Then he got down to business. “Have you thought of anything,” he asked us, “for the anti-Communist gimmick?” Neither Miller nor I answered him immediately, so Brewer went on. “As a suggestion, why couldn’t we have a reporter from the People’s Worker approach Marty [the central figure in The Hook, a longshoreman] and ask him for his support? Marty could say, ‘We don’t want any Commie sheets around here.’ ” Brewer stopped, looked at us, and waited.

Harry Cohn was studying Miller.

Art responded that we could try to get that in some way. Brewer noticed the lack of enthusiasm in Miller’s voice. “You don’t want to give the impression that your picture is a plea for the support of Bridges, do you?”

Harry Bridges, president of the International Longshoremen, was a man we admired.

“You should show in the strongest way you can,” Brewer went on, “that Marty does not represent the so-called progressives. The great problem in the unions is the Communist. The racketeers are much less a menace to labor than the Communists.”