Sola: Hollywood, McCarthyism, and a Motherless Childhood Abroad

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McCarthyism didn’t just affect the Hollywood players-the actors, directors, writers, and all the people behind the scenes like my father. It affected the wives and husbands of those named, too, as a whole cadre of people were now jobless or penniless, some living with friends, others leaving the country to live cheaply abroad, or living out of their cars. It also affected children-the red diaper babies as we’re called-whose lives were often uprooted by McCarthyism and who sustained the impact of having one’s parent (or both parents) suddenly and so publicly deemed un-American. I haven’t yet met a fellow red diaper baby whose mother or father was able to parent ‘normally.’

In the midst of a successful Hollywood career, Julietta Appleton’s father is crushed like a bug by McCarthyism and the Red Scare during the early years of the Cold War.

Coupled with her mother’s sudden death, young Julietta exists in a world where she doesn’t ever quite fit. Un-American. Unmothered. Untethered.

While living in ex-pat communities of artists and writers across Europe - from Italy to Ibiza to the Canary Islands - and upon returning to the US, Julietta searches for a place to belong, a place where she can be heard, and a place to call home.

A story of love, loss, and a woman’s search for herself.