Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  The purposes of the congressional investigations were twofold. The avowed aim was to gather information necessary for effective legislation. The unstated purpose was to put or keep the elected investigators in the public eye. Members of Congress relished their role as guardians of the commonweal; it provided them a platform denied to nonincumbent rivals.

  Conduct of war was a favorite topic; every armed conflict produced at least one major investigation. Suspected subversion ran a close, related second, as it touched similar chords of anxiety. Fear of sedition inspired by the French Revolution had prompted a close look at foreign aliens in the 1790s; fear of Southern sympathizers exercised Congress during the Civil War. In some respects subversion made a better target for congressional investigators than the overt conduct of war. Challenging the conduct of war entailed taking on the president, a politically risky thing to do during wartime. This helped explain why various of the war investigations occurred after their wars were over. Unmasking subversives, by contrast, was politically safe. The subversives, if they actually existed, were marginal types with few defenders. Congress could wax wroth against them with little worry about political repercussions.

  The modern search for subversion began near the end of World War I, when the Senate Judiciary Committee created a special subcommittee to track down German influence in the United States. The defeat of Germany largely mooted that issue, but the committee found a new target: radical Russian Bolsheviks and their sympathizers. The findings of the committee contributed to the antiradical crackdown known to its critics as the red scare. The search for subversives continued when the House of Representatives in 1930 established a special committee to ferret out domestic communist influences, which appeared to be growing as millions of Americans considered alternatives to capitalism. A reconfigured committee was given a broadened mandate that brought fascism as well as communism into its purview, under the rubric of “un-American activities.”

  The House Committee on Un-American Activities, acronymed imprecisely but universally as HUAC, conducted its first hearings in 1938. Chairman Martin Dies of Texas tried to link the labor movement, in particular the CIO, and the New Deal to communism. The CIO deflected Dies’s assault, but the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project fell victim to the hostile investigators, partly because it was federally funded and therefore could be federally unfunded, and partly because the artistic and intellectual types involved in the theater project made easy political targets. They worked in words and ideas, which might be insidiously twisted to warp the minds of unsuspecting audiences.

  This point wasn’t lost on the members of Congress who took charge of HUAC after the war. Many Republicans and conservative Democrats had been silently incensed by America’s reliance on the Soviet Union in the victory over fascism; the necessity of backing the communists was what had kept them silent, but it didn’t make them happy. The end of the war freed them to speak their minds against the communists, and against Franklin Roosevelt, whom many despised, even after his death, almost as much as they hated the communists. They discovered that they could swipe both objects of their animus by attacking certain wartime films produced at the behest of the Roosevelt White House and designed to paint the Soviet Union as a worthy ally. Warner Brothers’ Mission to Moscow was exhibit A in the double indictment; other evidence included MGM’s Song of Russia and RKO’s North Star. The films had accomplished their wartime purpose of rendering American assistance to Russia politically palatable, but after the war they left the responsible studios and writers vulnerable to anticommunist criticism.

  The criticism was swift in coming and alarmist in tone. A confidential report produced for HUAC in 1945, and later leaked, asserted that Hollywood was infested with communists. “It is estimated that 514 writers in the motion picture industry either belong to the Communist Party or follow the party line to the letter,” the report asserted. “If the industry itself continues to do nothing about it, the great majority of the persons in the industry performing work of a creative nature will, within the not distant future, be either Communist Party members or close sympathizers following the party line. The industry will then be dependent upon this radical group for its output.” The charge of communist subversion became a powerful weapon against the Democrats in the 1946 congressional elections, and after the Republicans swept to victory in both houses, they swung into action against the communists, against the Truman administration, and against Hollywood.

  THE HOUSE COMMITTEE launched a new investigation in the spring of 1947. Members traveled to California to assess conditions on the ground in the alleged nest of the reds. Studio executives were asked about the influence exerted by the Roosevelt administration in the production of wartime movies. The hearings were closed to the public, but a HUAC subcommittee subsequently reported, “Some of the most flagrant Communist propaganda films were produced as a result of White House pressure.”

  The spring operation served as a prelude for a major autumn offensive. The committee called dozens of Hollywood producers, directors, writers, and actors to Washington to testify. This time the hearings were open to the public and the press; they were broadcast by radio and recorded by cameras for distribution as newsreels. The HUAC chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, Republican of New Jersey, dismissed criticism already raised that the hearings would undermine the Constitution and stifle free speech. The hearings were for informational purposes only, Thomas said. “Our committee’s job is to spotlight the Communists.” What private individuals and groups did with the information was up to them. “The movie industry and the American people will take care of the rest.” Thomas helpfully estimated that the number of “dues-paying Communists” in the United States was 100,000; these were supported by a roughly equal number who followed the party line without being members.

