Into the Red River: Adolphe Menjou Turns on John Cromwell

John Cromwell's Caged (1950) will play as part of Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist at 79th Locarno Film Festival, August 2026. — EK

Hearings regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry

Tuesday, October 21, 1947

House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Washington D.C.

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Robert E. Stripling: Do you know Mr. John Cromwell?

Adolphe Menjou: Yes, sir.

Mr. Stripling: He was identified before the committee yesterday by Mr. Sam Wood as being one who sought to put the Screen Directors Guild into the Red river. Do you consider Mr. Cromwell to be a Communist?

Mr. Menjou: I don't know whether he is a Communist or not.

Mr. Stripling: Does he act like one?

Mr. Menjou: In my opinion, he acts an awful lot like one.

Mr. Stripling: Did he ever make any statement to you relative to his...

Mr. Menjou: Mr. Cromwell, in his own house, said to me that capitalism in America was through and I would see the day when it was ended in America. A very strange statement from a man who earns upward of $250,000 a year, who owns a great deal of Los Angeles and Hollywood real estate. It is rather difficult to reconcile that. He is profiting by the capitalistic system, and yet he is against it. He told me so with his own lips.