “Vest the screen with freedom’s armor so it can truly battle for free people and institutions.”Footnote ³⁷ Johnston and others explicitly linked self-regulation to the broader Cold War struggle for peoples’ minds. “Hollywood is playing a lead role in the ceaseless bitter battle of ideology,” observed one reporter, who also extolled the “noteworthy example of co-operation between government and private industry.” Defending Americanism through movies became a way for Hollywood leaders to use Cold War rhetoric to promote their economic self-interest and provide a shining example of the successes of private industry when left alone from government regulation.Footnote ³⁸

The professed commitment to anticommunism and efforts to fight the Cold War allowed the MPIC and its members to quiet the ideological extremes that had publically polarized the industry in the past. Correspondences between the MPIC and the Motion Picture Alliance, for example, sought to settle disputes behind closed doors, rather than the pages of Variety, or Hollywood Reporter.Footnote ³⁹ When MPIC member Walter Wanger accepted the chairmanship of the Southern California chapter of Crusade for Freedom in 1950, the MPA reminded him of his former criticism of the anticommunist organization in 1944. While Wanger reminded the organization that his public statements had stemmed from the “injudicious statements” and blanket accusations of communist infiltration of the industry, he nevertheless proposed to “bury the dead past and face the troubled future.”Footnote ⁴⁰ By 1950, the MPA and MPIC did share important beliefs in principles of individualism, privatization, and anticommunism, and the MPIC worked to make this rhetoric less polarizing and more in line with mainstream political debates. After all, the council’s principal goal of advancing box office returns and promoting a positive image of Hollywood depended on not alienating viewers because of perceived political extremism.

The Cold War crusade against communism, more than anything else, emerged as the key ideological way for Hollywood to align the industry’s business sense, which relied on free-market ideals and self-regulation, with national politics. When overtly anticommunist films like The Red Menace failed to attract a large viewing audience, the MPIC shifted its efforts to promoting anticommunism off the screen. Introduced as “screen actor by profession, Red-fighter by choice,” Reagan spoke to a Kiwanis International Club in St. Louis about how he “assumed command” and “struck back at the Commies” and “led some 35,000 film employees to a notable victory.”Footnote ⁴¹ Individuals like himself, not the government-sanctioned investigation, emerged as the leading reason for Hollywood’s victory over the communists. Motion pictures became “cultural ambassadors” for the spread of democracy and capitalism in the Cold War; in the process, as MPIC activities demonstrated, the ideological battle against communism offered an important opportunity to establish entertainment as a central player in national politics.

A staunch Cold Warrior, Eric Johnston led MPIC’s campaign to use the motion picture to fight communism in new ways. “The motion picture transplants the American scene and the American standard of living in visual form before the eyes of millions,” Johnston’s office explained.Footnote ⁴² “It evokes new ambitions, new incentives, new wants. This is important to the future economic well-being of the world.” MPIC honed in on the important role of Hollywood actors as “ambassadors abroad.” Speakers traveled the country not only to promote the morality and important economic place of the industry, but also to praise its diplomatic potential. The motion pictures, reported the MPIC, depicted two main messages that were instrumental to the success of democracy and freedom abroad: the political importance of the individual and the economic significance of consumption.Footnote ⁴³ Reports came in from countries on both sides of the iron curtain about the power of Hollywood productions in selling the high quality of life possible under democratic leadership.Footnote ⁴⁴ In 1953, Representative Joseph F. Holt (R-Calif.) told Congress that if it had not been for the “unheralded services of Hollywood” in spreading American goodwill and portraying through entertainment—and, most important, not through “obvious indoctrination”—the luxuries and benefits of the American way of life, the diplomatic war against communism would already have been lost.Footnote ⁴⁵

MPIC depended on the international appeal of Hollywood films and the industry’s rising Cold War prestige to attain concrete economic benefits from the government, and in doing so, developed partnerships with the Truman and Eisenhower administrations that often contradicted the broader ideological beliefs of free-market Hollywood conservatives about public-private relationships—ultimately showing how opportunities for professional advancement trumped philosophical commitments. During one meeting, MPIC members discussed the “high praise” United Nations officials gave Hollywood for “promoting better understanding between peoples,” and hoped that “comments of this nature ease the path of industry’s films in vital markets abroad and have bearing on State Department attitude in relation to industry.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Representing the interests of the motion picture industry, MPIC pushed the government to use films, produced in Hollywood, to sell democracy and stimulate consumption to the free world in the battle against communism. While MPIC frequently publicized itself as a public relations organization to develop intra-industry cooperation, MPIC also worked extensively with the State Department and executive branch to continue the successful collaboration between the industry and government that had been so successful in World War II. In 1946, President Truman welcomed industry leaders to the White House, praising their trade as “one of the most effective and forceful media for spreading knowledge and truth,” and the president also hoped the industry would “perform a public service of increasing importance.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Truman appointed John R. Steelman, head of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (OWMR), to “establish a single point of contact” between government and Hollywood that would provide “the functions of production, distribution, and exhibition play their parts in a joint contribution,” to allow films to “make major contribution to public understanding of many serious postwar problems.”Footnote ⁴⁸

