An extremely large number of the cast and crew on the film - writer Abraham Polonsky, actors John Garfield, Anne Revere, Lloyd Gough, Canada Lee, Art Smith, Shimen Ruskin, producer Bob Roberts and even, albeit to a lesser extent, cinematographer James Wong Howe - found themselves either blacklisted or greylisted during the HUAC witch hunts of the 1950s, while director Robert Rossen only avoided that fate by naming names.