Myron Coureval Fagan was an American writer, producer and director for film and theatre and a red scare figure in the late 1940s and 1950s. Fagan was an ardent anti-communist and influential conspiracy theorist.
In 1945, Fagan claimed he saw secret documents of the meetings in Yalta, shown to him by author John T. Flynn, that led him to write the plays Red Rainbow and Thieves Paradise. Written in 1945, Red Rainbow portrays Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and others in Yalta plotting to deliver the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Berlin to Stalin. Left-wing groups in the New York opposed the production of the play, and Fagan had difficulties getting financial backing to produce it. Fagan took the play to Hollywood where he encountered more protests against it than he had in New York. In the late 1940s, Fagan launched a one-man crusade against what he claimed was a "Red Conspiracy in Hollywood". Out of this crusade came the Cinema Education Guild. In 1953, Red Rainbow was produced by Bruce Fagan and staged for 16 performances at the Royal Theatre between September 14 and 26. Written two years later, Thieves Paradise portrays the same group plotting to create the United Nations as a Communist front for one world government. Despite opposition, Thieves Paradise opened at the Las Palmas Theatre in Hollywood on December 26, 1947. It starred Howard Johnson, who was subject to a campaign of harassment so bitter and intense that it sent him to St. Vincent's Hospital with a nervous breakdown after six performances, and he never made another movie in Hollywood.Thieves Paradise was produced and staged at the El Patio theatre in Hollywood in April 1948. It opened on April 12,, and despite protest against it, was able to complete its run.
Pamphleteer
From this period onward, Fagan did not produce any more work for stage or screen; instead he wrote anti-communist pamphlets, such as "Hollywood Reds Are on the Run", and bulletins for the remainder of his life. The Eleventh Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities of the California Legislature stated this of Fagan's anti-Communist lists,
But those who realized their mistake and left the front organizations in disgust and disillusionment are often still carried as subversives on the Fagan lists, and therein lies the danger from any unofficial organization that undertakes to publish lists of alleged subversive organizations and individuals. They do not have the facilities, nor the authority, nor the experience to handle these matters in an expert fashion and therefore they produce an enormous amount of harm by falsely accusing individuals who are not only loyal but who have profited greatly by their unfortunate experiences in having been lured into Communist-front groups.
