What Makes a HollywoodCommunist?

By RICHARD ENGLISH

Edward Dmytryk started with nothing, rose to earn $2500 a week as amovie director hefore he was forty. Yet he became a communist. Hereis the case history of what he now knows was his personal tragedy.

lERY seldom can a man point to the exactminute at which his whole Ufe changed. Buton the afternoon of October 29,1947, EdwardDmytryk, then thirty-nine and earning $2500

a week as one of Hollywood's top directors, rangdown a curtain on hisown life far moredramatic thanany in the twenty-four pictures he had directed upto that time. In ten short minutes he appearedbefore the House Committee on Un-AmericanActivities and, having refused to answer whetherhe was then or had ever been a communist, he wasexcused from the stand and promptly cited forcontempt.

Edward Dmytryk was the seventh witness todefy the committee at those Washington hearingsand with three others, was to become one of theHoUywood Ten. The Ten were soon to becomeSlightly more famous than the picture industryItself theu- appearances at raUies having aU thehoopla usually found only at HoUywood prvmikres.Now, having served his sentence for contempt ofCongress Dmytryk is back in Hollywood, a manwith a briUiant past, a clouded present and anunknown future.

The first of the Hollywood Ten to admit he wasever a communist. Edward Dmytryk, now forty-two and hving quietly in a small apartment withnis wife and nmeteen-month-old son. has reachedtbe point of no return. His awareness of this isTlT^ ' " J^ ^ ''•^ tenseness. Five-seven and a huskyKVt^"j ^^ '*' ^ "^""Pact man in a lumberjack

sum; and brown trousers, a smaU cleft in his chin,and the brown hair and eyes that are part of hisUkramian descent.

"ActuaUy," he said, pacing the fioor, " I passedthe point of no return a long time ago. But I wasa communist. I joined in the spring of 1944 anddropped out of the party late the next fall. And I

« f ^ vu^^ J**^ "° '°"Ser a party member, Istood with the Ten on my own peraonal convictionsabout civil liberties. And when we lost, I couldn't

wY u%^^"^ ""^" ^^^^^ ^ ^^ ^^^^ "^y time. Iwouldn t have wanted it to appear that I was tryingto ^ p e any consequences of my original stand."hi= ^ f "? t^^ baby was crying, and he looked afterhis wife, Jean Porter, as she went up the stairs. A

Z L T ! ^ ^ ' * ^^°"^^' ^^' own car r as anbeen m a rather gray limbo from the day

convicted. Fora moment he hesitated, then^u^' "Breaking off Uke this takes momthan going to jail. Then I was carried along""* } °^^°^ P^P'« ^«'' that the hearings

U L f i if - ^ t ' ' ^ K a U L e f t i s t e i n p i c -h r H ^ ^ . i ! mvestigating party membership. But

they didn know what they were backing. I kamed

rZ T T ^ T *" *^ ^^ d hlfyt u^" ^ ""^^ '^"^-d when I was

a party member. And it's no good.

He Learned About Communism the Hard Way

time has come now when even the feUow

Kduoid Dmytryk is forty-two years old. His past is hrilliaut, his present clouded, his future uukimwn.Elf JQin<Ml the Communist Parly in the spring of 1944, went to jail for contempt of Congrc!«s in 1950.

«nl *!rT r T ^f " - ^^^y^ ^^^ the waxsule that protects the tubercle-dissolve that yA'"'^^^;!^^ r " "^""'^ ^^ tuberculosis in no timeAnd that s what you have to do with communism.I know I ve been there." Grimly, he picked up apipe and looked around for tobacco. Then, quietly,

I know now that you can't aid a communist frontin any way without hurting your own country. TheHISS conviction, the Judith Coplon trial, they allshow that no matter how smaU a fraction of theparty IS guilty of espionage, the responsibility is onthe whole party and anyone who supports it."

The feehngs that make Dmytryk talk now maysupply the answer to a question that has been tear-ing HoUywood apart ever since those fatefulWashington hearings. The day eight prominentwriters aind two directors, John Howard Lawson,Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, Alvah Bessie,Saniuel Ornitz, Herbert Biberman, Dmytryk,Adrian Scott, Ring Lardner, Jr., and Lester Colewent to jail for contempt of Congress, the picturebusmess received a black eye from which it has notyet recovered. The pubUc wanted to know whatmade a Hollywood communist, and Hollywoodcouldn't teU them.

