Focused on the field of broadcasting, it identified 151 entertainment industry professionals in the context of "Red Fascists and their sympathizers". On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet entitled Red Channels was published. These producers instituted compulsory oaths of loyalty from their employees with the threat of a blacklist. It was announced via a news release after the major producers met at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and it included a condemnation of the personalities involved, effectively ostracizing those named from the industry. The Congressional action prompted a group of studio executives, acting under the aegis of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, to fire the artists – the "Hollywood Ten" – and make what has become known as the Waldorf Statement. The contempt citation included a criminal charge, which led to a highly publicized trial and an eventual conviction with a maximum of one year in jail in addition to a $1,000 fine. These people were subpoenaed to appear before HUAC in October. The first systematic Hollywood blacklist was instituted on November 25, 1947, the day after ten writers and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Nevertheless, it quickly and directly damaged or ended the careers and income of scores of individuals working in the film industry. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement, from the late 1940s through to the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit or easily verifiable, as it was the result of numerous individual decisions by the studios and was not the result of official legal action. This was usually done on the basis of their membership in, alleged membership in, or sympathy with the Communist Party USA, or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional investigations into the party's activities.
Actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals were barred from work by the studios. The blacklist involved the practice of denying employment to entertainment industry professionals believed to be or to have been Communists or sympathizers.
The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War, in Hollywood and elsewhere.
Members of the Hollywood Ten and their families in 1950, protesting the impending incarceration of the ten
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