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 HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY 2411 occasion. He was introduced as an organizer of the Auto Workers Union from Detroit. I regret that I cannot rememher his name. In any case, he prob- ably did not use his own name. I had never seen him before, nor he me. He made a vituperative analysis of my conduct in refusing to fall in with the party line and plan for the Group Theatre, and he invited my repentance. My fellow members looked at him as if he were an oracle. I have not seen him since, either. That was the night I quit them. I had had enough anyway. I had had a taste of police-state living and I did not like it. Instead of working honestly for the good of the American people, I had found that I was being used to put power in the hands of people for whom, individually and as a group, I felt nothing but contempt, and for whose standard of conduct I felt a genuine horror. Since that night, I have never had the least thing to do with the party. II After I left the party in 1936, except for the making of the two-reel documentary film mentioned above, in 1937, I was never active in any organization since listed as subversive. My policy in the years after 1936 was an instinctive rather than a planned one. I could usually detect a front organization when I first heard about it and I stayed away from it. I never became a member of such an organization, although I was pressed to join dozens of them. Contradictorily, on a few of the many occasions when I was asked to sign a statement or a telegram for a specific cause, I may have allowed my name to be used, even though I suspected the sponsoring organization. They insidiously picked causes which appealed to decent, liberal, humanitarian people; against racial discrimination, against Japanese aggression, against specific miscarriages of justice. There was a piece of spurious reasoning which influenced me to let them use my name in rare instances. It went like this, "I hate the Communists but I go along with this cause because I believe the cause is right." Today I repudiate that reasoning, but it accounts for those of the instances listed below in which I may have done what is alleged. I repudiate the reasoning because I believe that all their fights are deceitful maneuvers to gain influence. My connections with these front organizations were so slight and so transitory that I am forced to rely on a listing of these prepared for me after research by my employer, Twentieth Century-Fox. I state with full awareness that I am under oath, that in most of the cases I do not remember any connection at all. It is possible that my name was used without my consent. It is possible that in a few instances I gave consent. I am told that the New Masses of November 4, and the Daily Worker of Novem- ber 8, 1941, list me as an entertainer at a meeting sponsored by the American Friends of the Chinese People. I remember no connection whatsoever with this organization and especially since I ceased all "entertaining" in 1936 when I left the party, I can only suppose that my name was used without my permission in this instance. I am told that I signed an appeal put out by the Committee for a Boycott Against Japanese Aggression. I do not remember this either, but it is possible that I signed such an appeal. No date is given, but it must have been before Pearl Harbor. I am told that the official program of the Artists Front To Win the War listed me as a sponsor in October 1942. I have no memory of this either, but it is possible that I gave my consent to the use of my name. I am told that on July 19, 1942, I signed an open letter sponsored by the Na- tional Federation for Constitutional Liberties, which denounced Attorney Gen- eral Biddle's charges against Harry Bridges. I have no recollection of this either, but again it is possible that I did so, for I remember that, in contrast to what I had heard about the New York water front, what I had heard about San Francisco suggested that Bridges had done a good job for his union. And I remember that I believed the story, current at that time, that he was being hounded for this. At that time I did not believe him to be a Communist. I have been reminded that my name was used as a sponsor of the publication, People's Songs. I have no doubt that I gave permission for this. The date could be found by referring to the first issues of the publication. Beyond allowing my name to be used initially, I had no contact with it.