What was the last straw for mccarthy in the eyes to the american public

In the second half of the 1950s, McCarthyism began to decline in the United States. Public opinion and a series of judicial decisions affected the end of McCarthyism.

A key figure to end the blacklists was John Henry Faulk. Conductor of a radio comedy, Faulk was a left-wing trade union leader of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Faulk was investigated by AWARE, one of the private companies that investigated citizens to find "signs of communism" in them. Marked by AWARE as "unfit", he was fired by CBS Radio. Unlike what most of the victims did, Faulk sued AWARE and won the case in 1962. As of this ruling, private blacklist companies and those who used them took note that they could be sued by damages. Although some continued, most had to close.

Even before the sentencing in the Faulk case, already Hollywood had begun to disobey the blacklists. In 1960, Dalton Trumbo, one of the best known artists on the blacklist known as The Ten of Hollywood, was publicly hired to write the scripts for the films Exodus and Spartacus.