“To my knowledge, the one movie that openly protested the tactics of the Committee was Storm Center, which was directed and co-written by Daniel Taradash in 1956. The film was conceived and scripted in secrecy because the filmmakers were certain that it was ‘politically explosive'; production was postponed several times during five years. Bette Davis plays a mettlesome librarian who refuses to remove a volume called ‘The Communist Dream' from the shelves after the local city council demands that she do so. She argues that the book is ‘preposterous'--hence it should be read, like ‘Mein Kampf.' Accused of turning the library into ‘a propaganda machine for the Kremlin,' she's smeared for her former membership in wartime Communist front groups, and then fired.
“The movie is careful to state that Davis is a civil libertarian, not a radical. Branded as ‘a danger to the community,' she finds that adults and children shrink from speaking to her. Another actress might have made the role too pious or pitiful, but Davis' defiant poise protects the film from sogginess. Joe Mantell embodies the sour anti-intellectual of the Fifties...he distills a triumphant loathing of ‘pinkos.' When the library is set on fire by an hysterical child, this modest...film does convey the horror of book burning....” --Nora Sayre, “Running Time: Films of the Cold War”