America was riven in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the House Un-American Affairs Committee turned its gimlet eye on Hollywood and 10 writers and producers with suspiciously leftist sympathies. The Hollywood Ten were among the most successful and well-known writers of their time, including Oscar-winners Michael Wilson and Dalton Trumbo. After being forced out of their careers and country, they encamped for the more tolerant climates of Mexico and Europe, writing under assumed names for much lower wages and no credit.

In the mid-1950s, they began to trickle back into America, where Trumbo and Wilson set up camp in Ojai, led by Wilson's wife, Zelma, the noted architect. Zelma and Michael formed a salon where other blacklisted writers and actors gathered to commiserate, party and make history. We take up this story with Mark Lewis, former chair of the Ojai Valley Museum and a long-form narrative feature journalist who is also an associate editor of the Ojai Quarterly. After Kirk Douglas and others helped bust the blacklist, these talented writers got back to work on such classics as "Planet of the Apes" and "Johnny Got His Gun."

Among other topics we talked about Stalin, Ojai architecture, Ronald Reagan and Nordhoff homecoming queens. We did not talk about Zen archery, Great Lakes boat craft or the Peloponnesian War.