Reagan: The Life (14 page)

Louis B. Mayer thanked the committee for its outstanding work and volunteered to do his part. “
Communism is so completely opposed to the principles of democratic government that I welcome the opportunity provided by this committee to be of any service possible to bring out the true facts concerning reported infiltration of un-American ideology into motion pictures,” Mayer said. Yet he thought the facts would reveal that the industry was doing a good job on its own keeping the subversives at bay. “I am proud of the motion-picture industry, proud of its record in war and peace. With press and radio, it shares today a solemn trust: to preserve our sacred freedom of speech and fight with our every energy any attempt to use that freedom as a cloak for subversive assassins of liberty.” Mayer declared that he and others in the industry had maintained a “relentless vigilance” against subversive influences. “If, as has been alleged, communists have attempted to use the screen for subversive purposes, I am proud of our success in circumventing them.”

The executives walked a thin line. They didn’t want Congress to dictate content for their films, but neither did they wish to be seen as obstructing an investigation that appeared to be popular with Americans at large—that is, with the people they hoped to continue to bring into the movie theaters. Warner, Mayer, and the others were no less sensitive, in their profit-seeking way, to the public psychology of the moment than Thomas and the elected officials on the committee were from a political standpoint. A boycott, organized or informal, of the films of a studio seen as soft on communism could be fatal to the bottom line. Warner and Mayer had special reason for avowing their anticommunist bona fides, having been responsible for two of the wartime films—
Mission to Moscow
and
Song of Russia
—now lambasted as communist propaganda.

A final consideration was unspoken but never absent from the executives’ thinking. They remained vulnerable to the charges of oligopoly in their control of the theaters that distributed their films. The system reeked of restraint of trade, and the victims of the oligopoly were again petitioning Congress to break up the studio system. Warner, Mayer, and the other executives wished to avoid anything that upset the legislators.

Chairman Thomas evinced pleasure at the start of the hearings. “
You really lay it on the line,” he told
Sam Wood. “If the great, great majority of persons in industry, labor, and education showed the same amount of courage that you show, we would not have to worry about communism or fascism in this country. In other words, you’ve got guts.”

A
FTER THREE DAYS
with the producers and executives, the committee brought out the stars.
Robert Taylor told the committee that in his work with the Screen Actors Guild he had often detected communist influences. “
At meetings, especially meetings of the general membership of the guild, there is always a certain group of actors and actresses whose every action would indicate to me that if they are not communists they are working very hard to be communists,” Taylor said. He thought the studios should take decisive action against the reds. “If I were given the responsibility of getting rid of them I would love nothing better than to fire every last one of them and never let them work in a studio or in Hollywood again.” Congress had a role as well. Taylor said he thought the Communist Party should be outlawed and its members banished. “If I had my way about it they would all be sent back to Russia or some other unpleasant place.”

Robert Montgomery asserted that communists and other subversives were a small minority in Hollywood. But they were dangerous nonetheless. “
They are well organized, they are well disciplined,” he said. “They appear at public meetings tremendously well organized and with a complete program.” Montgomery was willing to support whatever steps were necessary, including war, to defeat the ideology the communists stood for. “Mr. Chairman, in common with millions of other men in this country in 1939 and 1940, I gave up my job to fight against a totalitarianism which was called fascism. I am quite willing to give it up again to fight against a totalitarianism called communism.”

George Murphy agreed that American communists were agents of the Soviet Union, and he believed they had infiltrated Hollywood, but not Hollywood uniquely. “
I think there is communism in the motion-picture industry, as there is in practically every other industry in our nation today,” Murphy said. He joined Jack Warner in contending that Hollywood was holding its own against the reds. “I think that the screen has been very successful in keeping any attempts to propagandize off the screen.”

R
EAGAN FOLLOWED
M
URPHY
. The lead investigator for the committee,
Robert Stripling, inquired about Reagan’s background in films. Reagan replied that he had been in the movie business since June 1937—“
with a brief interlude of three and a half years,” he added nonchalantly.

What period was that? Stripling asked.

“That was during the late war,” Reagan replied. The committee members and many in the audience nodded approvingly.

Was Mr. Reagan a member of the Screen Actors Guild? If so, how long had he been a member?

“Since June 1937.”

He was president of the guild, was he not?

“Yes, sir.”

Had he held any other positions?

“Yes, sir. Just prior to the war I was a member of the board of directors, and just after the war, prior to my being elected president, I was a member of the board of directors.”

Stripling posed his first substantive question: “As a member of the board of directors, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and as an active member, have you at any time observed or noted within the organization a clique of either communists or fascists who were attempting to exert influence or pressure on the guild?”

Reagan had expected the question, which was essentially that asked of each previous witness. He answered forthrightly: “There has been a small group within the Screen Actors Guild which has consistently opposed the policy of the guild board and officers of the guild, as evidenced by the vote on various issues. That small clique referred to has been suspected of more or less following the tactics that we associate with the Communist Party.”

Had this clique been a disruptive influence within the guild?

“At times they have attempted to be a disruptive influence.”

Did Mr. Reagan know whether they were members of the Communist Party?

“I have no investigative force, or anything, and I do not know.”

Had he ever heard that they were members of the Communist Party?

“I have heard different discussions and some of them tagged as communists.”

Had they attempted to dominate the guild?

