On this day, 22 August 1893, Dorothy Parker, Jewish US poet, writer, activist, two-time Academy Award nominee and victim of Hollywood blacklisting, was born.
She became radicalised in 1927 with the executions of Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, in support of whom she was demonstrating when she was first arrested. Parker travelled to Spain during the civil war, and recounted in New Masses magazine: “when a[n air] raid comes in the daytime, you see little children wild with terror. They don’t cry. Only you see their eyes. I can still see those eyes. After one raid, I saw a great pile of rubble, and on the top of it a broken doll and a dead kitten—ruthless enemies to the fascists.”
Parker later helped found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and helped rescue Spanish civil war veterans, children and orphans after the victory of right-wing general Francisco Franco.
Called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Parker warned: “For heaven’s sake, children, Fascism isn’t coming—it’s here. It’s dreadful. Stop it.”
FBI agents were sent to her house by J Edgar Hoover after she helped raise money to buy milk for Spanish children, and Parker was then blacklisted from working in Hollywood for much of her working life.
This is a short history of the Hollywood blacklist: https://libcom.org/history/hollywood-blacklist-dan-georgakashttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2063991953785944/?type=3
