Walter Bernstein and Lee Grant

Screenwriter Walter Bernstein, 93, formally joined the Communist Party after World War II. He was blacklisted in 1950, and his name did not again appear in the credits of a film until 1958 or a TV show until 1961; he continued working under pseudonyms and through other writers who agreed to claim credit for his work so he could continue to earn a living. Actress Lee Grant, 81, was blacklisted for 12 years, but became one of the few actors who achieved greater success afterward. She earned an Emmy in 1966 for Peyton Place; a Golden Globe nom for In the Heat of the Night (1967); and best supporting actress Oscar and Globe noms for The Landlord (1970), Shampoo (1975) and Voyage of the Damned (1976), winning the Oscar for Shampoo.

Walter Bernstein

"I never thought there'd be repercussions," Bernstein said of joining the Communist Party. "The ideas and the ideals were very important to me." 

He wrote for The Magnificent Seven (1960), Fail-Safe (1964) and The Molly Maguires (1970). He is best remembered for The Front (1976), a dramedy about the Blacklist that brought him an original screenplay Oscar nom.

Lee Grant

"You have to understand how motivated I was," she said of her time after being blacklisted. "I had 12 years to make up for, and nothing was going to stop me."

She directed the Oscar-winning documentary feature Down and Out in America (1986), and is now writing a book about her Blacklist years.

Cliff Carpenter and Jean Rouverol

Cliff Carpenter, 97, a prolific film, radio, theater and TV actor, is best remembered for voicing Terry on the popular Terry and the Pirates radio show for years until the outbreak of World War II  at which point he left to serve his country. 

Jean Rouverol, 96, won a contract with Paramount Pictures at age 17 and made her big-screen debut opposite W.C. Fields in the classic comedy It's a Gift (1934). She went on to appear in 12 other films during the next six years.

Cliff Carpenter

In 1942, he got in hot water for speaking out against the unjust treatment of fellow actor Philip Loeb, who had been listed in Red Channels. "I was so disturbed by what was happening to Phil that I had to do it," he has said, "though I knew it could take me down a treacherous road from which I might never return."

He was blacklisted and unemployable for years. Carpenter got the last laugh, though, as he continues to do voiceover work for radio and occasionally appears on TV shows such as The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and in films like 2008's Synecdoche, New York. Today, he lives with fellow Blacklist victim Jean Rouverol, whom he met 9 years ago. He says, "It is a happy ending."

Jean Rouverol

Jean Rouverol and her husband, screenwriter Hugo Butler, joined the Communist Party in 1943 before he went off to serve in World War II.

In 1951, agents for HUAC came looking for the couple. Rather than risk jail time in America, they and their four young children fled to Mexico, where they lived for the next 13 years. They continued to write, often together (until Butler died in 1968), and always using pseudonyms or fronts.

Cliff Carpenter and Jean Rouverol

Decades later, when Jean Rouverol returned to the U.S., she served four terms on the board of the Writers Guild. In 2001, she wrote a book about her years in Mexico, Refugees From Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years.

Marsha Hunt and Norma Barzman

Marsha Hunt, 95, made her film debut in 1935, at age 18, and appeared in 52 films during the next 14 years, most notably Pride and Prejudice (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and The Human Comedy (1943) for MGM.

Norma Barzman, 92, on her 21st birthday came out from New York to Hollywood, where her cousin, a noted screenwriter, enrolled her at the left-leaning School of Writers. A year later, she married up-and-coming screenwriter Ben Barzman and joined the Communist Party, of which he was already a member. 

Marsha Hunt

Hunt and her husband, screenwriter Robert Presnell, joined the Committee for the First Amendment, which was composed of Hollywood A-listers looking to defend their colleagues' constitutional rights.

"We were defending freedom and the good name of our industry, which was being attacked," Hunt recalls.

Despite being a hot commodity before being blacklisted — she'd had a solo Life cover and been offered shows by all three TV networks — she found it virtually impossible to get film or TV work for the next decade. Instead, she shifted her attention to public service, devoting 25 years to the United Nations. "It enriched me, it challenged me, it helped me grow," she reflects. "I was lucky, wasn't I?"

Norma Barzman

Her attraction to the Communist Party was due as much to the community that it provided as the politics it professed. "The Hollywood progressive community in the '40s was so wonderful, so exciting to be part of," she said. But she made no secret of her belief that capitalism wasn't working

Norma Barzman

In 1947, after the Hollywood Ten were jailed, Barzman and her husband, Ben, decided not to wait for their time to run out. To avoid being subpoenaed if named by others, they moved to Paris in 1949. (They were indeed named in 1951.) Even overseas, they continued to be monitored by the FBI but still wrote under pseudonyms and fronts. It would be three decades before they could return to America. "These were intensely difficult years," she says. "When I got back here, by God, I was gonna be the Norma that I was supposed to be, that I started out as."

In the years since, Barzman has written a popular newspaper column and several books, including a memoir, The Red and the Blacklist. Ben died in 1989.

Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas went out on a limb when he decided to make noted lefty Howard Fast's novel Spartacus into a film, and went even further when he hired Dalton Trumbo, who was one of the first writers to be blacklisted, to adapt it. Trumbo was one of the original Hollywood Ten who had refused to cooperate with HUAC, spent 11 months in prison and was still on the Blacklist.

"I have a letter he wrote to me thanking me," Douglas says. "'Kirk, I thank you for giving me back my name.' It was very touching. … It's nice to make a movie that people enjoy and that does something.'"