CROSSFIRE and HUAC: Surviving the Slings and Arrows of the Committee.

The HUAC investigations of Hollywood in 1947 are credited with having had several effects. One of those is that films deemed "suspicious" by the committee were rejected by filmgoers--they lost at the box office or were pulled from circulation. Yet, RKO's CROSSFIRE (1947) does not fit this hypothesis. Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk, producer and director of the film, were prominent as unfriendly witnesses before the committee and became part of the Hollywood Ten. Their film was released just three months before the hearings started, yet it was successful at the box office and seemed unaffected by the insinuations of its "Communist" nature. This paper argues that the film succeeded for several reasons, especially due to a well-planned campaign that sold an admittedly controversial film to the public and the film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]