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3520 COMMUNISM IN HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Velde. Did you feel that you had no assistance from the Com- munist organizations, the one that you belonged to, in securing your job ? Miss Lennart. None at all. I wrote a story at night, which took me 6 months to write, not a very long story because I only had a couple of working hours at night. I wrote it with somebody, I took it to an agent, peddled it to several agents, and the first few didn't want it, and it didn't sell for about 6 months and then suddenly, when I least expected, it sold overnight and I was put to work as a screen writer. I had never written a screen play, but the years I had held script had taught me about the technical side of it so I was able to. But there was no connection between the two at all. Mr. Tavenner. Who was your agent at the time you sold the first one? Miss Lennart. Harold Hecht, who is not a party member to the best of my knowledge. He was with the Nat Goldstone Agency. He left the agency, I think, to go into another agency, and I stayed on with Mr. Goldstone and then later with George Willner, who joined the agency. I was with the agency before Mr. Willner came on as an assistant. Mr. Tavenner. What Communist Party functionaries collected your dues, or chided you about the amount of your dues? Miss Lennart. Elizabeth Leech. At the beginning Madelaine Ruthven and then later on Elizabeth Leech. The dues were collected usually at meetings. The office of treasurer was passed around. It was an unpopular office. Somebody would have it one time and somebody else the next. But since I missed so many, I usually paid mine to Elizabeth Leech. Mr. Tavenner. Were you ever a treasurer of the organization ? Miss Lennart. Not so far as I remember. I never held any office in the party so far as I remember. Mr. Tavenner. Do you remember learning anything about the dues paid by other members of your group ? Miss Lennart. No. I never remembered this being discussed openly in the party except in terms of the percentage, and what the amount should be. Mr. Tavenner. Now, I would like to go back to this point and ask you a question which occurred to me earlier. When you spoke of the work that was being done by many of the Communist Party members of your group, with the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, was that league considered by the Communist Party members as a mass organi- zation to be infiltrated and controlled or influenced by the Communist Party? Miss Lennart. Well, when people were assigned to mass organiza- tion work they spoke of the Anti-Nazi League, so I assumed then, and do now, that they regarded it certainly as an organization to work through, and to influence, yes. Mr. Tavenner. Did you ever do any work in recruiting others to membership? Miss Lennart. No, I never recruited anybody into the Communist Party. I never sold a subscription to the People's World, although I contributed money to it. I was the recipient of two gift subscriptions myself. This was a popular method of recruiting, to send somebody