Hedda Hopper's Impact On Film Analysis

433 Words2 Pages

Jennifer Frost argues how famous Hollywood columnist, Hedda Hopper used her celebrity prestige to influence Americans into anticommunism and being “Red Scared.” Indeed, Hopper used her charisma to influence Hollywood internally and externally, as its culture moved against the Commies. Frost argues how Hopper, through her column, in the Los Angeles Times, along with her radio show, had a significant impact in generating intolerance against Communism. “Hopper and her readers used her column to share and exchange information about films they saw as communist propaganda and to redbait filmmakers they suspected of communist affiliations or .sympathies.” Moreover, Frost discusses how Hopper used political activism and movie material as the …show more content…

“Liberty and freedom were at the heart of Hopper's Americanism, conveying the basic right to live one's life free of external restraints and to privilege independence and individualism over social qualities or collective interests.” Furthermore, Frost shows that Hopper’s representation on the essentials of democracy and capitalism were curtailed. Hopper’s influence upon her readers and popular culture helped impact the denouncement of the “Hollywood Ten.” “When movie industry ownership and management gathered at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel in December 1947 and decided to blacklist the Hollywood Ten, and the five with studio contracts were either fired or suspended. Hopper and her readers should have been happy.” During the culminations of the second Red Scare, of the 1950s and 1960s, Hopper and her supporters followed Red Scare politics along with the “Hollywood blacklist.” Nevertheless, the historical significance is that Frost affirms that Hopper, along with her endless respondents and advocates prone to contentious argument, were part of the addendum that became synonymous with defending the United States against communist annihilation, by impeding it in our films, thus our homes. “As Hopper's respondents engaged in public sphere activities around