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)

20 COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Nixon, Mr. Warner, you stated we can't fight dictatorships by borrowing dictatorial methods. As I understand your observation there, it is that if we adopt the same methods the dictatorships adopted in Germany and Italy, and which the Communist dictatorships in Russia and other Communist-dominated countries are adopting, if we adopt those methods in fighting communism in the United States we will be no better than they are from the standpoint of so-called freedom of expression, which you advocated very strongly in your statement ? Mr. Warner. By that I mean we learn the folly of the type of laws they adopted. I am not qualified to say just what laws we should have, but we certainly do not want to go along in their pattern. Mr. Nixon. You think it is essential we maintain in America a free press, free speech, and a free screen as the best safeguards against dictatorship ? Mr. Warner. Definitely; because if we do not — and I speak for myself as an American, we will have a repetition of what they had in the destroyed countries abroad. They had laws which completely closed everything. Mr. Nixon. Such as Germany and Italy? Mr. Warner. Germany and Italy and when the Germans overran these other countries everything was closed. There was not a radio that wasn't planted; the words were put into the narrator's mouth. There wasn't any free press; there were not any movies shown, only as to the destruction of man by the Nazis. I saw pictures made before the war that forecast everything that happened during the war. That is, I saw these pictures in Europe. Mr. NixoN. Have you had occasion during the past few years to see any Russian motion pictures? Mr. Warner. The only Russian picture I ever saw was an old silent film about a battleship — Potempkin — or some name like tliat. They put words into the actors' mouths ; they made it a talking film. That is the only one I ever saw. Mr. NixoN, From your knowledge and experience, would you say they have what you would term a free screen in Russia today; that is, they can make any kind of a picture they would like to? Mr. Warner. Only from what I have read in the free press in America do I know what is going on in Russia. Mr. Nixon. What have you read in the free press in America? Mr. Warner. My own individual conclusion is that everything is censored, and you cannot do anything you want to do. Mr. NixoN. In other words, from what you have read in the press, which is free in America, the situation in Communist Russia today is the same as it was in Nazi Germany, insofar as a free screen or free press or free speech is concerned ? Mr. Warner. No; I cannot say that I know that. I don't know it. Not having been there I really don't know just how they control it. I do know what Hitler and jNIussolini did, but I don't know what the Russian Government is doing today. Mr. NixoN. You think it is possible that in Russia today they do have a free screen and free press? You follow the statements that are made in the American press to the contrary; do you not? Mr. Warner. I question that they have anything free there, from what I have read of it in American newspapers.