Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills—names that evoke a sunlit Californian idyll where filmmakers, writers, and musicians who fled Nazi Europe found refuge. Yet, even as they contribute to the Allied cause in the early years of the war, they themselves come under suspicion. Once hailed as outspoken opponents of Nazism, they are subjected to intense scrutiny, their garbage searched by the FBI. In the fevered climate of the ‘Red Scare,’ independent thinkers are branded as ‘communists.’ The country that once offered them safety begins to transform into a place of surveillance, repression, and persecution.