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The 1941 Senate Investigation into Hollywood by J E Moser


http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2082/4_63/77557517/p1/article.jhtml




"GIGANTIC ENGINES OF PROPAGANDA": THE 1941 SENATE INVESTIGATION OF HOLLYWOOD.
Historian, Summer, 2001, by John E. Moser

Throughout most of the 1930s, Hollywood studios showed a remarkable reluctance to produce films about the political situation in Europe, especially Adolf Hitler's rise to power. As the political pendulum in the United States swung toward support of those nations opposing Hitler, however, the mood of many motion pictures also changed. Starting with the release of Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939, Hollywood studios increasingly began to produce films dealing with Nazi Germany and the European war. These films, including (among others) The Mortal Storm (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Great Dictator (1940), and A Yank in the RAF (1941), were overtly anti-German and pro-British in tone and substance.(1)

Such a partisan interventionist posture alarmed those in Congress who opposed U.S. involvement in European affairs, and in 1941 Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-Montana), chair of the Interstate Commerce Committee, appointed a five-person subcommittee to investigate alleged war propaganda in Hollywood films. According to Wheeler and his allies, the eight largest motion picture companies were taking advantage of their access to the American people to promote involvement in a war that was none of America's concern. Over the course of several weeks the subcommittee heard the testimony of such film giants as Daryl F. Zanuck and Harry Warner before reaching an inconclusive end in late September.

While relatively few historians have written about the investigation, those who have tend to take a dim view of the whole affair. Historians of the film industry have portrayed it as an anti-Semitic "witch hunt" "a sorry example of congressional dimwittedness."(2) On the other hand, U.S. diplomatic historians have treated it as a desperate act by an anti-interventionist movement that was rapidly losing its momentum.(3) While these interpretations are not wrong, this paper will argue that they are incomplete. The Hollywood investigations, I contend, fall well within a tradition of American progressivism that resisted the increasing corporatization of society.

Several authors, including David A. Horowitz, Christopher Lasch, and Catherine McNicol Stock, have shown how the spirit of "insurgent progressivism" to use Horowitz's term, has run through American politics since the age of William Jennings Bryan, perhaps even going back to the republicanism of Thomas Jefferson. Strongest among the small farmers and businessmen of the Middle and Far West, this strand of progressivism embraced a "producer" ethic that emphasized masculinity and independence. It was an expression of those who saw their way of life being overturned by an increasingly corporate culture created by forces far away and beyond their control. Specifically, it represented a defense of a Jeffersonian ideal of the agrarian republic against the growing threat of big business and big government.(4)

While earlier historians tended to view these insurgents as liberals, Horowitz has demonstrated the inadequacy of this term in dealing with such individuals as William E. Borah (R-Idaho) and Burton K. Wheeler. While their critique of corporate society appeared highly progressive during the period 1900-1930, their ideology was easily cast as reactionary when they resisted the centralizing and bureaucratizing tendencies of the New Deal, and isolationist when they fought the globalist foreign policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successors. The same reformist impulses that drove progressive crusaders to demand regulation of the motion picture industry in the 1920s impelled their intellectual heirs to investigate communist influence in Hollywood in the late 1940s.

The 1941 Senate investigation, although it admittedly had little impact on the film industry, is vital to an understanding of how insurgent progressivism moved from anticorporatism to anticommunism. On the surface it is difficult to see any connection between the reform movement of the 1920s and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation the late 1940s. After all, the former charged Hollywood executives with putting profits ahead of public morality, while the latter focused on screenwriters and actors whose left-wing sympathies called their patriotism into question. The Senate hearings of 1941 provide the "missing link," for they combined important aspects of the two. In the 1920s and 1930s the villains were"corrupt trusts"; in the late 1940s they were"subversives" and "foreign agents." In 1941 they were both.

Americans quickly recognized the enormous potential of movies to shape public morals and opinion. Several historians of film have noted that the progressive movement and the motion picture industry grew up side by side, and in fact the first calls for regulation came from progressive reformers. The first nationwide pressure group for control of motion pictures, the National Board of Censorship, was set up in 1909 under the auspices of the People's Institute, a reform organization that had worked for such progressive causes as direct primaries, municipal ownership of utilities, labor legislation, and women's suffrage.(5)

Supporters of censorship frequently invoked such progressive-era legislation as the Pure Food and Drug Act or the Meat Inspection Act, maintaining that "indecent" films were no less harmful to society than patent medicines or tainted meat. "We have a State Board of Health to protect our communities from physical pestilence," one reformer argued. "Let us have state boards of moving-picture censors to protect us from the moral pestilence which lurks in the attractive, seductive motion-pictures." By the early 1920s bills to censor the movies were pending in 32 states, and similar bills had been proposed in Congress.(6)

One consequence of this movement was the establishment of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association, headed by Indiana Republican (as well as prohibitionist and Presbyterian elder) William H. Hays. In addition to instituting background checks on performers, Hays created a list of "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" which prohibited, among other things, any nudity, kisses lasting longer than seven feet of film, sympathetic portrayal of criminal acts, and "all low, disgusting, unpleasant though not necessarily evil subjects." This list, which set standards for moral purity in Hollywood films, eventually evolved into the famous Motion Picture Production Code of 1930.(7)

But the MPPDA, better known as the Hays Office, could not confront the issue that worried progressives most--the amount of control over the industry exercised by a small number of major studios. By the 1920s eight corporations accounted for 90 percent of the roughly 800 motion pictures produced annually in the United States. Moreover, thanks to the common industry tactics of block booking and blind selling, the studios essentially dictated what was shown in theaters nationwide. The former required independent theater owners to rent large numbers of films from a particular studio, whether they wanted all of them or not; the latter forced them to make these decisions without having first viewed the films. Progressives objected to the tremendous amount of power these practices gave to the studios, which one independent operator called "the most corrupt trusts ever known."(8)

