THE HUAC ROAD SHOW by Kit Bix and Nora Helfand 1
CHARACTERS:
Lillian Hellman Bertolt Brecht Ayn Rand Gerda Lerner Larry Parks Ring Lardner, Jr. Paul Robeson
COMPANY of actors who play the following roles: Stephanie Tony Carl Conrad J. Edward Bromberg Kate Lardner Sam Tom Julie Garfield John Garfield Gene Dennis Sarah Rankin Ronald Reagan Elia Kazan Martin Dies J. Parnell Thomas Mary Joseph P. Frey Philip Murray Fritz Kuhn Bruce Ben Jim Rep. Francis E. Walters Richard Nixon Arthur Garfield Hayes Alvah Bessie Lawson Herbert Biberman Stripling Mr. Baumgardt Mr. Tavenner Mr. Potter Kearney 2
Mr. Woods Doyle Michael Velde Sterling Hayden Lee J. Cobb Barbara Sherwood Reporter Dr. Frances Matthiessen George Orwell Arens Sherer Jackie Robinson Sullivan Arthur Miller William Sherwood Grandson
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(Lights come up on adult children of HUAC, the “HUAC diaper babies.”)
STEPHANIE My mother was a peace and civil rights activist and feminist who was red-listed by the House of Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. She was one of over 12,000 university professors, public school teachers, civil service workers, journalists, labor union leaders, civil rights activists, as well as Hollywood screenwriters, actors, and directors who lost their jobs as a result of the Committee’s investigations between the years 1938 and 1975. ... Which story are we telling?
TONY It won’t be one. But we’re starting with the children.
CARL If you are a kid, you’re trying to connect the dots, to make sense of thing. It didn’t make any sense to me that my parents were being called in, because as far as I could see, they weren’t accused of committing any crime. They were accused of thinking or believing certain things. I was seven. I was worried I might be arrested for thinking certain things. I was scared, because I didn’t know what things I wasn’t supposed to think about.
CONRAD My father had been a successful actor in the film industry. He was terrified of being called up. He had heart disease. His doctor was afraid it would be too much, so he wrote a note to the Committee. He was able to avoid being subpoenaed for two years, but he was blacklisted anyway. We had enough money to live on. But my father had a weakness.
BROMBERG My whole life has been acting.
CONRAD He could not— He just refused to accept that it was over. He got no more work in Hollywood, but he kept us there in the lion’s den for over two more years. I have mixed feelings about that.
KATE My father was the writer Ring Lardner, Jr. He was called before HUAC in 1947 and refused to testify. He was one of what came to be known as the Hollywood Ten.
CARL It was miserable. They called us “dirty commies” at school. Everyone was shunning us.
CONRAD 4
He could have done something else. But he had this pride. He had been a Somebody. So, he took a job—an acting gig—at a theater in the Midwest. They said that if he was well enough to go to Michigan and work, he was well enough to testify. He was brought in to testify under compulsion and against doctor’s orders. The stress was too much for him. He died within the year.
KATE We lived in this big beautiful house with glass doors that led out into the swimming pool from the kitchen. And one day these two men—they were wearing big black shoes— they walked in through the glass doors, and they gave my dad a package. Later that day, I asked my mom what was going on, and she said that my dad had got a subpoena. I was six. I didn’t know what that was. I thought it had something to do with a penis.
TONY From then on, my parent’s conversation would stop when you entered the room.
SAM Years later, I managed to get my father’s FBI dossier through the Freedom of Information Act. It said that my dad “had a facial resemblance to Lenin.”
TOM My dad saw it for what it was. He was blacklisted. We moved to New Jersey, and he went into the carpentry business. You know he made pennies compared to what he made before, and we moved to a smaller house. But you got used to it. I think some people were just better at being blacklisted than others.
JULIE My father was the international movie star John Garfield. He always played the tough guy. He once played a boxer in a movie.
(JOHN in boxing gloves and boxing shorts appears on stage jabbing in the background.)
JULIE (CONT’D) They subpoenaed him in 1947. He was one of the first ones. They asked him to testify against his friends, even his wife—my mother. He refused and was blacklisted. He took it hard.
TONY I realized, I think by the time I was seventeen, that most people would do just about anything to save their own skin. That didn’t bother me so much as knowing that they would never, ever acknowledge that.
JULIE 5
It wasn’t just the blacklisting. My father had a weak heart from having had scarlet fever when he was a kid. Now the FBI hounded him. They wouldn’t leave him alone. The pressure was just overwhelming. Then the Committee subpoenaed him to testify again. He was terrified. He was smoking a lot, and someone said he hadn’t slept for 3 days. The night before he was to testify, his heart gave out. He died.
GENE Well, my Dad was a real Communist. He was a leader in the American Communist Party, and he was arrested and went to jail for espionage. And I didn’t know at the time, but he was really spying for the Soviet Union. My parents were hard-liners, at a time when Stalin was murdering millions, and I have a lot of trouble with that. They did wrong. My mother actually went to Moscow and witnessed the show trials, the purges— she knew. But she was one of those true believers who rationalized brutality. But that’s not the story we’re telling, right?
TONY Not tonight.
GENE But here’s what I remember about that time, after they took him to prison. I went to see a movie, and then there was a bonus second feature. And the second feature was—
EVERYONE The Red Menace.
(KATE LARDNER poses.)
GENE That was an Anti-Communist film. It was propaganda, and it featured newsreels of the trials and hearings. I felt tremendous anxiety, but I thought, I’ll just wait it out. But then I looked up at the screen, and there was a big shot of my father. I was terrified.
JULIE You can’t imagine the fear.
GENE I was alone in a dark movie house, and I realized that everyone in this country hated my father. I was glad it was dark.
SARAH One thing I’ll say about growing up under the red list. You don’t get to go through the usual family drama.
TOM It was so sudden.
6
SARAH You couldn’t indulge in those internal family conflicts—those resentments and fits of anger—because you were—all of a sudden—characters in this huge national drama.
TONY All the casualness of our lives was gone. Like that.
SARAH Like that, we were pariahs. Everyone shunned us. How can you get angry with your parents when the whole world is against them?
TONY We were together in a struggle with the outside world.
JULIE I watched the films. The one I hated the most— He loved to ridicule foreign-sounding names. Jewish names especially. My father was the international movie star John Garfield. Rankin addressed him as:
RANKIN Jacob Julius Garfinkle. . JULIE He said it like it was funny-sounding. He relished saying it.
TOM I wanted to give him back his dignity. You did a lot of things to compensate for what was done to them. I made up reasons for asking my dad for advice. Like when I was doing homework, I used to dumb down and ask him for his advice. It could be about anything. I tried to make him feel like a big shot again. An expert, anything to get him off that sofa. To make him feel like a person again.
