In the final days of the 1942 California election campaign, a group from the motion picture industry which had previously helped to make Culbert L. Olsen the first Democratic governor of the state in almost half a century, reassembled to work for his reelection. Although unsuccessful, the response to their efforts suggested the potential of such a group, and plans were begun for an organization of industry people to work for progressive candidates in the 1944 elections and for other important issues.
Two hundred people responded to the general invitation to the industry to attend a meeting on January 14, 1943, and 123 joined that evening. On March 4 a constitution was adopted which named the group the Hollywood Democratic Committee. Officers were elected, including Marc Connelly as chair, and plans were formulated for the upcoming Los Angeles municipal elections and for a regular radio program. Forty-two new members were added at the time.
In the following month, the first issue of Target for Today, a bimonthly bulletin, made recommendations for the coming election and stated the organization's stand on a number of national issues. A mass meeting attracted 2500 who heard speeches by Senator Sheridan Downey and Congressman Will Rogers Jr., saw a skit presenting the aims of the committee, and sent a “Message to
Washington” urging passage of the anti-Poll Tax Bill and the Kilgore-Tolan-Pepper Bill, continuance of Reciprocal Trade Agreements, added funds for child care, and defeat of the Hobbs Bill.
During the first year, the efforts of HDC were varied. The files include correspondence and data, sometimes extensive and sometimes very brief, supporting child care, soldiers' vote, and price control; opposing the Chinese Exclusion Act; commending the War Relocation Authority and aiding in the publicizing of loyal Japanese Americans; investigating the causes and cures of the L.A. “Zoot Suit” navy race riots and recommending passage of a number of anti-discrimination bills: the anti-Lynch Bill, the anti-Poll Tax Bill, the Lynch-Dickstein Bill to bar racist material from the mails.
By the beginning of 1944, the membership rolls included nearly one thousand names, many of them famous.
Many of its prominent members were very active. Marc Connelly continued as chairman; vice chairmen were Gene Kelly, John Cromwell, the president of the Screen Directors' Guild, and E.Y. Harburg, composer of the music for The Wizard of Oz. Olivia de Havilland, Duke Ellington, Rita Hayworth, Ira Gershwin, and William Wilder were among the board members. George Pepper was executive secretary, as he had been from the early establishment of the organization.
The rallying point was loyalty to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The platform voted at the January 1944, meeting backed “full mobilization of the country's resources for victory,... the President's foreign policy, realistic measures against inflation, full democratic rights for all racial and minority groups, opposition to all repressive attacks on labor, protection of the farmer and agricultural production, development and extension of a balanced social security program, immediate planning for full employment after the war, work and security for returning veterans.”
The primary “causes” of the year were the election - local and national. HDC campaigned for registration and for the election of its endorsed candidates, largely but not entirely Democratic, employing the talents of its members who provided research data, pamphlets, articles, slogans, songs, cartoons, speeches and entertainment for meetings of all sizes, and most important their names, endorsing candidates and causes.
The January 1945, membership meeting announced a membership of 2700. During the year HDC added to its activities support of the Crimea Conference and Bretton Woods; protest of the action of radio station KFI, which dismissed six news commentators and forbade future editorializing; and continued opposition to the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities, by January 3 a permanent House committee broadening its investigations and increasing its public statements.
HDC formulated a program of cooperation with the Independent Citizens Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (New York) and in March changed its name to Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, broadening its membership to workers in the other arts, the sciences and the professions. It retained its own constitution and its power to act independently, and resolved “support to President Truman in carrying out FDR's program for international security.” It also resolved to support labor, a permanent FEPC, anti-Poll Tax legislation, social security, jobs for veterans, and “extension of Bill of Rights.”
HDC had wired Harry Truman commending his first message to Congress as president, and pledging continued support of FDR's policies and programs. But the loss of FDR was a serious blow to the organization, apparently weakened already by divisions over policies and the tie with ICCASP. Some members withdrew, among them Jimmy Roosevelt, once an officer, and Will Rogers Jr., who had been supported by HDC from its beginning and had lent his name to their causes and his presence to their public meetings, declared that HICCASP “behaves like a Communist front group.”
The energies of HICCASP were increasingly directed toward fighting HUAC and HUAC-inspired attacks on the loyalty of artists in general and Hollywood personalities in particular. There is no evidence in these files that HICCASP was under Soviet influence, but there is much indication of the time and effort spent combatting charges brought by those fearful of the Communists. At the opening session of the 79th Congress, John Rankin denounced Hollywood as “a hotbed of subversive activities...the red citadel... [dominated by] aliens and alienminded people plotting to overthrow the government of the United States.” HICCASP responded with an eloquent pamphlet setting down, almost without comment, Rankin's previous record.
In a series of statements and meetings on atomic energy control, HICCASP called for a Big Three conference to establish international control, and a domestic policy which placed atomic power in civilian, not military hands.
In March 1946, HICCASP affiliated with ICCASP as its Hollywood chapter. At the end of the year, ICCASP joined with the National Citizens Political Action Committee and a number of small groups to form the Progressive Citizens of America, which at its founding convention in December voiced its dissatisfaction with both major parties and stated that it could not “therefore rule out the possibility of a new political party...” HICCASP retained its separate identity as the Arts, Sciences, and Professions Council of the Progressive Citizens of Southern California, ASP-PCA.
In California, HICCASP was called a “key Communist front.” In Washington, J. Parnell Thomas increased the investigations of Hollywood. ASP-PCA continued its general program, which included a conference, “Pattern for Survival,” called with Albert Einstein and Harlow Shapley and advocating USA-USSR co-existence. But primary efforts went to conferences on academic freedom; defense of the Hollywood Ten, most of them members of ASP; and campaigns against HUAC and all forms of “thought control” and censorship.
PCA grew louder in its protest of US policy in almost every field. When, in 1948, most chapters merged into a Third Party supporting Henry Wallace for president, ASP withdrew, stating that it was a non-partisan organization supporting individuals without regard for party lines. It reorganized as the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions, and in October endorsed Wallace.
In its final major undertaking, NCASP, with a list of 600 prominent sponsors, invited delegates from more than 20 countries to the “Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace” at the Waldorf Astoria, March 25-27, 1949. Publication of the acceptances sent from Communist countries began a storm of protest from the American Legion, the Catholic War Veterans, and other groups and individuals. Several sponsors withdrew. The State Department revoked the visas granted delegates from Britain, France, and Brazil, and denied subsequent applications from other western countries, although allowing those already granted official representatives from Communist block countries, saying that the visas denied were for persons not sent by their governments, that “the Communist side of the case will certainly be adequately presented by the twenty-one delegates from Eastern Europe, and by the Communists and Communist sympathizers in the United States,” and that “the American government entertains no illusions as to the manner in which the Communists will attempt to use and manipulate the present conference.” NCASP declared that the action was designed to make the meeting appear Soviet-dominated by refusing delegates from other countries, and stated that it was not a pro-Communist conference. Prominent Americans and Europeans, among them Thomas Mann, protested to the State Department. The conference met on a schedule reduced from earlier plans, and was picketed at every session. Three Canadians attending were held and questioned for Communist activities, and when many delegates announced their intention to travel and speak in the United States, their visas were restricted to Manhattan. The files end at this point. Although activities continued on a small scale during the following years the final history of the organization cannot be determined.
