High Noon (1952), now celebrating its 65th anniversary, was produced during the high tide of McCarthyism and the Korean War, and has been deemed a courageous allegory about the dangers of McCarthyism. But behind the scenes, the participants were anything but…

Many writers adopt a public persona. Hemingway’s was that of a macho sportsman. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s was that of a burn-out failure. Today, mystery writer James Ellroy’s is that of a guttural, right-wing loon. With a few exceptions, the literary…

Sixty-five years ago last week, Alger Hiss—the protégé of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a rising star in the State Department, and a Soviet agent code-named “Ales”—was convicted of perjury for denying any involvement in Soviet espionage. This should have forever closed…

Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical By Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo.(University of Kentucky Press, 640 pages, $36) One of the dangers for a biographer, particularly when his subject shares the same ideology, is to display his love for him. This…