Marilyn Monroe Talks to the Press, 23 May 1957

Marilyn Monroe meets reporters in Washington D.C. on 23 May 1957, outside the home of Miller’s attorney, Joseph Rauh, as Arthur Miller’s contempt of Congress trial comes to an end. Questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Miller had refused to name the other writers with whom he had attended a 1947 Communist Party Meeting. Miller stated that it was harmless flirtation. “I supported caused that I would not support now“. He had also agreed the year before to sign and anti-Communist oath in order to obtain a passport to accompany Marilyn to England. But he would not implicate anyone else in what many American considered a “witch hunt“. “I could not use the name of another person. I wouldn’t make it tougher on the life on any other writer“.. Marilyn told newsmen that she was confident her husband would be acquitted and that she had come to Washington “because feel a woman’s place is with her husband“. A week later Miller was convicted on two accounts of contempt, each with a maicimy sentence of $1,000 and one year in jail. Miller received a thirty-day suspended sentence and a $500 fine. He vowed to appeal the conviction. On 7 August 1958: Arthur Miller was cleared of contempt; Washington’s Court of Appeals has quashed playwright Arthur Miller’s conviction for contempt of Congress after a two-year legal battle. Background: The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was set up in 1938 to investigate fascists as well as communists within federal government. In 1947 it turned its attention to the arts. A group of writers, directors and actors known as the Hollywood Ten were subsequently convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about their political beliefs. They were blacklisted by Hollywood and over the course of the next 10 years some 320 people were barred from work in the film studios over their alleged membership of the Communist party. As more convictions of contempt were quashed by the courts of appeal, the committee’s influence declined and it was abolished in 1975.