Jurisdictional disputes in the motion-picture Industry : hearings before a special subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first-session, pursuant to H. Res. 111 (1948)

430 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES Mr. McCann. When you wrote the article entitled "Peace in Jail" wliich appeared in the June 20, 1947, edition of the Commonweal and in which you referred to Mr. Sorrell as possessing "certain of the qualities which to me are a reflection of genuine holiness,''' had you read and were you familiar with the contents of the following documents : (a) Report of subcommittee on law and order of the assembly committee on governmental efficiency and economy being a part of the assembly journal of February 18, 1!J4U, and being a report of such assembly committee on the violence and break-down of law and order in the 1945 strike? Father Dunne. Is this to identify the document ? Is this the Tenney report ? Mr. LuDDT. Don Field. Father Dunne. No, I am not familiar with the report. I am familiar with the incidents described in the report. I already made the comment about my view of violence. Mr. McCann. That portion of the Assembly Journal of the State of California dated February 19, 191:6, which contains a partial report of the Joint-Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, which report relates to certain signatures of one Herbert Sorrell and one Herb Stewart and the testimony of John L. Harris and Clark Sellers, handwriting experts, with respect to such signatures ? Father Dunne. Again I think that I must develop my answer. I am familiar Mr. McCann. Proceed with your answer. Father Dunne. This is the Tenney report, and I am entirely familiar with it and completely unconvinced by it. I am familiar with Mr. Tenney. I have had personal experiences with him. I place very little reliance upon the kind of a thing Mr. Tenney has done. I have come to know Mr. Sorrell quite intimately. I am completely convinced in my mind Mr. Sorrell is not a Communist. The evidence in this report lias been submitted to me and is entirely unconvincing, based upon the unsubstantiated kind of thing that you get from witnesses, who know nothing about their background. The particular document in question, that purports to have Mr. Sorrell's handwriting on it, I have seen similar things happen before, and the original has never been produced. I believe this document was supplied the committee by Mr. Koy Brewer, if I am not mistaken, who has a very definite interest in trying to smear the conference people as all Communists. I have talked to Mr. Sorrell about communism off the record. How do you get to know the people are not Communists ? From talking to them. How would I know Mr. McCann was not a Comunist? Talking to Mr. McCann and his philosophy of life, economic philosophy, comes out and I can see a man that believes in these things couldn't be a Communist because of the contradiction between this kind of thing and the communism philosophy. If there are handwriting experts, I mean experts to identify handwriting, I also know there are experts at faking handwriting. One may very well fool the other. Photostatic copy of a document, the original of which has never been produced, is not sufficient evidence to convince me against the background of everything I know about Mr. Sorrell that he is a Communist.