Hollywood, by instinct and common sense, was a town largely disinterested in politics, it was a community dedicated to the manufacture of mass entertainment for people all over the world, regardless of how they voted, but it was also traditionally relaxed about those who took their politics seriously. Of course, we know that a few among us were Communists, but we also knew that others were Holy Rollers and that quite a number practised black magic, but so long as the Communist Party was officially recognized by the government and not outlawed in the United States, Hollywood did not feel that people who felt strongly enough to join it should be treated like criminals.

So the great majority watched sadly while a small minority tore itself to pieces. It all seemed so unnecessary, because it was quite impossible for a tiny group of writers, directors, and actors to subvert for Communist propaganda the motion-picture industry when the whole business was in the hands of a dozen men.

The writers and directors could possibly inject small doses of Communist ideology into innocent-looking scripts, and perhaps the actors might be capable of giving an innocuous line a sinister twist, but the producers controlled the finished pictures, and there was just no way that the Seven Dwarfs could be Reds under Snow White‘s bed unless Walt Disney wanted them there.

The macabre farce unfolded, and Parnell Thomas allowed the friendly witnesses to make opening statements but denied the same opportunity to the unfriendly witnesses. The crunch question, which the unfriendly witnesses all faced was this. “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”