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 IX HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY 3517 knowledge of. I, was reproached for my lack of any activity. You know, I was just there. And they said Mr. Tavenner. You mean you were reproached by fellow members of the Communist Party ? Miss Lennart. In the group, yes. Usually at a meeting. "What have you been doing? What is your activity? Are you working in a mass organization?'' That sort of thing. And I wasn't and it was because of the hours. So they suggested that I might do some office work, and something called AFA, which was Associated Film Audiences. I was told that this was not a Communist organization, only I suppose in terms of behavior in the office and so on. I never met anybody there but another volunteer secretarial worker. I think I went about three times and licked envelopes in the office. They had followed awfully fast, I think because of the program which was a very ambitious one, and which was to organize film audiences to demand better pictures, better treatment of labor problems in pictures, better treatment of racial minorities in pictures, and so on, and to the best of my knowledge this organization didn't exist for more than a few months. Mr. Tavenxer. Was there any other person connected with that organization who was known to you to be a member of the Com- munist Party ? Miss Lennart. I only met one other person there in my three visits and that, as I say, was a volunteer secretarial worker whose name I don't know, don't remember. Mr. Tavenner. What were the circumstances under which you were assigned? Was the subject brought up in a Communist Party meet- ing or by a Communist Party individual ? Miss Lennart. Yes, it was; by one of the people I have mentioned in this group. Which one I don't know. But, yes, it was brought up in a group. It was a suggestive activity because it was one place where I could go in to daytimes if I didn't have a full afternoon's work. Mr. Tavenner. In other words, it was a type of activity which was encouraged and .suggested by the Communist Party ? Miss Lennart. Yes. Mr. Tavenner. Your entrance into the party was prior to the Stalin-Hitler pact? Miss Lennart. Yes, it was. I dropped out Mr. Tavenner. Do you recall the making of that pact? Miss Lennart. Yes, I do. I remember it very well because I stopped going to party meetings because of it. The explanation given in the party, after a lag in which no explanation was given, because I think they were caught short by it as anybody else was Mr. Tavenner. I believe the date of the pact was August 23, 1939. Miss Lennart. That is about what it would be. The explanation given to the party was that it was for the purpose of expediency, that Russia knew she was next on Hitler's list, and that it was to give her time to arm. It was not an explanation that I was able to accept. I had such a fear and hatred of nazism, that this was too much of a strange bedfellow combination for me. And so for some time I dropped out of the party completely and went to no meetings. How- ever, when Germany did attack Russia, I felt that perhaps I had been mistaken. I was called by Madelaine Ruthven, who was a functionary