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)

COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY 87 better and better life for my country." What do you mean when you say bettei' and better ^ That means she has ah-eady helped to build a good way. That is the Soviet Communist way. But now she wants to make it even better. All right. Now. then, Taylor's manager, who is played, I believe, by Benchley, an American, tells her that she should leave the country, but when she refuses and wants to stay, here is the line he uses : He tells her in an admiring friendly way that "You are a fool, but a lot of fools like you died on the village green at Lexington." Xow, 1 submit that that is blasphemy, because the men at Lexington were not fighting just a foreign invader. They were fighting for freedom and what I mean — and I intend to be exact — is they were fighting for political freedom and individual freedom. They were fighting for the rights of man. To compare them to somebod}^, anybody lighting for a slave state, I think is dreadful. Then, later the girl also says — I believe this was she or one of tlie other characters — that "the culture we have been building here will never die." What cultured The cultui-e of concentrati(m camps. At the end of the picture one of the Russians asks Taylor and the girl to go back to America, because they can help them there. How ? Here is what he says, "You can go back to your country and tell them what you have seen and you will see the truth both in speech and in music." Xow, that is plainly saying that what you have seen is the truth about Russia. That is what is in the picture. XoAv, here is wliat I cannot understand at all : If the excuvse that has been given here is that we had to produce the picture in wartime, just how can it help the war effort ? If it is to deceive the American people, if it were to ])resent to the American people a better picture of Russia than it really is, then that sort of an attitude is nothing but the theory of the Nazi elite, that a choice group of intellectual or other leaders will tell the people lies for their own good. That I don't think is the American wav of giving people information. We do not have to deceive the jieople at any time, in war or peace. If it was to please the Russians, I don't see how you can please the Russians by telling them that we are fools. To what extent we have done it, you can see right now. You can see the results right now. If we present a picture like that as our version of what goes on in Russia, what will they think of it? We don't win anybody's friendshij:). We will only win their contempt, and as you know the Russians have been behaving like this. My Avhole point about the picture is this : I fully believe Mr. Mayer when he says that he did not make a Communist picture. To do him justice, I can tell you I noticed, by watching the picture, where there was an effort to cut propaganda out. I believe he tried to cut propaganda out of the picture, but the terrible thing is the carelessness with ideas, not realizing that the mere presentation of that kind of happy existence in a country of slavery and horror is terrible because it is propaganda. You are telling people that it is all right to live in a totalitarian state. Xow, I would like to say that nothing on earth will justify slavery. In war or peace or at any time you cannot justify slaverv. You cannot tell peojile that it is all right to live under it and that everybody there is haj:>py.