Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [98]
But unfortunately it has been an unorganized majority. This has been almost inevitable. The very love of freedom, of the rights of the individual, make this great majority reluctant to organize. But now we must, or we shall meanly lose “the last, best hope on earth.”
As members of the motion-picture industry, we must face and accept an especial responsibility. Motion pictures are inescapably one of the world’s greatest forces for influencing public thought and opinion, both at home and abroad. In this fact lies solemn obligation. We refuse to permit the effort of Communist, Fascist, and other totalitarian-minded groups to pervert this powerful medium into an instrument for the dissemination of un-American ideas and beliefs. We pledge ourselves to fight, with every means at our organized command, any effort of any group or individual to divert the loyalty of the screen from the free America that gave it birth.50
The launching of the Alliance, as it came to be known, was timed to coincide with a dinner in honor of Vice President Henry Wallace hosted by the liberal Free World Association, and it was the opening shot in the ideological war that would dominate Hollywood politics well into the 1950s.
Less than three months after its first meeting, The New York Times reported,
“A wide cleavage in Hollywood’s political and economic thought . . . has resulted in the breaking up of some long-established writing teams and has even extended into the colony’s social life. The factional spirit is most pronounced in studio commissaries at lunchtime. Talent groups—particularly writers and directors—have broken previous bonds of friendship, the so-called liberal thinkers grouping at certain tables, the conservatives at others.
But in their references to one another they are ‘Fascists’ or ‘Communists.’”51
As the 1944 presidential election approached, the fledgling Alliance was no match for the thriving HDC, which went all-out to win a fourth term for FDR, despite his replacement of Henry Wallace, the darling of the left, 1 6 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House with the provincial but less controversial Harry Truman. Working closely with the California State Democratic Committee and the Democratic National Committee, George Pepper deployed hundreds of movie stars across the nation, culminating in an election eve broadcast on all four major radio networks. Humphrey Bogart narrated, Judy Garland sang, Groucho Marx told jokes, and lyricist E. Y. Harburg, who had written “Over the Rainbow,” provided jingles. As a finale, one star after another stepped up to the microphone and endorsed the Democratic ticket: Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Bennett, Irving Berlin, Joseph Cotten, John Garfield, Rita Hayworth, George Jessel, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, Lana Turner, Claudette Colbert, and even the supposedly apolitical Jane Wyman.52
Although Reagan did not take part in the broadcast, he gave $100 to the HDC during the 1944 campaign.53 Along with Wyman, he was among the horde of stars who turned out to hear Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, give a speech attacking the Republican candidate, New York governor Thomas Dewey. Neil Reagan recalled the endless political arguments he and Ron had then: “On Sunday afternoon up at his house above Sunset Boulevard . . . there used to be a big gathering of the
[Jack] Bennys and the [George] Burnses. . . . If they were all out around the pool, in about thirty minutes the Reagan brothers would have driven everybody into the house with our battles on politics. His statement to me always was: ‘That’s the trouble with you guys. Anybody who voted for Roosevelt is a Communist.