While Steelman designated a temporary Motion Picture Coordinating Committee in the OWMR, MPIC and its New York-based sister organization, the Council of Motion Picture Organizations, forged a long-term link between the government and the film industry. By 1950, MPIC approved a final government cooperation plan that directly stemmed from the postwar reconversion conversations with Steelman.Footnote ⁴⁹ The coordination plan highlighted the importance of motion pictures in the ongoing ideological warfare with communism and the Soviet Union. The plan emphasized the council’s “patriotic spirit” and the vital role of motion pictures in waging an ideological warfare with communism and the Soviet Union; however, it also articulated the need for industry leaders to attain national policy insight and economic incentives to promote the private business of the motion picture industry. “It must be emphasized,” wrote the plan of the impending place of the MPIC, “that this office should be established at one of the highest levels of government or else it would be relatively useless.” Moreover, MPIC promised collaboration to produce films that fulfilled key policy objectives while simultaneously reinforcing the industry’s role as a private business for hire by the government and in need of diplomatic measures to ensure its profitability.

Economic concerns about high foreign tariffs, changing technology, and a disappearing audience pushed MPIC to strengthen its relationship with the government in hopes of achieving new production and distribution opportunities abroad and at home. Developing government film programs with the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the Economic Stabilization Agency, the United States Information Agency, and eventually the armed forces during the Korean War, gave Hollywood studios a new market to make up lost revenue. But government film production also provided members of the MPIC, like Ronald Reagan, with professional contacts in Washington. The State Department and the Department of Defense frequently requested MPIC representatives to travel to Washington for consultations about using film in public awareness campaigns. Government officials also made the cross-country trip to Los Angeles. The director of the United States Information Agency addressed the MPIC membership meeting in 1954 about how he considered it “most important that your members be informed of the direction in which our Government effort is moving in so far as its film program is concerned.”Footnote ⁵⁰

The necessary place Hollywood had carved out in national and international politics through the Cold War in the 1950s gave the industry the leverage and prestige it craved. While the OWI depended on Hollywood coordination to sell World War II ideology, it remained a wartime measure. Politicians on both ends of the political spectrum feared the potential for misuse and manipulation of peacetime propaganda. MPIC, however, found a political place for Hollywood in the Cold War by highlighting the importance of entertainment to sell messages beneficial to the economic interests of the industry and the anticommunist agenda of the country. Rather than enduring accusations as a propagandist, MPIC helped to promote Hollywood as America’s salesman, effectively equating professional entertainment with patriotism. Entertainment emerged as a necessary tool for political communication at home and abroad; however, because it was also a private industry looking first to make a profit, the sales pitch espoused fiscally conservative messages that attacked the role of the governmental regulation. “The movies, from the beginning,” wrote Ronald Reagan as a newly mobilized conservative spokesman, “were a pure American enterprise in the tradition of private thought and execution.”Footnote ⁵¹ Government regulation through antitrust legislation threatened the powerful corporate hand that had run Hollywood, Reagan argued, as he pushed for the return to free enterprise and individualism in American politics.

MPIC moved from being a public relations watchdog and anticommunist crusader in its early years to an ardent campaigner for tax policies beneficial to the industry. In 1958, Ronald Reagan went before the House Ways and Means Committee to protest high taxation rates on Hollywood actors. During his tax battle, he used MPIC’s resources for support, revealing how his Hollywood connections and experiences continued to shape his increasingly conservative political appeals. Having served as the president of the MPIC in 1956 and received an honorary “plaque which gratefully acknowledged the MPIC’s appreciation in recognition of his inspiring leadership and devoted service” in 1957, Reagan felt his new obligation to MPIC was to fight for lower and nondiscriminatory taxes. Relying on personal relationships developed with policy makers over the previous ten years, Reagan traveled to Washington to plead his case before Congress. Reagan talked about how high income taxes “brought about a talent slowdown” because high-salaried stars “won’t work for a net of nine cents on each dollar earned.”Footnote ⁵² Not only did high taxes stifle productivity, but they unfairly targeted movie stars who frequently went through “feast or famine” income levels. The high taxes taken out on productive years did not account for the average income that stars earned during unproductive years; therefore, Reagan argued, “entertainers should be allowed to average out their taxes over a number of years.” After demanding tax reductions for both individuals and corporations, Reagan reported to the MPIC that he “was surprised at the sentiment he observed by members of the Congressional Committee for the motion picture industry and its people” and he believed hope for tax relief remained alive on Capitol Hill.Footnote ⁵³ The majority of Americans cast their votes for Democrats in the congressional election that year, ultimately reaffirming popular support of big government and Keynesian economics. Reagan’s beliefs, however, dovetailed with a growing conservative minority that he would actively align himself with six years later during Barry Goldwater’s campaign.