"There isn't any simple answer as to what makesone," Dmytryk said slowly. "When I was in theparty I *d guess there were perhaps 150 'inteUectual'communists in the picture business. By that I meanmen who work with their heads, the creators. Andthe 'intellectual' communists don't run to patterneither in actions or in the motives that cause themlo l>ecome commies. The only thing I learned wasthis: the same ideals that take a liberal into theCommunist Party take him right back out again."

Determined not to be regarded as either a dopeor a dujje who did not know what he was doing,Dmytryk moves restlessly around the clutteredliving room of his apartment. There, in a crowdedroom with rice-cloth walls are his books and jazzrecords, the bar bells with which he works out threetimes a week, doing 140-pound presses. DailyVariety and the Hollywood Reporter are on a coffeetable, mute reminders of the business in which hewas so prominent a figure. "I t 's not just one thingthat gets you interested in communism." he saidslowly. "I t ' s where you came from, what you be-

lieve in, the way you feel about people. It 's aU thosethings put together."

To show you that Dmytryk's story which I amteUing here may be more than a superficial analysisof what makes a HoUywood communist, I mightexplain that I have been a motion-picture writerfor fifteen years. For two years I was on the exec-utive board of the Screen Writers' Guild, havingbeen one of a group which defeated the far-Leftelements, and was the third and last editor of theScreen Writer Magazine, succeeding Dalton Trumboand Gordon Kahn, who were both called up beforethe Washington hearings, although only Trumbotestified. With that background, I know somethingof Dmytryk's past as well as his career.

Dmytryk's childhood was not a particularlyhappy one. He was bom September 4, 1908, inGrand Forks, British Columbia. His father, Michael,was a Ukrainian truck farmer who worked wintersin the local copper smelter. Eddie was the secondoldest of four sons. Harold, the first-bom, is asuccessful businessman. Arthur, the third-bom and

to whom Eddie feels the closest, is a laborer. William,the youngest, is now a major in the USAF, stationedin England.

While he is not now a member of any church,Dmytryk's family was Catholic. But any formalreligious training ended with the death of his motherat the age of thirty-three in Northport, Washington,a lead-mining town. I^ft with four smaU hoys on hishands, his father moved the family to San Francisco,where he became a motorman. His father soon mar-ried a Protijstant and moved on to Los Angeles,where he again worked on streetcars. Although heleans backward in talking of his father, who diedin 1946, it is obvious that Eddie had little affectionfor the man who raised his family on strictlyEuropean ideas.

While Dmytryk was in grade school he and hisbrother Arthur became one of Professor Terman'sGroup. Professor Terman, one of the developers ofthe Stanford-Binet tests for inteUigence, selectedwhat he called "1000 Gifted Children" in 1920. Allhad a base LQ. of at (Omtinuetl on PHRP 147)

Hefore ihe Un-American Activities Committee,Dmytryk refused to say if he was a communist.

At the 1947 inquiry into llcillywood communism, a group of movie players Hupportetl the IlollywooilTen. Among them were Danny Kaye, Evelyn Keyes, June Havoc, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Raeall.

INTEKNAIIONAL

Gary Cooper, a "friendly witness,*' testified thatlie had found communist ideas in movie seripts.

INTKllNAIIONAL

John Howard Lawson (lefl), here heing removed from the stand ior refusing to answer the critieal ques-tion at the eongressional inquiry, usually had the last word in disputes among Hollywood Reds.

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 147

WHAT, MAKES A HOLLYWOOD

COMMUNIST?(Continued from Fape 31)

least 140 and Terman has chartedtheir progress through life. Later, atthe Mill Point, West Virginia, Federalprison camp, where Dmytryk servedhis time, he was to score the highestI-Q. ever made at that honor camp.

When he was fourteen Eddie ransway from home. After an investigationof conditions there, the juvenile author-ities paid his room rent while EddieWorked his way through HollywoodHigh School. Harry C. James, a Los^geles man interested in boys' work,^ k an interest in him and persuadedParamount studios to give Dmytryk ajob after school. The six doUars a week

. he earned as an errand boy kept him inlunch money and clothes. "They madethat job for me,", he said. " I neverforgot it."

