The group, which was generally composed of non-Communist New Dealliberal Democrats, was hurt when it was subsequently revealed that Sterling Hayden had been a Communist Party member. Humphrey Bogart, who had been assured that the Committee membership had been vetted, and there were no Communists among its membership, was incensed by the revelation that Hayden was a Communist. There was a great deal of naïveté among Committee members such as Bogart, who did not know that Hollywood 10 members such as Alvah Bessie, John Howard Lawson, and Dalton Trumbo were known to be Communist Party members. Lauren Bacall later said that she, Bogart, and other Committee members had been duped by the Communists. "We didn't realize until much later that we were being used to some degree by the Unfriendly 10", she said. The California state legislature, which had its own Un-American Activities Committee, soon branded the Committee as a Communist front organization. Ronald Reagan, who was the president of the Screen Actors Guild during the post-World War II Hollywood Red Scare and a dedicated anti-Communist as well as a liberal Democrat at the time, claimed that his fellow liberals had been the victims of "one of the most successful operation in domestic history", terming them "suckers". Ira Gershwin later testified before the California State Senate's un-American activities subcommittee that he was appalled to have been involved with the group. Bogart, Garfield, and Robinson later wrote articles stating that they were "duped" into supporting the Hollywood Ten. The March 1948 issue of Photoplay included an article by Bogart, entitled "I'm No Communist". In this article, he claimed that he and other members of the Committee did not realize that some of the Hollywood Ten actually were Communists. Bogart, one of the biggest Hollywood stars of his time, was attacked by many liberals and fellow travelers for supposedly selling out to save his career.
Aftermath
Humphrey Bogart continued to be a major star, having put the debacle of the Committee behind him. Bogart's biographers have come to the conclusion that the straight-talking star was genuinely disgusted at being manipulated by the Communist Party. John Garfield was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1951, refused to name names, and was blacklisted, dying of a heart attack in 1952. It is generally believed he was never a party member, and his blacklisting contributed to the heart attack that killed him at the age of 39. Edward G. Robinson, a well-known long-time New Deal liberal who had been friends with Franklin D. Roosevelt, was "gray listed", and made his living as a stage actor during the period of McCarthyism until director Cecil B. DeMille, a noted and vociferous anti-communist, hired him for his 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments. Also "gray listed" were committee members Henry Fonda, Lena Horne and Melvyn Douglas. Like Garfield, Sterling Hayden was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1951. Unlike Garfield, however, Hayden "named names", a decision he later regretted. "It is the one thing I've ever done in my life for which I'm ashamed", he said. John Huston later moved to Ireland, reportedly to avoid any backlash from the McCarthyism that gripped the United States in the post-War period.
