and film people to contribute articles without pay. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Walt Disney, William Saroyan, Ogden Nash, Dalton Trumbo, Chaplin, Hughes, William DeMille, Ray Bradbury, Leo Politi and Stanton MacDonald-Wright among others wrote for the magazine. Bradbury was a regular contributor with a series of short stories from about 1940 through 1947. MacDonald-Wright provided art reviews. Gladys Robinson, wife of actor Edward G. Robinson, wrote a Hollywood gossip column. Script was liberal, witty and fond of tweaking the noses of the country's movers and shakers. Leftist leanings Wagner, a Socialist, was a progressive advocate dating to at least 1900 during his tenure as art director at The Criterion. The magazine and its theater group, The Criterion Theater, was a magnet for artists and writers that embraced individualism and Socialism. By 1914, he helped establish with Job Harriman the Llano del Rio cooperative colony in California's Antelope Valley. The project ultimately failed. During this period he served as associate editor for Los Angeles-based Western Comrade magazine, which offered a mix of socialist dogma, labor-related film news, advocacy on the women's suffrage movement, and profiles on artists and writers. The magazine also featured leftist writers Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and Frank E. Wolfe. Through the period of World War I to the early 1920s he was often the subject of Department of Justice scrutiny for his Socialist and pro-Bolshevik activities. Wagner also sent his sons to Boyland, an avant-garde boarding school with a progressive, if not unorthodox, approach to education. Pacifist Prynce Hopkins operated the school. However, Hopkins was arrested under the Espionage Act in 1918 for making an anti-war speech in Los Angeles. Hopkins was charged and pleaded guilty in federal court of interfering with military recruitment. Federal authorities interrogated Wagner about Hopkins. Although Wagner defended Hopkins, it put Wagner in the spotlight of the government's attempt to crush the anti-war movement. His defense of Hopkins cost him his job as a teacher at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. Around 1915 Wagner had become friends with Charlie Chaplin and was soon employed as the comedian's part-time secretary. Chaplin was eligible for the draft in both the United States and England during World War I, but was rejected for military service because he was too small. Yet he was under intense scrutiny for failing to support the war effort. Wagner waged a publicity campaign on Chaplin's behalf to demonstrate the actor's support.