Graduating from high school withstraight A's, Dmytryk passed the stiffentrance examinations to Caltech. He*ent one year there, making his froshnumerals in football, basketball, trackand baseball. But at the end of hisfreshman year he knew he wanted to^ake pictures his career instead of thefield of science, and he went back to

amount.At nineteen he became a studio

projectionist, and he became a full cut-ter at twenty-one. He was weU-likedand regarded as something of a boyWonder. In 1932 he married Madeleine^binson, of LOB Angeles, and has aboy, ten, by that youthful marriage.At the age of thirty-one he became adirector at Paramoimt. the goal he had

always had his eye on. "That was1939," he said. " I got my citizenship,became a director, everything."

Starting with B pictures, Dmytryk srise was gradual until, after also work-ing for Monogram and Columbia, hemoved to RKO and hit the jack potwith Hitler's Children. His career shotup then as he made such pictures asTender Comrade; Murder, My Sweet;Back to Bataan; Cornered and Cross-fire In eight years and twenty-fourpictures, including eleven for RKOalone his salary had chmbed from $250

' a week to $2500 a week. And durmgthat time he had become a communist.

He was a success in the industry ofhis choice, he had an outstanding rep-utation for so young a man and he wasmaking pictures with the social sig-nificance he thought so important. Onthe debit side, his first marriage endedin an unhappy divorce in 1947. And,regardless of actual party membership,his association with communists oncertain grounds continued until lastSeptember, and only now is publiclyended. , , „ , . ,

" I know it doesn't add up, he saidslowly, " but everybody goes into com-munism seeking different things. Ithought this was the best country inthe world, but that we could stiU doIwtter. I know it sounds unrealistic—and i s -bu t I was trying to help peo-ple as I had lieen helped. And you justcan't do it alone, or through chantyeither I know how I felt alxiut charitymyself. So you decide things have tobe done on a scientific basis, so thatpeople are really taken care of all thetime. So then you begin hearing aboutsystems. With me it was Marxism."

By 1942 Dmytryk was widely knownin the movie industry for "wanting tomake honest pictures about people"and was ripe for communistic indoc-

trination along those lines. "Late thatyear," he said, "a kid, a reader at thestudio, asked me to lecture at theLeague of American Writers aboutcutting. It was the first time I hadever talked about a subjeKit that I wasvitally interested in and, in talking, Ifound that I had developed new the-ories that were of great practical ad-vantage to me as a director. Until thenthere wasn't any place in HoUywoodwhere the professionab could really gettogether and talk over their trade. Ididn't know then, just talking aboutcutting, that the league had anythingto do with communism."

Dmytryk was talking more urgentlynow. "That was the first step," hesaid, "talking in a private home to aboutten people. Then the People's Educa-tional Center was formed, and I wasasked to take over a class on cutting.AU kinds of people taught there andmost of them were not commies. ButI did become aware that the PEC wasbeing run by communists, and insteadof being shocked, I thought they mustbe my kind of people. This was in thelove-feast days, and being a communistthen didn't stop you from being anAmerican. But at any rate, I likedwhat I had seen so far, both as anindividual and as a director. I wasthinking about the advancement ofpicture learning as much as I wasal>out politics."

The third step came early in 1943,when Dmytryk l>ecame part of theHollywood Writers Mobilization."This, too, was a communist front,though that word wasn't in use then.They wrote skits for the USO, prop-aganda speeches for the war effort, andagain there were seminars on cutting,music, such as we'd had at PEC, butnow on a much larger scale. By now Ihad decided I liked the way they didthings, and I wanted to know moreabout communism."

In the spring of 1944 EdwardDmytryk joined the Communist Partyjust as it dissolved into the CommunistPoHtical Association, a result of StaUn'sofficially ending the Comintern. Awriter who was to be one of the Tenmade a recruiting pitch at a home inthe San Fernando Valley and anothermember of the Ten passed aroundmembership applications. Dmytiyk wasone of three recruits to join that night.

"This is where it gets rough," hesaid slowly. "Nowadayw, if you admitl>eing an ex-communist, everyone ex-pects you to be able to trot out aU sortsof secret plans and big names l>ent onhigh treason. But if it was going onthen, it certainly wasn't in the neigh-borhood groups I attended. In aU, Iattended seven or eight group meetingsof from fifteen to twenty people, andthey spent most of their time wranglingover the new by-laws and things likethat. It was all directed on a propa-ganda plane, writing speeches and try-ing to elect candidaties favorable tocommunism — things like that.

