A general term for denying membership or employment, but used specifically with reference to Hollywood’s collaboration with Cold War paranoia. Pressured by the House Un-American Activities Committee, the American Legion and McCarthyism, studios denied employment to those who had even vague associations with “communist-front” organizations. This dark era, spurred by House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations in the later 1940s, produced both heroes and collaborators as actors confessed publicly and implicated colleagues. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Ten who refused to speak in 1948, including director Edward Dymytrk (who collaborated in a second investigation in 1951) and screenwriters Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Dalton Trumbo, were jailed for contempt of Congress. Later investigations ruined more actors, writers and directors; some, like Jules Dassin, were forced to move to Europe, others retired or fled, while some eked out a living writing covertly for others. While the blacklist faded by the end of the decade, scars lingered in individual lives and political divisions of Hollywood—decades later people protested a 1999 Academy Award recognition of Elia Kazan. who had “named names” before HUAC.