Film Description
Autopsy on Operation Abolition (1961)
Sponsor: Catechetical Guild. Production Co.: Impact Films. Director: Fred Barnes. Narrator: Rev. Louis J. Twomey. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 16mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 61 minutes.
Dissection of the film Operation Abolition, which was produced by the House Un-American Activities Committee to show communist involvement in the protests sparked by its 1960 hearings held in San Francisco. Autopsy on Operation Abolition includes an interview with historian Henry Nash Smith, who attacks Operation Abolition as “a deliberate falsification” but is sympathetic to its anticommunist viewpoint.
Note: The Catechetical Guild is a Roman Catholic educational organization.
Resources
Lawrence Laurent, “Autopsy Could Set Up the Funeral for Operation Abolition,” Washington Post and Times Herald, Mar. 15, 1962, D8; “Catholic Film Gives Views on Coast Riot,” New York Times, May 3, 1962, 16.