In Hanns, the committee believed they had found their missing link. In the end, however, the investigation was able to prove little of substance. Hanns Eisler's sympathies with the Communist movement were well known. But during his sojourn in southern California he was, for the most part, inactive politically. The only two movies with political content for which Eisler wrote music were So Well Remembered and Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die .
Communists make no appearance in either film.
In fact Eisler, as a film composer, would have had almost no influence over the story line of any Hollywood movie. It is interesting to speculate what direction Eisler's career might have taken if HUAC hadn't made life in the U.S. miserable for him. Eisler's departure, on the other hand, was more ambivalent. He had written music for Brecht's sardonic poetry about southern California with its suburban sprawl and fast-buck methods of cultural production, but one suspects Eisler was not completely alienated by the artificial paradise in which he lived. An extravert who loved to entertain, Eisler was a popular host in wartime Hollywood.