The fight against block booking and blind selling was closely connected to progressive concerns about the morality of film content. Sidney Cohen, the founding president of the Motion Picture Theater Owners of America, called the content of Hollywood movies "a sin against the common decency of the American people."(9) Independent exhibitors argued that if they were allowed to choose their films, they would make their decisions based on the values and standards of their communities. Reformers tended to agree. "With an open market restored to America" one group claimed, "the local exhibitor will have no excuse for exploiting motion pictures in defiance of the wishes of his community and his patrons."(10)

Beginning in the late 1920s and continuing through the 1930s, then, the move to regulate industry trade practices gradually eclipsed the earlier drive for movie censorship, which was politically unpopular. Catheryne Cooke Gilman, a child welfare advocate who became president of the Federal Motion Picture Council in 1929, wrote that "[t]he character of the film is so dependent upon the trade practices that it is necessary for us to consider them.(11) Progressive organizations that had previously embraced censorship now endorsed the prohibition on block booking as a first step toward improving the moral standards of films. Regulation was also warmly endorsed by the editors of Christian Century, a favorite journal among Protestant reformers. An end to block booking, they wrote, would "make motion pictures a permanent and constructive force in American culture."(12)

By the mid-1930s the call for reform was impossible to ignore. In 1935 representatives from three of the leading studios were indicted by a federal grand jury in St. Louis for conspiracy to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Four years later the Senate held hearings to investigate the industry's trade practices--hearings in which representatives of 29 civic and educational organizations testified to the connection between the "movie trust" and indecent films. A bill to prohibit block booking and blind selling introduced by Matthew Neely (D-West Virginia) passed the Senate later in late 1939, although Will Hays managed to persuade Neely to withdraw the bill before it reached the House. Finally, in 1940 the industry narrowly escaped an antitrust suit fried by independent producers and theater owners. It was only through the intervention of the White House (probably at the insistence of commerce secretary and Roosevelt confidante Harry Hopkins, a personal friend of the Warner brothers), that the case was settled by consent decree in August of that year.(13) Under the terms of this settlement, the Justice Department agreed to drop the antitrust suit in exchange for a pledge by the studios that they would amend their block booking practices by limiting the blocks to no more than five films.

By the time the consent decree was signed, most domestic political issues were being eclipsed by events in Europe, where Nazi Germany appeared triumphant on all fronts. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, and France had fallen, leaving Great Britain the only great power standing between Hitler and European domination. The Roosevelt administration, although it remained formally committed to neutrality, favored an escalating program of aid to Great Britain. The keystone of this policy was lend-lease, a program by which military hardware and other items deemed essential for the war effort would be transferred directly to the British. Critics charged that this was an act of war, and indeed that it was calculated to provoke a declaration of war by Germany; nevertheless, the bill passed in March 1941.(14)

Although the anti-interventionists represented a broad coalition of forces, the progressive insurgents were among the most vocal in their opposition to FDR's foreign policy. They had lived through one instance of American involvement in a European war--in 1917-18--and they had come to the conclusion that it had been a grave mistake. That war, they argued, had led to depression at home and had ultimately served no vital American interest. Both morality and prudence dictated that the United States avoid being drawn into this war at any cost.(15)

Until 1940, however, anti-interventionists had little reason to target Hollywood, as motion picture producers were generally careful not to alienate their German market. By the 1920s Hollywood had stopped portraying Germans as villainous characters, as they had during World War I and in the immediate postwar years. In addition to avoiding controversial subject matter, American producers also complied with certain Nazi regulations, such as dismissing their "non-Aryan" employees in Germany in 1933. Only Warner Bros. refused, choosing instead to close its German operations.(16)

Even if the studios had been inclined to take a stand against Nazism, higher authorities within the industry would have objected. The Production Code Administration, established in 1934 as the regulatory arm of the MPPDA, attacked any tendency "to depart from the pleasant and profitable course of entertainment [in order] to engage in propaganda."(17) Although PCA chairman Joseph Breen favored "patriotic" films that promoted the military, he was deeply suspicious that Jews in Hollywood would use motion pictures to generate hatred toward Germany and Italy. He therefore consistently blocked subject matter that might give offense to Berlin and Rome, beginning with a personal intervention in 1934 to stop production of an anti-Hitler film entitled The Mad Dog of Europe. Indeed, it was only with considerable difficulty that Confessions of a Nazi Spy ever found its way into production.(18)

Starting in 1936, Hitler began to place severe limits on the release of American films in Germany. Despite most American producers' efforts to placate the Nazi regime, only 30 Hollywood movies were shown in German theaters in that year, and by 1939 the entire Central European market had virtually disappeared. In January 1940 Will Hays lifted a ban on anti-Nazi films that he had imposed in the wake of Confessions of a Nazi Spy, and the studios immediately began to produce motion pictures openly critical of Nazism. Within a few months, the Motion Picture Herald announced an "all-out production schedule of pictures dealing with World War II, national defense preparations of the United States, sabotage and espionage." All in all, the journal reported, 46 pictures and five serials on these subjects were ready to go into production.(19)

Among those who noted and decried this trend was John T. Flynn. A former editor of the New Republic, Flynn, like most progressive insurgents, had turned against Roosevelt in the mid-1930s, attacking the New Deal as a fraud. Roosevelt, he argued, posed as a liberal, but New Deal policies actually had the effect of increasing the concentration of economic power in corporate hands.(20)

Flynn's opposition to war grew directly from his animosity toward the "money power" World War I, he argued, had reversed all of President Woodrow Wilson's social reforms, as "all of the `malefactors of great wealth' flocked to the capital to become patriots."(21) By 1941 he was a leading figure in the anti-interventionist movement, chairman of the New York City chapter of the strongly noninterventionist America First Committee (AFC). But as the noninterventionist forces lost battle after battle in Congress in 1941 and public opinion polls continued to show increasing support for all-out aid to Great Britain, Flynn became convinced that a conspiracy existed to promote the British cause in America and to discredit those who sought to avoid European entanglements.(22)

