Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry : hearing before the Committee on Un-American activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, first session (1951)

4472 COMMUNISM IN HOLLYWOOD MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Burrows. I went to elementary school, high school, in New York City and in Manhattan and in Brooklyn; went to College of the City of New York and NYU School of Finance, Pace Institute of Accounting. Mr. Tavenner. "What is your present occupation ? Mr. Burrows. I am a writer and director in the theater, and I also appear periodically as a performer on television. Mr. Tavenner. Will you tell the committee what the record of your employment has been since, say, 1936 ? Mr. Burrows. Well, in 1936 I gave up accounting and was in a business called the woven-label business, in which I didn't do very well. Then I worked as a salesman in this woven-label company for a while, and finally in 1938 I went into show business. I wrote gags for a great many comedians around town, and then finally started on a regular radio program for the Columbia Broadcasting System. Do you want me to go on from there, sir? Mr. Tavenner. Yes. Please tell the committee where you engaged in these various lines of activity and as near as you can when you changed the location of your work, give us the dates. Mr. Burrows. Eight. Well, in New York City I worked on this radio program in 1938. Then in 1939 I was hired to do a program called the Texaco Star Theater in California. I went to California and wrote this Texaco Star Theater for Ken Murray and Frances Langford and Kenny Baker, and then in 1940 I was employed to write the Rudy Vallee-John Barrymore radio program. I started that in New York, went back to California with it. While in California, we got an idea for a program called Duffy's Tavern. The idea was picked up and sponsored and I went back to New York to write Duffy's Tavern. I was head writer of Duffy's Tavern for about 5 years, after which I left the field of radio and went to Para- mount Pictures as a writer and producer. I didn't write or produce anything there. Mr. Tavenner What was that date? Mr. Burrows. That was about in the middle of 1945. After that I wrote a program of my own, that is, one I owned myself and wrote, called Holiday and Company. I did that in New York from about the end of 1945 until about June of 1946. I came back to California and didn't do anything for a couple of months. Then I wrote the Dinah Shore program and the Joan Davis program. Then I took on my own program called the Abe Burrows Show at the beginning of 1947; did that for a while. Then I went out in night clubs for about a year and a half and went back into television. Then I wrote a Broad- way show. I was coauthor of Guys and Dolls. Since then I have done several other things in the theater. I did Guys and Dolls. I did a play called Three Wishes for Jamie, which I was coauthor of and I directed, and it is a play that won the Christopher award. I am presently engaged in writing a new play for the spring, a musical, and I am employed on a weekly television show called the Name Is the Same. Mr. Tavenner. Mr. Burrows, you stated that you went to Cali- fornia in 1945 and returned for periods to New York in 1946 and then returned again to California, if I understood it. Mr. Burrows. Yes; I did, sir. I returned to California in the middle of 1946.