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

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

1556 COMMUNISM EN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY izations either declared subversive by this committee or by the Attor- ney General of the United States, you having said that you referred to the book. Therefore, I felt that I had a perfect right without being anything but fair to you, to see really what you had ever no- ticed in that book. I just want to say this, young man, to you, as a young man. You said you just returned from World War II, and I noticed your wife said that she had stopped working in gainful work to raise a family. Mr. Levitt. That's right. Mr. Doyle. I want to commend you both on that high purpose, but as an older man who lost his son in the last war, and I did, I want to just urge you as a young man who has received the benefits of our great Nation, if you are a member of the Communist Party, for God's sake get out of it and be true to the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Jackson. Mr. Levitt, I think you said you were in the Army. Mr. Levitt. That's correct. Mr. Jackson. When did your Army service commence? Mr. Levitt. It commenced in December of 1942,1 oelieve, and—can I refer to my discharge here ? Mr. Jackson. Just generally. Mr. Levitt. I got my discharge, I believe, in January of 1946. Mr. Jackson. What was your rank upon discharge? Mr. Levitt. Sergeant, Mr. Jackson. Would you willingly serve in the Armed Forces of this country again if it became necessary to do so, even though it might involve conflict with the Soviet Union? Mr. Levitt. I believe—I must say, in preface to my answer, as-a matter of fact as part of my answer, that this question has occurred before in this room and has the design of facing a witness with the alternatives of either appearing to jump on the bandwagon for what I consider the destruction of civilization, or else to appear in the light of someone who is not willing to fulfill his obligations as a citizen. Now, I have always fulfilled my obligations as a citizen, to the best of my ability, and I always intend to fulfill my obligations as a citizen to the best of my ability. Mr. Jackson. Do you think, Mr. Levitt, that one of the obligations of your citizenship is service in the military forces? Mr. Levitt. It may be; it is possible. And when I am called upon to serve in the military Mr. Jackson. It is quite definitely an obligation of citizenship to serve your country in time of need. Mr. Levitt. Perhaps I should make the distinction that I feel very strongly, and perhaps it will explain a little bit more about my answer. I feel that since World War II an entirely new element has entered the world in the form of atomic weapons which now makes the possi- bility of war completely different from anything which was ever known to history before, in that the consideration of war, I believe, is a consideration of the destruction—entire destruction of civiliza- tion. 1 feel, therefore, that efforts should be bent entirely in the direction of securing peace. Mi-. Jackson. Have you ever expressed yourself as being opposed to the Soviet foreign policy of its actions abroad? Are yon opposed to the Soviet policy as compared to the American policy?