Though he remained unclear as to who or what lay at the heart of the conspiracy (the British Secret Service? the Roosevelt administration? both?), Flynn was certain of Hollywood's involvement. Having supported the Justice Department's antitrust suit against motion picture producers, he dismissed the 1940 consent decree as "meaningless," concluding that the suit had been dropped in exchange for an agreement by the studios to produce films that would promote the administration's foreign policy. "There is plenty of evidence of collaboration between the film magnates and the government to whip up [war] hysteria," Flynn wrote.(23)

Certainly industry behavior since the signing of the consent decree seemed to support Flynn's suspicions. Not only had there been a series of films promoting a martial spirit among Americans, but a number of prominent movie stars, including Melvyn Douglas, Errol Flynn, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., frequently went on the radio to advocate intervention. By contrast, only one prominent actor--the silent film star Lillian Gish--publicly supported the America First Committee. The executive secretary of that group's Southern California chapter complained that studio intimidation stifled anti-interventionist support, even though "several leading actors" were known to be "very much on our side of the fence."(24)

In July 1941, therefore, Flynn recommended that the America First Committee "take a more aggressive stand" by"making an attack on the various kinds of propaganda designed to get us into the war" and secured funding to conduct a personal investigation of propaganda in Hollywood films.(25) Over the next three weeks he claimed to have produced "results quicker and larger" than even he had expected, and by early August he was able to make a full report of his findings to Burton Wheeler and his allies in the Senate.(26)

The opening Congressional salvo against alleged Hollywood war propaganda came from Senator Gerald P. Nye (R-North Dakota). Perhaps the Senate's most vehement anti-interventionist, Nye had a reputation for agrarian radicalism and passionate dislike of major corporations. Nye's views on foreign policy flowed logically from his agrarian beliefs. His first speech in the Senate was a denunciation of the World Court, which he claimed was controlled by international financiers. But Nye also had a history of concern about the American media. In 1929 he introduced legislation to establish a series of government-owned radio stations that would guarantee equal airtime to all political parties. Five years later he called for a federal motion picture commission to inspect and classify films on the basis of their content.(27)

On 1 August Nye delivered a radio address (largely written by Flynn) in which he accused the major studios of serving as "gigantic engines of propaganda" designed "to influence public sentiment in the direction of participation by the United States in the present European war." In a fashion typical of the insurgent progressives, he claimed that the studios relied for their profit margin on the income derived from the British market and therefore had "a stake of millions of dollars annually in Britain winning this war." If Germany were to win the war, "seven of the eight leading companies will be wiped out."(28)

Nye also noted the cozy relationship between the studios and the Roosevelt administration, claiming that "there are Government men on every moving-picture lot" to see that films carried prowar messages. He suggested that the administration was trying to turn the motion picture industry "into the same kind of propaganda agencies that the German, Italian, and Russian film industries have become." Moreover, he argued, the ethnicity of many in the industry inclined them toward pro-intervention movies. Hollywood, Nye said, "swarms with refugees ... [and] British actors [as well as] directors ... from Russia, Hungary, Germany, and the Balkan countries" who were "susceptible to ... national and racial emotions." While Nye admitted that their animosity toward Germany was understandable, in using the power of the cinema to spread "the virus of war" he claimed, they were putting their own feelings ahead of the national interest.(29)

That same day Nye and Bennett Champ Clark (D-Missouri) introduced a resolution on the Senate floor authorizing "an investigation of war propaganda disseminated by the motion picture industry and of any monopoly in the production, distribution, or exhibition of motion pictures."(30) Like Nye's radio address, it was largely drafted by Flynn. Noting that an earlier resolution to investigate propaganda had stalled in committee, the AFC leader decided that the best strategy was to draft legislation directed not against foreign propaganda as a whole, but rather targeting the film and radio industries in particular. This meant that it would fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee, which was chaired by the reliably anti-interventionist Burton Wheeler.(31)

Wheeler, too, had a history of animosity toward big business. As a young lawyer in Montana he often fought the powerful Anaconda Copper Mining Company, becoming known as the only litigator in the state willing to defend labor leaders--even members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World--against the interests of "the Company" In 1924 he was Robert La Follette's running mate on the National Independent Progressive Party ticket, and in 1930 he was the first prominent Democrat to endorse Franklin Roosevelt for president. Over the next ten years, however, foreign policy and other issues turned Wheeler and Roosevelt into bitter enemies, leading the senator to endorse the Socialist Party candidacy of Norman Thomas in 1940.(32)

Also like Nye, Wheeler had an axe to grind against Hollywood. Two years earlier he had been instrumental in bringing the Neely anti-block booking bill to the floor of the Senate. Later, during the congressional battle over lend-lease, he complained to Will Hays about the one-sided portrayal of the debate in the newsreels. "Will you kindly inform me when, if at all, you intend to carry my answer to the President's most recent fireside chat?" he wrote. "And what, if anything, you are going to do about carrying both sides of the controversy on pending legislation which directly involves the question of war or peace?" He went on to suggest ominously that the motion picture industry was so biased toward intervention that legislation might be necessary to ensure "a more impartial attitude."(33)

The Nye-Clark resolution called for a full-scale investigation by the Interstate Commerce Committee. Wheeler recognized, however, that given the degree of interventionist support in the Senate, such an investigation was unlikely. He therefore opted to form a subcommittee charged with conducting "preliminary hearings" in order to determine if grounds existed for the sort of investigation called for under the resolution. Wheeler named Idaho Democrat D. Worth Clark chair of the subcommittee, which was also to include Washington Democrat Homer T. Bone (who, due to illness, never participated), Ernest McFarland (D-Arizona), C. Wayland Brooks (R-Illinois), and Charles W. Tobey (R-New Hampshire). All but McFarland had established reputations as critics of Roosevelt's foreign policy, so from the beginning the deck was stacked against the movie industry. The subcommittee announced its intent to begin its investigation immediately and promptly served subpoenas to representatives of the major studios.(34)

In Hollywood, meanwhile, there was some initial confusion among the major motion picture companies as to the best defense to be offered against the charges. Will Hays initially stepped forward to deny that filmmakers were trying to influence public opinion on the war issue. After all, he explained, 92.7 percent of all the feature-length films released since the outbreak of World War II were completely unrelated to the war. Regarding the others, Hays counseled the industry to deny that the movies were anything more than "pure entertainment."(35)

