Talk:John Abbott (actor)

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Blacklisting[edit]

The blacklist wasn't exactly official in Hollywood, and it wasn't as if the government forbade blacklisted people to be employed. Instead there were publications such as "Red Channels" that listed people they considered worthy of being blacklisted, and the industry went along with it. Therefore, filmmakers didn't get someone's name removed from the blacklist so that they could employ them. Instead, they defied the blacklist--or they waited until, over time, it came to have less significance. I'm not changing the text, because I don't know what actually happened in Abbott's case, but I think the text as it stands shows a misunderstanding of how the blacklist worked. The probability is that the producer defied the blacklist or circumvented it in some way.

By the way, the citation for this statement directs not to a source, but an unsourced footnote.

Also, the idea that Abbott was blacklisted because Dalton Trumbo used his name seems exceedingly unlikely. Trumbo used aliases to get work as a screenwriter, not to engage in political activities. According to a tribute site run by a library, here are the aliases used by Trumbo as a screenwriter: Earl Felton, Millard Kaufman, Hugo Butler, Guy Endore, Ian McLellan Hunter, Felix Lutzkendorf, Marcel Klauber, Ben L. Perry, Robert L. Rich, Sally Stubblefield, Edmund H. North, James Leicester. ^[1]

In fact, the source for both pieces of information--how Abbott was removed from the list and how he got on it--seems to be the trivia page on his IMDB entry, almost word for word. The info is not sourced there either.

Winter Maiden (talk) 18:40, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with everything that the previous poster said. I would be more aggressive in removing an unsourced claim however since the burden of proof is on the person asserting that Abbott was blacklisted and it was Trumbo's fault. This sounds more lie one of those twisted tales that gets accepted as fact; it seems that Dalton Trumbo wrote a "story" in 1934 that had a character named "John Abbott" https://books.google.com/books?id=ETLVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT8&lpg=PT8&dq=john+abbott+blacklisted&source=bl&ots=ZJovsinzQP&sig=aYVAul9MTilpTZtJ9IWGU4wU9UQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwkaqdtpzXAhXCWCYKHWBRAvkQ6AEIQDAF#v=onepage&q=john%20abbott%20blacklisted&f=false

Looking at Abbott's filmography on the main page, he had some lean years in the Fifties but I'd hardly say he was blacklisted from performing.

John Simpson54 (talk) 03:32, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ http://www.mcpld.org/trumbo/WebPages/aliases.htm

[1] ttp://www.mcpld.org/trumbo/WebPages/aliases.htm

[1]