KATE So this thing, a subpoena, I later figured out, was not a penis.
(Transition. LILLIAN HELLMAN and BRECHT walk onstage. LILLIAN HELLMAN calls to someone in the wings.)
LILLIAN Mic.
(Someone in the wings throws her a mic. She throws the mic to BRECHT. He stares at it a moment. LILIAN points her finger to downstage. He moves downstage.)
BRECHT I am, um, Bertolt Brecht, and tonight we will be performing a farce. 7
LILLIAN A tragedy.
BRECHT A tragi-farcical... Thing... Dialectic.
(AYN RAND walks onstage. LILLIAN snaps.)
BRECHT Okay, zo. On the left we have—
RAND “Saint” Lillian Hellman. Playwright, fabricator of false memoirs, lifelong Stalinist apologist. Scary.
BRECHT (to the audience) I would not want to get on the wrong side of Lillian Hellman.
(LILLIAN glares at him and stands.)
LILLIAN On the right we have ruthless, “Let the workers be damned,” laissez-faire, hyper- capitalist Ayn—
BRECHT Ze terrible—
LILLIAN —Rand, who during her lifetime scorned everything that decent empathetic human beings prize but— (to BRECHT) I’m feeling generous tonight.
BRECHT Ladies, please! Here we have peace activist, labor activist, and feminist Gerda Lerner.
(LILLIAN applauds. Other characters enter as they are named.)
GERDA Thank you. (Introducing LARRY) Reluctant friendly witness, actor Larry Parks. In 1951 he tried very hard not to name names. He was broken.
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LARRY Blacklisted, imprisoned member of the Hollywood Ten, Ring Lardner Jr.
RING Sterling Hayden. Named names but later repented.
GERDA Eric Johnson, President of the Motion Picture Association, capitulator who pressured the studios to fold to HUAC too.
LARRY And further to the right (He looks for REAGAN. He’s not there.) Wait. (He hears a galloping sound.) Then SAG President Ronald Reagan, who not only cooperated with the Committee but actively informed on fellow actors to the FBI.
(RONALD REAGAN gallops by on an imaginary horse with a cowboy hat, screaming. He gallops off. Then gallops in again on his horse and stops stage center and neighs.)
BRECHT Vronnie? What is it, boy?
(REAGAN holds up a piece of paper and neighs.)
BRECHT (CONT’D) What? You got a speech?
(REAGAN nods his head.)
BRECHT (CONT’D) So, okay, go.
REAGAN (reads from paper) Any American who associates with the Communist Party is befouled. He is befouled, not by the person who exposes him, but by his own act in joining a traitorous conspiracy against his own country.
(REAGAN hits the back of his imaginary horse and gallops off.)
BRECHT And last but not least, the infamous pigeon—
LILLIAN 9
Stool.
BRECHT The infamous pigeon stool, Elia Kazan.
(Everyone onstage hisses and hoots.)
ELIA Whistleblower.
LILLIAN Informer.
ELIA Cooperating witness. Patriot.
PAUL Belly-crawler, capitulator, rat.
BRECHT It was a time of treachery.
LILLIAN Scoundrel time.
PAUL It wasn’t a “time.” It was a heightening. It was not an aberration. It lasted 36 years.
GERDA HUAC was longest lasting apparatus of political repression in 20th century American history.
LILLIAN (noticing PAUL ROBESON for the first time) Wait, is it? Oh my God! (blushing, almost) Comrade? Comrade Paul Robeson?
(She stands with a beaming smile and salutes. PAUL just looks at her, having no idea who she is. He thinks she might be an eccentric Communist weird lady.)
BRECHT Last, least. The world-famous House of Un-American Activities Cancers.
(DIES, RANKIN, and THOMAS start in dancing but stop after a beat and look at BRECHT, then at each other.) 10
LILLIAN Dancers.
(They resume dancing.)
BRECHT HUAC’s story begins in 1938.
RAND Please, can we just skip to the Cold War?
LARRY You miss it, Ayn. Don’t you.
PAUL Actually, no. We will not be skipping. We will start at the beginning. The Dies Commission, 1938.
(Everyone gets into position for the “Un-American” scene except BRECHT. BRECHT holds up a sign that says: “ZE UN-AMERICAN.”)
PAUL (CONT’D) The choice of the word “un-American” was very deliberate.
LILLIAN Whole categories of Americans were deemed un-American.
RING It was a sobriquet that they would fasten on anyone who didn’t agree with them.
GERDA What story are we telling? I want to talk about how, in its earliest permutation, the House of Un-American Activities Committee targeted the labor movement. Particularly what—
(LILLIAN snaps her fingers at BRECHT. BRECHT holds up a placard that reads: “THE DIES COMMITTEE, 1938-44.”)
PAUL Sauntering, cigar-sucking, grandstanding, poll-tax Democrat from Texas. Obsessive anti-New-Dealer.
DIES Martin Dies, Chairman of the first House Special Committee on Un-American Activities.
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GERDA What Chairman Dies called “the alien infiltration of the unions affiliated with the CIO.”
DIES HUAC is deeply committed to the protection of this country against the infiltration of alien influences and philosophies that threaten to undermine the pillars of the Republic.
BRECHT Ze pillars?
LILLIAN Want to know how a fervently Roosevelt-hating anti-New-Dealer got a resolution for an Anti-Communist committee through a Democrat-led, fervently pro-Roosevelt Congress?
DIES Well now, sometimes you have to tell folks what they need to hear to help them along.
GERDA He lied about his intentions.
DIES The American Nazi movement now has 480,000 members. President Roosevelt is now in danger of being assassinated. Our committee will concern itself primarily with German espionage and domestic fascism.
RING Dies exploited the very real fears about Hitler and the rise of fascism and the pro-fascist groups operating in America to get his resolution for a committee passed. He told Congress he was going after German espionage and domestic fascist groups.
DIES Primarily.
BRECHT Ah, you mean mainly ze pro-Hitler groups? Ze Silver Shirts? Ze Black Legion? The Ku Klux Clam?
DIES Primarily. Also, ze Communists.
LILLIAN By communists, Dies meant the unions, the New Deal, and the Roosevelt administration.
DIES 12
No need to belabor distinctions. Our committee will conduct an investigation of the extent, character, and object of all kinds of subversive and un-American propaganda activities.
GERDA Dies devoted exactly one whole day to investigating the pro-Nazi German-American Bund before turning the focus to the CIO. One of his specialties was exploiting factionalism in the labor movement in order to crush the progressive direction that unions were headed in— Hi, I’m the AFL.
MARY Hi, I’m the CIO. I broke with the AFL over their refusal to unionize unskilled labor.
JOHN Which included some of the most oppressed members of the working class: Mexican- Americans, women, immigrants...
