Lavery Holds Hollywood No Red Bailiwick

"You can call Hollywood anything except subversive," Emmett Lavery, president of the Screen Writers' Guild and recent witness before the Thomas Committee in the Senate, told the Liberal Union last night. "It is difficult to get any idea, much less a subversive one, on the screen today," he pointed out,

Lavery called the un-American Committee poorly defined, poorly led, and poorly run, Klieg lights and eight-inch headlines are no way to investigate, he said. "Personalties, not the films, were prosecuted."

Right to Investigate

Although he considers the present committee a monace, Lavery stated that he believes Congress has the right of inquiry, pointing out that this right can be a great protection in the hands of a good council.

When questioned about communist influence in his Screen Writers' Guild, Lavery answered, "In the recent Guild elections, only one out of 20 offices was filled by a left-winger. This man isn't a Communist. Subversive influence has been over-magnified."

Effect on Hollywood

"Fear is a powerful weapon," he said. "Although the best possible answer to the Communist tag tied on the movie industry would be the making of better pictures, Hollywood will probably crawl back into its shell for about two years and produce even less imaginative pictures."

Lavery did not approve of the decision of the movie industry, a private group, to act as a judiciary, firing the ten cited for contempt.