The big event for the ICCASP in April was the dinner honoring the delegates of the UN Security Council on the occasion of the UN's first anniversary. This is the event later branded as subversive by AWARE in its list of allegations against John Henry Faulk who was among the performers. Truman sent his greetings to the dinner. The US representative Edward Stettinius, scheduled to deliver an address, was unable to be present because of an attack of sinusitis. His military attache read his address. Several UN delegates also spoke. The political sympathies of much of the attendees was evident, according to the New York Times report on April 26, by the two ovations accorded Andrei Gromyko, permanent representative of the Soviet Union. The dinner also included 12 men and women representing different sections of American life who gave their view of the UN. Movie star Lana Turner led off the presentation. A skit under the direction of Norman Corwin satirized opposition to the world organization.
It was not the Committee's only event that month. The advertising and publicity division sponsored the "Riches to Rags: Anti-Inflation Ball" at the Hotel Astor on April 5. The event ad that ran in the April 4 New York Times said that Leo F. Gentner. the regional OPA administrator was the guest of honor. The entertainers included Broadway comedy actress Paula Lawrence, Broadway's Louis Calhern, jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, actress Uta Hagen, folk singer Tom Glazer, and stage actress Stella Adler. Radio personality Henry Morgan was M.C. The ad said "See and hear big-name cast of Broadway stars. Dance to big-name music. Play carnival games." Tickets for couples was a stiff $7.50 (almost $80 in today's money) and stag tix were $4. Attendees could add their names to a 6-foot telegram that ICCASP was sending to Congress in support of the continuation of price controls.
In April, the music forum of ICCASP called for all trade unions to fight the bill passed by Congress to curb James C. Petrillo's power in the radio industry. Petrillo, the head of the musicians union, was a well-known and widely despised man outside union ranks for his aggressive bargaining tactics that took music off the radio and out of stores for extended periods. Some music historians believe the excessive concessions he won helped kill off the big bands by making them economically impossible to sustain.
Predictably, ICCASP joined other leftist groups in petitioning the UN to support Poland's moves to isolate Franco's Spain. The petitioners also urged economic sanctions, repeating the Communist charges that Spain was harboring Nazi scientists who were secretly working on an atomic bomb.
Harold Ickes, speaking in his capacity as executive director, endorsed the Truman administration's health care plan. The same powerful interests who have prevented any meaningful health care reform since then doomed this plan to failure.
James Gow, co-author of the Broadway hit "Deep Are the Roots," spoke on the role of the theater in breaking down racial prejudice at a discussion sponsored by the New York chapter of ICCASP at the Willkie Memorial Building, 20 W. 40th St. Jose Ferrer took issue with Gow's assertion that Negroes occupied the worst housing in the city. Ferrer said that as a Puerto Rican he knew it was his compatriots who had the worst housing. The meeting also called on those stars who could afford to take a stand to refuse to play theaters where blacks were not admitted.
On April 18, the Women's Division met at the Henry Hudson Hotel to hear Dr. John P. Peters, Florence Eldridge March and Clifford McAvoy. That same week the ICCASP sponsored a closed meeting of city, civic, veterans and labor organizations at the Willkie Memorial Building, 20 W 40th, to discuss a new group, Housing Action. being formed to promote housing for veterans. Several invited organizations declined to take part in the meeting including the AFL, the American Legion and the VFW, on the grounds that the proposed group included organizations with ties to the Communist Party. Later the AFL and American Legion said they would cooperate on mutual goals but not formally join the coalition.
The theme of the invitation-only monthly meeting of film division was "Psychiatry on the Screen." Several "psychiatric films" made during the war were shown and Dr. Lawrence S. Kubie of New York Neurological Institute spoke. The initial article in the NYT gave the Museum of Natural History as the venue but the follow-up had them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some 450 guests attended. Kubie called for the motion picture industry to establish a research board of qualified psychiatrists to study the effect of films with psychiatric themes, including horror pictures "with strong neurotic impact," on mass audiences and especially children.
In April an ICCASP led protest was instrumental in getting a Philadelphia radio station to drop the Mutual Network talk show of ultra-right wing anti-semitic commentator Upton Close. Other East Coast stations would follow and eventually the network would cancel his show. This does not jibe with the group's supposed commitment to civil liberties and free speech which they later championed when left wing commentators lost their shows.