DIES Aliens. The Committee calls Joseph P. Frey of the American Federation of Labor’s Metal Trades Department.
FREY The Committee for Industrial Organization is ruled by Moscow. I have submitted to the record the names of nearly 300 CIO-affiliated union officials who are definitely, certainly, definitely, certainly Communists, which I submit with only a tiny percentage of corroborating evidence.
THOMAS Mr. Frey, can you tell us the source of the tiny percentage of corroborating information you have collected?
FREY No.
THOMAS No?
FREY I cannot openly give the source of my information. It is against my principles.
THOMAS But you are convinced your sources are reliable.
FREY 13
Yes, I am convinced.
DIES Good enough.
BRECHT Now for the bad news.
PAUL Dies sent the names of the 300 CIO organizers Frey named with only a tiny percentage of corroborating evidence to the chiefs of every police department in the US operating what was then called a subversive squad.
GERDA In 1941, Frey charged that the Steel Workers Committee of the CIO were planning to tie up of the steel industry if the US was forced to enter the war.
PAUL CIO President Phillip Murray denied the charge.
MURRAY Mr. Dies is using the Committee as a weapon to undermine the CIO. I charge Chairman Dies with subversive activities.
LILLIAN Dies waited only a few months to start demanding a purge of the Roosevelt administration.
DIES There are over 2,000 Communists in the Roosevelt administration. Over 2,000! All doing Stalin’s bidding.
RAND Outrageous. Inconceivable. Imagine a Russian government pulling the strings of a puppet American President, infiltrating the media, and getting an entire party to fall in line?
RING We are not telling that story.
DIES I have here a copy of Josef Stalin’s speech on the subject of the Communist Party of the United States: “Soon the Earth will be too hot for world capitalism. The task for the Communist parties is to begin right now with the development of mass preparatory work for the combat to come.”
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BRECHT He actually said, “Soon the Earth will be too hot”?
PAUL In 1938, political alignments were such that American pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organizations—like the German-American Bund—along with all the Southern White Supremacist groups—like the Black Legion and Ku Klux Klan—happened to be among the most virulently Anti-Communist as well.
GERDA The Committee started using the terms like “foreign labor” and “law and order,” phrases that the Klan included in its membership agreements in the hearings.
BRECHT (to DIES) Zo.
DIES Zo?
BRECHT Zo, you are not going after the Clam?
THOMAS Uh, the, uh, Committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe. After all… After all, the KKK is an old American institution.
DIES He actually said that?
LARRY (to PAUL) Are you saying that the American Anti-Communist movement had its origins in nativist and White Supremacist movements?
BRECHT I think what he is saying is that HUAC, and by association American Anti-Communist movement, drew into its schmear of influence a range of racist, anti-immigrant, and fascist currents. Yes?
LILLIAN Now for the bad news. By the end of 1938 the Committee was being openly praised by some of the very pro-fascist and White Supremacist organizations that Dies had initially vowed to investigate.
DIES 15
The Committee calls—
PAUL German-American Bund Leader Fritz Kuhn.
KUHN Bundesleiter.
PAUL The man who Life Magazine called “America’s Number One Nazi.”
THOMAS Mr. Bundenmeister.
KUHN Sleiter.
THOMAS Let’s clear this up now, Mr. Sleiter. Are you and your followers planning to overthrow the American government or not?
KUHN No.
THOMAS No? Well, then.
KUHN We’re not plotting a revolution ourselves, but we are going to be prepared to wrest control from the Communist-Jews when they start their revolution and save America for white Americans! Free America!
THOMAS Well, then.
PAUL The periods in which the world has not lost its mind completely are very rare in human history.
KATE What story are we telling again?
LARRY Within the year, President Roosevelt himself was calling the Dies Committee “un- American.” There was tremendous opposition to Dies. I don’t think the Committee would have survived but for the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939-41... 16
GERDA It came as a shock to almost everyone in the American Communist Party—to everyone in the Left. Russia’s anti-fascism was a myth. The American Communist Party lost over half its members.
RAND Only the die-hards remained. The very next day, the Left magazines turned its criticism against the Allies. Party leaders were making excuses for the Nazis.
GERDA Dies exploited the rift between the Far Left and the Left. He continued to use the Committee to advance the agenda of the industrialists and bankers. To crush the workers’ movement.
BRECHT Yah! I have a little bankers’ joke.
LILLIAN No.
BRECHT No?
GERDA No.
BRECHT How about a little story?
EVERYONE No.
PAUL Yes, well, I will tell a little story. It is a story about the violent Red-Black-Scares throughout the South, the use of Red Squads to crush any resistance to Jim Crow while driving black writers and intellectuals into exile, all of which had disastrous consequences for the struggle for racial socioeconomic equality in this country.
RING Now for the bad news.
GERDA We were talking about a period in which American democracy failed. In which the leaders of our country trampled on our democratic freedoms in the name of protecting them. 17
DIES Not at all. This Committee is committed to keeping the pillars of democracy erect.
BRECHT What, again with the pillars?
GERDA The all-white, male Committee felt particularly threatened by powerful female public officials in the Roosevelt administration—
THOMAS —and their perceived usurpation of male authority and by the centrality of male competitiveness in our national economic life. We feel that our rightful place is being undermined by, um, Eleanor Roosevelt.
DIES Eleanor Roosevelt is trying to deprive us of our vigor. Well, we’re not going to let it happen.
BRUCE, BEN, LILLIAN, JIM No depriving of vigor! None! Zippo!
LILLIAN Hence the famously hyper-defensive masculinist eroticism that started to creep into Anti-Communist rhetoric.
GERDA Should we do the Dies Red-ucator Hearings of 1939 next?
LILLIAN Let’s.
BRECHT Ah, ze sex.
(BRECHT holds up sign that reads: “1939 HOUSE COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA ACTIVITIES REPORT ON RADICALS AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.”)
DIES (holding a piece of paper in one hand and waving a cigar in the other) Gentlemen, the document I have refers to the organizing that has gone on in our institutions of both lower and higher learning. For example, in New York over 7,000 teachers have gotten into bed with organizations known to be pink, even while certain red-leaning professors have penetrated the student bodies of some of our top 18 universities. This protracted attack on our academic institutions is expanding—under the blanket protection of so-called academic freedom that the wife of the man in the White House invokes repeatedly to cover her young radical friends—even at Harvard.
THOMAS The teachers have had ongoing intercourse with their Soviet Masters through Red Curators, traveling back and forth through Moscow.
WALTERS But Harvard? That was not my experience at all.
DIES Harvard has several Communist organizations. For instance, Mr. Granville Hicks—an openly Communist literary scholar—was released from his contract at Michigan.
WALTERS Hicks was fired?
