1947 October 30

Famed Playwright Brecht Testifies Before HUAC – Immediately Leaves the U.S.

 

The famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht testified before HUAC on this day as one of the so-called “unfriendly” witnesses in the HUAC investigation of alleged Communist influence in Hollywood, but cleverly said nothing substantial about his political beliefs and associations.

Brecht delivered elliptical and clever responses to the committee’s questions and never actually answered the key questions, particularly the question,”Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party.” His testimony was later released on an LP album by Folkways Records.

See October 27, 1974, for the beginning of the famous confrontation between the committee and the “Hollywood Ten,” a group of writers and directors who refused to cooperate with the committee. The hearings were conducted in Washington, DC.

Immediately after his testimony, Brecht flew to La Guardia Airport in New York City and caught a plane to Paris. He then settled in East Germany and never returned to the U.S.

Brecht is best known to Americans as the lyricist for  the musical, Threepenny Opera, with composer Kurt Weill, which features the now-famous song, Mack the Knife. One of the ironies of Threepenny Opera is the Brecht was a committed Marxist and yet earned considerable income from the original state production in Germany and then considerably more from the royalties from Mack the Knife.

Read: James K. Lyon, Bertolt Brecht in America (1980)

Read the FBI file on Brecht: http://vault.fbi.gov/Bertolt%20Brecht

Read the fascinating book: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)

Learn more: Michael Freedland, with Barbara Paskin, Witch-Hunt in Hollywood: McCarthyism’s War on Tinseltown (2009)

Learn more at the International Brecht Society: http://www.brechtsociety.org/

Learn more About HUAChttp://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac

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