More Red Than Herring

Most scoffers who had once called Communism in Hollywood a red herring were long since convinced that it was much more Red than herring. But last week, just in case there were still any skeptics left, the House Un-American Activities Committee scooped some more prize specimens, into its net.

One was Director Frank Tuttle (College Holiday), a lean, greying oldtimer, who came all the way from Vienna, where he has plied his trade since 1949. Tuttle was only too happy to unburden his conscience. He had been a Communist, all right, from 1937 till 1947--when the C.P. line got to sounding too violent for his taste. Witness Tuttle ticked off a long list of his ex-party comrades, most of whom had been brought to the committee's attention by earlier witnesses. "There is a traditional dislike among Americans for informers," he admitted. But, said Tuttle, "a ruthless aggression is abroad in the world ... I believe it is necessary today for Americans to be equally ruthless."

What Made Buddy Run? Novelist Budd (The Disenchanted) Schulberg had somewhat the same story to tell. In 1937, he said, at the tender age of 23, he was lured into a Marxist study group. He wasn't really certain that he'd ever been an actual party member, and his disillusionment with the party came (at the tender age of 25) when his Communist pals tried to dictate the story line of his first novel, What Makes Sammy Run?

After that, said Schulberg, "I didn't want anything more to do" with the party. With this account, the committee seemed impressed.

It was less impressed with the story told by Academy Award Winner Jose (Cyrano de Bergerac) Ferrer. He stoutly denied that he had ever been a Communist or had ever had the least sympathy with party aims. He was, explained Ferrer, just a sucker for high-sounding left-wing groups.

What Happened to Jose. Ferrer was in hot water from the moment he began his simple-country-boy tactics. How did it happen, the committee demanded, that so many Communist front outfits used his name? It was a case of "plain, stupid carelessness," replied Ferrer. Didn't Ferrer know that Ben Davis was an open Communist candidate when he sponsored him for election to New York's City Council? "I linked Davis with the Democratic Party," Ferrer said. "This is only an evidence of how careless I can get."

After Ferrer admitted a host of careless affiliations, exasperated Committeeman Harold Velde recalled that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had once said that an innocent person could perhaps join two or three Red front organizations--but not six or seven. Replied Ferrer: "I don't know, sir. That is not true in my case." But just to show the committee that he had finally gotten his politics straightened out, Puerto Rican-born Actor Ferrer added, a little irrelevantly: "I am completely against Puerto Rican independence."

The committee produced no evidence to show that Ferrer had played anything worse than the sucker's game he had freely admitted to. But if he was as naively ignorant as he professed to be, Actor Ferrer could serve as a classic warning to other gullible citizens of Broadway and Hollywood.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.