Hays's approach seemed far too passive to Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century-Fox, so he consulted his friend Ulric Bell, executive director of the pro-interventionist organization Fight for Freedom, for advice on how to proceed. Bell advised Zanuck to stand firm, warning that "it would be a mistake to pull your punches in any manner whatsoever," The best approach was "to handle it with bare knuckles, to blast the committee from the very start as a pack of Nazi smear artists"(36) To argue that Hollywood films were merely for entertainment purposes was unnecessary; after all, was it not the industry's patriotic duty to help forge national unity during a time of crisis? It was time, as Zanuck subsequently put it, for Hollywood's producers to "proclaim [that] they are doing everything they know how to make America conscious of the national peril"(37)

Given such a strategy, who could best represent the industry? Bell ruled out Hays altogether; indeed, he insisted that Hays not be allowed to make any statement on the hearings unless he was provided with an "iron-clad" script from which to speak. The man for the job, Bell insisted, was the 1940 Republican nominee for president, Wendell L. Willkie.(38) Interestingly, the Roosevelt administration seems also to have been involved in the industry's choice of legal counsel. In a written record of a conversation between Bell and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Bell noted that "Mr. Knox approves of Willkie being spokesman."(39)

Despite Willkie's high price--reportedly $100,000 in legal fees he was a logical choice. As a recent presidential candidate (this would be his first case upon return to active law practice), Willkie already had a high national profile, and since the election he had been campaigning actively for aid to Great Britain; indeed, he had already impressed Darryl Zanuck in July when he spoke at a major pro-interventionist fundraiser at the Hollywood Bowl. At the same time, his stature within the Republican Party kept him from being viewed as a shill for the Roosevelt administration.(40)

Willkie wasted no time in showing his opponents that he meant business. The day before the hearings opened he sent subcommittee chairman D. Worth Clark a nine-page statement denying any need for an investigation. The motion picture industry, he wrote, was "proud to admit that we have done everything possible to inform the public of the progress of our national defense program." By holding hearings on--and presumably attempting to regulate--alleged war propaganda, the subcommittee was heading down a slippery slope toward dictatorship:


From the motion picture and radio industry, it is just a small step to the
newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. And from the freedom of the
press, it is just a small step to the freedom of the individual to say what
he believes.


Moreover, Willkie argued, the subcommittee had no legal authority to subpoena witnesses, as the resolution had not passed the Senate. Nevertheless, since "the inference will be then drawn that he who refuses to testify has something to hide" his clients would appear--although they would do so under protest.(41)

It was, therefore, in a highly charged atmosphere that the hearings commenced on 9 September. Three witnesses testified for the prosecution: the two sponsors of the resolution, Gerald Nye and Bennett Champ Clark, plus John Flynn. They maintained that war propaganda films, by presenting a one-sided account of the European war, posed a serious threat to the American public. One found such propaganda in many media, especially in the newspapers, but propaganda in films was far more dangerous. As Nye put it, in a darkened theater "Mr. or Mrs. or Miss America sits, with guard completely down, mind open, ready and eager for entertainment"(42) Flynn agreed; audience members went to the movies anticipating an enjoyable evening watching their favorite actors and actresses, but "after a while, when he is well softened up, they go to work on him with the propaganda"(43)

What made movie propaganda particularly dangerous, the prosecution argued, was the domination of the industry by the "big eight" studios. These corporations had access to special equipment that allowed them to produce films at lower costs. They also had nearly all of the stars in Hollywood on contract, so that independent producers had no access to the top talent. Finally, despite the efforts of earlier reformers, the top eight firms continued to control distribution. All told, it was virtually impossible to put a motion picture before the American public without their consent.(44)

As a result, Clark testified, "dozens of pictures are used to infect the minds of their audiences with hatred, to inflame them, to arouse their emotions, and make them clamor for war. And not one word ... of the argument against war is heard." The reason? The handful of men in control of the film industry "are themselves dominated by these hatreds, and are determined, in order to wreak vengeance on Adolf Hitler, a ferocious beast, to plunge this Nation into war on behalf of another ferocious beast [Great Britain]." Control over "what 80,000,000 can see and hear in 17,000 theaters each week" was "too dangerous a power for any democracy to permit, concentrated in the hands of a few men."(45)

The three main witnesses for the defense were Nicholas Schenck, president of Loew's, Inc. (which controlled MGM), Harry M. Warner, president of Warner Brothers, and Darryl F. Zanuck, vice president of production at Twentieth Century-Fox. Despite Ulric Bell's recommendation of a "bare knuckles" defense, the three actually followed a strategy closer to that suggested by Will Hays, as each of them denied that their films qualified as propaganda. Rather, their movies were merely accurate portrayals of the plight of Great Britain and the menace of Nazi Germany, and in producing them they were guilty of nothing more than satisfying public demand. "Pictures do not mold the public" Schenck testified. "The public molds us."(46) Warner agreed, adding that "the only sin of which Warner Bros. is guilty is that of accurately recording on the screen the world as it is or as it has been." The company had produced films dealing with current affairs for over 20 years, he said, "and our present policies are no different than before there was a Hitler menace"(47)

The defense took particular aim at Nye's accusation that the studios' policies were motivated by their financial need to keep Britain in the war. Harry Warner testified that his company's revenues from Great Britain were roughly $5 million per year. Since the studio had continued to function between 1932 and 1934, when gross revenues had declined by $50,000,000, it could certainly handle a loss one-tenth that size.(48) Willkie added that if the industry was so worried about foreign revenues, it could make considerably more money producing pro-German films aimed at the European market.(49)

The investigation never succeeded in winning over public opinion or in producing the sort of evidence that might lead to formal Senate action. One reason for this was an incessant press campaign against the hearings. Willkie might not have employed a bare knuckles defense on Capitol Hill, but the country's newspapers were doing it for him. Clark complained that "at least 75 percent of the better-known newspaper columnists" had attacked the subcommittee's work.(50) Some of this was to be expected, of course--the Film Bulletin, for example, insisted that "Senator Nye must not be allowed to crawl out clean from the foul-smelling hole he has dug."(51)