DIES He was asked to withdraw. But immediately he was able to talk his way into the arms of the English Department at Cambridge.
WALTERS He’s on the staff of Harvard now?
DIES He is on the English Department staff.
WALTERS Well, I can't account for the English Department, but the Classics Department at Cambridge has a truly top-notch staff. And I speak from experience.
DIES In fact, the Communist threat has repeatedly raised its head in Classics under the guise of training students in arcane tongues. The font from which the spring has flowed almost uninterrupted is the noted Platonist Robert Johnson.
THOMAS Johnson must be removed immediately.
WALTERS Removed? I daresay things have gotten very tense between Russia and the United States, but Chairman, don’t you think you are being a tad too rigid? These men are tenured. Perhaps we need to slow down.
THOMAS 19
To the contrary, the expansion is occurring so rapidly we don’t have time to diddle around. Perhaps you’re not as familiar with the Communists’ expansive tendencies as I am.
WALTERS Certainly, but to forceibly extract a member of the faculty—
THOMAS I think you’re missing his general thrust.
DIES My point is, we’ve passed that threshold. The problem has swelled to unmanageable proportions. I am therefore calling for an immediate probe.
(LILLIAN goes over and takes DIES’ cigar and breaks it in half. She gives the other half to RAND.)
GERDA By the ‘50s, the Red Scare included a Lavender Scare.
RAND Ironically, in the post-war era the American Communist Party purged all its gay members on the premise that their sexuality made them vulnerable to blackmail by the Anti-Communist government bodies.
LILLIAN The U.S. government did the same.
NIXON The hearing will come to order. Can you state your name and your background?
HAYES Arthur Garfield Hayes, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. I cannot understand the members of the Committee. You say you’re Americans. But you have so little faith in our institutions. You are doing what they have done in every fascist country. You are talking about passing laws that will not allow people to express and to hear certain opinions. Freedom is the right to hear an opinion. I agree that Russia is a totalitarian state, and I hate totalitarianism of any kind. If you tell me Russians are a danger to Europe and a danger to the US, I agree. I don’t know how to meet that danger. As far as this country is concerned, we can meet all dangers as a free country a whole lot better than if we pass suppressive laws. If you bring people out in the open and let them speak, you can get much further than if you drive them underground.
BRECHT Excuse me, Mr. Paul Robeson? 20
PAUL What?
BRECHT I have a little Communism joke for you.
(LILLIAN shakes her head “no.”)
BRECHT (CONT’D) I dropped out of my Communism class because I got lousy Marx. (beat) Ha!
(LILLIAN looks down.)
BRECHT (CONT’D) Your mother is a Communist. She’s got no class! Ha!
(Everyone onstage looks down.)
PAUL You need to stop.
(Beat.)
BRECHT I used to be a banker, but I lost interest.
(PAUL snaps his fingers. BRECHT starts, then holds up a placard that reads: “THE THOMAS COMMITTEE. THE HOLLYWOOD TEN. SEPTEMBER 1947.”)
LILLIAN The very notion that Hollywood filmmakers could pose a threat to national security was preposterous. Rings of spies and conspirators. In Hollywood!
RAND The Venona Papers did show there were hundreds of Soviet spies working in the U.S.
RING There was no conspiracy in Hollywood, Ayn. Tell me, if you were a Soviet agent, would you recruit spies from show people?
BRECHT Yah! Try keeping a secret in Hollywood. (Looks around. No response.) 21
Ha!
GERDA HUAC was political theater. It was designed to intimidate people, to stifle dissent, and it destroyed thousands of people’s lives.
LILLIAN Hollywood was filled with sell-outs.
RING I was at the Hollywood Hearings. Not everyone was a total hero or a total shit.
ALVAH It’s true. There were gradations of shit.
RING Also, deciding not to be a total shit doesn’t make you a hero.
(LILLIAN hums or sings, “Memories, like the corners of my mind...”)
LILLIAN Yeah, that is not the way we were.
PAUL J. Parnell Thomas, Republican, New Jersey, had been a stockbroker before entering Congress.
KATE Thomas loved getting to play the judge.
THOMAS I am the judge. (He puts on judge’s robes. Maybe a wig.)
GERDA No, you are not the judge. A legislative committee is not a law enforcement body. Which is why we were called “witnesses” and not “defendants.”
RING It also meant we had none of the protections that criminal defendants have. No access to the Committee’s “evidence,” so no pre-hearing chance to mount a defense, no cross examination.
GERDA 22
Thomas was a publicity hound. He put cameras on the back of the dais. He arrived early to check site lights with the technicians. He had an aide put a big red satin pillow on his chair—
THOMAS Bench!
GERDA On his chair, to elevate himself so as to give him a more dignified look. And that gavel.
RING It was a three-ring circus.
LILLIAN No, it wasn’t. It was like a tornado touched down and wiped out everything you had built. It was tragic.
PAUL The Thomas Committee called in ten high-profile witnesses, mostly screenwriters. Claiming the protection of the First Amendment’s right to free speech, all ten—"The Hollywood Ten,” as they came to be known—refused to answer the question…
THOMAS Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
LAWSON The Bill of Rights was established precisely to prevent the operation of any Committee which could invade the basic rights of Americans...
(Before he is finished answering, LAWSON is removed from the room by guards.)
THOMAS It would please the Committee, Mr. Biberman, if you could answer the question.
BIBERMAN I would be very suspicious of any answer that would come out of my mouth that pleased this Committee.
KATE They called my father.
THOMAS Mr. Lardner. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
RING 23
If you make me answer this question today, tomorrow you could ask somebody whether he believed in spiritualism.
THOMAS That is just plain silly. Any real American would be proud to answer that question. Now, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
RING It depends on the circumstances. I could answer, but if I did, I’d hate myself in the morning.
(Laughter in the hearing room.)
THOMAS (explosive) Leave the witness chair.
(The police swoop in and take RING away.)
KATE I was listening on the radio. He’d had a stutter as a young child. It was so faint, I am pretty sure that only my mother and I could hear it. I heard it—just at the end—ever so slightly.
RING I’d hate myself in the m-morning.
KATE He was afraid.
BRECHT All ten were cited for Contempt of Congress and given prison sentences of between six months and a year.
RING I was sent to Danbury Federal Penitentiary in Connecticut for one year.
KATE My mother called it “the penal interlude.”
RING It was decided that two of us would appeal. In March 1951, the Supreme Court agreed with the Committee by deciding that the rights of the individual had to be balanced against the national interest.
KATE 24
Turns out the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees weren’t absolute. You didn’t have the right to silence. In the interim, Congressman Thomas—the very guy who sent my father to prison—was convicted of tax evasion and salary fraud and sent to—
THOMAS Danbury Federal Penitentiary in Connecticut.
