The McCarthy Era and the American Theatre

Abstract

Eric Bentley's Thirty Years of Treason, Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time, Lately Thomas's When Even Angels Wept, and Robert Goldston's The American Nightmare are only a few of the many studies that have been written about that unsettling and aberrant period of recent American history frequently known as the McCarthy era.' The very titles of the books tell us immediately with what loathing and shame most Americans now look back to that time of political paranoia. Joseph McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin, who became a household word through the famous hearings that sought to excoriate Communists from the American army and from American life, was really only one aspect of a widespread fear of subversion already very much manifest long before Senator McCarthy came forth with his claims. On February 9, 1950, Senator McCarthy made his famous speech to the ladies of the Ohio County Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, exclaiming, I have here in my hand a list of 205 who were known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. With these words he launched his now infamous campaign against Communism, but as one historian nicely points out, the menace had merely found its spokesman.2 The real starting point for the so-called McCarthy era actually came several years earlier when, on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9835 creating a loyalty and security program within the American federal government.

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