But one did not have to turn to the trade journals to find such language. The liberal Republican New York Herald Tribune called the hearings an "inquisition ... to intimidate public expression on the screen," and the Washington Post dismissed it as "a springboard for the expression of isolationist views."(52) Among the major metropolitan newspapers, only the notoriously anti-interventionist Chicago Daily Tribune offered consistently favorable coverage of the hearings. Among the important political magazines, only Christian Century--the same journal that had consistently supported regulation of the movie industry in the 1920s and 1930s--wrote in favor of the investigation.(53)

The most damaging accusation was that the investigation was motivated by anti-Semitism, an issue that surfaced immediately after Nye read a list of the names of those who controlled the film industry in his St. Louis radio address. Some who listened to the address noted that everyone on the list seemed to be Jewish and claimed that Nye had deliberately over-pronounced their names in order to stress their ethnic identities. The Chicago Sentinel, a Jewish newspaper, accused him of resorting to "the tactics of the demagogue--and the German demagogue at that."(54) Anti-interventionists attempted to parry such charges, noting that many wealthy backers of Great Britain belonged to country clubs that excluded Jews. As the chairman of one local America First chapter wrote, "Pick at random any local newspaper report of the attendance at a Bundling for Britain or Parceling for Pinks party, at a rummage sale for the R.A.F.... and you'll find a very high percentage of names of wealthy snobs who would shun a Jew as they would shun a leper."(55)

The furor over Nye's radio address had barely begun to cool when famed aviator Charles Lindbergh made a speech that stoked the coals once more. Speaking on 15 September before an America First meeting in Des Moines, he accused Jews of plotting with the British and the Roosevelt administration to draw the United States into the European war. "Their greatest danger to this country" he said of the Jews, "lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our Government."(56)

Lindbergh was in no way associated with the motion picture investigation, but since he was a key AFC member the speech inevitably reflected badly on the entire anti-interventionist community. Moreover, since it raised once again the specter of Jewish control of Hollywood, it could not help but revive the accusations that antiSemitism was driving the subcommittee hearings. Wendell Willkie called the speech "the most un-American talk made in my time by any person of national reputation" while Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called upon the AFC to "clean its ranks of those who would incite ... racial and religious strife in this country."(57) John Flynn recognized immediately the damage it had caused, writing to D. Worth Clark that the speech "has given us all a terrible kick in the pants."(58) The AFC executive committee held an emergency meeting to try to deal with the ensuing crisis, forcing Flynn to absent himself from the next several days of the hearings.(59)

But perhaps most damaging of all to the subcommittee was the fact that while Americans may have expressed concern about war propaganda in the abstract, they seemed not to be bothered by the content of specific motion pictures. Nye made much of an August poll showing that only 20 percent of those surveyed preferred films "dealing with the lives of people at war" over those "dealing with the lives of people in peacetime;' but ticket sales told a different story. In 1940, The Fighting 69th, dealing with an Irish-American unit in World War I, and The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin's satirical portrait of Hitler, were among the biggest box-office draws. In 1941 Sergeant York and The Great Dictator were the two highest-grossing films, with A Yank in the RAF and Dive Bomber not far behind. Even comedies were likely to deal with military themes, with Caught in the Draft, starring Bob Hope, and Buck Privates with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello among the most popular comedies of 1941. Moreover, a public opinion survey conducted in September showed that only 16 percent of those polled claimed to have been "annoyed by any propaganda in the feature films" that they had seen recently. Only nine percent of those surveyed expressed approval of the Senate inquiry.(60)

Buffeted by bad press and negative public opinion, the investigation began to fall apart, and by late September the preliminary budget provided by Wheeler's Interstate Commerce Committee had been depleted. Any further spending on the investigation would have to be approved by the Audit and Control Committee, and since the chairman of that committee--Scott Lucas (D-Illinois)--was a staunch Roosevelt supporter, the subcommittee's days clearly were numbered. McFarland estimated that no more than 18 senators would support any resolution to continue the investigation.(61)

The subcommittee went into recess after 26 September, and on 9 October the Washington Star reported that the hearings had been suspended for the time being, but that the subcommittee would "meet again in the near future, subject to call of the chair"(62) That call never came; soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 6 December, D. Worth Clark wrote to Wheeler indicating that since "some matters covered in S. Res. 152 are now moot," the subcommittee would not issue a final report "unless requested to do so by the full committee." The investigation had come to an ignominious end; even the America First Committee had felt compelled to distance itself from it. On 3 October Ruth Sarles, director of the AFC's speakers' bureau, wrote, "certain aspects of the investigation are so unsavory that I question the advisability of publicizing it any further" Later that month the group's chairman, Robert E. Wood, explicitly denied that the AFC had anything to do with it.(63)

In many ways the 1941 Senate investigation of Hollywood resembled earlier attempts to regulate the motion picture industry. The recurring characterization of the major studios as a "trust" that endangered the public interest was very much in line with the crusades of the 1920s and 1930s. In the eyes of the reformers, powerful corporations were exploiting their access to the American public to put across a pro-war message because they believed that their markets in Great Britain were threatened.