"While I also attended a couple offraction meetings where they wereworking on local race-prejudice angles,I was never asked to do any particularjob, largely because I hadn't beenfitted into any assignment yet. In alot of ways I was a bad communistfrom the start. I began to suspect thatthe ideals that had first attracted mewere going to remain just that. Whilethere was a lot of talk alrout equalities,there was damn little action. It endedup I never did pay any dues, though Idid make contributions out of whatmoney I happened to have on mewhenever the hat was passed. But Inever went for their 'tithing.'"

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The one thing the communists werealways after was to get Hollywoodmembers to contribute 10 per cent oftheir gross pay and Dmytryk beUevesthat Hollywood contributed far moremoney than any other group its size inthis country. That he never contributedto this tithing himself is Iwrne out bybis business manager's records. "Ac-tually," Dmytryk said, "if it hadn'tbeen for the hearings and what fol-lowed, this wouldn't have been animportant phase of my life. I was al-ready beginning to doubt tbeir sin-cerity. And what really upset me waswhat the party tried to do to a pictureof mine."

RKO purchased a story that wasultimately released as Cornered, star-ring Dick Powell. Dmytryk and AdrianScott —also one of the Ten —were as-signed to it as the director and pro-ducer, respectively. The story was thatof a Canadian flier who, bent on revengefor his wife's death, trails the Nazi whokilled her to Buenos Aires. "John

May 19,1951

Wexley wrote the first script," Dmytryksaid, "and when 1 saw it I just didn'tlike it. While his script was highlyantifascist, I didn't so much object toits sentiments as to its wordiness andgenerally uncinematic treatment.

"Consequently I suggested to AdrianScott that we put another writer on it.I wanted it made more dramatic and Iwanted to cut the wordiness too. Heagreed and a second writer came onand did a bang-up job. I shot the pic-ture, and as far as I was concerned,that was that. But meanwhile JohnWexley had protested the credits on thescript, and a Screen Writers' Guild ar-bitration committee found againstWexley. Now, with the pictureabout tobe released, John Wexley called AdrianScott and insisted that tbe three of usbave a meeting regarding the story.

"The meeting was held at my apart-ment. Adrian and I felt of course thatit was going lo be a last beef about thecredit decision. But when Wexleywalked in, he had two communistscreen writers with him. They cameright to the point, charging that bychanging Wexley's script, we had actu-ally made a profascist picture. This an-gered both Adrian and me.

"Wexley insisted on a second meet-ing, and this, too, was held at myapartment. This time Wexley arrivedwith the two communist writers plusJohn Howard Lawson, who was thelast word in such matters. We then gotAlbert Maltz—also a member of theTen —in to argue our side. He did thisso ably that the meeting ended in astalemate. All that came of it was mydisillusionment in some importantmembers, and thus in the party."

But the repercussions had onlystarted. Maltz felt so keenly about thematter he wrote a piece for NewMasses entitled. What Shall We Ask ofWriters? Appearing February 12,1946,it defended writers' freedom of thought.For this heresy Maltz was promptlytaken to task by the Daily Worker andon April 7, 1946, he accepted the partydiscipline, completely recanting in theWorker with an article entitled Mov-ing Forward.

The meeting with Maltz was late inthe fall of 1945. While he retained hisLeftist friends, there is no record of hisparticipation in the party after thattime, aside from his name still appear-ing on various "fronts." During thenext two years he was to make threepicture and, having parted from hiswife, was to fall in love with JeanPorter, who had played in one of them.

But In September, 1947, the HouseUn-American Activities Committee,

trying to prove communist infiltrationof the picture business, served nineteensubiK>enas on Hollywood Leftists, ofwhom Dmytryk was one. The com-mittee was already highly unpopularwith Hollywood liherals, who fearedthat its real aim was Government cen-sorship of all motion pictures. AsDmytryk said, "A lot of people hesidesthe commies were anxious to appearbefore it, if only to cballenge it on con-stitutional grounds."

