There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
“Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.”
“He has all those different aspects to him, so I can more or less decide as a performer how I'm going to deliver a line in a particular scene, or play a particular scene in total.”