Conformity and Challenges in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Years 363Communist. This was particularly ironic because his lead lawyer, a particu-
larly noxious attorney named Roy Cohn, was gay himself and he went along
with McCarthy’s witchhunt [a play written in the 1990s, Angels in America,
featured Cohn and was later made into an award-winning HBO miniseries in
which Al Pacino was honored for his portrayal of the red-baiting gay lawyer].
Indeed, the nature of anti-communism became so absurd that all “profes-
sional wrestlers” in Indiana were required to take a loyalty oath before their
bouts, and the New York Yankees did not allow their all-star catcher, Yogi
Berra, to appear on a television variety show because one of the other guests
was Jack Gilford, who was accused of being a Communist.
The entertainment industry in general came under attack in the McCarthy
era, as we have seen, and continued into the 1950s. One of the most famous
victims was the comedian Charlie Chaplin. Though a British citizen, and never
a member of any Communist Party, the U.S. refused to allow him to enter
America in 1952 because he had been an advocate of “popular front” policies,
meaning that he believed that coalition governments of conservatives,
Capitalists, Socialists, and Communists could work together. It took twenty
years, and an honorary Oscar award, to get him to return to the U.S. On the
other hand, Elia Kazan, famous director of On the Waterfront and other films,
FIGuRE 7-8 Charlie Chaplin, victim of McCarthyism, seen giving a satirical
portrayal of Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940)