Transcript of Judy Holliday's Testimony - Page 10
Mr. Arens: What was your participation in the movement protesting the indictment of the so-called Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress?
Miss Holliday: I allowed my name to be used in that.
Mr. Arens: That is what the ad was about, was it not?
Miss Holliday: Oh, is that the same ad you are talking about?
Mr. Arens: Yes.
Miss Holliday: Oh, well, I didn't identify it that way. I identified it as a protest against the indictment of the Hollywood Ten; that there should be, that they weren't, you had to prove them guilty.
Mr. Arens: That is what you have to prove in this country. You have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and is that not what they were doing in this particular case, submitting it to a grand jury, the question of probable cause of the guilt of the Hollywood Ten for refusal to testify on certain matters before the House Committee on Un-American Activities?
Miss Holliday: Yes; but I at the time didn't believe that they were guilty or that they were Communists.
Mr. Arens: How did you know?
Miss Holliday: I just didn't believe it, that's all.
Mr. Arens: Had you heard the evidence?
Miss Holliday: No, not all of it.
Senator Watkins: Were you acquainted with any of these 10?
Miss Holliday: No.
Senator Watkins: You mean to say that you were not acquainted with any of those 10 men and yet you would sign a protest?
Miss Holliday: Yes.
Mr. Arens: These people on whose behalf you were protesting had all been indicted by a grand jury for contempt of Congress, had they not?
Miss Holliday: Yes.
Mr. Rifkind: I should like to suggest that a look at the ad would be helpful.
Senator Watkins: Do you have a copy there?
Mr. Rifkind: No; I haven't.
Senator Watkins: Do you have it?
Mr. Arens: No.
Mr. Rifkind: We have not been able to find any such ad.
Mr. Arens: Who is it that came to you and told you in effect that you should let your name be used in behalf of people who had been indicted in the normal judicial process of this land for contempt of Congress?
Miss Holliday: I don't know.
Mr. Arens: Did you have in your mind that the use of your signature would influence?
Miss Holliday: I think it emanated again from this ASP.
Mr. Rifkind: Arts, Sciences and Professions?
Miss Holliday: Yes. They called up and said, "It's a shame, that these people are innocent, and we want to protest it," and I said O.K. That was about it.
Mr. Arens: And you let your name be used in their defense, protesting the trial of people who had been indicted?
Miss Holliday: I don't know if it was protesting the trial. The way it seemed to me, it was protesting the fact that the motion-picture companies could fire people and not defend them if they just even thought they were guilty. I am not too clear about it. I know that I at the time had a feeling about it, that it was wrong to do that.
Mr. Arens: This was with reference to people who were indicted for failure to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee, is that not true?
Miss Holliday: Yes.
Mr. Arens: And you knew at the time you let your name be used?
Miss Holliday: Yes.
Mr. Arens: You knew that the failure to answer was failure to answer questions with reference to Communist activities in this country, is that not true?
Miss Holliday: Yes.
Senator Watkins: You still insist that you did not know any of these people?
Miss Holliday: I had met one of them, but I didn't know them. I didn't even know them to speak to as I speak to you. I had met one of them, named Adrian Scott, at a party where we played a game of charades. As it happened, we played in two separate rooms, and he was not on my team, so I had very little to do with him.
Senator Watkins: Do you have a wide acquaintance in the theatrical field in Hollywood?
Miss Holliday: In Hollywood, no.
Senator Watkins: Have you ever lived in Hollywood?
Miss Holliday: Yes; I lived in Hollywood for a year before I was in pictures. I was under contract to Twentieth Century and didn't know anybody and nobody wanted to know me and I never met anybody. Then when I did do pictures I would go out there for 3 months, work exhaustively and come home. You get up at 5:30 and come home at 7 at night and you fall into bed and just keep going. It's terrific work, and I never socialize. I was always eager to come here. I resented the time I spent there, and I never met many people. I don't even know too many people in the theater profession in New York. I led a very quiet and secluded life. My friends, a great many of them, are my husband's or Betty and Adolph, this girl Yetta Cohn. We are like a family. We don't go out to cocktail parties and we don't go out with people, it's just our way of life. We don't do it.
Senator Watkins: The reason I am asking you the question is to see whether you had an opportunity to know about this whole thing. You plead innocence about it; that you do not know anything about it, and that you never heard about it?
Miss Holliday: No, no, I didn't know that it was called something ----
Mr. Arens: You have a recollection of letting your name be used?
Miss Holliday: I do.
Mr. Arens: In defense of the 10 people who were indicted by a grand jury in the United States, duly impaneled, for failure to answer questions before a congressional committee; is that not correct?
Miss Holliday: I do. I don't know whether or not I had good and sufficient reason for doing what I did. I certainly know that it was not presented to me that way.
Mr. Arens: How was it presented to you?
Miss Holliday: It was presented to me as something about underdogs. All right, I have been a sucker for that, I usually say "Yes."
Mr. Arens: You knew Communists were involved in this?
Miss Holliday: I didn't know they were Communists.
Senator Watkins: Did you know they were charged with communism?
Miss Holliday: Yes.
Senator Watkins: You knew that.
Miss Holliday: Yes. They said that they shouldn't answer that and were willing to go to jail rather than answer.
Mr. Arens: Do you not think that congressional committees, particularly congressional committees charged with the responsibility of developing facts about the internal security of the Nation, have the right to inquire of witnesses with respect to Communist conspiracy in this country?
Miss Holliday: Absolutely, As things have turned out and as I have learned more of what has been going on, my views have changed completely. At the time it was all shallow thinking. I admit I responded impulsively on an emotional basis many times and didn't realize the seriousness of the situation, which I do know.
Senator Watkins: When did you first have your eyes opened to this situation?
Miss Holliday: Well, I guess I read about spies and people really working against the Government, and then I began to realize the seriousness of the accusations which I once thought were nothing when they were directed at me and when I had to look at what I had been doing, and I began to realize that I should have been much more responsible about it and investigated much more thoroughly. We are in a state of extreme tension now, things aren't the same as they once were. I mean, Douglas MacArthur signed a big ad in the New York Times congratulating the Red Army. That was then, see?
Senator Watkins: The events that have happened that we were interrogating you about just a few moments ago were not in the same period at all?
Miss Holliday: No; but there was in my mind a sort of -- not happy-go-lucky, but irresponsible attitude, I admit it. It was an irresponsible attitude mostly on an emotional basis for a quick "yes" for anybody that sounded to me like they were getting the wrong end of something.
Senator Watkins: Did you change after the Supreme Court decided and upheld the conviction of these 10?
Miss Holliday: I never did anything about it after that.
Senator Watkins: I am trying to find out when you changed your mind? You must have had some different frame of mind on this if you made a change. Now about when was it?
Miss Holliday: I don't know. There were so many things that happened. When I began to realize the possible imminence of a war, when I began to realize that there were such things as spies and people working against the country. I don't know when it was, but I know that the whole tenor of my thinking changed considerably in the last 2 years.
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