The Hook, a screenplay by Arthur Miller from 1950, never produced due to its leftish sympathies, now adapted for the stage, has just completed a run at the British regional theater the Royal and Derngate.
Although [Harry] Cohn [of Columbia Pictures] agreed to make the film, the McCarthy-era mood prevailed….
Soon after the meeting [with Miller], Cohn declared the script had to be vetted by the head of the stagehands union, and — according to Miller’s autobiography — by the F.B.I., which feared the film might cause unrest in the dockyards that supplied the Army fighting in Korea. Changes were demanded, Miller wrote, notably that “the bad guys in the story, the union crooks and their gangster protectors, be communists.”
Furious, Miller returned to New York. Soon after he received a telegram: “It’s interesting how the minute we try to make the script pro-American, you pull out. Harry Cohn.”