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550 MOTION PICTURES I922-I945
used to defeat an anti-closed-shop amendment about to appear on the California ballot, an amendment for which De Mille intended to vote. Few demands for a dollar have ever stirred up such strong reactions. Mr. De Mille saw that noon— and increasing numbers of people see today— two vital questions involved: first, the right of a labor union to dictate the political thinking of its members; and second, the "right to work."
As De Mille said to his wife the night before the deadline for paying: "I believe in unions, but this assessment is the destruction of a man's right to work. It is a disastrous thing. Tomorrow I must pay— or else." The "or else" was the giving up of $125,000 a year, and all that went with it, as director of one of the most popular programs on the air. "You have no choice," said Mrs. De Mille without hesitation. "If you pay that dollar you will know positively that you put money above principle." De Mille sat down and wrote a formal letter to AFRA, declaring he would not pay the assessment. He was suspended in December of 1944 and has been off the air ever since.
It was as a direct result of this "incident" that Cecil B. De Mille became the national leader of a movement urging "right-to-work" legislation on Congress. With the help of public contributions, he established the De Mille Foundation for Political Freedom, to promote thinking and action in this direction.
He took his own case to the California courts, seeking, as he said, a decision as to "whether the constitution of a union supersedes the Constitution of the United States." Two lower courts have ruled— quite wrongly, I think— that the union had the right to make the assessment, including the penalty of suspension for non-payment. It seems to me that a voluntary contribution to a union fund from those who believe in its objective is one thing, but that wielding the power of professional life or death to enforce the political "party line" of the union's officers is wrong. With my Hoosier political traditions, it looks to me like a confession that the union's case, in such an instance, is not good enough to be left to the judgment and conscience of the members but must be enforced at the sword's point of financial loss.
From another point of view, according to a more recent news story sent out from Hollywood by John M. Carlisle for the North American Newspaper Alliance, there seems to be a similarity between the union's attitude in this case and that of some federal bureaus discussed in the Hoover report. Mr. Carlisle writes:
Now, Claude L. McCue, executive secretary of A.F.R.A., says that "I believe De Mille was sincere on principle."
I wish we could have avoided this. He had a principle and wre had a