The anticommunist witch-hunts of the 1940s and 1950s were more than just a disgraceful chapter of American history. The moment the Hollywood Ten were hauled before the HUAC, American cinema, politics and culture changed irrevocably. Unlike most of the available literature on the Red Scare, this contribution argues that, even if bitter political enemies, Stalinism and McCarthyism shared a fundamental hostility to Marxism and, in turn, to those artists most inspired by the "proletarianized" left culture of the first half of 20th century America. The blacklisted filmmakers examined here embodied...