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COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY 83
Mr. Stripling. You have read the letter I read from Lowell Mellett ?
Miss Rand. Yes.
Mr. Stripling. Which says that the picture Song of Russia has no political implications?
Miss Rand. Yes.
Mr. Stripling. Did you at the request of Mr. Smith, the investigator for this committee, view the picture Song of Russia?
]\Iiss Rand. Yes.
Mr. Stripling. Within the past 2 weeks?
Miss Rand. Yes; on October 1;> to be exact.
Mr. Stripling. In Hollywood?
Miss Rand. Yes.
Mr. Strii>ling. Would you give the committee a break-down of your summary of the picture relating to either propaganda or an untruthful account or distorted account of conditions in Russia?
]\Iiss Rand. Yes.
First of all I would like to define what we mean by propaganda. We have all been talking about it, but nobody
Mr. Stripling. Could you talk into the microphone ?
Miss Rand. Can you hear me now ?
Nobody has stated just what they mean by propaganda. Now, I use the term to mean that Communist propaganda is anything which gives a good impression of communism as a way of life. Anything that sells peo})le the idea that life in Russia is good and that people are free and happy would be Communist propaganda. Am I not correct ? I mean, would that be a fair statement to make — that that would be Communist propaganda? /■""T^ow, here is what the picture Song of Russia contains. It starts / with an American conductor, played by Robert Taylor, giving a conj cert in America for Russian war relief. He starts playing the American national anthem and the national anthem dissolves into a Russian mob, with the sickle and hammer on a I'ed flag very prominent above their heads. I am sorry, but that made me sick. That is something which I do not see how native Americans permit, and I am only a naturalized Amei'ican. That was a terrible touch of propaganda. As a writer, I can tell you just exactly what it suggests to the people. It suggests literally and technically that it is quite all right for the American national anthem to dissolve into the Soviet. The term here is more than just technical. It really was symbolically intended, and it worked out that way. The anthem continues, played by a Soviet band. That is the beginning of the picture.
Now we go to the pleasant love story. Mr. Taylor is an American who came there apparently voluntarily to conduct concerts for the Soviet. He meets a little Russian girl from a village who comes to him and begs him to go to her village to direct concerts there. There are no GPU agents and nobody stops her. She just comes to Moscow and meets hifn. He falls for her and decides he will go, because he is falling in love. He asks her to show him Moscow. She says she has never seen it. He says, "I will show it to you."
They see it together. The i)icture then goes into a scene of Moscow, supposedly. I don't know where the studio got its shots, but I have never seen anything like it in Russia. First you see JNIoscoav buildings— big, prosperous-looking, clean buildings, with something like