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 151 forced to eat his own words, disciplined, and had to confess error and return to what he termed the Marxist basis for all writers. That is what I mean by the terminology "leave of absence." Mr. Nixon. I see. So at the present time the Communist writers in Hollywood, or those who are following the Communist line, do not have, as you put it, a so-called leave of absence to either, one, tell the true facts about America, and, two, tell the true facts about totalitarian communism. Mr. McGuiNNESs. I believe that to be the condition. Mr. Nixon. In other words, the situation at the present time is that those who are following the Communist line as writers in Hollywood are under direction to distort the facts about America and to suppress the facts about totalitarian communism? Mr. McGuiNNEss. I believe that to be true. Mr. Nixon. Well, in view of that fact, if you had, as a studio executive, in your employ writers who you knew were, (1) either members of the Communist Party — which might be unlikely, I admit, from the standpoint of proof — or, (2) who had consistently followed the Communist line, would you feel that if they were to remain in your employ they would have to be watched very carefully from the standpoint of the type of pictures that they produced and their activities in attempting to control the pictures in some way? Mr. McGuiNNESS. Yes; I believe they should be watched with vigilance continually. Mr. NixoN. And the reason you feel that they would have to be watched is that because they do follow the line which you have explained these writers, and directors as well, assuming that some of those would be involved, constitute a potential danger to the industry and to the country as well in that what they advocate and what they are working for would destroy the principles which you believe in and which most of us in America believe in ? Mr. McGuiNNESS. I believe that the only group in the United States organized for the purpose of exercising thought control is the Communist group and if they ever got control of the industry nothing would ever appear on the screen but their own conception of what was best for all of us. Mr. NixoN. So, if a motion picture does not, as far as the Communist writer or sympathizer is concerned, as we have put it before, distort the facts about America, or suppress the facts about communistic Russia, then is it not true that those people in Hollywood proceed to call such pictures or people who attempt to promote such pictures Fascists, un-American, and enemies of free speech — antiliberals? Mr. McGuiNNESS. They call us all that, and I could elaborate the list. Mr. Nixon. You mean you don't want to say anything that can't go over the air ? Mr. McGuiNNESS. That is right. Mr. Nixon. And so, in your opinion, the most violent opponents of a free screen in Hollywood, and of free speech, are the Communists and the Communist Party liners, because as far as they are concerned they oppose unequivocably telling the truth and the facts about Communist Russia, or anything that would in any way criticize communism in Russia, or any other totalitarian Communist country and