Reagan: The Life (13 page)

The meeting was rowdy, and Reagan became the object of vituperation. The leftists lashed him for opposing worker democracy and siding with the studios. Reagan presented his and the board’s position again, his voice rising and accelerating amid the excitement. “
Reagan spoke very fast,” observed
Alexander Knox, a character actor who had worked with Reagan but didn’t like his politics. “He always did, so that he could talk out of both sides of his mouth at once.”

The dissenters proved to be a small minority. A motion was offered that the assembled body should vote confidence in the board’s leadership. Under the circumstances this equated to opposition to the CSU strike. The motion passed by an overwhelming majority of those present, who evidently agreed with Reagan that working and collecting paychecks outweighed whatever arguments the CSU made for its vision of worker representation.

The studio chiefs were no less pleased with Reagan’s performance. “
Ronnie Reagan has turned out to be a tower of strength, not only for the actors but for the whole industry,”
Jack Warner told his son.

The strike went on for months, but without the support of the actors it weakened. The strikers wandered back to their jobs and then out of the union, which expired for lack of interest. Reagan was happy for the part he had played in killing it. The SAG board seemed equally happy, for in March 1947 it made him the guild president.

The dissidents despised him more than ever. “
Eddie Arnold and I were crossing an intersection one night on our way to a board meeting,” Reagan wrote later. “Coming toward us were two actors we both knew. My smile was already forming and I had just started to greet them when one of the two thrust his face close to mine, his eyes burning with hatred. ‘Fascist!’ he hissed, literally spitting the word at me.”

A
LESSER CLAUSE OF
the
Taft-Hartley Act required union officers to affirm that they were not communists. This provision was comparatively uncontroversial, in that the big
unions were as eager to rid themselves of communists as conservatives and Republicans were to see the communists rid. But the consequences of the provision, and the mind-set it manifested, contributed to one of the most controversial chapters of modern American history, a chapter in which Reagan played a crucial part.

Congress had been conducting investigations since the eighteenth century. The first congressional investigation probed the 1791 defeat by Indians in Ohio of an army force under General
Arthur St. Clair. Congress investigated
Abraham Lincoln’s conduct of the Civil War. It investigated corruption in the construction of the transcontinental railroad. It investigated the financial power of
J. P. Morgan in the early twentieth century. It retrospectively investigated the “merchants of death” who were said to have manipulated America into World War I and battened on the profits therefrom.

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
un
funded, 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.

T
HE
H
OUSE 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 importance 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.”