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2346 COMMUNISM IN HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Blankfort. Yes. I still have the book. Mr. Tavenner. Was that a contribution made by you to New Masses ? Mr. Blankfort. Well now, there is confusion here. I said that I had stopped contributing as a regular contributor to the New Masses and Daily Worker at a certain time. Mr. Tavenner. I understood you to say you had been dropped by them. Mr. Blankfort. Yes; that is true. They stopped asking me to contribute play reviews. I don't know how long it was before they stopped sending me books. In this case, I may have begged for the book. In this case, I may have run into Joe Freeman or Joe North and said, "Will you send me a book to review?" There are no two ways about this. Book reviews, to review books— for which, by the way, I was paid nothing—means that you got the book. That means that you owned it. This book cost $2.50; it was a book I wanted. I begged to review for the New York Times. I begged to review for the Nation and New Republic. I wanted those books. Mr. Tavenner. Yes; but the fact that you were continuing to make reviews for the New Masses, regardless of what purpose you had in mind, is inconsistent with your prior statement that they dropped you because of your attitude unless you have some explanation of it. Mr. Blankfort. Well, they knew that I would not write play re- views to fit their design. Now, if I had said in this review that I thought that Stanislovsky was a something, that they didn't like, then they wouldn't have published this review. I wrote a review about a theater piece. It is about acting. It is a nonpolitical piece about acting. I had no objection—I want this to be clear, I don't want to mislead you—I had no objection to contributing as a writer on nonpolitical material to the New Masses. I would say, when I would not have written for the New Masses Mr. Tavenner. I know, but the point is that you have reiterated here several times that the New Masses dropped you because you would not conform your views to their wishes and their desires. Now, if that were true, it is hard to reconcile it with the appearance of other reviews several years later. Mr. Moulder. As I understand it, you mean to construe that they dropped you as a regular contributor to the paper? Mr. Blankfort. That is right. Mr. Tavenner. Is that the only explanation you have of that, that you were dropped as a regular contributor ? Mr. Blankfort. Yes, sir. Mr. Tavenner. I show you a photostatic copy of a pamphlet pub- lished by the National Committee Against Censorship of the Theater Arts. According to this pamphlet you were a member of that com- mittee. Will you tell us when that committee was created, the purpose of its creation, and who solicited your support, if you were a member? (Representative Harold H. Velde left the hearing room at this point.) Mr. Blankfort. I can't even remembar the committee. This was 1935. I was opposed to censorship, and I can't—as I look over the names, I am impressed by the number of people that I knew and didn't know, and people like Brooks Atkinson, of the New York Times,