Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry : hearing before the Committee on Un-American activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, first session (1951)

COMMUNISM IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY 477 fore the 1947 hearings. Since that time they have become aware of the menace and have been trying to help clean them up. Before that they were just ignoring them and were indifferent to them. Mr. Velde. Do you feel that there were as many Communists in Hollywood in 1947 as there are at the present time, but that they probably were not all identified at that time? Mr. Brewer. Oh, yes. I think the underground organization that is being exposed by this committee is completing the Job which was only started by the 1947 hearings. But the real point I want to make is, it was the ordinary citizen that became awakened in 1947, the fel- low who was not a Communist but who was completely indifferent to the efforts that had been made to expose them. Mr. Velde. That is all. Mr. Wood. Proceed, Mr. Tavenner. Mr. Tavenner. I believe my question was to this general effect, that I would like for you to tell the committee in your own way just what the objects and purposes, from your experience, were of the Communist Party in infiltrating Hollywood from the labor angle, and to develop, as you can, the methods used by the Communist Party lo accomplish their main objectives. Mr. Brewer. Well, I think first of all that the effort to infiltrate and control the labor unions was a part of the total plan. I think there were separate parts of the plan, but I think there was an over-all plan, and that their effort to infiltrate and control labor was definitely a part of that plan. As to their motives, I think without a doubt the principal motive of the Communist Party was to use the motion-picture industry for propaganda purposes. They realized that was the area in which it was supreme. There was no industry in the world that had the in- fluence over the mass thinking of the people of the world, particularly the western world, that this industry had. I think there can be no real doubt but that the ultimate goal of the Communist Party was to control the motion-picture industry for pur- poses of propaganda. You will see that they praised it as a progres- sive industry up to a point, and that point was until 1947, when they began to change and to brand it as an agent of the imperialistic United States. So, there can be no doubt, in my opinion, but that the goal was to control the content of films. I have an editorial in my possession which was published since Mr. Dmytryk's testimony which I think is indicative of the fact that that was their motive. They attack Mr. Dmytryk and say he is now iree to make the frivolous kind of films that the industry is known for, and he will no longer be able to turn out the type he used to. There were many byproducts of this. One was influencing the motion-picture industry itself, and in some of the communications published as far back as 1938 we have evidence of the fact that they felt the Hollywood unions in themselves would be a powerful stim- ulus toward the development of an industrial union in the United States, which the Communist Party was pressing. There was the prestige they got out of being able to call upon the stars and personalities of the motion-picture industry. That was another byproduct of their program.