A PERSONAL STORY

The Day The Cold War Came Home


In “Blacklisted, “ Tony Kahn presents a child’s-eye view of the effects of political repression, including a precipitate slide from affluence to near-poverty, being shunned and denounced by neighbors, living with parents whose whispered conversations would stop whenever a child entered the room.
— Andy Meisler, The New York Times, 1997
 
 

The Day the Cold War Came Home tells the story of the fifteen years my family spent under FBI surveillance from 1947 ‘till my father’s death in 1962. He was a Hollywood screenwriter and one of the first victims of the American Red Scare and reign of fear that deprived thousands of people of their reputations and careers.

(I owe special thanks to Cinematographer David Skilikorn for his invaluable contributions not only in shooting all my TV specials but in creating ways early analog video could look like film.)