The Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions was formed initially as the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt to support FDR's controversial run for a fourth term in 1944. After the 1944 election, the group reconstituted itself as an ongoing organization with a paid professional staff and a declared mission to extend democracy in the US and abroad, promote worldwide peace through the UN and provide support for policies that would lead to full employment and a "decent standard of living for all." It had subcommittees for theater, radio, literature, film, art, science and technology, music, education, medicine and journalism. In 1946 it had a broad-based membership of New Deal supporters although Communists had played a significant covert role in creating and running the organization.
An ad that ran in The New York Times in January 1946 in support of union strikers identified the sculptor Jo Davidson as national chairman and actor Frederic March as Treasurer. The national board of directors was made up of
Actress Olivia de Havilland
Saturday Review editor and poet William Rose Benet
Literary critic Van Wyck Brooks
Actor Louis Calhern
Playwright Marc Connelly
Film director John Cromwell
New Dealer Morris Llewellyn Cooke
Radio writer Norman Corwin
Attorney Bartley Crum
Columbia University Dental School professor Dr. Moses Diamond
Educator Donald du Shank
Actress Florence Eldridge (married to Frederic March)
Composer and conductor Dr. Rudolph Ganz
Playwright and director Moss Hart
Playwright Lillian Hellman
Screenwriter Howard Koch
Screenwriter and Hollywood Communist party chief John Howard Lawson
Poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish
Journalist John T. McManus
Talent agent William Morris
Educator Dr. Alonzo F. Myers
Medical researcher Dr. John P. Peters
Singer Paul Robeson
Astronomer Dr. Harlow Shapley
Director and producer Herman Shumlin
Literary critic Carl Van Doren.
Times film critic Bosley Crowther headed the film group and actor/director Jose Ferrer chaired the theater group. FDR's eldest son, James Roosevelt, was the group's director of political organization. Other celebrities who were involved included Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Eddie Cantor, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, writer John Hersey, and Nobel Prize winning scientist Linus Pauling as well as those more often identified with Communist causes such as writers Dalton Trumbo and Dashiell Hammett, composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein and bandleader Artie Shaw. It was a politically eclectic group ranging from hardcore Communist Party members and fellow travelers to New Deal Democrats and liberal Republicans. While the domestic policy was conventionally liberal, the group hewed closely to the Party line on foreign affairs, as evidenced at a Brooklyn rally in May when crypto-Communist Congressman Hugh De Lacy delivered a vehement attack on British and American "war mongers" and a spirited defense of Stalin and the Chinese Communists.