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COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY 101
curing people every day. Tliere has been an amazing change in Hollywood in the attitude of many people since this connnittee has started to function and also due to the activities of the INIotion Picture Alliance. These people only have to be told and have to see. The only dangerous one is the hard, disciplined core of the Communist Party themselves. These people I do not know. I have never seen one. The only Communist I ever met was Mr. Maisky, the Ambassador to London, and I fear he has either been liquidated or shunted off somewhere for some deviation. His name has disappeared completely from the newspapers.
Mr. Stripling. Mr. Chairman, those are all the questions I have at this time.
The Chairman". Mr, Wood.
Mr. Wood. Mr. Menjou, do I understand from your testimony that it is your opinion that the producers themselves and the responsible studio heads in Hollywood are not communistic ?
Mr. Menjou. They are as fine a group of men as I ever met. I have worked with them for 34 years, and I don't think any of them are Communists. I think due to the fact that the Communist Party in America is a legal party has prevented them from taking certain action against very excellent writers. There are some very excellent writers among those leftist writers. They don't have to always write communistically, at all. Some of them have contributed much to some of our finest motion pictures, in which there was no communism whatsoever,
I think the producers in California, as I say, are as patriotic a group of Americans as you will meet anywhere. •
Mr. Wood. It was suggested yesterday in the testimony of one of the witnesses by a member of the committee that the producers themselves should get together and by concerted action eliminate these people who are affected with Communist tendencies from the industry. Do you agree with me that that would involve or not involve some very serious legal implications ?
Mr. Menjou. I believe it would.
Mr. Wood. Under existing law?
Mr. Menjou. I spoke to Senator Taft about that the other day, and he n creed also.
Mr. Wood. Would you then feel that a recommendation to the Congress by this committee to so modify existing law as to permit just that to be done would have a wholesale effect?
Mr. Menjou. ISIr. Wood, I feel this way : If the Communists would come out in the open, let us know who they are, because they can be watched. I am told by Mr. Edgar Hoover, who is a very close personal friend of mine, that he is against driving the Communist Party underground. They are now underground. I want to bring them out so we can see who they are. I feel, about pictures, that propaganda pictures should be labeled propaganda as such and propaganda should be not injected into entertainment. I feel that if an anti-Fascist picture is made, an anti-Communist picture should be made next, because I am anti-Fascist as well as I am anti-Communist. The German-American Bund was driven underground, if you want to call it such. I believe all their members are known. But they cannot go on the air. The}?^ cannot have meetings. They cannot get con