This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Red Pilled America.

Previously on Red Pilled America, we began telling the story of the legendary Orson Bean,

a beloved actor, comedian, and raconteur who charmed America for over seven decades.

In part one, we followed his journey from a troubled childhood through his

early career and his first run-in with the Hollywood Blacklist. When we left off, Orson Bean's

career was taking off. CBS wanted to make him the next big funny man. They built a TV pilot around him,

but the Hollywood Blacklist started to grip the industry, and

Orson Bean was about to get caught up in it.

The effort to purge communists from Hollywood may have started out with the right motives, because

there was actually a communist infiltration of the entertainment industry.

But like today's good intention Me Too movement that unfairly lumped poor judgment with

actual sexual predators,

the hysteria of the Hollywood blacklist took out many people that were not communists.

That's what happened to Orson.

Yeah, they were there at every, there was a thing I was nailed for was a thing called the

Emergency Civil Liberties Committee that felt that the Civil Liberty's Union wasn't doing a good enough job.

So the emergency Civil Libert's Union says, we're after, you know, it was real, communists.

So I just shut up and did some of my jokes I've done in Ed Sullivan there, you know, that

was all.

And the reason that they picked me out is that I ran for office in the local, New York

Local of AFRA because the blacklist was so divisive among the performers that when you

...