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74 COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY
Mr. Smith. By the same token. Mr. Mayer, would you employ a Bundist, a known member of the Bund?
Mr. Mayer. I have prol)ably had them; I wouldn't employ him knowingly; no, sir.
Mr. Smith. At the present time?
Mr. Mayer. No, sir.
Mr. SatiTH. Ts it correct from your testimony that a great effort or considerable effort is made by the studios to keep Communist writers or persons alleged to be Communist writers from injecting propaganda into the pictures ?
Mr. Mayer. We haven't had that problem in our studio. I heard Mr. Warner testify this morning. He says he has had it, but I can't say I have had it.
Mr. Smith. I miderstood you to say it is impossible for them to get material into the pictures because you have a number of readers and other individuals that are always checking on them; that you. vourself, recently observed some material that might have been, although under the circumstances surrounding the writer it obviously was not.
What I would like to determine from you is what do you think will happen in a period of 5, 6, or 7 years if these individuals keep on infiltrating, one, two, three, and four, and so on ? At that time maybe we won't have individuals that can keep this information out of your pictures.
jNIr. Mayer. I am just hopeful, like I told you in California. ]Mr. Smith, that perhaps out of this hearing will come a recommendation to the Congress for legislation on which there can be no question and they will give us a policy as to how to handle American citizens who do not deserve to be American citizens, and if they are Communists how to get them out of our place.
Mr. Smith. Going back to the picture Song of Russia, I notice in your statement, Mr. JSIayer, you state :
The final script of Song of Russia was little more than a pleasant musical romance — the story of a boy and girl that, except ff)r the nmsic of Tschaikowsky, might just as well have taken place in Switzerland or England or any other country on the earth.
Is that 3'our definite opinion on that particular picture?
Mr. Mayer. Basically, yes.
Mr. Smith. Don't you feel the picture had scene after scene that grossly misrepresented Russia as it is today, or as it was at that time?
Mr. ISIayer. I never was in Russia, but 3^011 tell me how you would make a picture laid in Russia that would do any different than what we did there?
Mr. Smith. Don't you feel from what you have read, and from what you have heard from other people, that the scenes just did not depict Russia in one iota ?
Mr. Mayer. We did not attempt to depict Russia : we attempted to show a Russian girl entreating this American conductor to conduct a concert in her village where they have a musical festival every year and as it inevitably happens this girl fell in love with the conductor, and he with her. Then we showed the attack of the Germans on the Russians and the war disrupted this union.
Mr. Smith. The original story was written by whom, Mr. Mayer ?
Mr. Mayer. I don't recall now.