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 3521 a three-month subscription to the People's World, somebody you thought should be in the party. I got two myself, anonymously, but I never sold any. Do you have some questions ? Mr. Tavenner. How long did you remain a member of the Com- munist Party ? Miss Lennart. May I talk about this a little, because there wasn't a definite date, and I don't want to give a false impression. Mr. Tavenner. You may cover it any way you like. Miss Lennart. From 1941 until 1944,1 considered myself a member of the party, and am not trying to minimize it. Their records, I think, will show that I was strictly a rank-and-file member. I didn't hold any office, I didn't work in any mass organization. I have never been a member of any mass organization, to my knowledge. I didn't recruit anyone else. I did contribute money, small amounts of money, to these things. I was not a member of the party fraction of writers in the Screen Writers' Guild. I certainly talked freely enough, at the studio and socially, about what was going on, but the only political activity I had was as a member of the Screen Writers' Guild, and that was since I was not in the fraction it was not directed activity. When the party declared itself an association and gave up all talk of being a revolutionary party, I wasn't surprised because in relation to the people I knew, the idea that this was a revolutionary group, this seemed nonsense, considering the people I knew, and it still seemed to me so. However, even though I was considered a passive member from 1941 to 1944,1 never asked myself what I was doing in it at all. And that seems fantastic to me now, but I think I can explain it. I think I joined for good motives but my joining was unexamined, uncritical and emotional and something to regret. However, once I got in, I found a number of people who seemed to be there for the same reason I was, for nothing more vicious than that. You must remember that my knowledge of people was quite limited, I did not know the really active people in the party, and some of the informa- tion that has been divulged at other hearings of this committee has been startling to me, too. To me, and to many others, it was a place to gather to talk about what was going on around us, who was writing and what, what we could do about things that seemed unjust. But the atmosphere in the party is a strictly hot-house atmosphere. You all read the same things, you talk about the same things, you hear nothing but one point of view. You don't realize this when you are in. You don't realize you have blinders on. But you get so if somebody outside says something that doesn't fit in, you feel that they are being dupes, not you, you see. You feel that they are being influenced by a corrupt press. You don't challenge the press in the party. I may be doing injustice to people who examine things more carefully than I did, but this was certainly true of me and many people like me who were basically nonpolitical people. As individuals, a great many people were well meaning and hard working without malice to anybody, but I know now that I had absolutely no right even from a Communist point of view to be where I was, because I had no understanding of what that might imply. I did begin to realize it in 1944, when I met the man I later married, who was very strongly anti-Communist. He didn't ask me to leave the 21546—52—pt. 8 6