The committee’s chief investigator, Robert Stripling, asked: “Now, Mr. Schary, as an executive of RKO, what is the policy of your company in regard to the employment of ... Communists?”
Schary replied: “That policy, I imagine, will have to be determined by the president, the board, and myself. I can tell you personally what I feel. Up until the time it is proved that a Communist is a man dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force or violence, I cannot make any determination of his employment on any basis other than whether he is qualified best to do the job I want him to do.”
That made him a controversial figure in some people’s judgment. When Nick Schenck wanted to see Schary, he flew out in secret from New York to avoid getting involved in the probing of communism, which was still drawing blood in our town.
Nick, the soft-spoken boss of Loew’s who directed the world-wide empire and its 14,000 employees from his New York office, had a monumental mission to perform. He had come to take a look at Dore Schary, whom Louis B. Mayer now wanted back at Metro as vice president in charge of all productions, as Irving Thalberg’s successor, as Mayer’s crown prince. And Schary was insisting that if he took the job, Louis would have to keep his hands off Dore’s key decisions.
Nick Schenck approved of the plan. Schary received contract number four—seven years “in charge of production” at $6000 a week. He started in on July 1, 1948. In my July 19 column, I wrote: “It will be ironically amusing to watch some of the scenes behind the scenes now that Dore Schary is the Big Noise at Metro-Goldwyn-Moscow. He testified on the opposite side of the fence in Washington from Robert Taylor, James K. McGuinness, Louis B. Mayer, Sam Wood, and other men with whom he will work....”
As soon as he read that, Mayer shut the studio gate in my face. But I didn’t have to go there to get news; my friends inside telephoned me every day. Two weeks later Louis telephoned: “I’ve got to see you.”
“Impossible. How can you? You barred me from the studio.”
“I mean at your house.”
“Louis,” I said, “fun’s fun. What makes you think you can come into my home when I can’t go into your studio? Turnabout is fair play.”
But he badgered and bullied and begged until I agreed to see him at five o’clock that afternoon. He was standing on the doorstep as the clock struck. He came in, and we shouted at each other for an hour. “How could you do this to me, write such a column?” he kept bellowing.