On March 31, 1941, MPPDA president Will Hays released his annual report, titled Motion Pictures and National Defense. Although most of the 38-page document would be ignored by the Senate investigation of Hollywood, Hays outlined Hollywood’s response to the turmoil in Europe. Hays describes 1940 “as a period of supreme crisis in the history of the world.” Profits were the only true ideology in Hollywood, and the war was clearly affecting foreign sales. Hays listed fourteen countries that no longer bought Hollywood films and thirteen that were nearing the same position. The isolationist senators used this economic change as an explanation for why Hollywood made anti-Nazi films, but Hays also explained that the industry had simply shifted its export focus elsewhere.
The MPPDA president also gave an overview of the kinds of films released over the past year. Hays categorized them in terms of drama, comedy, and music and singled out films that portrayed the “somber and satirical aspects of the tragedy of Europe.” Several films that would be discussed during the Senate investigation were listed, such as The Mortal Storm, The Great Dictator, Night Train to Munich, Foreign Correspondent, The Man I Married, and Pastor Hall. For Hays, the war in Europe was a natural topic for movies, but the small number of such films “spoke most emphatically against any charge that the screen was a breeder of hate.” Only 5 percent of films released in 1940 dealt with the European conflict in any capacity.
While critics of Hollywood would soon refer to film primarily as a means of amusement, Hays defined film as “a medium of information, education, and entertainment.” Hays also stated that movies were an important force for national morale, which was proven by the Naval leaders who testified before the House Appropriations Committee two weeks prior to Hays’s report. After describing the industry’s growth in terms of exhibition policy and technology, Hays noted how Hollywood was leading the nation with its community service. The film industry raised millions of dollars for the Red Cross and donated thousands of films to health facilities, which was a testament to its civic responsibility.
PURCHASE ‘HOLLYWOOD HATES HITLER!’ HERE
Hays’ conclusion argued that “the screen is too prominent a medium for criticism, right or wrong, not to be constantly leveled at it. Wholesome criticism allows for constant self-examination and stimulates our progress; baseless criticism gives us the opportunity to establish the facts about the industry.” The industry would certainly be providing facts countering ill-informed criticism, as the isolationist senators would grasp strongly to Hays’s final paragraph that describes cinema as “an instrument of universal entertainment,” but would ignore the rest of the sentence that describes film as an instrument of “wide-spread information and common inspiration.” Much of Hollywood’s defense would be based on the medium’s purpose of spreading information and, when necessary, inspiration.
The pamphlet that likely informed the Senate investigation on a more significant scale was G. Allison Phelps’ dossier An American’s History of Hollywood: The Tower of Babel. Phelps’ arguments and accusations throughout the 34-page document would regularly find their way into the comments made by the isolationist senators. An American’s History of Hollywood opens with the claim that Hollywood is largely informed by its many Russian immigrant employees, and therefore is an industry led by communists. Phelps’ evidence, without listing specific productions, was that “the Hollywood leaders, in selecting ‘literature’ from which to produce pictures, reached far back into Russia to bring forth the embryo of atheism, the oriental germ of eroticism, [and] the seeds of lust and hatred.” The films coming from Hollywood were described as “a constant stream of sexy, underworld pictures,…
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