RING Of all the joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.
LARRY I think my career is over.
BRECHT Excuse me, Lillian?
LILLIAN What?
BRECHT I think you have skipped—
LILLIAN My testimony.
RAND Bert’s testimony.
LILLIAN (snippy) Oh.
(BRECHT, beaming away, holds up a sign that reads: “MY TESTIMONY.”)
BRECHT Presenting: My Testimony.
(BRECHT pretends to be a radio reporter.)
BRECHT (CONT’D) World famous German theater practitioner, playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, had arrived in Santa Monica in 1941 after seven years being chased all over Europe by the Nazis. He had recently applied for U.S. citizenship.
(He turns to the audience.)
25
BRECHT But the paperwork was tied up. I felt badly that I did not stand with the others and refuse to answer. I was an alien. I had no protections at all. Zo.
(BRECHT takes in the Hearing Room. He walks over to STRIPLING and stands in front of him for a moment. Then, he pulls away. STRIPLING’s face is revealed to have a red, rubber clown nose. BRECHT sits down. Next to him is his translator, MR. BAUMGARDT. Both really pour on the heavy German accent in the hearings.)
STRIPLING Bertolt Brecht, have you ever attended any Communist Party meetings in the U.S.?
BRECHT No, I don’t think so.
STRIPLING Aren’t you certain?
BRECHT No, I am certain, yes.
STRIPLING You are certain that you did not?
BRECHT Yes, I think so.
STRIPLING Have you attended any Communist meetings in the United States?
BRECHT I do not think so.
STRIPLING You are certain?
BRECHT I think I am certain.
STRIPLING You think you are certain?
(BRECHT consults with his translator.)
BRECHT Yes… In my opinion. 26
STRIPLING Now, I’ll repeat the original question. Mr Brecht, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of any country?
BRECHT Ah, I do not know. But I think I will answer your question as well I can. I was not a member—am not a member—of any Communist Party.
STRIPLING You were not.
BRECHT Nyet.
STRIPLING Good— What?
BRECHT No.
STRIPLING But some people did ask you to join the Communist Party, did they not?
BRECHT In Germany?
STRIPLING No, in the United States.
BRECHT No, no, no, never.
STRIPLING Mr. Chairman, I feel that the witness is…
(THOMAS has sensed that the Hearing Room has warmed to BRECHT. THOMAS wants to be liked.)
THOMAS Now, you let him, you let him, he’s doing all right. He’s doing much better than the other witness that you brought here.
(Laughter in the Hearing Room.)
27
STRIPLING Mr. Brecht, since you have been in the United States, have you met with any officials of the Soviet government? And if so, what did you speak about?
BRECHT I do not understand the English so well. I think… (He consults with translator.) Festivities!
STRIPLING Parties.
BRECHT There were, uh, with other writers, and, uh, actors. We spoke about… somethings.
STRIPLING Uh, Mr. Brecht, is it true that you have written a number of very revolutionary poems, plays, and articles?
BRECHT I am written a number of poems, songs, and plays in the fight against Hitler. And, of course, they can be considered therefore as revolutionary cause, uh, I, of course, was for the overthrow of, uh, that government.
THOMAS (waving gavel) Mr. Stripling, we're not interested in any works that Mr. Brecht might have written going for the overthrow of Germany.
STRIPLING I’m going to hand you a magazine. On Page 24 you find “In Praise of Learning.” Did you collaborate with Hanns Eisler on the song “In Praise of Learning”?
BRECHT I wrote that song; he only wrote the music.
STRIPLING (interrupting) I will read the words and then ask you for your response. It says here, “You must be ready to take over. Learn it, men on the dole, men of ’65… You must be ready to take over."
BRECHT (interrupting) No, uh, excuse me, that is the wrong translation.
28
THOMAS That is not the correct translation?
BRECHT That is not correct, no. That translation. It is not very beautiful… (laughter in Hearing Room) But I am not speaking about that. Just one second, I give you the correct… Here, may speak, uh, the translator…
BAUMGARDT The translation here is not a literal translation of the German text. The correct translation would be, "You must take the lead.” It definitely says “lead.” It is not "take over".
THOMAS (over STRIPLING) You must take the lead.
BAUMGARDT “The lead,” yes.
STRIPLING Mr. Brecht, did you write the words to a song entitled, "Forward, We've Not Forgotten.:”
BRECHT I think— The next morning, I was on a plane to New York, then another to Paris. I never returned to the U.S.
RING After The Ten, it was understood you’d go to prison for contempt if you refused to answer questions on the basis of the First Amendment.
PAUL LA Times Reader: March 23, 1951: “The first Hollywood character to admit in public testimony his past membership in the Communist Party is the actor Larry Parks.”
GERDA He figured if he came clean about his own history, it would be enough.
MR. TAVENNER Will you please state your present occupation?
LARRY Actor.
MR. POTTER 29
You were a member of the Communist Party?
LARRY I was. I joined the Communist Party from September 1941, and I left by 1945. I am not a Communist now. I think that being a Communist in 1951 is an entirely different kettle of fish when the Soviet Union is a great power that is trying to take over the world.
MR. TAVENNER Now, just a moment. In other words, you didn't realize that the purpose and object of the Communist Party was to take over other segments of the world in 1941, but you do realize that that is true in 1951?
LARRY Well, ten years ago I was a much younger man. I attended very few meetings, and I drifted away from it.
MR. TAVENNER Who was the chairman of the cell to which you were assigned?
LARRY Well, it had no chairman that I know of, that I recall… anyone that was chairman.
MR. POTTER Are you acquainted with Lionel Stander?
LARRY I have met him.
MR. POTTER Have you ever attended a Communist Party meeting with him?
LARRY I don’t recall ever attending a Communist Party meeting with Lionel Stander.
MR. TAVENNER Are you acquainted with Karen Morley?
LARRY I am.
MR. TAVENNER Is she a member of the Communist Party?
LARRY Well, Counsel, these— I would prefer not to mention names, if it is at all possible, of anyone. I don't think it is fair to people to do this. 30
WALTER Who would call the meetings together?
LARRY I can’t answer this.
MR. POTTER Certainly, it wasn’t run by mental telepathy. Somebody had to issue a call?
LARRY That's correct. I would get a call from a member of the group, and they would say, “Well, let's have a meeting tonight, tomorrow night.”
KEARNY Can you name some of them?
LARRY Well, as I said, I would prefer not to mention names. These were people who did nothing wrong.
MR. WOODS Mr. Parks, in what way do you feel it would be injurious, then, to them to divulge their identities, when you expressed the opinion that at no time did they do wrong?
