KEVIN BRIANTON
Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist University Press of Kentucky Hardcover, 156 pages, $45 KentuckyPress.com. When legend becomes fact, print the facts. Finally! On October 22, 1950, during the height of the Red Scare, Screen Directors Guild members met to vote on the dismissal of guild president Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a strong opponent of an anticommunist loyalty oath.

The meeting, remembered for actions and speeches by Cecil B. DeMille (The Squaw Man, The Plainsman), George Stevens (Shane, Giant) and John Ford (Stagecoach, The Searchers), has become a mythical moment for Hollywood and First Amendment rights. But much of this history has been misremembered, misinterpreted and actually made up.

Relying on a stenographer’s transcripts from that meeting, Kevin Brianton explains what really happened at the Beverly Hills Hotel and why. One of the best and most important Hollywood histories to come out in years.

– Johnny D. Boggs
Roundup magazine, December 2017

http://www.westernwriters.org/round-up/dec17-ru-reviews.pdf