Red Sapphire: The Woman Who Beat the Blacklist

by Julia Bricklin

Overview

In 1950, facing artistic and legal persecution by Senator Joe McCarthy because of her inclusion on Louis Budenz’s list of four hundred concealed communists, single mother Hannah Weinstein fled to Europe. There, she built a television studio and established her own production company, Sapphire Films, then surreptitiously hired scores of such blacklisted writers as Waldo Salt, Ian McLellan Hunter, Adrian Scott, and Ring Lardner Jr., and “Trojan-horsed” democratic ideals back to the United States through more than three hundred half-hours of programming, making a fortune in the process. With the exception of a French producer, no other woman on the continent was creating television content at this time, and Weinstein was the only one who was head of her own studio. Before she became one of the more powerful independent production forces in 1950s British television, Hannah Weinstein had a distinguished career as a journalist, publicist, and left-wing political activist. She worked for the New York Herald Tribune from 1927, then began a career in politics when she joined Fiorello H. La Guardia’s New York mayoral campaign in 1937. She also organized the press side of the presidential campaigns of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later (in 1948) of Henry Wallace.

Using declassified FBI and CIA files, interviews, and the personal papers of blacklisted writers and other sources, Red Sapphire depicts how for the better part of a decade, Weinstein was a leader in the Left’s battle with the Right to shape popular culture during the Cold War. .. a battle that she eventually won.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493061877
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	09/05/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,044,023
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Julia Bricklin has been called a “great storyteller” of nonfiction. Her debut book, America’s Best Female Sharpshooter: The Rise and Fall of Lillian Frances Smith (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), was honored by its inclusion in the William F. Cody Series on the History and Culture of the American West. Bricklin’s Polly Pry: The Woman Who Wrote the West—an eagerly anticipated biography about the first female reporter on the Denver Post—was released by TwoDot in 2018 and was a 2019 Spur Award Finalist for Best Biography. The Notorious Ned Buntline: A Tale of Murder, Betrayal, and the Creation of Buffalo Bill was published in 2020 (TwoDot). Bricklin has also written numerous articles for academic journals and magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Civil War Times, Financial History, True West, and California History.

Bricklin grew up in southern California, obtained a journalism degree at Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo, and worked in the TV/film industry before obtaining her master’s degree in history at Cal State–Northridge. Bricklin writes for the podcasts American History Tellers, Legends of the Wild West, and Infamous America, and is a regular contributor to a history segment on public radio KPCC. She lives in Studio City, California.

Editorial Reviews

In Red Sapphire, Julia Bricklin has doggedly uncovered a fascinating—and inspiring—heroine of the Hollywood Blacklist. Like many women of the era, Hannah Weinstein has, until now, been buried in the footnotes (and redacted FBI files) of history, but Red Sapphire is a crucial antidote.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Meticulously researched and beautifully told, this immersive biography pulls us straight into the gripping history of an extraordinary heroine. Bricklin builds the story of Hannah Weinstein’s remarkable life via so much stunning detail that we can visualize it unfolding before us, as if we were watching it on the screens Weinstein once commandeered.

Elizabeth Weitzman

Red Sapphire brings Hannah Weinstein's dramatic story to light with white-hot intensity. Julia Bricklin, against the odds and despite many historical gaps, crafts a page-turning portrait of a public relations writer-turned-political powerhouse who finds a second life as a filmmaker, which is where the maneuvers really begin. Weinstein's tireless work on behalf of blacklisted writers and democratic activism could not be more timely.

Christina Lane

Red Sapphire is a fascinating portrait of a trailblazing woman. Hannah Weinstein was one of television’s first female showrunners and pioneered the idea of “prestige TV” with her highly successful historical series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood. She was also a single mother and political exile with the courage to employ many victims of the Hollywood blacklist on her productions. Julia Bricklin’s meticulously researched book reveals the indomitable will and enviable powers of persuasion that fueled Weinstein’s astonishing achievements in a male-dominated industry. Bricklin writes with verve, wit, and a deep appreciation for what it means to live a life of political engagement. This is an engaging and overdue account of Weinstein’s story.

Rebecca Prime

The strength of this well-researched book lies in the abundance of information it provides about Weinstein’s contributions to the often entangled worlds of entertainment and politics. .. readers seeking to understand the McCarthy era and how it resonates today, as well as those interested in women working at the intersection of media and politics, will find this book of interest. Illuminating reading.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 08/01/2023

Bricklin (The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline) rescues from obscurity the career of Hannah Dorner Weinstein (1911–84), a U.S. journalist and founder of Hollywood's left-leaning Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions. During the anti-Communist Blacklist period of the 1950s, Weinstein voluntarily exiled herself to France and the UK and established her own production company, Sapphire Films. The book guides readers through the convoluted trails of the Communist Party USA, which adherents and their allies followed. Utilizing declassified FBI and CIA files, interviews, and archival materials, the book adds the complex Weinstein to the list of those whose work was blacklisted but later exonerated in the cultural industries. Weinstein hired blacklisted writers for her short films and TV work that portrayed iconoclastic characters challenging deleterious stereotypes of politically or culturally marginalized groups. Bricklin emphasizes that Weinstein retained a commitment to promoting progressive causes, especially via mass communications. VERDICT Written with the pulsating pace of a thriller, this book will likely attract readers and scholars interested in political journalism, women in film and television, and mid-20th-century pop culture history.—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.

Library Journal

2023-05-24
A biographer and historian introduces a singular woman who helped sustain blacklisted writers and directors during the McCarthy era.

Hannah Weinstein (1911-1984) had a profound but largely underestimated influence on 1950s TV. The daughter of progressive Jewish parents, Weinstein became a campaigner for prominent New York City Democrats during the 1930s. Later she became a strategist for a public relations firm and came into contact with socialist groups, which made her appear, by association, to be part of the supposed internal communist threat to American democracy. She went on to work with many left-leaning Hollywood celebrities, many of whom she brought together in an organization called the Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Science and Professions. When the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating members of the entertainment industry for subversion in the late 1940s, Weinstein formed committees to help the artists who became HUAC targets. Weinstein eventually came under investigation by the FBI and left the U.S. for England in 1950. In London, she launched a TV production firm called Sapphire Films. Over the next decade, her company covertly employed dozens of blacklisted writers, including Ring Lardner, and directors who transformed Sapphire Films projects—e.g., the British and American TV hit The Adventures of Robin Hood—into “thinly veiled commentary on the plight of the blacklisted writers and McCarthy hysteria in general.” The strength of this well-researched book lies in the abundance of information it provides about Weinstein’s contributions to the often entangled worlds of entertainment and politics. However, those same details—like those pertaining to the many colorful actors and directors who came into the Sapphire Films orbit—occasionally detract from Weinstein’s story. Still, readers seeking to understand the McCarthy era and how it resonates today, as well as those interested in women working at the intersection of media and politics, will find this book of interest.

Illuminating reading.

Kirkus Reviews