LARRY Congressman, I’d just like to say that this… is a very difficult and arduous process for me. Partly because, as an actor, my activity is dependent a great deal on the public. To be called before this Committee at your request has a certain inference, a certain innuendo that you are not loyal to this country. Also, this is my industry, and it’s a great industry—
MR. TAVENNER You are placing your reluctance to testify upon the great job that the moving-picture industry is doing or can do?
LARRY I’m not declining. I’m—
MR. WOODS Just what the reasons are in your mind for declining to answer the question.
LARRY On the question of naming names, I feel that we as Americans have all been brought up that it is a bad thing to force a man to do this. This is not the American way of doing things— To force a man to do this is not American justice. 31
MR. TAVENNER Mr. Parks, it seems to me that your argument in substance is this: that this Committee should investigate Communism but not find out who it is that is a Communist.
LARRY No, Counsel, that is not my argument. But I’m asking you as a human being, having opened myself to you—
MR. WOODS And if you would be equally frank with regard to other people who are connected with this organization, then this Committee would be permitted to function in line with the statutory duty that rests upon it. Was Karen Morley a member of this group with you?
LARRY I ask you again to reconsider and not to force me into this position.
DOYLE I think you said you more or less had a social affair. Did you have refreshments?
LARRY Yes, we did have coffee. Coffee and donuts.
DOYLE What did you discuss in these meetings, besides drinking coffee?
LARRY We didn't discuss drinking coffee; we just drank it. As I told you, at that time the war was going on, and this, as I recall, was the major topic of conversation.
VELDE You stated that you now believe that the Communist Party of the United States is a subversive organization. Is that true?
LARRY Yes, I do.
VELDE But at that time that you went into the Communist Party, you felt that it was not a subversive organization.
LARRY That is quite correct.
VELDE 32
Well, do you now know that at the time you belonged to the Communist Party actually was a subversive and disloyal organization—at that time?
LARRY What I observed personally at the time, the experiences that I had with the small group of people that I knew, I cannot say that this was true.
VELDE Mr. Parks, how could you possibly know how other members of your particular cell felt about the purposes of the Communist Party organization—at that time?
MR. TAVENNER Mr. Parks, you were a member of the Laboratory Theater. You are no doubt acquainted with Mr. Samuel G. Wood, a picture producer and director, or at least you were acquainted with him.
LARRY I don’t believe that I have ever met the gentleman. I’m quite— This is the man that died a year or two ago. I'm an admirer of his work as a director.
MR. TAVENNER Yes. Now, he testified before this Committee with regard to the Laboratory Theater as follows: “Well, in the old days we used to have youngsters who had a chance to study to become actors. But now the Lab, I think, is definitely under the control of the Communist Party.” Do you agree with his statement?
LARRY I disagree with it emphatically.
MR. TAVENNER But do you agree that Mr. Wood is a man of honor and integrity?
LARRY I agree that Mr. Wood is a man that turned out many fine motion pictures. I don’t know the gentleman. I never knew him?
KEARNEY Were there occasions when a member of the Communist Party would come to speak to the group?
LARRY There was one instance.
KEARNEY Can you give his name? 33
LARRY Please. I beg of you not to force me to do this. This is probably the most difficult morning and afternoon I have ever spent. This is probably the most difficult morning and afternoon I have ever spent, and I wish that if it was at all possible— You see, it is a little different to sit there and to sit here, and for a moment if you could transfer places with me, mentally, and put yourself in my place. I think my career has been ruined because of this, and I would appreciate not having to— Don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer. I don't think this is a choice at all. I don’t think this is American. I think to do something like that is more akin to what happened under Hitler, and what is happening in Russia today. I have two boys, one thirteen months, one two weeks. Is this the kind of heritage that I must hand down to them?
MR. WOODS Upon what do you base the opinion that the people whose names you have in your possession probably have severed their relations with the Communist Party?
LARRY It’s my honest opinion. You know who these people are. You know them as well as I do. I don't think this is American justice to make me choose to be in contempt of this Committee, which is a Committee of my government, or crawl through the mud for no purpose, because you know who these people are. This is what I beg you not to do.
KATE The Committee on Un-American Activities took a recess at this point. The Committee continued to interrogate Parks behind closed doors for the next three days.
MICHAEL LA Times Reader: “This just in. Mr. Larry Parks has given the Committee the names of seven people he said were Hollywood Communists. The Committee reports that it already had most of the names, so Mr. Parks’ testimony in this regard does not seem to be particularly valuable.
LILLIAN Poor son of a bitch was blacklisted anyway. Never worked again.
PAUL The way they did it. It was heartbreaking.
GERDA Almost like the self-humiliation statements of the Soviet show trials.
RAND 34
Except he wasn’t murdered afterward. There is political suppression and there is lethal political suppression. The American Anti-Communists’ political repression was non- lethal.
PAUL Oh please, do not start me on lethal political repression in the United States of America.
RING The Larry Parks Hearing ushered in the name game.
GERDA Now, even you were honest about your own history. You had to name the names of other “Communists,” or you could be held in contempt.
PAUL It turned out they already had the names… or most of them.
RING But that didn’t mean you weren’t hurting anyone by naming someone already named. You were serving an inquisitorial system. A system of betrayal. You were part of the…
GERDA Chain reaction.
LILLIAN You were still disgusting if you named someone who had already been named.
STERLING If you weren’t willing to inform, the only way you could protect yourself from going to prison was to invoke the Fifth Amendment, which provides the right to avoid self- incrimination. But if you pleaded the Fifth, you’d be blacklisted. The bottom line was that you had to give names or you didn’t get to work.
GERDA There were some—there were a handful of people—who felt that they needed to make a stronger statement about their rights.
KATE There were some who defied it all: They did not take the Fifth. Their great courage is the reason you probably don’t know their names.
LILLIAN I did not plead the Fifth, I am proud to say.
RING 35
Lillian, you did plead the Fifth.
(She sulks.)
KATE Officially, there was no blacklist. Ronald Reagan, President of SAG.
(REAGAN rides in on his invisible horse and seats himself at the hearing table.)
REAGAN Well, Mr. Chairman, I think we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people’s activities curtailed. We have exposed their lives when we came across them. Hey, hello kid! What’s your name?
JOHN John.
REAGAN Well, Johnny, did you know that how we meet the Communist challenge depends on you! Would you like to know how the Communists in our schools and in our neighborhoods use deceit and lies to advance their agenda?
(JOHN looks surprised.)
JOHN Um.
(REAGAN hands him a pamphlet and gallops off. JOHN holds it up to look at it as BRECT holds up a placard that reads: “PAMPHPLET: HOUSE COMMITTEE ON UN- AMERICAN ACTIVITIES: 100 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COMMUNISM AND RELIGION. JOHN and MARY take the pamphlet and read from it.)
JOHN (CONT’D) Gosh, Mary, what would happen if Communists should come into power in this country?
