Celluloid Soldiers: The Warner Bros. Campaign Against Nazism

Hollywood under the Gun: The Senate Investigation of Propagandain Motion Pictures

Hollywood under the Gun The Senate Investigation of Propaganda in Motion Pictures On August 1, 1941, Senators Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota and Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri introduced Senate Resolution 152, drafted largely by America First’s true believer, John T. Flynn, calling for a thorough investigation of the film industry.1 The investigation would be carried out by a subcommittee of the Interstate Commerce Committee directed by isolationist Sen. Burton K. Wheeler. The subcommittee was chaired by D. Worth Clark of Idaho and included Homer T. Bone of Washington, Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire, and Ernest McFarland of Arizona. Though Nye and Clark, who sponsored the bill that led to the hearings, were not members of the subcommittee, they were the first to testify, and the subcommittee was generally referred to as the “Nye-Clark Committee.” Nye, Clark, and many of the subcommittee’s members hailed from the country’s interior; their politics had been shaped by Populism , and they belonged to or were sympathetic with the America First Committee (AFC).2 Staunchly isolationist, they were generally suspicious of foreigners and held some of the same views as the cryptofascist organizations that flourished in America during the Depression. They resented Hollywood and the license they associated with it and tended to be Anglophobic . All these resentments emerged once the hearings were under way. The subcommittee leveled several charges against Hollywood, saying that it was dedicated to warmongering, that it constituted a Jewish-controlled monopoly, and that it was engaged in covert dealings with the Roosevelt administration. In their isolationist—and some would argue anti-Semitic—opinion, Hollywood had willingly violated the official neutrality of the United States and spread war fever among a gullible public.3 The eight movies they found particularly reprehensible were 6 154 Confessions of a Nazi Spy, The Great Dictator, Dive Bomber, Flight Command , That Hamilton Woman, Escape, Underground, and Sergeant York.4 Nye and Clark were neither the first nor the only people intent on curbing the power of Hollywood. On February 24, 1941, Rep. Lyle H. Boren of Oklahoma called for a thorough investigation of the film community because he argued that Hollywood studio heads were ignoring the consent decree they had signed in 1940. His bill got nowhere at the time but proved damaging to Hollywood in 1948 and played a critical role in destroying the studio system. The proposed hearings launched by Nye and Clark immediately drew attention from several quarters. Not surprisingly, some people, like Silver Shirt Legionnaire William Dudley Pelley, praised the proposal. Others, such as reporter Michael Straight, criticized them and their intention. He accused Nye and Clark of being the toadies of isolationist Sen. Burton K. Wheeler of Montana. The subcommittee was established because “its sponsors, Senator Nye and Senator Clark, did not command enough votes to bring a resolution for a proper Senate investigation to the floor of the Senate.”5 Gerald P. Nye had long harbored bad feelings toward the film industry. He had called for the creation of a government regulatory agency in 1934 to screen and classify movies. Filmmakers rejected such direct governmental intervention and opted to police the industry more rigidly through PCA.6 Bennett Champ Clark loathed Hollywood as well; both men were convinced the movie industry was undermining the morality of the country and Jewish moguls were bent on turning America into a country lusting for war. Delivering a national radio address from Saint Louis the same day Clark entered the resolution, Nye declared: “Go to Hollywood. It is a raging volcano of war fever. The place swarms with refugees [and] . . . with British actors”; he said it was ruled by foreigners and Jews.7 The movie colony represented “the most potent and dangerous Fifth Column in our country,” and the danger America needed to confront immediately was not the external Nazi threat but the international Jewish conspiracy.8 “[T]hese men with the motion picture films in their hands, can address 80,000,000 people a week, cunningly and persistently inoculating them with the virus of war.”9 Hollywood Jews, the modernday equivalent of Typhoid Mary, spread their deadly contagions among a defenseless public. Nye insinuated that the federal government had prodded them to produce prowar propaganda, saying: “I am informed that there are Government men on every moving-picture lot in Hollywood.”10 Hollywood under the Gun | 155 His remarks earned plaudits from hosts...