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.
COMMUNISM IN HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY 2093 Mr. Shayne. Well, it is very difficult to bring back all the circum- stances of 16 years ago, Mr. Wheeler. It would be impossible for me to do so accurately. I will do so to the best of my ability. Mr. Wheeler. To the best of your ability, yes. Mr. Shayne. If you will recall the emotional excitement of 1934 and 1935 and all those years in there when we were in the midst of a terrible depression, unemployment was quite rampant, and those circumstances were not peculiar to the acting profession any more than they were to any other field of activities in the United States, and I was one of the ones who was suffering a great deal of unemploy- ment, and there were no minimum wages, no pay for rehearsals, and no adequate protection against being fired from a part by a producer and to replace you with an actor at a lower salary if the play was a success, and there was considerable agitation among members of the Actors' Equity Association, of course, if you recall that climate for those things, and during the course of that—during that period I must have run into somebody who thought I was a ripe plum for picking and, in any event, I was given a copy by somebody of a book called The Coming Struggle for Power by Strachey. I forget his first name. John, or something. Mr. Jackson. John Strachey. Mr. Shayne. John Strachey, and it made quite an impression on me, and one thing led to another, and I was invited down to the Workers' School by somebody—I don't remember whom—on Twelfth Street or Fourteenth; somewhere in that area. I went to a number of courses—rather, classes, and was, I suppose you would call it, in- doctrinated. In any event, after some period of time—I suppose it was 2 or 3 months—it was suggested that I join the Party, that that was a good way to get the things that the actors were working for. So I, being fairly gullible, must have signed a card or an application, because to all intents and purposes, so far as I know, I became a mem- ber. I was given a card, but I destroyed that card some months later and, as I say, I never paid dues in the Party because I quickly became disillusioned with the secrecy of the whole procedure and the fact that I was supposed to give a fictitious, and 1 believe I did give a ficti- tious name, but that completely disillusioned me, and I have never been interested or at all active in any Communist Party activity since the spring of 1936. Mr. Wheeler. Do you recall who actually recruited you in the movement at that time? Mr. Shayne. No, I don't. Mr. Wheeler. Do you recall any of the members of the Communist Party? Mr. Shayne. No, I don't. Mr. Wheeler. You recall no one. Mr. Shayne. No, sir. That was 16 years ago. Mr. Wheeler. Have you ever been a member of the Anti-Nazi League? Mr. Shayne. No. Mr. Whesler. The Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions? Mr. Shayne. No, sir. Mr. Wheeler. Hollywood Democratic Committee? Mr. Shayne. No, sir.