John
Parnell Thomas was born in New Jersey on 16th January, 1895. He studied
at the University of Pennsylvania and during the First
World War served on the Western Front
as a second lieutenant. In 1918 he was promoted to the rank of captain
and transferred to Regimental Staff Headquarters.
After the war Thomas moved to New York where he worked in investment
securities. A member of the Republican
Party, Thomas was elected to Congress in January 1937. Thomas
held right-wing views and claimed that Franklin
D. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies
had "sabotaged the capitalist system". He objected to the
idea of the subsidized theatre and led the attack on the Federal
Theatre & Writers Project. Thomas claimed that: "Practically
every play presented under the auspices of the Project is sheer propaganda
for Communism or the New Deal."
In 1947 Thomas was appointed chairman of the House
of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Soon afterwards he
began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry.
The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These
people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses".
During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused
of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an
emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany.
Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester
Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian
Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton
Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring
Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson
and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any
questions.
Known as the Hollywood Ten, they
claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave
them the right to do this. The House of Un-American
Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and
all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced
to between six and twelve months in prison.
His activities while working as chairman of the House
of Un-American Activities Committee had upset those with left-wing
political views and some began investigating Thomas. His secretary,
Helen Campbell, leaked information about his illegal activities to
the journalist, Drew Pearson. On 4th
August, 1948, Pearson published the story that Thomas had been putting
friends on his congressional payroll. They did no work but in return
shared their salaries with Thomas.
Called
before a grand jury, Thomas availed himself to the 1st Amendment,
a strategy that he had been unwilling to accept when dealing with
the Hollywood Ten. Indicted on charges
of conspiracy to defraud the government, Thomas was found guilty and
sentenced to 18 months in prison and forced to pay a $10,000 fine.
Two of his fellow inmates in Danbury Prison were Lester
Cole and Ring Lardner Jr. who were
serving terms as a result of refusing to testify in front of Thomas
and the House of Un-American Activities Committee.
Thomas was paroled after serving nine months in Danbury Prison. Attempts
to return to Congress ended in failure and so in his final years he
worked in publishing and real estate. John Parnell Thomas died in
St. Petersburg, Florida, on 19th November, 1970.
(1)
Jack
Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker
(1979)
The leader of the committee
was J. Parnell Thomas. In appearance, he was improbable either as
hero or villain. He was old - I thought sixty-three was old then and
fat, with a bald head and a round face that glowed perpetually in
a pink flush. But as it turned out, his flat idiom and disarming corpulence
concealed an unsuspected capacity to cultivate unreality, or rather,
to parody reality. This was to be his passport to power and fame.
Thomas was moved principally
by caricatures. Confronting a world that abounded in real Communist
threats, he was obsessed with phantom, even ludicrous slapstick ones.
One was his notion that the saccharine movies of that day, produced
and monitored as they were by the most conformist capitalists, represented
a New Deal conspiracy to Communize the free world.
The bipartisan empathy
of the Thomas committee was exemplified by its ranking Democrats:
Representative John Wood of Georgia advocated legislation to require
that every commentator be identifiable to the public as to ethnic
background and political affiliation, and whether he was reporting
news or opinion. Representative John Rankin of Mississippi saw the
Red Menace as merely a workaday illustration of his larger themes
- the evil of Jewry and the inferiority of Negroes. In Rankin's portrayal,
Communism was just another Jewish conspiracy, which used the guileless
Negroes as dupes, pushing them into unwanted intimacies with whites
in order to sow discord.
It is scarcely credible
today that such figures could wield the power to
dominate the news, eclipse careers and cause whole industries and
institutions to grovel in fear. But indeed they did.
The motion picture industry
was almost totally intimidated by the rising power of J. Parnell Thomas,
and to appease him, instituted the blacklist that would spread to
broadcasting and degrade the entertainment world for a decade to come.
Under the pressure of the Thomas committee's probe into disloyalty
among government employees, President Harry Truman issued a far-reaching
Loyalty Order designed to circumvent legal forms in rooting out those
suspected of disloyalty.
Under it, grounds for
dismissal were broadened to'include "sympathetic association"
with a "movement" or with a "group or combination of
persons" considered subversive by the Attorney General. Truman's
order specified the files of HUAC as a source of information on suspect
employees. Meanwhile, the courts were affirming HUAC's powers and
prerogatives; the Congress was close to unanimous in whooping through
mounting appropriations for its probes; auxiliaries were springing
up in states and localities across the country; even elements of the
press, such as the Hearst chain,' were bawling for federal
censorship.