Indeed, the prosecution charged that the actions of the studios were a threat to cherished American liberties. Taking up an argument that had been used by reformers in campaigning for regulation of the radio airwaves, Bennett Champ Clark spoke for millions of anti-interventionists who felt they were denied a voice in the movies and news, saying,


When a few men can get possession of the ... moving pictures and shut me
off from that vast audience, while opening it up to the man who opposes me
in public life, how can that man ... say there is freedom of speech as to
that question?(64)


But some aspects of the investigation pointed in a new direction. To a 1920s-era reformer the accusations of "monopoly power" would have been perfectly familiar, but Nye's charges of administration complicity were quite different. He noted how after the passage of lend-lease, Roosevelt thanked the motion picture industry for its help in "explaining" the bill.(65) He also saw sinister intent in a visit by Gary Cooper and the makers of Sergeant York to the White House soon after the 1941 opening of that film.(66) At times Nye even suggested that the studios themselves were not to blame, that the administration was forcing them to produce films for which there was no real demand. Nye may have been correct; historian Richard W. Steele has presented considerable circumstantial evidence that the industry was indeed being coerced and that the administration was prepared to prosecute the studios for antitrust violations if they failed to cooperate.(67) Hollywood columnists Louella Parsons and Jimmie Fidler, meanwhile, claimed that the studios were "losing their shirts" making unpopular anti-Nazi films.(68)

The investigation's emphasis on Britons, Jews, and European refugees in Hollywood was another break with tradition. Anglophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of ethnic prejudice were certainly not new phenomena. As early as the 1890s wealthy Americans were accused of favoring Britain over America, and in the 1920s Protestant reformers had attacked "the Jewish money czars of moviedom" for subverting Christian values in their films. The difference lay in the concern with individuals other than the top studio executives. When Nye spoke of "refugees" and the "British Army of Occupation" in Hollywood, he was referring not to American-born moguls such as Darryl Zanuck or the Warner brothers, but rather to actors, directors, and screenwriters. Previous investigations and inquiries had not targeted such men and women, since the critical decisions were assumed to be made at the top. But for Nye and his allies, the very presence of these individuals in the motion picture industry contributed to the atmosphere of"war hysteria" in Hollywood.(69)

The importance of these elements to the 1941 hearings should not be overstated. The main focus of the investigation remained the control exercised over the industry by the "Big Eight," and the possibility of noneconomic motives--whether the studios were acting on orders from Washington or London--only surfaced occasionally over the course of the hearings. Yet questions of government complicity and subversive influences would gather steam throughout the decade. The role of the U.S. government in the wartime production of pro-Soviet films such as Mission to Moscow, North Star, and Song of Russia raised more than a few eyebrows during the postwar era. And, of course, the notion that directors, actors, and screenwriters might be agents of a foreign power was a major theme in the HUAC investigation of the late 1940s. In fact, studio executives eventually found it a useful strategy to paint themselves as harried businessmen who had been duped by Communist sympathizers in their employ. This goes a long way toward explaining why the HUAC hearings targeted not Hollywood moguls but those lower in the corporate hierarchy.(70)

One might be tempted to overlook the connection between the HUAC hearings and earlier investigations of Hollywood. After all, by 1946 very few insurgent progressives remained in the Senate. What could the conservative Republicans who took office in the following year--men like John Bricker of Ohio, William Jenner of Indiana, James Kem of Missouri, and Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin--have in common with the old insurgent tradition?

Actually, quite a lot. In fact the anti-New Deal "conservatives" who had begun to find their way into Congress as early as the late 1930s were in many ways the intellectual heirs of men like Nye and Wheeler. All claimed to speak for the interests of small farmers and businessmen who felt that their way of life--if not their very existence-was under threat from forces far away and beyond their control. By the 1940s, however, these same groups now viewed government bureaucracy as far more menacing to their interests than big corporations were.

Moreover, long before the 1941 investigation Roosevelt and his supporters were accusing many of the insurgents of being stand-pat conservatives. Although they had sharply criticized the Republican administrations of the 1920s, had supported FDR's presidential bid in 1932, and had backed many New Deal initiatives, most had broken with Roosevelt later in the decade. Still, they denied accusations that they had moved to the right. Burton Wheeler later claimed in his autobiography, "while the times, the issues, and the leaders have changed" he wrote, "my basic outlook has remained the same.... I agree with the `liberals' when they are on the side of justice for the individual and against the concentration of economic power. I agree with the `conservatives' in their opposition to the buildup of centralized power in the federal government."(71)

None of those behind the 1941 investigation remained in office by the late 1940s. Bennett Champ Clark, D. Worth Clark, and Gerald Nye went down to defeat in 1944, while Wheeler met with a similar fate two years later. By the end of 1946 virtually all of the insurgent progressives in Congress had either died or lost their bids for reelection. There is ample evidence, however, that they supported the anticommunist crusade of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy. Gerald Nye praised the Wisconsin senator for "doing a job that needed to be done;' although he expressed some discomfort with his tactics.(72) Burton Wheeler even approved of his methods, writing in his hometown newspaper that "[w] hen you are dealing with crooks and spies, you have to be tough." John Flynn put it even more simply--"God bless Joe McCarthy" he wrote in 1953.(73)

By the 1950s antigovernment and antiforeign sentiments had replaced attacks on corporate power in the rhetoric of the insurgents. In 1941, however, there was still room for both. The investigations of the Clark subcommittee combined the old progressive themes of moral purity and the threat of the "trusts" with concerns about foreign subversives and the power of the centralized state. Herein perhaps lies the key to its failure--such rhetoric not only alienated the pro-corporate conservatives of the Northeast (the insurgents' old nemeses), but also the New Dealers in Congress and the administration. When the insurgents sided with the latter against the former in the early 1930s they enjoyed a measure of success. However, by the end of the decade the conservatives had made common cause with the administration, viewing intervention in the European conflict as necessary for the defense of Western Civilization as well as international trade. Ultimately it was this alliance--between big business and government power--that dominated U.S. politics and diplomacy through much of the Cold War.(74)

It is a truism that the spread of film and radio in the early twentieth century was bringing the world closer together, overcoming traditional barriers between urban and rural, the coasts and the Midwest, the United States and the outside world. No group grasped this more completely--and resisted it more consistently--than the insurgent progressives. Earlier in the century they had protested when Hollywood imposed the "consumer values" of modern corporate culture on a traditional society of small producers. In the months before Pearl Harbor, the motion picture industry was bringing the European war to small-town America and, in the anti-interventionists' eyes, trying to convince its inhabitants that this was their fight as well. The 1941 investigation of the film industry gave voice to those who resented the advance of Hollywood's "cultural imperialism." In the "culture war" of the early twentieth century, the motion picture industry was the bearer par excellence of corporate values; for the insurgent progressives, this was reason enough to fight its increasing influence.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

(1) Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (Berkeley, 1987); Bernard F. Dick, The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film (Lexington, Ky., 1985); Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York, 1993); Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s (New York, 1997); James J. Lorence, "The `Foreign Policy of Hollywood': Interventionist Sentiment in the American Film, 1938-1941," in Hollywood as Mirror: Changing Views of "Outsiders" and `Enemies" in American Movies, ed. Robert Brent Toplin (Westport, 1993); Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 (Berkeley, 1979); Lee A. Gladwin, "Hollywood Propaganda, Isolationism, and Protectors of the Public Mind, 1917-1941" Prologue 26 (Winter 1994): 235-47; Michael E. Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: The Warner Bros. Campaign against Nazism (New York, 1999); Michael Todd Bennett, "Anglophobia on Film: Creating an Atmosphere for Alliance, 1935-1941," Film & History 27 (1997): 4-21.