MARY Our capitol would move from Washington to Moscow. Every man, woman, and child would come under Communist discipline.
JOHN Where are the headquarters of the Communist faith?
MARY The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia. 36
JOHN What kind of people become Communists?
MARY The real center of power in Communism is in the professional classes. Actors, writers, lawyers, editors, businessmen, and even a few millionaires.
LILLIAN I blame the liberals. I really do.
RAND Of course you do.
GERDA There were different kinds of informers. You need to distinguish between people like Larry Parks, who was so reluctant—
LILLIAN And those who were altogether groveling.
STERLING That’s not fair. You have to understand. By the point I went, they wanted more than just the names. You had to be penitent. You had to say you were sorry and had been stupid in the past. You could say you were ignorant. That you had joined the Party but had no idea what Communism was. You had to show them you were grateful for the opportunity to clear your name. You had to—
MICHAEL Stop. What story are we telling?
REAGAN (to JOHN) Hi again, Johnny! How’d you like to hear a story? It’s the story of a person who finally realized that he had been besmirched by his association with the Communist Party, and who sought out help in raising himself from Communist slime to cleaner ground. That’s my friend—
STERLING Sterling Hayden.
WALTERS State your name, please.
STERLING I am ashamed. I come here in all humility. 37
WALTERS Yes, that’s fine. But first state your name.
STERLING Sterling Hayden.
WALTERS Now the scraping, please.
STERLING I would like to say that I very, very, very much appreciate the opportunity to appear here today. I’d like to say, I think there is a tremendous service to be rendered, not only to the country at large but to the motion picture industry and also to those individuals who find themselves in a similar position to mine.
LILLIAN Oh, for God’s sake, why not just drop your trousers?
(BRECHT stands up and drops his trousers. He is wearing big plaid boxer underwear. He sits back down.)
LARRY (aside to GERDA) I really would not want to get on the wrong side of Lillian.
(GERDA vigorously shakes her head “no’’ in agreement.)
STERLING I would like, if it is not presumptuous, to suggest, in all humility, that perhaps some provision could be made to permit people who had a similar experience to get this thing off their chests, because, believe me, it is a load to carry around with you!
TONY My father’s friend was always a little miffed he never got called to testify. It seemed like a question of prestige.
ALL WOMEN Subpoena envy.
GERDA Now for the bad news.
EVERYONE (incredulous, because what’s all this been if not bad news?) What? 38
GERDA The Hollywood film industry yielded the greatest per capita number of citizen informers of any of the industries that HUAC investigated—about one out of every three witnesses subpoenaed named names.
STERLING Because in Hollywood it was spectacle. The commissioners bullied you, they ground you down as part of the show.
LILLIAN You could hear people in the living room applauding or booing.
LEE There was a vigilante spirit. Outside the hearings they would be waiting for you. It could be Anti-Communists or Anti-HUAC protesters shouting you down.
LARRY By 1948, the country had moved into the murk of fear and unreality
LEE Life felt dangerous.
LARRY When there is fear in the air, people get impatient with the ordinary course of law. They don’t want to wait any longer. They don’t care about moral nuance. They want immediate relief.
KATE The Russians tested their first atomic bomb in 1949. In those days, we thought about the atomic bomb, about nuclear annihilation, all the time. I was eight. At recess we argued about which city the Russians would drop the bomb on first.
BRECH The Ducks!
(He ducks.)
GERDA What?
BRECHT Everybody! The Duck and the Cover!
KATE He means “duck and cover.” 39
(Faux nuclear signal goes off. BRECHT does duck and cover—the public-school nuclear drill where you get down on your hands and knees and put your arms over your head. He waits a few seconds, then looks around at the others. Others just ignore him.)
GERDA If you even signed a petition against nuclear weapons, you were a Communist. And with the Truman Loyalty Oaths, red hunting became a national pastime like building bomb shelters. It was as if someone decided that by purging the country of Communists, you could somehow go back, extinguish the threat of nuclear war.
RAND Meanwhile, the Soviets were continuing to expand their borders.
BRECHT (to RAND) Miss Ayn Rand, do you know the one about the Russian tourist at the Romanian border? He gives his passport to the border official. The officer looks up and says, “Occupation?” Russian guy says, “No, just visiting.”
(BRECHT smiles that “I just told a joke” smile.)
GERDA Things got worse.
LARRY Things got worse when they started televising hearings. Maybe not so much for show people, but certainly for people in the government and the civil service and the schools.
KATE These were different times. There were people for whom television cameras were terrifying.
GERDA It was especially hard on academics, especially in the sciences.
RAND Oh, please, let’s not talk about Mr. Oppenheimer, shall we?
BRECHT No, we will not be telling that story. We are telling another story. Now, I ask that the lights be dimmed. For the sadness.
PAUL His name was William Sherwood.
40
BARBARA My husband was a very brilliant but a very shy—and frightened—research scientist at Stanford. He was doing very important work with cancer and nuclear illness. In his youth, he had volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The Committee subpoenaed him.
KATE He agreed to testify?
BARBARA He agreed to testify. But he was terrified of the lights and the television cameras. He pleaded that they not have the cameras on. He asked that the lights be dimmed.
RING They did that on purpose. To dissociate you.
LARRY But he did agree to testify.
PAUL Yes, he agreed to testify. But on those conditions. That they take the cameras out. Chairman Walters refused.
BARBARA After he received word of their refusal, my husband committed suicide. It was two days before he was scheduled to testify.
REPORTER Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1957: “Facing Probe, University Man Kills Himself. The suicide here yesterday of a Stanford university graduate student and research scientist under subpoena by the House on Un-American Activities put a spotlight on a brilliant career. The man who killed himself—apparently choosing death to a scheduled televised appearance tomorrow before a Committee hearing in San Francisco on Communist ‘intellectual infiltration’—was William K. Sherwood, 40. His death added on more names to the long list of lawyers, scientists, and scholars who have died mysteriously since 1948, while the Committee was delving into their political activities, touching off a continuing wave of mystery deaths.” Congressman Walters, do you believe the Committee was responsible for William Sherman’s suicide?
WALTERS Well, it is certainly unfortunate that the Committee cannot interrogate him, because we have every reason to believe that he had valuable information about the tax-exempt foundations and how they make their selections for their grants.
KATE 41
Doctor Francis Matthiessen, Harvard.
TOM “Matty.”
KATE Author of the seminal work American Renaissance. His sexuality was an open secret at Harvard, but he chose officially to remain in the closet. Around the time of his death, HUAC was making inquiries into his past.
TOM Dr. Matthiessen committed suicide in 1950 by jumping from a twelfth floor window from a hotel room in Boston. He left a note.
