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.

COMMUNISM IN HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY 2313 Mr. Levy. This I cannot answer. All of my conversations were either with Mooney or with his sister, Miss Mooney. I don't remember her first name. Mr. Tavenner. Were the changes or the difficulties that you had of such a character that you could determine the source of them; that is, whether they came from problems in the Communist ideology? Mr. Levy. I would guess that they came from many sources. I would guess that the AFL would say something; that the molders committee would say something, probably the Communist Party would say something. There were many people interested in Mooney in a different way than I was interested in him. I remember one of the things—it is a long time ago, and it is hard for me to remember details—one of the things that went back and forth was the attitude about the American Federation of Labor, it sometimes was for and sometimes it was against, and this man was just lost sight of. Mr. Tavenner. Did your Communist Party membership have any- thing to do with your selection as a person to write the life of Tom Mooney ? Mr. Levy. No. This preceded it. No, this was Harcourt Brace and I that had this idea. It began with another firm whose name I do longer remember, which was later absorbed by Harcourt Brace who thought this was a good idea. Mr. Tavenner. I understand this work commenced before you be- came a member of the Communist Party? Mr. Levy. Yes; the contract was made before the negotiations, but just before I went to San Francisco to meet Mr. Mooney, I had these meetings with Mr. Browder. Mr. Kearney. Mr. Counsel, may I ask a question ? Mr. Tavenner. Certainly. Mr. Kearney. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Moulder (presiding). Mr. Kearney. Mr. Kearney. At the time you talked with Mr. Earl Browder con- cerning your joining the Communist Party, was Browder the leader of the Communist Party in America at that time? Mr. Levy. I don't know if he was a leader. He was a very important man. I don't know if he was at the top. He was an important man. I think he had a special interest in writers and artists. Mr. Kearney. He had a special interest in obtaining recruits for the Communist Party? Mr. Levy. I think he also had an interest in writers and artists and painters. Mr. Kearney. For the Communist Party, and for recruitment into the party ? Mr. Levy. Yes; but I think—this is judgment, personally—that he was a widely read man, and a very literate man. Mr. Tavenner. What was the reason he had? That is the question I was trying to get at a moment ago. What was the reason that Earl Browder had for taking this special interest in writers? Do you think it was to influence the course of their writings? Mr. Levy. Yes; I think it was two things. I think that certainly it was to influence the course of writings, but I think also that this particular thing came out of his own personality—this is a matter of