(2) Dick, The Star-Spangled Screen, 91, and Doherty, Projections of War, 42, respectively; see also Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 159-61; James E. McMillan, "McFarland and the Movies: The 1941 Senate Motion Picture Hearings" Journal of Arizona History 29 (1988): 277-302; and Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 154-71.

(3) See, e.g., Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-1941 (Madison, Wis., 1953); Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1983); and Mark L. Chadwin, The Warhawks: American Interventionists before Pearl Harbor (Chapel Hill, 1968).

(4) David A. Horowitz, Beyond Left & Right: Insurgency and the Establishment (Urbana, 1997); Wayne S. Cole, Determinism and American Foreign Relations during the Franklin D. Roosevelt Era (Lanham, Md., 1995); Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, 1991); Catherine McNicol Stock, Main Street in Crisis: The Great Depression and the Old Middle Class on the Northern Plains (Chapel Hill, 1992).

(5) Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, 1912), 80-81, 103, quoted in Stephen Vaughn, "Morality and Entertainment: The Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code;" Journal of American History 77 (1990), 4042; see also Horowitz, Beyond Left & Right, 76-80; Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York, 1980), 43-59; Francis G. Couvares, "Hollywood, Main Street, and the Church: Trying to Censor Movies Before the Production Code," American Quarterly 44 (December 1992): 584-616; Nancy J. Rosenbloom, "Between Regulation and Reform: The Struggle over Film Censorship in Progressive America, 1909-1922," Film History 1 (1987): 307-25; and Shelley Stamp, "Moral Coercion, or The National Board of Censorship Ponders the Vice Films," in Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era, ed. Matthew Bernstein (New Brunswick, N.J., 1999), 41-59.

(6) "The Nation-Wide Battle Over Movie Purification," Literary Digest, 14 May 1921, 33; see also Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York, 1994), 122-33.

(7) Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York, 1997), 695-96; Sklar, Movie-Made America, 83-85.

(8) George S. Schaffer to U.S. Attorney General and Sen. Thomas Walsh, n.d., Investigation Motion Pictures, subject file B, box 189, Walsh Papers, quoted in Horowitz, Beyond Left & Right, 76-77.

(9) Sidney S. Cohen, quoted in William Sheefe Chase, Catechism on Motion Pictures in Interstate Commerce, 3d. ed. (New York, 1922), 5.

(10) Graham Report, 8, MPRC Correspondence, 1932-33, box 72, Papers of Robbins and Catheryne Cooke Gilman, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul (Gilman Papers) quoted in Horowitz, Beyond Left & Right, 77-78.

(11) Gilman to Laura Dreyfus-Barney, 30 December 1927, Motion Picture Files, National Council of Women, Correspondence, 1927-1928, box 69, Gilman Papers, quoted in Horowitz, "An Alliance of Convenience," 562.

(12) Garth Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston, 1976), 277.

(13) Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 9-10; Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art, 276-79; Richard W. Steele, Propaganda in an Open Society: the Roosevelt Administration and the Media, 1933-1941 (Westport, 1985), 155--57; Kurt Pinthus, "History Directs the Movies" American Scholar 10 (1941): 488.

(14) See Warren F. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (Baltimore, 1969).

(15) See Justus D. Doenecke, Storm of the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (Lanham, Md., 2000); Robert David Johnson, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992); Stuart I. Rochester, American Liberal Disillusionment in the Wake of World War I (University Park, Pa., 1977); and Ralph A. Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (Lexington, Ky., 1970).

(16) Ruth Vase)r, The World According to Hollywood, 1918-1939 (Madison, Wis., 1997), 51-55; Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, 93; Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York, 1994), 339-47; Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 20-24; Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 18-19.

(17) Memorandum in the Confessions of a Nazi Spy file, Hays Office documents, quoted in Colin Schindler, Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society, 1929-1929 (London, 1996), 208.

(18) Colin Schindler, Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society, 1929-1939, 195-211; Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies (Cambridge, 1984), 281-88; Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 22; Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, 100-102; Vasey, World According to Hollywood, 205; Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 57-86.

(19) Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War,21-22; Steele, Propaganda in an Open Society, 144; Schindler, Hollywood in Crisis, 212-13; Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 78-86; Motion Picture Herald, n.d., quoted in Pinthus, "History Directs the Movies" 495.

(20) Michele Flynn Stenehjem, An American First: John T. Flynn and the America First Committee (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1976), 15n; John T. Flynn, God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times (New York, 1932); John T. Flynn, Men of Wealth (New York, 1941).

(21) Flynn, Men of Wealth, 513.

(22) Stenehiem, An American First, 143-44.

(23) Flynn to Robert E. Wood, 8 August 1941, John T. Flynn Papers, Department of Special Collections, University of Oregon Library, Eugene.

(24) William T. Dodson to Benson Inge, 2 June 1941, quoted in research notes found in the Wayne S. Cole Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa.

(25) "Confidential Memorandum for Members of Executive Committee" 16 September 1941, Flynn Papers.

(26) Flynn to Robert E. Wood, 12 August 1941, Flynn Papers; see also Flynn to Burton K. Wheeler, 6 August 1941, Flynn Papers; and Stenehjem, An American First, 146-48.

(27) Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 143-44, 228-29; Cole, America First, 60-76, 185-86; Ronald L. Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism: The Western Republican Senators and the New Deal (Baltimore, 1981), 14, 70-71, 93-95, 97-98, 123, 126-27, 163.

