Have You No Sense of Decency?: Resources

A quick overview of the Cold War Era. Don't look for anything too deep here.

An in-depth look at the man and his obsession.

Two different artists, two different sides about whether or not to name names to HUAC.

Dalton Trumbo was a screenwriter who was blacklisted by Hollywood during the McCarthy Era. This is his story. PS: Is there anything Bryan Cranston can't do?

There are tons of versions of this play by Arthur Miller about the Salem witch hunts, which was written as a condemnation of the HUAC and McCarthy investigations. Shmoop is partial to the Daniel Day-Lewis version.

This film is Elia Kazan's defense of his own testimony before HUAC, in the form of a story about a guy standing up to corrupt union bosses. Kazan said he named names because the he had to stand up to the pressure of the Screen Actors' Guild, which was filled with leftist types.

George Clooney directs this film about the epic showdown between Edward R. Murrow and Joe McCarthy. True story: test audiences thought that the actor playing McCarthy was too over the top, but Clooney had just used actual footage of the real guy.

During the McCarthy Era it wasn't uncommon for blacklisted screenwriters to make a living by having other people submit their work. These people were called "fronts."

What's in McCarthy's files?

Just a solid piece of journalism here by one of the best.

A take on how the TV broadcast influenced the future relationship between politics and television.

The inside story suggests that Welch wasn't feeling as calm and collected as he seemed to be.

In the interest of fairness in Shmoopcasting, here are some excerpts from Arthur Herman's book that suggests that McCarthy wasn't as bad as his caricature as a crazy Red-baiter makes him out to be, and that much of the time, he was right. Herman claims that while the senator could be a bully, compared to Stalin he was a pussycat.

Because this is the land of liberty and we're not threatened by free speech, here's a sample of a detailed pro-McCarthy article, brought to you by the magazine of the far-right John Birch Society. They feel that McCarthy was himself unfairly smeared, and that he did the country a big favor by highlighting the dangers of Communists in the government.

McCarthy himself in a snippet of the 1954 hearings.

McCarthy definitely wouldn't have felt the Bern.

The title kinda says how the guy feels about Tail Gunner Joe.

Collect 'em all!

You'd be forgiven if you saw this and assumed tweezers had yet to be invented.

Back when he was in the service

That's Welch there on the left, all like, "Can you believe this idiot?"

McCarthy with Roy Cohn.

Cohn and Schine make the cover of TIME.