Hollywood Anti-Nazi League

[1] To kick off his work, Katz held a hundred-dollar-a-plate fundraising dinner, which was attended by, among others, Irving Thalberg, Jack L. Warner, David O. Selznick, and Samuel Goldwyn.

[9] By 1937, the board of directors of the HANL included Jack Warner and Carl Laemmle, as well as the head of the Hollywood division of the CPUSA, John Howard Lawson.

[7] An anti-Nazi league has established itself in Hollywood which was termed by Vittorio Mussolini returning home from his research trip a "center of political agitation against the Fascist Idea."

Los Angeles mayor Frank Shaw gave a speech, as did Eddie Cantor who, perhaps having had let his passion get the better of him, claimed that Nazi agents had tried to prevent his attendance.

[10] The League also attempted to convince the studios to produce an anti-Nazi film, but they were hindered in their efforts because the Motion Picture Production Code decreed that movies should be apolitical.

They also accused the studios of changing the ending of The Road Back, a film by James Whale based on a novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque, in order to "'glorify' Hitler".

[16] In summer 1940, Los Angeles County District Attorney Buron Fitts convened a grand jury to investigate "a Communist objective to overthrow the government and assassinate leading industrialists who refuse to 'play ball.'"

A former CPUSA organizer testified to the grand jury that the party had set up the HANL in order to raise funds from wealthy members of the film industry.

[17] After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed in August 1939, guaranteeing neutrality between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, communist-backed organizations were no longer allowed by the Comintern to oppose Nazism.

[1] The HANL changed its name, first to the "Hollywood League for Democratic Action" and finally, in concert with a number of other formerly anti-Nazi front groups,[18] to the American Peace Mobilization.