Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [134]
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people are acquainted with the facts there is no question but that the American people will do the kind of job that they want done: that is, to make America just as pure as we can possibly make it. We want to thank you very much for coming here today.”
But Reagan was not about to let the New Jersey congressman hijack Jefferson for his own purposes. “Sir,” he rejoined, “if I might, in regard to that, say that what I was trying to express, and didn’t do very well, was also this other fear. I detest, I abhor their philosophy, but I detest more than that their tactics, which are those of the fifth column, and are dishonest.
But at the same time I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.”91
Reagan’s performance impressed a wide range of observers, from Nixon on the right to ADA executive secretary James Loeb on the left. Loeb, whom Reagan met with before leaving Washington, thought his testimony was “by all odds, the most honest and forthright from a decent liberal point of view” and called him “the hero” of the hearings.92 The press was also adu-latory: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Life, and Motion Picture Daily singled him out for his credibility and refusal to name names. “Intelligent Ronald Reagan stole the show from his better known colleagues,”
wrote Quentin Reynolds in Collier’s magazine. “Reagan, it was obvious, had done a good deal of thinking on the subject in question.”93 Even the recently installed Communist government of Rumania paid him the compliment of being the only star among the friendly witnesses whose movies were not banned by its Ministry of Information Censorship Division.94
Eleven of the Unfriendly 19 were called to testify the following week.
When asked the fateful question—“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”—ten refused to give a direct answer, choosing instead to lecture the committee on the Bill of Rights, compare its members to Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler, and otherwise make themselves look, in John Huston’s phrase, like “belligerent buffoons.”95 In doing so, the Hollywood 10, as they would be known from then on, played right into the hands of Parnell Thomas, who pounded his gavel and charged them with contempt of Congress.
“I am not on trial here, Mr. Chairman. This Committee is on trial here before the American people. Let’s get that straight,” shouted John Howard Lawson in a typical outburst.96 After ordering police officers to remove the 2 1 8
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House screenwriter from the stand, Thomas had Stripling read a nine-page memorandum detailing Lawson’s long and extensive involvement with Communist activities in Hollywood.97 A second investigator produced a copy of Lawson’s 1944 Communist Party registration card. Dalton Trumbo wouldn’t even say whether or not he was a member of the Screen Writers Guild. Albert Maltz, Alvah Bessie, Samuel Ornitz, Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, Adrian Scott, Ring Lardner Jr., and Lester Cole gave equally truculent performances before the hearings were abruptly suspended by Thomas on October 30, some say because of the negative publicity, others because by then he had realized his goal of instilling the fear of God into the studio moguls. Only Bertolt Brecht, who as a resident alien felt his position was especially precarious, had outrightly—and probably falsely—denied Party membership and escaped a contempt citation.
“It was a sorry performance,” wrote John Huston in his 1980 memoir, An Open Book. “You felt your skin crawl and your stomach turn. I disapproved of what was being done to the Ten, but I also disapproved of their response. They had lost a chance to defend a most important principle. . . .
Before this spectacle, the attitude of the press had been extremely sympathetic. Now it changed.”98 Huston and two dozen other luminaries from the Committee for the First