(28) Flynn to Gerald P. Nye (undated, but probably late July 1941), Flynn Papers; Nye to Bennett Champ Clark, 1 August 1941, Papers Supporting Senate Bills and Resolutions, National Archives, 77th Cong., S. Res. 152, Dkc.44, Official Correspondence folder; Gerald P. Nye, "War Propaganda: Our Madness Increases as Our Emergency Shrinks," 15 September 1941, Vital Speeches of the Day, vol. 7, 720-21.

(29) Nye, "War Propaganda," 721-23.

(30) U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate Commerce, Hearings, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 77th Cong., 1st sess., September 1941, 1-2, 66-67.

(31) Flynn to R. K. Hines, 5 August 1941, Flynn Papers; Stenehjem, An American First, 149.

(32) Burton K. Wheeler, Yankee from the West: The Candid, Turbulent Life Story of the Yankee-born U.S. Senator from Montana (Garden City, N.Y., 1962), 83-114; Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 17-19,144, 229, 402; Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism, 23, 41, 83.

33) Horowitz, "An Alliance of Convenience," 571; Wheeler to Paramount and Will Hayes, 13 January 1941, quoted in Steele, Propaganda in an Open Society, 149-50.

(34) Gladwin, "Hollywood Propaganda," 243.

(35) Lorence, "Foreign Policy of Hollywood" 96; Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 41--42.

(36) Peter Cusick to Daryl Zanuck, telegrams, 4 June and 1 November, 1941; Ulric Bell to Daryl Zanuck, telegram, 5 September 1941, box 20, Fight for Freedom, Inc., Collection, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University.

(37) Memo by Bell (undated, but probably August 1941), box 32, ibid.

(38) Memorandum by Bell (undated, but probably August 1941), box 32, Fight for Freedom Collection.

(39) Summary of discussion between Knox and Bell, 25 August 1941, box 32, Fight for Freedom Collection.

(40) Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 42; "Films' `Patriotic Service' Defended by Willkie on `Warmongering' Rap" Variety, 3 September 1941; Darryl Zanuck to Willkie, 23 and 31 July 1941, Wendell L. Willkie Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

(41) Willkie to D. Worth Clark, 8 September 1941, Ernest D. McFarland Papers, McFarland Historical Park, Florence, Arizona.

(42) Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 24, 108-9.

(43) Ibid., 323.

(44) Ibid., 73-78.

(45) Ibid.

(46) Ibid., 326-27.

(47) Ibid., 339-40.

(48) Ibid., 417.

(49) Willkie to D. Worth Clark, 8 September 1941, McFarland Papers.

(50) Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 137.

(51) Clipping from Film Bulletin (undated, but probably early September 1941), McFarland Papers.

(52) New York Herald Tribune, 10 September 1941, 26; Washington Post, 28 September 1941, B6.

(53) Chicago Daily Tribune, 5 September 1941, 24, col. 2; Margaret Frakes, "Why the Movie Investigation?" Christian Centur,24 September 1941, 1172-74; see also "Propaganda or History?" Nation, 20 September 1941, 241-42; "Senate Isolationists Run Afoul of Willkie in Movie `Warmonger' Hearings" Life, 22 September 1941, 21-25.

(54) Nye, "War Propaganda," 721; Flynn to Gerald Nye, undated (but probably late July1941), Flynn Papers; Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 8-17; Nye to William Stern, 29 August 1941, box 1, Gerald Nye Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa; see also Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye, 186-89; Chicago Sentinel, 14 August 1941, 9.

(55) Gregory Mason to Thomas Caldecott Chubb, 18 September 1941, Nye Papers, box 1.

(56) Charles Lindbergh, quoted in A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York, 1998), 450-55.

(57) Ibid.; Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie (Lawrence, Kans., 1984), 212; "Lindbergh Storm," Newsweek, 22 September 1941, 16-17; Reinhold Nieburh to Flynn, 13 September 1941, Flynn Papers.

(58) Flynn to D. Worth Clark, 17 September 1941, Flynn Papers; Flynn, quoted in Doenecke, In Danger Undaunted, 38.

(59) Flynn to Lindbergh, 15 September 1941, Flynn Papers.

(60) Ibid., 52-53; Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s (New York, 1997), 466; Press release from the Committee for National Morale (undated, but probably September 1941), McFarland Papers.

(61) Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 355-59, 432-39; Stenehjem, An American First, 151; Miami Daily News, 27 September 1941, clipping in Gerald P. Nye Papers, box 43.

(62) Washington Star, 9 October 1941, 12.

(63) Gladwin, "Hollywood Propaganda," 245-46; Sarles to Page Hufty, 3 October 1941, and Robert E. Wood to Stanton Griffis, 31 October 1941, Wayne S. Cole Papers.

(64) Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 69-71.

(65) Nye, "War Propaganda" 721-22.

(66) Lorence, "Foreign Policy of Hollywood" 108-9; Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 36-37.

(67) Steele, Propaganda in an Open Society, 147-69.

(68) Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 41, 189, 195; Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 78.

(69) Horowitz, Between Left & Right, 9-10, 80; Nye, "War Propaganda" 721; Committee on Interstate Commerce, Propaganda in Motion Pictures, 53-54.

(70) Ceplair and Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood, 161-62, 279-80; Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (New York, 1968), 190-225; Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s (Rocklin, Calif., 1998), 89-90, 182-86.

(71) Wheeler, Yankee from the West, 428; see also Horowitz, Beyond Left & Right, 138-61.

(72) Interview with Nye, 17 August 1959, Nye, quoted in Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye, 222.

(73) Flynn, "Asia and Joe McCarthy" radio broadcast #206 (13 April 1953), and Wheeler, Helena Independent Herald, 31 December 1953 (n.p.), both quoted in Justus D. Doenecke, Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists and the Cold War Era (Lewisburg, Pa., 1979), 233.

(74) see Chadwin, The Warhawks, 43-73; and Horowitz, Beyond Left & Right, 174-75.

John E. Moser is a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Georgia.

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