Bartley Crum (November 28, 1900 – December 9, 1959) was an American lawyer who became prominent as a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, his book on that experience, and for defending targets of HUAC, particularly the Hollywood Ten and Paul Robeson.
[3] In 1924, Crum joined the law offices of John Francis Neylan, chief attorney for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
[6] According to ex-Popular Front, liberal journalist Sidney Roger, Neylan was the "mastermind" for the shipping industry to break the strikes by convincing Bay area newspapers of a "Communist plot", during which time Crum "became a strong supporter of the longshore union and Harry Bridges".
[7] In September 1945, Crum chaired a rally of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC), which featured an overseas call from Harold Laski.
[2][3] On February 17, 1946, Crum announced in Vienna, Austria, that he expected to see "mass suicides" if European Jews did not receive permission to emigrate to Palestine.
[8] His book, Behind the Silken Curtain a Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and the Middle East was published by Simon & Schuster in 1947.
"[4] When Clark Clifford, along with David Niles, took up the issue of recognition of the State of Israel, he received "advice and assistance" from Crum, Eliahu Epstein, and Max Lowenthal.
[11] The ACAL had been accused of socialist and communist connections, which led to the organization, including Crum, coming under close watch by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
[7] In 1947, Crum served as attorney for some of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" (originally the "Unfriendly Nineteen"), subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
National Lawyers Guild members formed the core team, originally Charles Katz and Ben Margolis,[13][14] followed by Crum and Robert W. Kenny, followed by Martin Popper in Washington and Sam Rosenwein in New York.
During pre-hearing preparation, the Nineteen and their lawyers negotiated and agreed to a strategy of unanimity as well as a pledge to cite the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
At that point I was too young to quite grasp the significance of those bugged calls, but I did know that my father had been one of six lawyers who had just defended the Hollywood 10 in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Washington.
[19] In 1948, due to blowback from the HUAC Hollywood hearings, Crum moved his family from the San Francisco Bay area to New York City.
[7] In May 1948, Joseph Starobin, foreign news editor of the Daily Worker, referred in print to Crum's "unquestionably progressive career".
[3][20][21][22] Also in the 1948 United States presidential election, he supported Harry S. Truman (Democrat) over Thomas E. Dewey (Republican) and Henry A. Wallace (Progressive).
On September 15, 1950, Lowenthal appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, commonly known as "HUAC", one of whose members was Richard Nixon, co–author of the Mundt-Nixon Bill.
Already in August 1950, HUAC had re-subpoenaed four witness who had been part of Whittaker Chambers's Ware Group: Lee Pressman, Nathan Witt, Charles Kramer and John Abt.
During the examination of the Hollywood Reds, Crum consulted Lowenthal because he regarded the man as an expert on the procedures and the authority of congressional committees.
However, on careful review of his old testimony I conclude that my early impression was incorrect that he positively withheld the names of "organizations" which arranged for his appointment to a job on Gen. Clay's staff in Germany just after the war.
He did admit knowing a number of the most notorious Reds of the movement but his voluntary estimate of the political character of his friend, Crum, is laughable in view of Crum's own admission to my attorneys and to Alfred Kohlberg, one of the most effective Red-baiters in the country, that he was ashamed of his activity in the Red movement, Lowenthal said: "I had confidence in his true Americanism."
[2] In the early hours of February 9, 1949, a few days after the New York Star folded, Crum made a second suicide attempt, again with pills and alcohol.
The younger, son Bartley Crum Jr., committed suicide in 1953 by shooting himself with his grandfather's gun in his freshman year at Reed College.
[2] In its obituary of Crum in 1959, the New York Times quoted Crum's stance on outlawing the CPUSA: It is unconstitutional and utterly stupid for government to attempt to prevent people from thinking or believing as they wish ... As a non-Communist, I think the most effective answer to the Marxists is to make our democracy work by providing equality and job opportunities for all, strengthening the trade unions, and raising the standard of living.
[3] Assessing his daughter's 1997 memoir, the New York Times wrote that she remembered him as:a hero-daddy who championed just causes, the doughty fighter for civil rights who defended the Hollywood Ten; the politically connected lawyer, friend of Harry S. Truman and Wendell L. Willkie; the member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Into Palestine in 1946 who told the world about the plight of the Jewish death-camp survivors in displaced-persons camps and fought for their safe passage to Palestine against British and Arab double-dealing ... [Yet his] addiction to political causes and big legal retainers exercised a centrifugal pull away from the family he certainly loved.
They support their critique by citing Crum's long-term membership in the National Lawyers Guild, with its strong communist partisans.