"Mr. Nye Goes to Hollywood"

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the best of men," said Senator Tobey at one of the early hearings in the Senate probe of the motion picture industry. At the time, the Senator's words seemed to offer the best explanation of what went on when Nye, Clark, Brooks, and company ran head-on into Wendell Willkie and his cotcric of assorted Hollywood executives. The whole show promised to set off more fireworks then a double-feature movie with a Mickey Mouse, newsreel, and Bank Night thrown in.

The heavily pro-isolationist investigating committee is, however, fast becoming the Boris Karloff rather then the Harpo Marx of the show in question. The investigation has rumbled along on an anti-British, anti-Semitic, anti-foreign-born campaign, stopping along the way to take a few digs at both the President and Mr. Willkie. The thoroughness with which the committee sought to avoid the truth was typified by Senator Nye's admission that most of the members of the committee had seen none of the movies that they alleged were pushing the United States to the brink of war.

It isn't hard to laugh the whole investigation off, but at a time like this such laughter rings a bit hollow. When the elected representatives of this country openly declare, as Senator Nye did, that they are "not, as yet, in favor of bringing the question of anti-Semitism into the investigation," then some sort of scepticism regarding their motives might well be expected.

That the motion picture industry could stand a good deal of reform is common knowledge. But the way to bring about such reform, does not seem to lie in the direction the present committee is taking. It looks as if the investigators, not the movie-makers are in need of investigation.