Hearings regarding the communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session. Public law 601 (section 121, subsection Q (1947)

14 COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Stripling. And you let these six people go. Can you name the six? Mr. Warneu. Yes; I think I can. I wish you would bear with me. I\Ir. Thomas. That is all right. Mr. Warner. I have heard these people stand around and ridicule and rib the committee, your full committee: "They aren't looking for Fascists; they are only looking for Communists. They have the same routine ; to belittle the other fellow and scheme about it." ]Mr. Thomas. If you have any names we would like to have them. Mr. Warner. Here are the names of people who in my opinion wrote for the screen and tried to inject these ideas, and I personally removed them — according to my best judgment or any of my executives working with me. Whether or not they are Communists I don't know, but some of them are, according to what I have read and heard. The first one is Alvah Bessie. Then Gordon Kahn. He is in charge of editing the little journal of the Screen Writers' Guild. He is now down in Mexico trying to write a story about a picture we were producing down there. I gave instructions all along the line not to have him in there, but he gets in. The day I let him go he was right on the plane for Mexico. He is writing a story for Holiday magazine, one of the Curtis Publisliing Co.'s magazines. I tried through the New York office to tell them the fellow was "off the beam" and should not accept his material. I was told, "You are not going to interfere with the right of free speech and freedom of the press." I got tJie usual run-down of a publisher. That is what they told my man. I tried to have the story stopped for this particular paper, but he is writing it. In fact, we were chastised for interfering with their business, so I got off of that. Guy Endore, Howard Koch, Ring Lardner, Jr., Emmett Lavery, John Howard Law.son, Albert Maltz, Robert Rosson, Erwin Shaw, Dalton Trumbo, John Wexley. You know these names. Mr. Thomas. That is a very familiar list. INIr. Warner. Julius and Philip Epstein, twins. Mr. Thomas. What are they doing? Mr. Warnek. They are at IM-G-M. I will give you my theory of what happened to these fellows when I finish. Mr. Thomas. All right. Mr. W^^rner. Sheridan Gibney, Clifford Odets. That is all of my list. Mr. Stripling. Were all of these writers that you named employed in your studio at one time or another? Mr. Warner. Yes ; they were. Mr. Stripling. Could you give us the names of some of the pictures in which they injected their lines or propaganda? l\Ir. Warner. I would rather correct that, if you don't mind. Mr. Stripling. All right. Mr. Warner. They endeavor to inject it. Whatever I could do about it — I took it out. Mr. Stripling. Tell us some of the pictures in which they endeavored to do that. The Chairman. Mr. Stripling. Mr. Stripling. Yes, sir. The Chairman. As I understand it, this was all sworn testimony in executive session ; is that correct ? Mr, Stripling. That is right, sir. The testimony continued : Mr. Warner. Do you want the names? Mr. Stripling. Identify the films. Mr. Warnfjl Alvah Bessie, The Very Thought of You. Gordon Kahn, Her Kind of Man. I might inject there for a moment, the majority of those writers, some of them wrote for as high as 6, 8, or 10 months, and never delivered anything. What they were doing was taking your money and supposedly writing your scripts and trying to get these doctrines into the films, working for the party, or whatever the term is. The strange thing is very few of these fellows deliver. Mr. Stripling. Is that right? Mr. Warner. Not only in our studios, but in any of the studios. I can speak authoritatively on that. These are the credits that these people have. They are always in every one of them. Howard Koch, In Our Time. I might explain