In the eyes of the communists, of course, we had committed a major crime. We had deprived the great Russian master of his greatest art work, and we had done it out of blind greed. All over the world the communist propagandists took up that theme, and we could not answer without damaging the property of our investors.
The situation was still more odd because my friends, the socialists, were also involved. I was just on the point of announcing my EPIC campaign for the governorship of California. I had sent a copy of my program to Norman Thomas, and he lit into it in the New York Call, denouncing EPIC as a “tin-can economy,” and me as “a renegade to the socialist movement.” The Socialist Party, which had placed a large order for seats for the opening night of Eisenstein’s film, canceled the order. So, we were getting it from all sides. On opening night there was a minor riot; communists yelled protests, and some of them shook their fists in my face in the lobby of the theater.
I had one comfort, however. Among the investors in the picture was Otto H. Kahn, New York banker and art patron; he had put in ten thousand dollars at my request, without ever having met me. I invited him to dinner with my wife and me at the Algonquin Hotel on the evening of the opening. He came up to me in the lobby and took both my hands in his and said, “I am telling all my friends that if they want to invest money and want to be sure of having it carefully handled and promptly accounted for, they should entrust it to the socialist, Mr. Upton Sinclair.”
Of course, Thunder Over Mexico wasn’t a very good picture. It couldn’t be because it was only a travelogue and had no form. Sol Lesser, an experienced producer, did his best and dealt with us fairly. The investors got about half their money back, and Sol’s friendship was the best thing that we got out of the whole experience.
When the film had run its course, we turned it over to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and occasionally I see mention of its being shown here and there. As for Eisenstein, he went back to Russia; I have no report on his meeting with Stalin. But all the world knows that for many years he was put to teaching his art instead of practicing it, and that when he made another picture it was a glorification of the most cruel of all the tsars.
14
EPIC
I
I come now to one of the great adventures of my life: the EPIC campaign. There had come one of those periods in American history known as a “slump,” or, more elegantly, a “depression.” The cause of this calamity is obvious—the mass of the people do not get sufficient money to purchase what modern machinery is able to produce. You cannot find this statement in any capitalist newspaper, but it is plain to the mind of any wide-awake child. The warehouses are packed with goods, and nobody is buying them; this goes on until those who still have money have bought and used up the goods; so then we have another boom and then another bust. This has gone on all through our history and will go on as long as the necessities of our lives are produced on speculation and held for private profit.
Now we had a bad slump, and Franklin Roosevelt was casting about for ways to end it. In the state of California, which had a population of seven million at the time, there were a million out of work, public-relief funds were exhausted, and people were starving. The proprietor of a small hotel down at the beach asked me to come and meet some of his friends, and I went. His proposal was that I should resign from the Socialist Party and join the Democratic Party, and let them put me up as a candidate for governor at the coming November election. They had no doubt that if I would offer a practical program I would capture the Democratic nomination at the primaries, which came in the spring. I told them that I had retired from politics and promised my wife to be a writer. But they argued and pleaded, pointing out the terrible conditions all around them; I promised to think it over and at least suggest a program for them.