Fonda has been an activist for more than half a century. That’s a good thing for the new CFA, because the original group was led by idealistic artists with little political experience. In 1947, The Hollywood Reporter began attacking writers, directors, and actors it considered communists. That attracted the attention of HUAC, which subpoenaed many of those named to testify.
In response, directors John Huston and William Wyler, together with writer Philip Dunne, founded the Committee for the First Amendment. It quickly attracted a stellar list of cosigners from the studio era’s golden age, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, William Holden, William Wyler, and Groucho Marx. Broadway recruits included Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman, and Richard Rodgers. They were not joined officially by their unions or any studio executives.
CFA leaders joined forces with the subpoenaed to oppose the committee’s threat to the First Amendment. Communists or not, they understood that to allow HUAC to go unchallenged meant that sooner or later they would be next—because HUAC wasn’t investigating “communist” films; it was investigating liberal films made by mainstream Democrats. Many in the CFA were assured that the film workers subpoenaed by HUAC had been vetted, and that none were communists. They wanted to appear as patriotic Americans supporting the rights of everyone to speak freely, and not give the committee political ammunition to call the CFA a communist front or a group of clueless liberals duped by communists.
This was especially important to Humphrey Bogart. He had been through this once before when the Dies Committee (the first incarnation of HUAC) held closed-door hearings in August 1940 in Los Angeles. Democratic Texas Representative Martin Dies had come west to investigate communism in the film industry and, many felt, get himself some celebrity-generated headlines from stars like Bogart and James Cagney. Dies cleared Bogart and Cagney, and in 1947 Bogart insisted that the CFA be vetted for communists. He was assured that there were none.
First, the CFA did what its members did best. It put on a show. To state their goals on their own terms before arriving in DC, CFA members staged two radio broadcasts on ABC to make their case, Hollywood Fights Back. Dozens of the CFA’s members appeared in cameos to defend free speech, cite HUAC’s critics, and expose its odious allies. “Before every free conscience in America is subpoenaed,” Judy Garland said of HUAC’s chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, “Tell them how much you resent the way Mr. Thomas is kicking the living daylights out of the Bill of Rights.”