Women And The Blacklist

Anti-Semitism was never far below the surface of the notorious blacklist of the 1950s. Did sexism play a role as well? In Julie S. Halpern’s new play, “Diminished Fifth,” two women with Jewish roots, writers Lillian Hellman (Stacey Scotte) and Dorothy Parker (Jacquelyn Poplar), along with three non-Jewish women, broadcaster Jean Muir (Mary McGloin), actress Margaret Webster (Elaine LeGaro) and civil rights activist Eslanda Robeson (Ronalda Ay Nicholas), grapple with the shattering experience of being blacklisted. The play began performances this week at the Producers Club in Midtown.

Halpern, who is Jewish herself, is the artistic director of Lovestreet Theatre, a company that provides opportunities for female performers and actors who are over the age of 40. “Diminished Fifth” commemorates last year’s 60th anniversary of “Red Channels,” a black and red pamphlet published in 1950 by the anti-Communist journal Counterattack that purported, with scant evidence, to reveal the names of 151 television and radio personalities, mostly in New York, who were secret Communists, sympathizers, or “fellow travelers.” Those who were tarred as “controversial” in the booklet became ripe for questioning by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

A third of those named in the booklet were women, leading Halpern to wonder if women reacted differently to the blacklist than men. In her research, Halpern found that many women who were called to testify in the federal hearings pled a variation on the Fifth Amendment known as a “diminished fifth,” which meant that they would incriminate themselves but not name anyone else. (A “diminished fifth” is also a musical term that connotes an interval of six semitones — half steps between notes.)

Blacklisted women have received increasing attention in recent years. In her book, “The Age of McCarthyism” (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), Ellen Schrecker noted that it is “hard to have a witch-hunt without witches.” And Milly S. Barranger’s “Unfriendly Witnesses” (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008) dubbed Hellman and Parker as “defiant ones” who were treated with great disdain because of their gender. Indeed, HUAC Chairman John Wood famously declined to send Hellman to jail for refusing to testify: “Why cite her for contempt?

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