Fade-Out

In the first day of his duel with Hollywood's suspected Communists, Representative J. Parnell Thomas, a choleric man, smashed one gavel to a smither. Next day he turned up with two new ones, prepared, if necessary, to smash both to smithereens. The spot he had put himself in was enough to try the patience of a saint, and J. Parnell ("Undoubting Thomas," as the Nation called him) was no saint. But he hated Beelzebub, and he was trying to solve the fly problem with a horse whip.

As Chairman Thomas' gavel whacked the table, a four-day parade of witnesses trooped to the stand. These were not publicity-seekers or Citizen Fix-Its; they were definitely recalcitrant. They wrangled angrily with the un-American Activities committeemen and were ordered down again. The witnesses followed a well-organized, prearranged plan.

First, each witness produced a statement. Chairman Thomas gave it a hasty, belligerent look and almost without exception refused to admit it. Then Committee Counsel Robert Stripling fired the two questions: "Are you a member of the Screen Writers' Guild?" "Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" In the witnesses' plan, the second question was the signal for a defiant outburst over the Bill of Rights. Disappointed spectators waiting outside the caucus room could hear the mingled shouts of the witnesses and the thumping of Chairman Thomas' gavel. Cried Scripter Alvah Bessie: "General Eisenhower has refused to reveal his political party affiliation and what's good enough for General Eisenhower is good enough for me."

After each exchange, Chairman Thomas, his red neck swelling, ordered the witness from the microphone. The committee then noted evidence of Communist allegiance (including photostats identified as their Communist Party membership cards) ; started the contempt proceedings rolling through the full committee to Speaker Joe Martin. By the third day they had cited eight: Writers John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Albert Maltz, Dalton Trumbo, Samuel Ornitz, Director Edward Dmytryk, Producer Adrian Scott, Writer-Director Herbert Biberman.

Only one witness would stand still long enough to be counted. He was quiet-spoken, 45-year-old Emmet Lavery, president of the Screen Writers' Guild and a member of the New York state bar. Like the others, he challenged the committee's constitutional right to ferret out a man's personal politics. "But," he said, "let me break the suspense immediately. I am not a Communist. I never have been, and don't intend to be. I am a Democrat, who in my youth was a Republican. Now if the committee is interested in the reason why. . . ."

Chairman Thomas hastily assured him that that point was of no interest.* What about Communists in the Guild? They were just a noisy, overrated minority, said Lavery. As for outlawing the party, he agreed with the FBI's boss J. Edgar Hoover: driving the Reds underground would only make them harder to find. The positive way to handle the problem, he thought, was to promote American ideals.

The committee was obviously getting nowhere. The remaining witnesses differed from earlier ones principally in their wisecracks. When Writer Ring Lardner Jr. was asked if he was or had been a member of the Communist Party, he said: "I could answer it, but I'd hate myself in the morning." The committee again produced its photostats of Communist membership, cited Lardner and Writer Lester Cole.

The committee had one more reel to show. Chairman Thomas had promised to produce a witness who would tie Hollywood Communism up with foreign spies. Committee Investigator Louis Russell, a onetime FBI man, was the mystery man.

Investigator Russell told an involved story of Russian attempts to get atomic information in 1942. The Soviet vice-consul in San Francisco, said Russell, had hired a Shell oil technician named George Charles Eltenton to do the dirty work. Eltenton (now working for Shell in England) got hold of a University of California professor named Haakon Chevalier, explaining that Russian allies had a right to be in the know. Chevalier went to Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, then in charge of radiation work at the University of California. That's as far as the plot went. Oppenheimer had promptly replied, said Russell, "that he considered such attempts as this a treasonable act."

The only bearing this irrelevant story had on the case of the Hollywood Communists was that it was laid in California. Chairman Thomas seemed to think that this was an appropriate and dramatic fadeout. He banged his gavel and announced that the hearings were suspended. They would be reopened after committee investigators had time to dig up fresh evidence. Most of the U.S. could agree that the fade-out was appropriate.

-Chairman Thomas had also pulled a switch in his time. Born J. Parnell Feeney, he changed his name after returning from World War I and before going into Wall Street, taking his mother's maiden name of Thomas.

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