For an UWS Descendant of a Blacklisted Actor, A New Exhibit on the Red Scare Feels Timely

By Claire Davenport

In 1951, Hollywood star and one-time Upper West Side resident John Garfield was called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), created by the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate “domestic subversion.” In practice, this often meant exposing alleged Communist ties.

According to Garfield’s daughter Julie, committee members confronted her father with an expired Communist Party membership card that once belonged to Julie’s mother. Invited to rat out his wife as a Communist, John Garfield chose a different response: he refused and walked out of the committee room, recalls Julie Garfield, an artist and award-winning actress who has long lived on the Upper West Side. 

For this choice, John Garfield was soon blacklisted by the industry — meaning he couldn’t get any roles in film productions. Eighteen months later, he died of a heart attack. 

“It really killed him,” said daughter Julie, in an interview with West Side Rag. “It was devastating for everyone in the family.” 

Garfield is one of the many Hollywood figures featured in a new exhibit at The New York Historical about the Red Scare — a period between 1945 and 1960 when being labelled a Communist or Communist sympathizer almost automatically resulted in losing your reputation and livelihood.

The traveling exhibit, created by the Jewish Museum Milwaukee and expanded by The New York Historical, details a period when the entertainment industry, along with other institutions in American life, came under the intense scrutiny of the federal government.

In one section of the exhibit, movie posters identify films flagged by the FBI as containing “subversive” messaging. The 1947 film “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which featured John Garfield before his blacklisting, made “a deliberate effort to discredit law enforcement,” the FBI said; the agency condemned the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” for “a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers.”

Over 150 artifacts, including historical pamphlets, film costumes, and movie posters share details about the screenwriters, actors, and performers who, after being labeled as Communists, lost their jobs and were forced to move abroad or write under pseudonyms. 

The exhibit tells the story of the Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters, directors, and producers subpoenaed by HUAC to testify about alleged Communist propaganda in films. 

When they refused to answer HUAC’s questions, they were held in contempt of Congress, and some, like Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, Jr., and other members of the Hollywood Ten spent time in prison. They were later blacklisted by the industry, even though the HUAC hearing ended without uncovering evidence of Communist messaging.

The film industry voluntarily responded to HUAC’s surveillance, moving swiftly to ostracize any actors, directors, or screenwriters accused of Communist ties. Eventually Trumbo and other writers continued working, but not under their own names; Trumbo, for example, co-wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning “Roman Holiday” under a friend’s name.  

The exhibit also chronicles the stories of lesser-known artists, such as jazz pianist and singer Hazel Scott, the first Black woman in a America to have her own television show (which was canceled a week after it aired because she was blacklisted).

And it highlights many others who caved under HUAC’s pressure: publicly repudiating Communism, or calling out others as Communists in order to save themselves from getting blacklisted. 

“There was so much internalized self-censorship,” said Anne Lessy, The New York Historical’s assistant curator of history exhibitions and academic engagement. “People had to really reassess sharing their ideas. And many buckled under the pressure.”

During a tour of the exhibit with West Side Rag, Lessy said that at least 500 people in Hollywood were formally blacklisted, while the wider social impact is “incalculable.”

Julie Garfield recalls that in the wake of her father’s blacklisting, her parents debated whether to leave the country — a move many other blacklisted creatives made. “But my father was determined to stay and clear his name,” she said. When he died a couple of months later, Julie was six years old.

Julie Garfield eventually followed her father’s career path to become an actor, garnering acclaim for her role in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at the Roundabout Theater — “when it was still in a supermarket basement,” she said. But the fame scared her, something she attributed to her father’s early death.

“For me, fame became synonymous with danger,” she said. She turned to teaching acting and later became an artist.

Today, she wonders if history is repeating itself.

“It’s the same thing happening again,” Julie said, noting that visitors to the museum’s exhibit  who haven’t heard of the Red Scare might be surprised when they notice the through lines.

“They’re going to get educated, and they’re going to be shocked,” she said. “Like, this is happening right now.”

The exhibit opened after months of pressure from the Trump administration on everything from private businesses to institutions of higher learning, demanding they police their language and programming around topics like diversity, gender, or Palestine. 

Towards the end of the exhibit, there’s a Declaration of Independence on the wall with a superimposed question to viewers: “How can we best protect our First Amendment freedoms?”

“I hope the exhibit allows visitors to learn about this history and reflect on questions of dissent and democracy — who gets to define what’s American and un-American,” Lessy said. 

There’s also a portrait of John Garfield hanging in the exhibit, painted by Julie for an art show in 2021.  The picture is titled “Running All the Way,” after the last film he made, “He Ran All the Way.”

Julie Garfield said she wanted her father’s portrait to be “colorful and beautiful.” She said she remembered her father as a man who was “funny, full of kindness, and full of love.” A favorite memory is their frequent visits to the carousel in Central Park, where the man running the carousel “loved my father and was a huge fan,” she added.

The exhibition “Blacklisted: An American Story” opened last weekend and runs through October 19, 2025 at The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West.

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