Subversive Activities Control Board

The Subversive Activities Control Board is one instrument of political scrutiny in the novel’s Cold War Hollywood. Its summons brings Norma Jeane Baker(Marilyn Monroe)to Sacramento, where studio lawyers turn a threatened public interrogation into a private hearing. The encounter makes the machinery of investigation tangible, but its anticlimax is revealing: after three hours, the Board asks the actress to sign photographs of Marilyn Monroe for its members.

Political scrutiny in Hollywood

The Board appears against a broader escalation of loyalty investigations. In 1947, after President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which required federal employees to take loyalty oaths and participate in security programs, private companies also began demanding such oaths. Hollywood performers publicly protested the initiative, gathered signatures, and defended constitutional freedoms, particularly speech and assembly.

The novel distinguishes this political climate from the Board’s specific actions. An unnamed actor who had joined the protests and taken part in Screen Actors Guild labor negotiations came under scrutiny from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Anonymous anti-communist informants accused him of longstanding ties to Communist Party members, including Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr. The resulting danger—summons, public pressure, boycotts by groups such as the Catholic Legion of Decency, and a possible blacklist—shows how political suspicion could threaten an actor’s livelihood. These events establish the surrounding climate; they are not presented as actions by the Subversive Activities Control Board itself.

Summons and change of venue

The Board’s direct encounter with Marilyn begins when she is summoned to Sacramento. The Ex-Athlete advises her to tell the truth and to name any communists she knows. She rejects the premise that she owes the investigators either disclosure or an explanation: what she might conceal or reveal, she insists, is her own business. Her response turns the hearing into a conflict over the boundary between public authority and private conscience.

Studio lawyers intervene, changing what had been expected to be a public interrogation before the California State Assembly into a private hearing. It takes place over an elegant breakfast in a private room at the State Capitol. The change removes the anticipated public spectacle and press presence, but does not cancel the inquiry: Marilyn still spends three hours before the commission.

The hearing and its outcome

The hearing is described through what it excludes: there is no adversarial exchange, no official proceeding, and no journalists. At the commission’s request, Marilyn produces a stack of photographs of herself and signs them one by one, adding a personal dedication for each member. The sequence converts an inquiry into an encounter with the star persona. The commissioners receive the recognizable public image, while the political question that brought her there yields no recorded confession or denunciation.

The scene also recalls the less formal pressure surrounding political investigations. When Norma Jeane asks I. E. Shinn about another commission, he raises a finger to his lips. The gesture is common in Hollywood and played for comedy, with exaggerated, Groucho-like eyebrows, yet the fear behind it is real. Shinn redirects her attention from Otto Öse and Cass Chaplin to Marilyn herself. The passage does not identify that commission as the Subversive Activities Control Board, so it serves as an atmosphere of caution rather than a second documented Board action.

Institutional pressure and celebrity

The Board’s appearance links political scrutiny to the novel’s account of celebrity without making the two forms of exposure identical. The hearing has the power to summon Marilyn and to demand answers, yet its private format limits public disclosure; its final request turns her image into the exchange’s most usable object. Her signature satisfies the commission’s request while leaving her stated refusal to disclose private beliefs intact.

That outcome contrasts with the wider Hollywood climate established around the House Un-American Activities Committee, where political allegations could lead to public damage and professional exclusion. The Board’s hearing does not produce such a consequence in the evidence presented. Instead, it stages the pressure of being questioned and watched, then ends with a peculiar transaction: a political body leaves with autographed likenesses of the woman it had called to account.