a daughter, Tessa, (1959). Taylor was stepfather to Thiess' two children from her previous marriage, Manuela and Michael Thiess. On May 26, 1969, shortly before Taylor's death from lung cancer, Ursula Thiess found the body of her son, Michael, in a West Los Angeles motel room. He died from a drug overdose. One month before his death, Michael had been released from a mental hospital. In 1964, he spent a year in a reformatory for attempting to poison his father with insecticide. Politics In February 1944, Taylor helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In October 1947, Taylor was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities regarding Communism in Hollywood. He did this reluctantly, regarding the hearings as a "circus" and refusing to appear unless subpoenaed. In his testimony concerning the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), delivered on October 22, 1947, Taylor stated: "It seems to me that at meetings, especially meetings of the general membership of the Guild, there was always a certain group of actors and actresses whose every action would indicate to me that, if they are not Communists, they are working awfully hard to be Communists." Two people already under investigation by the FBI, Karen Morley and Howard Da Silva, were mentioned as troublemakers at SAG meetings. Taylor alleged that at meetings of the SAG, Da Silva "always had something to say at the wrong time." Da Silva was blacklisted on Broadway and New York radio, and Morley never worked again after her name surfaced at the hearings. Taylor went on to declare that he would refuse to work with anyone who was suspected of being a Communist: "I'm afraid it would have to be him or me because life is too short to be around people who annoy me as much as these fellow-travelers and Communists do". Taylor also labeled screenwriter Lester Cole "reputedly a Communist", adding "I would not know personally". After the hearings, Taylor's films were banned in Communist Hungary and in Czechoslovakia, and Communists called for a boycott of his films in France. In 1951, Taylor remarked "I speak out against communism now for the same reason I spoke out against Nazism a decade ago, because I am pro-freedom and pro-decency." He helped narrate the 1952 anticommunist public service documentary The Hoaxters, which compared the threat of international communism in the 1950s to the threat