Tbe formal hearings started in Wash-mgton on October 20, 1947, completewith all the lights and microphonesthat normally make up a Hollywoodsuperproduction. The committee hadselected fourteen "friendly witnesses"to appear first. The "friendly wit-nesses," who attempted to show therehad been a communist infiltration inHoUywood, included such stars asGary Cooper and Robert Taylor, andthe press had a field day. A numberof pictures were cited as "examples"of how communist writers and directorshad tried to slip a loaded message tothe public, but, ironically. Corneredwas never mentioned.

The charges of the "friendly wit-nesses" so steamed up Hollywood lib-erals that they rushed right into thenewspapers themselves. This was ac-complished by a junket of top starsand writers who, banded together asThe Committee for the First Amend-ment, chartered a plane and flew backto Washington, loudly decrying boththe intent of tbe hearings and tbe testi-mony of the "friendly witnesses.'* Thepress really had a ball then, as LaurenBacail wrote a feature story for aWashington paper, protesting such aninvestigation. Danny Kaye madespeeches and Humphrey Bogart, whowas later to regret publicly the wholething, contributed his views of thecommittee.

By Octof)er 27, 1947, the stage wasall set for the dramatic appearance ofthe nineteen "unfriendly witnesses."

"We had !)een holding daily confer-ences in Washington hotels," Dmytryksaid, "and we had decided each of uswas to make up his own mind how totestify. And all of us came to the con-clusion we would refuse to answercertain questions on constitutionalgrounds. On that hasis we felt we couldthen take the committee into court andwin there. I felt strongly that the FirstAmendment protected me on a point ofprivacy."

But any sympathy that had accruedto the "unfriendly witnesses" becauseof the hearsay allowed earlier in thehearings was quickly dissipated, oncethe witnesses actually took the stand.The Ten went right down the line re-fusing, with the exception of Lawsonand Dmytryk, even to answer whetherthey belonged to the Screen Writers' orScreen Directors' guilds. Lawson andDniytryk answered the question ontheir guild affiliations largely becauseit was already a matter of record.

Dmytryk's brief testimony endedwhen it became apparent he was pur-suing the same line as the other wit-nesses. The chairman, J. PamellThomas, promptly excused Dmytrykfrom the stand and recommended thathe he cited for contempt. Dmytryk'stestimony in the 549-page report sub-sequently released by the committee isbarely three and a half pages. Anotherthree pages records the testimony ofvarious investigators as to Dmytryk'scomniunist-card numbers and his mem-bership in six communist "fronts."That afternoon, of course, Dmytrykhad no idea that J. Pamell Thomaswould soon be in a Federal prison him-

self for taking "kickbacks" from hisemployees. All Dmytryk knew wasthat he himself was in trouble.

The hearings abruptly ended withthe testimony of only eleven of thenineteen "unfriendly witnesses," theeleventh witness, Berthold Brecht, an-swering the sixty-four-dollar questionhy denying he was ever a commie.Congress backed up the committee,finding all ten in contempt of Congresson Novemher 24, 1947. Upset at thispublicity, three days later the studioheads issued a joint statement thatthey would forthwith discharge any ofthe Ten until he had acquitted orpurged himself of contempt and de-clared under oath that he was not aTOmmujiist. As a result, Dmytryk andScott were promptly fired by RKO un-der the "morals" clause found in alllong-term contracts. They, in turn,promptly brought civil suits fordamages against RKO. The suits arestiD pending.

"While I knew at least seven of theTen were communists," Dmytryk said,

I stayed with the group because ofmy own personal convictions. I wasvery angry at first, feeling I had beenwronged as an individual, and I wentalong wholeheartedly in the fight. Iwas asked to rejoin the party then, butthat I wouldn't do. I wanted to fight oncivil liberties alone."

The Ten's immediate concern was torally public opinion to their side. Thiswas done by tbe writing of pampbleU,Gordon Kahn's book, Hollywood onIrial, organizing appearances before

fellow-traveler groups tbrougbout thecountry, setting up committees to helpraise money for their defense, and mak-H>g a short subject of the Hollywoodien, showing the men with their fami-lies and at a round-table discussion.

Dmytryk married Jean Porter atI Q 7 O ° " ^'^y- ^^sryland, on May 12,Ju J ^^ " ° " ' ' *««**<* beside bim onthe divan, small and quiet in ber graylounging pajamas, she said, "We werealready going together when all thistrouble started, and I asked Eddieabout It. He told me he had belongedback in 1945, and that while he wasn'ta communist any more, he couldn'tjust walk out on them." Her voice islight^ and, in a way, childlike. " I tdidn t make any difference to me be-cause I knew the kind of a guy he reallywas. But It made a difference to someof my friends. They told me I shouldquit going with him, that it would hurtmy career, and when all the headlinescame out, they-weU, sort of just dis-appeared."

