To be fair, CSU and the left had reason to be taken by surprise, for the anticommunist upsurge swept through the industry like a fast-moving, Southern California late-summer blaze. As late as the fall of 1946 Hollywood’s chief spokesman, Eric Johnston—and the likeminded actor Ronald Reagan—were dismissing bedrock anticommunist notions. A shrewd businessman, Johnston was proud of his association with Josef Stalin during the war. By 1947 Johnston and Reagan had emerged as avatars of anticommunism and the “blacklist.” Apparently it was the intensity of the class struggle led by CSU that forced many in Hollywood to reconsider the utility of anticommunist tactics and to proceed fatefully toward an industry-wide blacklist.

Reagan was a significant player in this drama. As a leader of the Screen Actors Guild and a certified liberal, he could have helped avert the crushing of CSU. However, he was beginning a short journey that would lead him to the right. Why? He believed that CSU was a perfidious “Communist front” bent on exerting the will of Moscow in Hollywood; this was—by his own admission—the major reason that he helped to engineer the crossing of CSU’s picket lines.