  An added benefit of investigating Hollywood became apparent as the hearings opened. The typical witness at an ordinary congressional hearing was someone most Americans had never heard of. But the film industry hearings involved some of the most famous people in the country. The press and radio treated the hearings with fanfare ordinarily reserved for Hollywood premieres. More than a hundred reporters crowded into the old House caucus room, where the hearings were held. They wedged themselves between and behind loudspeakers, radio microphones, and newsreel cameras. Klieg lights glared upon witnesses and questioners; smaller floodlights dangled from the chandeliers. Special police fought to control the throng of spectators that battled for the three hundred seats reserved to them. When big stars appeared to testify, the cops served as a flying wedge to open the way through the massed bodies.

  Chairman Thomas gaveled the hearings to order. “The committee is well aware of the magnitude of the subject which it is investigating,” he declared. “The motion-picture business represents an investment of billions of dollars. It represents employment for thousands of workers, ranging from unskilled laborers to high-salaried actors and executives. And even more important, the motion-picture industry represents what is probably the largest single vehicle of entertainment for the American public—over 85 million persons attend the movies each week.” It was precisely the importance of movies in American life that made oversight of the industry so necessary. “We all recognize, certainly, the tremendous effect which moving pictures have on their mass audiences, far removed from the Hollywood sets. We all recognize that what the citizen sees and hears in his neighborhood movie house carries a powerful impact on his thoughts and behavior. With such vast influence over the lives of American citizens as the motion-picture industry exerts, it is not unnatural—in fact it is very logical—that subversive and undemocratic forces should attempt to use this medium for un-American purposes.” Thomas took pains to assert his confidence in the loyalty of the great majority of men and women who worked in movies. But the danger posed by the minority was so dire as to make a thorough investigation of the industry imperative. “There is no question that there are communists in Hollywood. We cannot minimize their im
portance there, and that their influence has already made itself felt has been evidenced by internal turmoil in the industry.” But the full magnitude and pernicious nature of communist activities and influence remained to be determined. “The question before this committee, therefore, and the scope of its present inquiry, will be to determine the extent of communist infiltration in the Hollywood motion-picture industry.”

  The committee first called studio executives. Jack Warner yielded to no one in his loathing of communists and other subversives, which were a problem not for the movie business alone. “Ideological termites have burrowed into many American industries, organizations, and societies,” he said. “Wherever they may be, I say let us dig them out and get rid of them. My brothers and I will be happy to subscribe generously to a pest-removal fund. We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia the people who don’t like our American system of government and prefer the communistic system to ours.” In earlier testimony before the committee, in May, Warner had been asked to identify individuals in the movie industry he thought to be communists or associated with communists. That testimony had been kept secret, but it was now read back to Warner so he could publicly confirm his identifications. The committee, the spectators, and the radio audience listened as the names were read off: Alvah Bessie, Gordon Kahn, Guy Endore, Howard Koch, Ring Lardner Jr., Emmet Lavery, John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Robert Rosson, Irwin Shaw, Dalton Trumbo, John Wexley, Julius and Philip Epstein, Sheridan Gibney, Clifford Odets. When the reading of his testimony was completed, Warner was asked whether he stood by the identifications. “Yes, I do,” he said.

  Producer and director Sam Wood, who had directed Reagan in Kings Row, added names to Warner’s list: John Cromwell, Irving Pichel, Edward Dmytryk, Frank Tuttle. Wood wanted nothing to do with censorship of the movies. “I think you should tell all things in pictures. I think that if a story has a good point to it—I mean, Grapes of Wrath—things happen in America, and we ought to show it.” But the reds had put themselves beyond the pale of artistic acceptability. “I think communism is treason and should be treated as such.” Wood noted that many people, including some prominent men in the movie industry, did not want to see the Communist Party outlawed, if only because it would then go underground. He disagreed. “I think you have to awaken the public to the fact that they are here and what they are doing.” The reds masqueraded as friends of labor and the downtrodden. And anyone, especially in Hollywood, who called them out found himself labeled antilabor, anti-Semitic, anti-Negro. But their actions revealed their true identity. “If you wanted to drop their rompers you would find the hammer and sickle on their rear ends.”

  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.”

  AFTER 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.”

  REAGAN FOLLOWED MURPHY. 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?