Although Dmytryk had earned $137,-? } ^ ' " 1947, he was almost fiat broke.tie had made an expensive divorce set-tlement with his first wife and now theGovernment found him $27,000 in taxarrears. Borrowing on his insurancepobcies and almost everything else, he^S"f™ ii's liills and started looking fora job. With his career so abruptly endedm Hollywood, he went to England withrns wife ,n the summer of 1948. Hesaid, I made expense money and thatwas about all by directing two picturesthere m the next eighteen months. Butgomg to England was atiU the bestthing 1 ever did."

In England he had no communistfriends, and he said, " I was completelyout of that circle of isolation that formsaround aU fellow travelers. I had beenso busy with my career at home that Ihadn t realized how I had graduallysealed myself off from outside thoughtsand lnfiuences. And the people I metabroad, living much closer ttf commu-nism than we do, see it more clearly forwhat it really is. One thing that hit me

THE SATURD.VY EVENING POST 149

was when Oksana Kosenkina jumpedout of the Soviet consulate in NewYork rather than be sent back to Rus-sia. That really made me think.

" When you're away," he said slowly,"you realize how much your countrymeans to you. I really found that outthe day the French embassy in LondonCalled me and said they had a subpoenathere, wanting me to appear as a wit-ness at the Victor Kravchenko trial inParis." (Kravchenko, the author of IChose Freedom, had sued a Paris com-munist newspaper, Les Lettres Fran-Caises, for saying his book, exposingconditions in Russia, was untrue, andwas to win nominal damages in his ac-tion.) "This commie paper wanted U)use me as a witness to show there waspersecution in America as well as Rus-sia. I really got mad then at the com-munists wanting to exhibit me in acase in which there was absolutely nogrounds for my appearance. It wascompletely callous, wanting to use meto prove tbat Russia was right in con-trast to America, and completely dis-regarding tbe fact I am an American.That was definite proof that commu-nists place the party above any countryexcept Russia, and that no communistcan ever possibly be a loyal citizen.Wbatever my personal beef was, I wascertainly not going to air any dirtylinen in a foreign country and I tumedthe subpoena down cold."

While Dmytryk was in England,John Howard Lawson and DaltonTrumbo were tried and convicted, andappealed. The eight other members ofthe Ten waived trials at tbat time, stip-ulating that they would abide by theSupreme Court decision in the Lawsonand Trumljo cases. A decision was ex-pected at any time, and so Dmytrykand his wife returned to HoUywood inAugust, 1949.

"After you've been away," Dmy-tryk said, "your eyes are really clear,and wbat hit me first was the way thepsychoanalysis craze had hit the Holly-

wood communists. All of them weretrying to solve the contradictions intheir thoughts and the way they lived,trying to reconcile themselves to pres-ent-day conditions. The second thingthat got me was the way the Ten werebeing tumed into martyrs, anotherScottaboro case. It was like everythingelse the commies do; they wili go into alynch case, for example, but instead oftrying to help the Negroes, what theyare really after is to use the incident tostir up still more treuble. Tbe Negroesdon't matter; tbey're just a means toan end. And that bad happened withthe Ten. Wben I left, it had basicallybeen a good civii-iilierties case. Nowit was lieing used as a spearheadagainst all attacits on communism.

"People like Thomas Mann, LinusPauling and Carey McWilliams hadbeen attracted to the cause of the Ten,and now I saw them being used tirneand again for other purposes. By dia-lectic extension, the party was tryingto make our case apply to all commu-nist cases, such as the eleven partyleaders who' were tried in New York,and the Bridges case in California. Ipromptly got into my own fight* withthe Ten, wanting to keep it just a civil-liberties case, but the group always in-sisted and always won out, and it gotso a statement was never issued witb-out bringing in the question of peaceand whatever else happened to be inthe current party line."

He hesitated, then said slowly, "Thehardest thing I had to live with was therealization that they were trying toprotect communism in this country byinvoking the Constitution and civilliberties, things that wouldn't last fiveminutes if the commies ever lookover." For the only time his voice waslow, "This was on my conscience con-stantly."

