RED SAPPHIRE

A biographer and historian introduces a singular woman who helped sustain blacklisted writers and directors during the McCarthy era.

Hannah Weinstein (1911-1984) had a profound but largely underestimated influence on 1950s TV. The daughter of progressive Jewish parents, Weinstein became a campaigner for prominent New York City Democrats during the 1930s. Later she became a strategist for a public relations firm and came into contact with socialist groups, which made her appear, by association, to be part of the supposed internal communist threat to American democracy. She went on to work with many left-leaning Hollywood celebrities, many of whom she brought together in an organization called the Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Science and Professions. When the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating members of the entertainment industry for subversion in the late 1940s, Weinstein formed committees to help the artists who became HUAC targets. Weinstein eventually came under investigation by the FBI and left the U.S. for England in 1950. In London, she launched a TV production firm called Sapphire Films. Over the next decade, her company covertly employed dozens of blacklisted writers, including Ring Lardner, and directors who transformed Sapphire Films projects—e.g., the British and American TV hit The Adventures of Robin Hood—into “thinly veiled commentary on the plight of the blacklisted writers and McCarthy hysteria in general.” The strength of this well-researched book lies in the abundance of information it provides about Weinstein’s contributions to the often entangled worlds of entertainment and politics. However, those same details—like those pertaining to the many colorful actors and directors who came into the Sapphire Films orbit—occasionally detract from Weinstein’s story. Still, readers seeking to understand the McCarthy era and how it resonates today, as well as those interested in women working at the intersection of media and politics, will find this book of interest.

Illuminating reading.