Document 24.5 Ronald Reagan, Testimony before HUAC, 1947

Document 24.5

Ronald Reagan | Testimony before HUAC, 1947

Ronald Reagan’s acting career began in the late 1930s and included numerous starring roles, mostly in B movies. During World War II, he served in the Public Relations Unit of the Army Air Corps, where he helped produce hundreds of training films. Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild during HUAC’s Hollywood investigations, and he testified before the committee. Robert Stripling was the committee’s chief investigator.

MR. STRIPLING Mr. Reagan, what is your feeling about what steps should be taken to rid the motion-picture industry of any Communist influences, if they are there?

MR. REAGAN Well, sir . . . 99 percent of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think within the bounds of our democratic rights, and never once stepping over the rights given us by democracy, we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people’s activities curtailed. After all, we must recognize them at present as a political party. On that basis we have exposed their lies when we came across them, we have opposed their propaganda, and I can certainly testify that in the case of the Screen Actors Guild we have been eminently successful in preventing them from, with their usual tactics, trying to run a majority of an organization with a well organized minority.

So that fundamentally I would say in opposing those people that the best thing to do is to make democracy work. In the Screen Actors Guild we make it work by insuring everyone a vote and by keeping everyone informed. I believe that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, if all the American people know all of the facts they will never make a mistake.

Whether the party should be outlawed, I agree with the gentlemen that preceded me that that is a matter for the Government to decide. As a citizen I would hesitate, or not like, to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. We have spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight against the inroads of any ideology. However, if it is proven that an organization is an agent of a power, a foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party, and I think the Government is capable of proving that, if the proof is there, then that is another matter.

I do not know whether I have answered your question or not. I . . . would like at this moment to say I happen to be very proud of the industry in which I work; I happen to be very proud of the way in which we conducted the fight. I do not believe the Communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion-picture screen as a sounding board for their philosophy or ideology. I think that will continue as long [as] the people in Hollywood continue as they are, which is alert, conscious of it, and fighting.

Source: House Un-American Activities Committee, Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry, 80th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 216–17.