On May 29, 1950, the SupremeCourt refused for a second time to re-view the Lawson and Trumbo convic-tions, and on June ninth, Lawson and

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Trumho went to jail. Dmytryk, whohad refused to tour with the Ten intheir last' money-raising campaigns,flew back to Washington and on June29, 1950, had a perfunctory formaltrial. Judge Keech sentenced him tosix months in Federal prison and a$1000 fine, and remanded him to theDistrict of Columbia jail the same day,where Dmytryk drew a bootlegger ashis first cellmate.

The war had just started in Koreaand it was the hig subject of conversa-tion among those of the Ten in thatWashington jail. Walking hack andforth during their exercise periods, theyhashed it over, always insisting it wasthe South Koreans who had attackedthe North Koreans.

" I t was utterly insane," Dmytryksaid. "We were in jail, we had no wayat all of knowing what was going on,and yet a judgment favorable to com-munism and unfavorable to us wasmade right then. This showed me forthe last time their conditioned think-ing; that there was no independence ofthought, there couldn't he. I was reallythrough then." His voice tightened,"All that Russian peace talk, things Ihad once believed in, had just been ablind to disarm the Western world."

With Albert Maltz he was trans-ferred to Mill Point Prison Camp onJuly 17, 1950. There, where he was as-signed a job as a garage clerk in a camplargely devoted to logging and sawmilloperations, Dmytryk kept getting mad-der. "Finally," he said, "when theChinese entered the war, I swore to anaffidavit before Superintendent Thie-

man." The affidavit, while reiteratinghis feelings that he had been right onconstitutional grounds, stated his loy-alty Ui this country and ended with thestatement that, at the time of thehearings", he was not a CommunistParty meml>er.

Albert Maltz pleaded with him notto issue the statement. "He used theclincher they always have on ex-com-munists," Dmytryk said slowly. "Hesaid, 'People won't helieve you anv-how; they'll think that if you wereonce a communist you're always oneand Hollywood will be as afraid of puh-lic opmion as it ever was.' And mayhehe's nght. But I had to have it ofT mychest. The only reason I didn't admitthen that I had ever heen a commu-nist was that I wanted to wait until Ihad put it all together in my mind, allthe things that took me into the partvand hack out again."

Released November 15, 1950 afterserving four months and seventeendays as a result of time off for good be-havior, Dmytryk returned to Holly-wood to pick up his unknown destinyWhile only one independent producerhas shown a nervous interest in havinghim direct a picture at some futuredate, the communists had alreadystarted their local smear campaign. AtLucey's Restaurant one of them ex-plamed away Dmytryk's affidavit, say-ing. You know the inside on thatdon't you? He made a deal with theproducers that he was to start work atMGM at $5000 a week the minute hegot out, if he would just sign that affi-davit."

Ma> 19. I9.'>1

Quietly, Dmytryk said, "While, likey guy. I hope I go hack to work one

of these days, that isn't why I'm talk-ing now. If I made a certain reputa-tion, I'm stuck with it. But a guy hasto speak out now. It's fellows like my-self that give the party its strength andIts camouflage. If they'll walk off now,the rest won't lie hard to handle."

What his future is in the picture in-dustry is not yet known. There arethose who feel that, communist or not,he was far too individualistic to haveever had any importance in the party.This checks with availahle records andDmytryk's own story. The more mod-erate elements seem to feel that he willhear watchful waiting, and that's all.Those on the Right have a violent dis-trust for any ex-communist and are in-sistent such people must continuouslypurge themselves with a steady "disin-fecting process." No one knows whatthat may be.

In timt quiet apartment Dmytryktries to forget those things by workingon a screen play. The phone rings veryseldom, and he said, a bit wryly,'That's what happens when you cut

yourself off. In hreaking clean, a lot ofthe people who were closest to you aregone too. This isn't Uke AlcoholicsAnonymous. The ex-drunks help eachother. They know that awful lonelinessa man gets—so there's always thatphone, somebody to call when it getsrough. Maybe that's the answer for alot of people who are trying to quit,sort of an Ex-Communists Anony-mous.'* He smiled faintly, watching hiswife. "It 's an idea, anyway."

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DOLLAR STOOGES(Continued from Page 29)

personnel." The forms and the uni-forms, it tumed out, were genuine, butstolen. The household goods were foundto be chocolate and cigarettes, thedrivers Austrian.

