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 143 Mr. Smith. Wliat are some of the dangers in the Screen Writers Guild? Mr. McGuiNNESs. I think I pointed that out in the situation in which a guild, functioning as a union, has so many unemployable members. I remember discussing this situation once with several of the important A. F. of L. leaders in the Los Angeles area. I cited it to them and said, "What do you think this situation is ? Do you think it is healthy?" The reply was, "If we have 10 men unemployable in a local of 1,000 members we can expect fireworks." Mr. Smith. What I had in mind was this : How are they able to control the new writers, the younger writers, and readers through the guilds? Mr. McGuilsTNESS. The manner of control of younger writers varies. I think the first approach is to the youthful idealism and the youthful sense of revolt, which is healthy and should be expected. If that fails, young writers who in the past, at least, have been sympathetic and followed along with the party line in the guild, have had more encouragement, have had their professional efforts supported and pushed by the tight clique in control of the guild, the writers who do not conform, the young writers find themselves largely isolated and not helped in the furthering of their careers. Mr. S-MiTH. Mr. McGuinness, will you explain the operation of the reading department ? Mr. McGuinness. To explain that I must tell you that the industry as a whole produces in a normal year approximately 500 featurelength pictures. The material for those pictures comes in very small measure from the successful plays and the best-seller novels. I would suppose that that type of material furnishes 20 to 30 feature-length pictures a year. Naturally, that material is familiar to every head of a studio, to every producer, to every executive, to every director because there is intense bidding in a very open and competitive market to obtain the motion-picture rights to highly successful material. But the necessity of motion-picture release and the demand of theaters for products leaves us with perhaps 450 to 470 pictures still to be obtained. A great flow of material comes to the reading department of every studio. It would be impossible for any executive or for any head of any studio to read one-tenth of that material, even if he devoted his entire time to it and did no other work. So, the job of sorting out the material, the run-of-the-mill flow, falls to the reading department which can decide to synopsize or not synopsize, according to the judgment exercised there as to the quality of the material. From these synopses, and about 15 or 20 reach my desk each week, selection is made of the most promising material, and that is then considered in its full form. Those members of the Story Analysts Guild who are sympathetic to or followers of the Communist Party, are in a position to promote, all things being equal, one submitted piece of material coming from people sympathetic to their cause, and to suppress material coming from anybody unsympathetic to their cause. Now, i want you to understand that cannot be done in the cases of highly important or highly promising material. There would then