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)

100 COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Strii'lixg. Do you consider that the Communist Party members in this countr}^ are onftaged in treasonable activities? Mr. Men.tou. Deiiiiitely. Mr. S'rKirLixG. Mr. Menjou, this committee also has a legislative function as well as an investigative function. During this session there were two bills introduced Avhich sought to outlaw the Communist Party. Do you think that the Communist Party should be outlawed by legislation? Mr. Menjou. I believe that the Communist Party in the United States should be outlawed by the Congress of the United States. It is not a i)olitical party. It is a conspiracy to take over our Government by force, which would enslave the American people, as the Soviet Government— 14 members of the Politburo — hold the Russian people in abject slavery. Any one of a dozen books will prove it. This is not hearsay. Dozens of other testimony will prove what horrors are going on in Russia today, so horrible that you cannot read them without becoming ill. Now, we don't want that here. Mr. Stripling. Now, Mr. Menjou, there has been quite a bit said and written in the Communist publications and certain left-wing organizations have circulated pamphlets to the effect that this committee is trying to bring about thought control. Mr. Menjou. Well, I also have heard many other words — "witchhunting." I am a witch-hunter if the witches are Communists. I am a Red-baiter. I make no bones about it whatsoever. I would like to see them all back in Russia. I think a taste of Russia would cure many of them. Unfortunately, people in Europe who have not faced the Russians do not realize the method. That is one of the great troubles in France. They are faced with French Communists and not Russians. All of those nations — Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, the Russian zone in Germany — that have had to come in contact with the Russian Army realize what a menace this is. There would have been much more of an overwhelming vote for General De Gaulle if these people realized it. They don't realize it. They don't read. They don't study. The masses of Russian officers who have come to the American headquarters and asked how they can get into America. The escape of the Russian general who is now in Buenos Aires. The capture of the young senior lieutenant who tried to commit suicide rather than to return to his country. With the hundreds of suicides of those who faced return there, I think it is shocking that the United States should ever return anybody back to the Soviet Union. Mr. Stripling. Mr. Menjou, yesterday there was placed in the record the salaries of three writers who were employed in the motionpicture industry, whose salaries exceeded $70,000 yer year. They had been identified as Communists, and the committee had records concerning these three men. How do you account for a person who would have such an income subscribing to the Comnuniist philosophy ? Mr. IMenjou. Well, Frederick Engels, who supported Karl Marx his entire life, was a millionaire. He had a very large textile factory in Germanv and a very large one in England. We find crackpots everywhere. We have in California what I call the lunatic fringe, the political idiots, the morons, the dangerous Communists, and those who have yet to be convinced. ' I don't accuse anybody, because we are