Harrison's Reports (1948)

Entered &b second-class matter January 4, 1921, at the post office at New York, New York, under the aot of March 3, 1879. Yearly Subscription Rates: United States $15.00 U. S. Insular Possessions. 16.50 Canada 16.50 Mexico, Cuba, Spain 16.50 Great Britain 15.75 Australia, New Zealand, India, Europe, Asia .... 17.50 35c a Copy 1270 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS (Formerly Sixth Avenue) New York 20, N. Y. A Motion Picture Reviewing Service Devoted Chiefly to the Interests of the Exhibitors Its Editorial Policy: No Problem Too Big for Its Editorial Columns, if It is to Benefit the Exhibitor. Published Weekly by Harrison's Reports, Inc., Publisher P. S. HARRISON, Editor Established July 1, 1919 Circle 7-4622 A REVIEWING SERVICE FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ADVERTISING Vol. XXX SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1948 No. 3 THE PUZZLING PHENOMENON CLEARED UP In the editorial published in the June 21, 1947 issue of this paper under the heading, "A PUZ' ZLING PHENOMENON," the following remarks were made in the first paragraph : "Many persons from within and without the motion picture industry have been trying to reason out the motives that prompt intellectuals, writers who earn anywhere from one thousand to five thousand dollars a week, and even more, to espouse the Com' munistic philosophy. They have been ascribing many motives, but they have not hit upon the real motive." This writer then proceeded to ascribe jealousy as the possible motive — jealousy at the fact that those intellectuals, with so much education, see persons of limited educations heading the industry, forgetting the fact that these industry leaders, though of limited education, are rich in executive ability, and in the knowledge of how to make pictures. That theory was the best that could be adopted at that time. Now, however, comes Life of January 5 with an explanation that seems to be the most rational : Once a person becomes a Communist, Life implies, he cannot break away. If he should desert the party, the party members blacken his character with all kinds of vicious falsehoods. Life should have added that they resort even to murder, if we are to judge by the fate of Leon Trotsky who, having disagreed with the other members of the ruling class in Russia, was mur' dered in Mexico, to which country he had fled. Life deals with the case of an American youngster who was inveigled into joining the Communist Party by various methods including the use of pretty girls. This young man was so thoroughly soaked with the party's doctrines that, years later, even after he be' came a Captain in the United States Army, he remained a Communist to the end. At first he was repulsed by the methods the party employed in order to gain its ends, but he became reconciled to them eventually, and in the end he remained true to the party because it trusted him as a faithful servant. Life says: "Now 'Kelly' (the name given to the young American so that his identity might be hidden) began to appreciate the terrible strength of the party. He had known that the damned, those who were expelled, had frequently become emotional wrecks, drunks, suicides, derelicts, but he attributed their breakdowns to those hidden faults which had caused their expulsion. Now he appreciated, as the party by this time intended he should appreciate, the power that had smashed them. "Each new prospect received the same treatment of encouragement, adulation, sexual satisfaction . . . Expulsion meant ostracism, the ending of every social tie, a situation much like that of a devout nun cast out from her convent. An expelled party member became one of two classes — the bitter enemy of the Communist Party . . . , or a psychotic, spiraling down to emptiness. . . . "... the program of the party was planned in terms of decades, in the course of which the party intended to advance the Soviet Union as the only possible control for the people of the world. . . Accepting the simple dogma that the party was always right made his life right, gave him a full satisfaction in living. . ." Elsewhere in the article there is said: "... Expulsions were matters of excitement and gabbling, always ending with the party dictum that the unfortunate was a moral leper as well as a political dullard. Invariably, those jettisoned by the party were stigmatized as homosexuals, drug addicts, police informers and syphilitics. During this period, 'Kelly' believed these charges to be the simple truth and was constantly concerned over his failure to have detected such moral, physical and mental lesions in people he had known so well. . ." This article of Life's is so enlightening as to what Communism is and how it operates that it should be read by every one who values his American citizenship, for he must know what a powerful enemy our system of government has in Communism. Dorothy Thompson, whose syndicated writings appear in a large number of newspapers, corroborates all this. In her first article on Communists in her January 6 column, she says that, if we knew what Communism is, we would have fewer heart-searchings as to what to do about it. She took her facts from documentary evidence, beginning with the Constitution and Rules of the International Communist Party, and is determined to prove how necessary it is for our Congress to outlaw Communism and declare all connections with it a penal offense. Miss Thompson is not a reactionary. As a matter of fact she is so liberal that only recently she deplored our tendency to outlaw Communism on the theory that, by so doing, we would drive the Communists underground where we would not have as much opportunity to watch their doings. For so liberal a person, then, to discard her views and advocate the outlawing of Communism to the extent that it will be a penal offense for any one in the United States to have anything to do with the movement, is indicative of the fact that she must have done much research work to convince herself that Communism is not a political theory but a group of persons who have vowed to upset our political and economic system, not by the ballot, but by criminal methods. By quoting from Communist documents, Miss (Continued on last page)