Tender Comrades
A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
by Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
More than sixty years ago, McCarthyism silenced Hollywood. In the pages of Tender Comrades, those who were suppressed, whose lives and careers were ruined, finally have their say. A unique collection of profiles in cinematic courage, this extraordinary oral history brings to light the voices of thirty-six blacklist survivors (including two members of the Hollywood Ten), seminal directors of film noir and other genres, starring actresses and memorable supporting players, top screenwriters, and many less known to the public, who are rescued from obscurity by the stories they offer here that, beyond politics, open a rich window into moviemaking during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
About the authors:
Patrick McGilligan has written several acclaimed biographies, including Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (a finalist for the Edgar Award) as well as New York Times Notable Books about George Cukor and Fritz Lang. His five-volume Backstory series is the definitive oral history of American screenwriting.
Paul Buhle, a retired senior lecturer at Brown University and the founder of the Oral History of the American Left archive at New York University, is the author or editor of more than forty books.
Press Reviews:
"This is not the usual book of remembrances—nostalgic, bittersweet, and all that. This is chapter-and-verse recall of our country’s most shameful epoch. . . . It is eloquent and revelatory, but most of all, it is a cautionary tale." —Studs Terkel
"An acute portrait of that squalid time when the witch-hunt was on in Hollywood." —Norman Mailer
> From the same authors:
Sydney Pollack (2026)
Collected Interviews
Dir. Patrick McGilligan and Paul Cronin
Subject: Director > Sydney Pollack
Young Orson (2015)
The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane
Subject: Director > Orson Welles
Backstory 5 (2009)
Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s
Dir. Patrick McGilligan
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Oscar Micheaux (2008)
The Great and Only: The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker
Subject: Director > Oscar Micheaux
Backstory 4 (2006)
Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Radical Hollywood (2003)
The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies
by Paul Buhle and David Wagner
A Very Dangerous Citizen (2002)
Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left
by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner
Subject: Director > Abraham Polonsky
George Cukor (1991)
A Double Life : A Biography of the Gentleman Director
Subject: Director > George Cukor
> On a related topic:
Shadow of a Lion (2021)
A Novel of Hollywood Writers in Exile
by Anne Edwards
Subject: History of Cinema
Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist (2014)
Reading the Hollywood Reds
by Jeff Smith
Subject: History of Cinema
'Un-American' Hollywood (2007)
Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era
by Frank Krutnik, Steve Neale, Brian Neve and Peter Stanfield
Subject: History of Cinema
The Inquisition in Hollywood (2003)
Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960
by Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund
Subject: History of Cinema
Back
