Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives
“Hearing before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives Eighty-Fourth Congress, First Session Transcript”
Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1955
Zero Mostel Papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Zero Mostel's testimony before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a broad and aggressive attack on communist ideas and anyone associated with them exploded through American life. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Congress played a leading role in this campaign, calling many prominent figures to testify about their political beliefs. In this transcript, the committee interrogates Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel, an actor, writer, and comedian. Though Mostel later achieved a significant degree of fame and critical success, particularly for his roles in The Producers and Fiddler on the Roof, he, like many who refused to fully cooperate with HUAC, paid a significant professional price for his testimony and struggled to work throughout the 1950s. As he quipped in 1966, “I am a man of a thousand faces, all of them blacklisted.” HUAC’s interrogations, which were often followed by punitive action from Hollywood studios, contributed to an environment in which many Americans felt that they had to censor their political, artistic, and intellectual expression.
Teach with this item from Unit 4 of the curriculum guide, Reading Dangerously: Censorship and the Freedom to Read in 20th Century America.
: Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
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