After weeks of investigation, the or-ganizers of the fake transport weretraced to Soviet-ruled Prague. It alsowas found that they had worked thesame stratagem dozens of times he-fore— only the uniforms had differed.Sometimes they had been American.

Coffee is brought over the border inwine barrels, cigarettes in bundles ofrags, and narcotics in hollowed-out re-ligious books. Cars have double floorsand trucks secret compartments largeenough to hold a $1000 proflt in tea.

In September, "Charley With theWhite Hairs," a notorious Frenchcounterfeiter, was arrested by the Parispolice. They found millions of marks,dollars and francs stacked up high inhis printing shop, ready to be shippedinto Germany in the water tank of alocomotive—as other millions had beensent before.

Ships, with their many partitionsand multiple bottoms, are the customsinspectors' grief the world over. Theheavy barge traffic on Germany's manywaterways supplies an ideal transportfor smugglers. A hai^e that had slippedin from the Soviet zone at night, butwas detected when fire broke out in itsgalley, disgorged a fine hodgepodge ofcontraband:

225 rolls of newsprint for the WestGemmn communist press

190 ladies' panties (dark blue)40 pairs of United States nylon

stockings

235 boxes of communistganda material

40,000 pounds of coffee3 boxes of Meissen china

5000 pairs of rayon stockings26 optical instruments

propa-

Still another variety of smugglinggoes on along the Belgian borderthrough Germany's "hole in the West.''There the city of Aachen lies close to aborder that winds through extensivewoodlands. Tens of thousands of peo-ple make a career out of smuggling.They work in carefully organized bandsand are often armed and protected inmilitary fashion by advance and reargxiards.

In this region of a few dozen miles ofborder country, customs police madeabout 40,000 arrests last year—eacharrest averaging six pounds of coffee."Those figures look fine on paper," onecustoms guard said, "hut for everypound we catch, at least fifteen poundsescape us."

There is no trick of the trade that thesmugglers haven't learned. Methodsdiffer, and so do the smugglers. Butwhether they are the small profession-als of Aachen, honteless DP's, membersof the occupation forces, the poorfanatics of the Communist Party or thehig-time organizers, the result is thesame.

Vast sumB of money which should heused for the reconstruction of Germanygo into private pockets. And largeamounts of vital materials go to theSoviets when they should he availablefor the defense preparations of theWest. Some "independent" smugglershave no connection with the Soviets.But they help Moscow by their opera-tions.

Though the Russians do not controlthe whole weird world of Germany'sblack market, they are fast increasingtheir holdings. They are now responsi-

ble for weU over half of its activities,German officials estimate. Their con-trol vanes from direct operation to dis-tant manipulation. Sometimes theCham of command is so tenuous thatthe man doing the job doesn't evenknow he is working for the Polithuro.

Ihe growth of the Soviets' contra-band organization is particularly re-markable, since at first, after the war,tne Kussians had Uttle to do with theorgy of^iUicit trading in ruined Ger-many. Then, the black market was justa legacy of the war-l ike the weeds thatspread in the rubble of the devastatedcities.

I ^'^^permans' main interest was tokeep ahve hy hook or by crook. The oc-cupying powers had their hands full.1 he new German customs forces wereunarmed, often corrupt and totally in-sufficient m numbers. Above aU, theywere permitted little authority over"""-German nationals.

That was the era when a whole na-tion danced, not around the goldencalf, but around a packet of cigarettesand a handful of coffee. Which visitorto Frankfort does not recall the officialAmerican barter market, the Hand-lungszentrale, whose roaring trade wenton just outside the American com-pound? German housewives broughttheir valuables to the Zentrale and re-ceived American cigarettes, coffee,soap or candies in return. Two pack-ages of cigarettes bought a fine camera,worth $100 or more, and a fine antiquecoffee table could he had for four packs,in those days anybody who had ac-cess to American and British suppliescould amass a small fortune. And manydid. ^

Gradually the occupation forcestightened their regulations. Alliedcitizens were required to submit tocustoms examination. More self-gov-ernment was granted to the Germans.Their customs service improved.

Richard English, "What Makes a Hollywood Communist?" Saturday Evening Post, May 19,1951.Courtesy Saturday Evening Post.