While Reagan learned many conservative economic and political ideas from his years working at General Electric with the company’s vice-president Lemuel Boulware, Reagan also remained committed to principles advocated by the MPIC, which, through anticommunist language, implicitly attacked the liberal welfare state and Keynesian principles that advocated for government involvement in the marketplace.Footnote ⁵⁴ His MPIC responsibilities moved from discussing the anticommunist threat overcome in Hollywood or the tendencies of the press to scandalize the industry to a concrete discussion of the economic factors at play in show business, paralleling the broader trajectory of the council that began as intra-industry organization and ended as a liaison representing the industry in national politics. Undoubtedly, General Electric provided classes and study material to familiarize Reagan with principles friendly to private corporations; so too, however, did the Motion Picture Industry Council. The organization’s research council, speakers’ kits, government connections, and political campaigns provided the actor with ten years of an increasingly conservative ideological training where traditional morality, free market, and anticommunism were synonymous with Americanism.Footnote ⁵⁵

In his 1964 autobiography, Where’s the Rest of Me?, Reagan linked the economic problems Hollywood experienced in the 1960s to the regulatory power of government and presented a nostalgic view about the time when powerful studio executives used their innovation, talent, and business sense to generate ninety percent of the world’s film production. How did they do it? Reagan asked. “They had their own code of voluntary picture morals, contracts with the stars, publicity and advertising for their product. They controlled the theaters that showed their movies, and generally could regulate their business.” Footnote ⁵⁶ Having served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan acknowledged the negative aspects that this “virtual monopoly” created. And yet he praised the power of individuals to build strong businesses and defended corporations’ rights to pursue profits and stimulate the economy. While the studio system undoubtedly had problems, Reagan regarded 1950s government restrictions, such as taxes and antimonopoly suits, as “slitting the throat” of the industry and leaving a “commercial vacuum” that foreign products subsequently filled. Throughout the book, Reagan blamed Hollywood’s economic and political problems on the rise of big government and the naive idealism of liberalism. He proposed a solution in deregulation, the free market, and individual responses to social problems, and a strong anticommunism all cloaked with the rhetoric of strident patriotism.

This conservative rhetoric continued to dominate his political outlook as the actor-turned- politician rose in the ranks of the Republican Party. Having sold the Americanism of Hollywood, its role in defending democracy and freedom during World War II and the Cold War, and the necessity of keeping its products free in the marketplace over the previous ten years, Reagan moved with ease and familiarity to a conservative political movement that espoused these same principles. While contemporary critics and historical scholars frequently dismiss celebrity activism as superficial—pointing to Reagan’s Hollywood experience in particular as merely training in showmanship—MPIC provides a window into how Hollywood figures developed cohesive, well-organized partnerships with politicians and civic institutions that actively engaged with national policy debates and facilitated their entrance into the political arena.Footnote ⁵⁷ In hopes of salvaging sagging box office returns, the council recast the role of entertainment in American society as a positive good and entertainers as credible public spokesmen. The council provided a training ground with ample opportunities for politically ambitious entertainers to engage with public officials about foreign policy concerns and economic issues while also giving politicians insight into the expertise that Hollywood could offer as individuals and as successful corporations.