Yes, they had, Reagan said. But like the studio executives, he thought Hollywood could police itself. “I guess in regard to that you would have to say that our side was attempting to dominate, too, because we were
fighting just as hard to put over our views.” And his side was winning. “An average of 90 percent or better of the Screen Actors Guild voted in favor of those matters now guild policy.”

Previous witnesses had testified that communist-front organizations had been established in Hollywood. Had Mr. Reagan ever been solicited by these?

“Well, sir, I have received literature from an organization called the
Committee for a Far-Eastern Democratic Policy. I don’t know whether it is communist or not. I only know that I didn’t like their views and as a result I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.”

Had he ever been asked to contribute to the
Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee?

“I was never solicited to do that, but I found myself misled into being a sponsor on another occasion for a function that was held under the auspices of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee.”

Could he explain?

“I was called several weeks ago. There happened at the time in Hollywood to be a financial drive on to raise money to build a badly needed hospital in a certain section of town, called the
All Nations Hospital. I think the purpose of the building is so obvious by the title that it has the support of most of the people of Hollywood—or, of Los Angeles, I should say. Certainly of most of the doctors, because it is very badly needed. Some time ago I was called to the telephone. A woman introduced herself by name. Knowing that I didn’t know her I didn’t make any particular note of her name and I couldn’t give it now. She told me that there would be a recital held at which Paul Robeson would sing and she said that all the money for the tickets would go to the hospital, and asked if she could use my name as one of the sponsors. I hesitated for a moment, because I don’t think that Mr. Robeson’s and my political views coincide at all; and then I thought I was being a little stupid because, I thought, here is an occasion where Mr. Robeson is perhaps appearing as an artist, and certainly the object, raising money, is above any political consideration: it is a hospital supported by everyone. I have contributed money myself. So I felt a little bit as if I had been stuffy for a minute, and I said, certainly, you can use my name. I left town for a couple of weeks and when I returned I was handed a newspaper story that said that this recital was held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles under the auspices of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee.” Leftist politics had dominated the event. “I did not in the newspaper story see one word about the hospital. I called the news
paper and said I am not accustomed to writing to editors but would like to explain my position, and he laughed and said, ‘You needn’t bother, you are about the fiftieth person that has called with the same idea, including most of the legitimate doctors who had also been listed as sponsors of that affair.’ ”

Did he find this to be typical of the tactics of the communists?

“I think it is in keeping with their tactics—yes, sir.”

Mr. Reagan was a leading figure in the film industry, Stripling said. What was his judgment about appropriate steps to rid the industry of communist influence?

Reagan reiterated that the industry could handle its own affairs. “Ninety-nine percent of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think within the bounds of our democratic rights and never once stepping over the rights given us by democracy, we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people’s activities curtailed. After all, we must recognize them at present as a political party. On that basis we have exposed their lies when we came across them, we have opposed their propaganda, and I can certainly testify that in the case of the Screen Actors Guild we have been eminently successful in preventing them from, with their usual tactics, trying to run a majority of an organization with a well organized minority. So that fundamentally I would say in opposing those people that the best thing to do is make democracy work. In the Screen Actors Guild we make it work by insuring everyone a vote and by keeping everyone informed. I believe that, as
Thomas Jefferson put it, if all the American people know all of the facts they will never make a mistake. Whether the party should be outlawed, I agree with the gentlemen that preceded me that that is a matter for the government to decide. As a citizen I would hesitate, or not like to see, any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. We have spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight against the inroads of any ideology. However, if it is proven that an organization is an agent of a power, a foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party—and I think the government is capable of proving that, if the proof is there—then that is another matter.” Meanwhile, Hollywood would deal with the challenge. “I happen to be very proud of the industry in which I work; I happen to be very proud of the way in which we conducted the fight. I do not believe the communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion-picture screen as a sounding board for their philosophy or ideology. I think that will continue as long as the
people in Hollywood continue as they are, which is alert, conscious of it, and fighting.”

Reagan was asked whether he knew of communist infiltration of the Screen Writers Guild, as opposed to his own Screen Actors Guild.

“I must say that that is hearsay,” he responded. “I have heard discussions concerning it.” But he offered nothing specific and no names.

Chairman Thomas tendered the committee’s thanks to Reagan for appearing. Picking up on the witness’s mention of
Thomas Jefferson and the self-correcting power of democracy, he predicted, “Once the American people are acquainted with the facts there is no question but what the American people will do a job, the kind of job that they want done, that is, to make America just as pure as we can possibly make it.”

“Sir,” Reagan interjected, “if I might, in regard to that, say that what I was trying to express, and didn’t do very well, was also this other fear. I detest, I abhor their philosophy, but I detest more than that their tactics, which are those of the fifth column, and are dishonest, but at the same time I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.”

“We agree with that,” Chairman Thomas said. “Thank you very much.”

T
HE SESSION WAS
unlike anything Reagan had ever experienced. Such an openly political stage, with a national audience, was new to him. He realized he liked it. And he was good at it. He was quick on his feet. He could feel the room and sense its mood. The camera had always been kind to him, and he knew how to flatter it back. He struck just the right balance between cooperation with the investigation and defense of his industry.

Reagan’s reviewers thought so. The movie press emphasized his earnest and determined appearance. Regular papers liked his appeal to Jefferson and the principles of democracy. Most looked forward to seeing more of this articulate, photogenic spokesman for the actors.