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)

2026 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES You will recall Mr. Sorrell testified that charges against him had been filed with the central labor council alleging that he was a Communist. This is a news report of his appearance before the central labor council. The date of the report is July 10, 1946, the Hollywood Sun. SoRREix Refutes "Commie" Charges Herb Sorrell dramatically took the central labor council floor in his own defense Monday night. By sincerity and danger in admitting and explaining leftist associations that had been counted on to damn him as Communist, observers felt Sorrell had turned the tide of opinion among the 300 AFL delegates at the fourth trial session. The plan to wind up the trial in one all-night session abruptly collapsed when the central labor council voted Sorrell more time to answer his accusers. Date was set for July 29. Worst blow to the lA camp was the certainty that lA prexy Dick Walsh had now lost his last chance to report as the crowning achievement of his regime, that Sorrell had been exposed as the Communist disrupter of Hollywood labor. Explaining that he stood up for men and principles regardless of political connection, Sorrell admitted protesting deportation moves against Harry Bridges and Communist William Schneiderman, and Browder's imprisonment, and pointed out proudly that men like Wendell Willkie and FDR had taken similar stands. Emphatically Sorrell denied any membership in the Communist Party and disavowed handwriting that the experts had claimed was his. Now an editorial from the People's World of March 4, 1948. That is of very recent vintage : The Case of Hekb Sobbell Herbert K. Sorrell was a militant trade-union leader once. Now he has lined up with the racketeers and the Red baiters in the labor movement, with the Jack Tenneys and the labor haters. Sorrell has filed charges against Frank Spector, a member of studio painters local 644, on the grounds of membership in the Communist Party. And he initiated thes'e expulsion proceedings the week after Spector was pilloried before the Tenney committee. The Red-baiting leaders of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees in Washington still call Sorrell a Communist at hearings of the Kearns House Labor Subcommittee. But Irving McCaun, the notorious free-swinging committee counsel, knows better. He defended Sorrell. We hope Sorrell gets whatever satisfaction he can out of his associations with the antilabor Kearns committee. Sorrell has been playing along for some time with the Kearns committee which includes among its members none other than Representative Fred Hartley of ill fame. At one time he went so far as to recommend to the committee that it bring forth ideas for labor legislation — although the kind of legislation it would recommend was only too clear. ThiS dalliance with the labor baiters was the inevitable outcome of Sorrell's break with progressives over the conduct of the studio lock-out. Progressives, while supporting the picket lines to the limit, felt that the best way to preserve democratic unionism in the studios was to get back on the job. They understood that the one thing the producers and their agents in the lATSE wanted was to get militant rank-and-file workers out of the studios. But Sorrell in rejecting this policy also rejected reliance on the rank and tile, and began to depend on maneuvers with the Kearns committee. Now lie has completed the circle with the attempted purge of Frank Spector. Maybe McCann and Kearns and Harley and Tenney will applaud. Maybe Sorrell will work out some top-level deal. But this policy won't build strong, democratic unionism. As Sorrell has said in the past. Red baiting always helps the employers, never the workers.