While images of radical millionaires in Hollywood who bankroll progressive causes and the Democratic Party dominate popular perceptions of celebrity politics, in reality a fiscally conservative outlook among well-paid personalities made the industry a more significant political resource for the Republican Party in the postwar period. In the wake of the red scare, Democratic politicians withdrew from overt collaboration with Hollywood activists during the postwar period. In fact, during the 1952 campaign, a Hollywood for Stevenson Committee—which attracted well-known liberal activists including Bette Davis, Phillip Dunne, Billy Wilder, George Jessel, and even MPIC member Roy Brewer—presented the Democratic National Committee with a “gift” of free film and radio advertisement spots.Footnote ⁵⁸ Despite their efforts, however, the Hollywood for Stevenson Committee saw the DNC fail to distribute their work among the national Democratic campaign efforts. As labor unions and “sundry organizations” attempted to find pro-Democratic material to fill their local television and radio time, they remained “unaware of the material produced by Hollywood for Stevenson,” the committee wrote in frustrated letters to the DNC.Footnote ⁵⁹ In its efforts to become involved in the campaign, the Hollywood for Stevenson Committee lacked encouragement from Stevenson and other Democratic politicians, who remembered too well the problems their party had encountered in the immediate postwar period because of collaboration with liberal entertainers. While John F. Kennedy turned to various celebrities for support in the 1960 election, it centered primarily on innovative efforts in fund-raising rather than developing concrete policy initiatives, which Hollywood liberal activists had previously prioritized through their collaborations with the DNC before the HUAC investigations of the late 1940s.Footnote ⁶⁰

Republican politicians in California, however, did not reject the helpful collaboration that their newfound friends in the industry could provide. Eisenhower’s campaign made personal appeals to bring former Democrats, like Jack Warner, Ronald Reagan, and Samuel Goldwyn, to the Republican Party. Longtime Republican and MPIC member George Murphy helped Eisenhower transform the Cold War patriotic support in the industry into concrete political support for his candidacy in 1952 and his reelection in 1956. Murphy led the Republican charge in Hollywood to gain the support of Democrats frustrated by the Truman administration. Under the name “Citizens for Eisenhower,” Goldwyn, Warner, and Zanuck stressed Eisenhower’s nonpartisan appeal and instead emphasized his personal appeal. As they sent letters to Hollywood Democrats and Independents, Zanuck and Warner constantly stressed that “you must judge the character of the man.” Yes, they too had voted for Roosevelt because of their faith in his leadership abilities, but in 1952, “from the standpoint of character, integrity, and experience, no one runs even a close second to Dwight D. Eisenhower.”Footnote ⁶¹ Moreover, the Republican converts cited the Truman policies that were ill-fated for the economic interests as reasons for switching parties.Footnote ⁶² The personal loyalty and economic interests advanced through patriotic rhetoric that had previously defined the industry’s public activities served as a basis for a deeper political involvement that would beget partisan benefits for the Republican Party, advance a candidate-centered campaign, and cultivate a Hollywood conservatism that stressed anticommunism, patriotic rhetoric, and a pro-business attitude.Footnote ⁶³

The Republican Party would continue to cultivate ties with Hollywood throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In return, the newly converted Hollywood Republicans donated their time and expertise to craft Eisenhower’s political advertisements through the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in 1956.Footnote ⁶⁴ The Republican Party realized not only the publicity power celebrities held but also the intimate knowledge of the camera and advertising tactics they possessed, and the GOP, unlike the Democratic Party, warmly welcomed Republican-leaning entertainers into its fold.Footnote ⁶⁵ In 1964, former MPIC member George Murphy gained political recognition for his successful senatorial campaign. Two years later, Ronald Reagan won the California race for governor. In both of these successful campaigns, Murphy and Reagan did not win simply because of their earlier Hollywood fame, but rather because they took advantage of the political networks they had built over the past two decades.Footnote ⁶⁶

By 1972, both parties would fight for the loyalties of wealthy celebrities, with the Democrats undertaking a more ideological appeal that targeted their social conscience and Republicans pursuing the strategy that had worked so well during the postwar period: targeting their pocketbook concerns. While in 1960, Richard Nixon neglected to take advantage of the Hollywood organization Eisenhower had built up, in 1968 and 1972 the presidential candidate attempted to rectify this mistake. After his victory in 1968, Nixon worked hard to cultivate relationships with prominent entertainers by frequently inviting Pam Powell, Sammy Davis Jr., and many others to the White House. Richard Nixon understood that to garner Hollywood support in his reelection campaign he would need to rely on two things: the positive policy developments for the industry under his administration and the personal appeal to individual stars.Footnote ⁶⁷ Jeb Stuart Magruder, the head of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, oversaw an extensive effort to get top entertainers involved in Nixon’s administration through policies that advanced the economic interests of the industry and gave individual prestige to his supporters. As Sammy Davis Jr., Charlton Heston, and Frank Sinatra all crossed the party line to support Richard Nixon, it became clear that the Republican strategy of celebrity mobilization, while not as publicized as the Democratic effort, brought concrete benefits to Hollywood as an industry and, ultimately, set the stage for Ronald Reagan’s political ascendancy.