(2)
Ring
Lardner Jr.
was interviewed by John Parnell Thomas, chairman of the House
of Un-American Activities Committee,
on 30th October, 1947.
J. Parnell Thomas: Are you
or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Ring Larner Jr: I could answer exactly the way you want, Mr. Chairman
but I think that is a...
J. Parnell Thomas: It is not a question of our wanted you to answer
that. It is a very simple question. Any real American would be proud
to answer the question.
Ring Larner Jr: It depends on the circumstances. I could answer it,
but if I did I would hate myself in the morning.
J. Parnell Thomas: Leave the witness chair.
Ring Larner Jr: It was a question that would...
J. Parnell Thomas: (pounding gavel) Leave the witness chair.
Ring Larner Jr: I think I am leaving by force.
J. Parnell Thomas: Sergeant, take the witness away.
(3)
Ring
Lardner Jr.,
interviewed by Ruth Schultz in 1989.
They were two basic questions
they asked: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Screen
Writers Guild? And are you now or have you ever been a member of the
Communist Party? We didn't answer either of them directly. We said
that the guild had had a tough fight for recognition and that trouble
could still come up again, that membership rolls were actually private.
It was not any of the committee's business to inquire into membership
of a union.
Then they asked me that "sixty-four-dollar question," but
I'd hate myself in that morning." He started to scream: "You've
been coached like all the others!" He was a small, heavy man,
who was sitting on a couple of telephone books in order to be on the
same level as the other members of the committee and look better for
the pictures. He got very red in the face and finally said, "Remove
the witness."
(4)
Drew Pearson,
Washington Merry-Go-Round (4th August, 1948)
One Congressman who has
sadly ignored the old adage that
those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones is bouncing
Rep. J. Parnell Thomas
of New Jersey, Chairman of the UnAmerican Activities Committee.
If some of his own personal
operations were scrutinized on the witness stand as carefully as he
cross-examines witnesses, they would make headlines of
a kind the Congressman doesn't like.
It is not, for instance,
considered good "Americanism" to hire a stenographer and
have her pay a "kickback." This kind of operation is also
likely to get an ordinary American in income tax trouble. However,
this hasn't seemed
to worry the Chairman of the UnAmerican Activities Committee.
On Jan. 1, 1940, Rep.
Thomas placed on his payroll Myra Midkiff as a clerk at $1,200 a year
with the arrangement that she would then kick back all her salary
to the Congressman. This gave Mr. Thomas a neat annual addition to
his own $10,000 salary, and presumably he did not have to worry about
paying income taxes in this higher bracket, because he paid Miss Midkiff's
taxes for her in the much lower bracket.
The arrangement was quite
simple and lasted for four years. Miss Midkiff's salary was merely
deposited in the First National Bank of Allendale, N.J., to the Congressman's
account. Meanwhile she never came anywhere near his office and did
not work for him except addressing envelopes at home for which she
got paid $2 per hundred.
This kickback plan worked
so well that four years later. Miss Midkiff having got married and
left his phantom employ, the Congressman decided to extend it. On
Nov. 16, 1944, the House Disbursing Officer was notified to place
on Thomas's payroll the name of Arnette Minor at $1,800 a year.
Actually Miss Minor was
a day worker who made beds and cleaned the room of Thomas's secretary,
Miss Helen Campbell. Miss Minor's salary was remitted to the Congressman.
She never got it.
This arrangement lasted
only a month and a half, for on Jan. 1, 1945, the name of Grace Wilson
appeared on the Congressman's payroll for $2,900.
Miss Wilson turned out
to be Mrs. Thomas's aged aunt, and during the year 1945 she drew checks
totaling $3,467.45, though she did not come near the office, in fact
remained quietly in Allendale, N.J., where she was supported by Mrs.
Thomas and her sisters, Mrs. Lawrence Wellington and Mrs.
William Quaintance.
In the summer of 1946,
however, the Congressman decided to let the county support his wife's
aunt, since his son had recently married and he wanted to put his
daughter-in-law on the payroll. Thereafter, his daughter-in-law, Lillian,
drew Miss Wilson's salary, and the Congressman demanded that his wife's
aunt be put on relief.
(5)
Drew
Pearson, diary
entry (28th November, 1949)
Parnell Thomas's trial started
this morning. Looking at him in the courtroom. I couldn't help but
feel sorry for him. I can't relish helping to send a man to jail.
Nevertheless, when I figure all the times Thomas has sent other people
to jail and all the instances when he has kept men away from combat
duty in return for money in his own pocket, to say nothing of salary
kickbacks, perhaps I shouldn't be too sorry.
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