Cold War, cool medium : television, McCarthyism, and American culture / Thomas Doherty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doherty, Thomas Patrick

Series:

Film and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

McCarthy, Joseph, 1908-1957.

McCarthy, Joseph.

Television and politics--United States--History.

Television and politics.

Television broadcasting of news--United States--History.

Television broadcasting of news.

Anti-communist movements--United States--History.

Anti-communist movements.

History.

United States.

Cold War--Social aspects--United States.

Cold War.

Social aspects.

United States--Politics and government--1945-1953.

Politics and government.

United States--Politics and government--1953-1961.

United States--Social life and customs--1945-1970.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

ix, 305 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Was I Love Lucy a subversive threat to conformist 1950s America? Did television act as a coconspirator in the repressions of Cold War America-a facilitator to the blacklist and a handmaiden to McCarthyism? In his groundbreaking study Thomas Doherty examines these questions and suggests that through the influence of television and shows like I Love Lucy, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Doherty not only details how the blacklist operated within the television industry but also how certain shows struggled to defy it, arguing that television reinforced the very freedoms that McCarthyism attempted to curtail.

Doherty chronicles some of the most fascinating and ideologically charged episodes in television history: the warm-hearted Jewish sitcom The Goldbergs; the anticommunist series I Led Three Lives; the legendary jousts between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy on See It Now; and the hypnotic, 188-hour political spectacle that was the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Contents:

1 Video Rising 1

A Television Genealogy 3

Red and Other Menaces 6

McCarthy: Man, Ism, and Television 13

2 The Gestalt of the Blacklist 19

The Blacklist Backstory 20

Pressure Groups and Pressure Points 24

Institutional Practices 34

3 Controversial Personalities 37

The Goldbergs: The Case of Philip Loeb 37

I Love Lucy: The Redhead and the Blacklist 49

4 Hypersensitivity: The Codes of Television Censorship 60

Faye Emerson's Breasts, Among Other Controversies 64

Amos 'n' Andy: Blacks in Your Living Room 70

5 Forums of the Air 81

Egghead Sundays 83

Direct Address 90

The Ike-onoscope 96

6 Roman Circuses and Spanish Inquisitions 105

"Kefauver Fever": The Kefauver Crime Committee Hearings of 1951 107

HUAC-TV 116

Wringing the Neck of Reed Harris: The McCarthy Committee's Voice of America Hearings (1953) 126

7 Country and God 134

I Led 3 Lives: "Watch Yourself, Philbrick!" 140

Religious Broadcasting 149

Life Is Worth Living: Starring Bishop Fulton J. Sheen 153

8 Edward R. Murrow Slays the Dragon of Joseph McCarthy 161

TV's Number One Glamour Boy 163

Murrow Versus McCarthy 168

The "Good Tuesday" Homily 172

To Be Person-to-Personed 177

"A Humble, Poverty Stricken Negress": Annie Lee Moss Before the McCarthy Committee 180

McCarthy Gets Equal Time 184

9 The Army-McCarthy Hearings (April 22-June 17, 1954) 189

Backstory and Dramatis Personae 190

Gavel-to-Gavel Coverage 195

Climax: "Have You Left No Sense of Decency?" 204

Denouement: Reviews and Postmortems 210

10 Pixies: Homosexuality, Anticommunism, and Television 215

Red Fades to Pink 219

Airing the Cohn-Schine Affair 224

11 The end of the Blacklist 231

The Defenders: The Blacklist on Trial 240

Point of Order!: The Army-McCarthy Hearings, the Movie 244

12 Exhuming McCarthyism: The Paranoid Style in American Television 249.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-292) and index.

ISBN:

0231129521

023112953X

OCLC:

52159965