MATTHIESSEN "I am depressed over world conditions. I am a Christian and a Socialist. I am against any order which interferes with that objective.”
RAND Well, with suicide you never know.
ELIA My favorite quote is from Jean Renoir: “Everyone has his reasons.”
RING My favorite quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “They were careless with other people’s lives.”
RANT Ring, you are so well red.
BRECHT Ah! I have a favorite quote! My favorite quote is: “I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh!”
(Silence as other characters look at each other, embarrassed.)
RING Uh, Bert?
(BRECHT looks at his feet a moment, then up.)
RING (CONT’D) Bert, were you just quoting yourself?
(BRECHT looks embarrassed.) 42
BRECHT No… Maybe… I am not certain.
RAND Well, Lillian is just dying to quote— What was it, that thing you said at your hearing about not being fashionable?
LILLIAN “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to suit this year’s fashion.”
(BRECHT holds out a business card to her.)
LILLIAN (CONT’D) What’s that?
BRECHT Zis is my tailor, Mr. Stuebenville. Santa Monica. Reliable, very reasonably priced… Can do darts.
WALTERS Playwright Lillian Hellman was dubbed a “key figure’” under suspicion by the FBI. Should we—
MR. WOODS Why cite her for contempt? After all, she’s a woman.
Gerda He actually said that?
LILLIAN None of this is funny.
RAND Why must you always be such a moralist, Lillian? The woman thinks she’s Antigone.
LILLIAN If you were an artist, you were forced to make an agonizing choice between your commitment to your art or your individual conscience.
ORWELL As far as analogies go, I’m going to go with Big Brother. Thought crimes. Newspeak. Double-speak.
KATE George Orwell? 43
RAND Lillian, I think Mr. Orwell knows a bit more about the nature of totalitarianism than you do.
LILLIAN A great man.
RAND Orwell named names, Lillian. Ask him.
PAUL In 1947, he gave a list of 35 names of “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers” to an agent of the propaganda unit of in the UK Foreign Office that was assigned to combat Stalinism. One of the names he gave was Charlie Chaplin.
BRECHT Ah, the divine Chaplin! Monsieur Verdoux! (It hits him.) You… You put him on the list? The little tramp?
KATE (nearly in tears) You too? Why?
ORWELL I believed the Soviet Communist Party was totalitarian, anti-democratic, and deeply oppressive.
LILLIAN Fine. Let’s talk about the Ayn Rand version of Anti-Communism, shall we?
RAND The end of Communism is the sterility of the individual. A society must nurture genius. Great minds are the engines of social progress. (She nods at LILLIAN.) Say what you want, but it’s true. The only way for great minds to have their creativity liberated is to have no restraints… Great artists included, Lillian. For an artist to grow, she must have no moral constraints.
LILLIAN And all the workers be damned.
RAND Well now, Lillian. Wasn’t it Stalin who said, “If you want to make an omelet, you’re going to have to crack a few eggs?” 44
LILLIAN That was Trotsky.
BRECHT Ladies!
RAND and LILLIAN What?
RAND No one died from being blacklisted, Lillian. There is lethal political repression and non- lethal political repression. In Russia, if you were even suspected of disagreeing with the party line, much less subversion, you were killed.
PAUL You do not get to talk to me about lethal political repression in America, Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand, you were not good for democracy. Ayn Rand, you were terrible for democracy, and I would like to take all your books and—
KATE Elia Kazan?
LILLIAN Well, if it isn’t the biggest rat of them all.
LARRY Excuse me, none of this is in my script.
ELIA Well, like I said, kid. We can do this picture with you or without you. I think the point is that blacklisting was not murder. They were able to find some kind of work. They survived.
RAND A few suicides, maybe.
ELIA A handful, maybe.
LARRY It felt like tragedy. It felt like fate or some power outside yourself suddenly forced you to make a horrific choice.
STERLING 45
However you chose there would be life changing consequences. I don’t think people understand that if you were subpoenaed, there was no way of going forward with the life you had. Especially if you informed. You were not the same person that you had been when you walked into the hearing room that morning. That night when you went to sleep, a different man got into bed with your wife.
LILLIAN Oh, it was tragedy. Paul Robeson. The Orestes, please.
PAUL (with a “wtf” look) What?
LILLIAN Paul is one of our finest classical actors.
ARENS Will you please come forward? Please identify yourself by name, and tell us your occupation.
PAUL My name is Paul Robeson. I am an actor and singer by occupation and law on the side now and then.
LILLIAN You know what? Read from the Orestes. Agamemnon.
PAUL I most certainly will not.
BRECHT In 1949, Robeson was subpoenaed after he made a speech at the Paris Peace Conference in which he said it would be “unthinkable” for African-Americans to fight in a U.S. war against the Soviet Union.
AREN Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
PAUL Oh, please, please, please.
SHERER Answer the question, please, Mr. Robeson.
PAUL 46
What do you mean by “the Communist Party”? Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?
ARENS Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
PAUL I stand upon the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
ARENS Do you mean to invoke the Fifth?
PAUL I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
ARENS I respectfully suggest the witness be ordered and directed to answer the question as to whether or not he honestly apprehends that, if he gave us a truthful answer to this last question, he would be supplying information which might be used against him in a criminal proceeding?
WALTER You are directed to the question, Mr. Robeson.
PAUL Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been all around the world, the first to die in the struggle against fascism were the Communists, and I laid many wreaths upon the graves of Communists. It is not criminal, and the Fifth Amendment does not have anything to do with the inference of criminality. Now. I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
ARENS Now, tell this Committee whether or not you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster?
(PAUL laughs)
SHERER Mr. Robeson, this is not a laughing matter.
PAUL It is a laughing matter to me. This is really complete nonsense. I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
WALTERS The witness talks very loudly when he makes a speech, but when he invokes the Fifth Amendment, I can’t hear him. 47
PAUL I invoked the Fifth Amendment very loudly. You know I am an actor and have medals for diction.
ARENS Have you ever had contact with a man by the name of Gregory Keifets?
PAUL Oh gentlemen, I invoke the Fifth.
ARENS Well now, Gregory Keifitz is identified with the Soviet espionage operations, is he not? Do you know a Manning Johnson?
PAUL Why do you not have these people here to be cross-examined? Could I ask whether this is legal?
WALTERS This is legal. This is not only legal, but usual.
PAUL May I read my statement? The reason I am here today is the State Department says I should not be allowed to travel, because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa. The other reason that I am here today is that, when I am abroad, I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist. I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walters, and my mother was a Quaker. And my ancestors in the time of George Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware. And my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens of this country, and they are not. They are not in Mississippi, and they are not in Montgomery, Alabama, and they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today.
WALTERS Mr. Robeson. Did you make a trip to Europe in 1949 and to the Soviet Union?
PAUL Yes, I did.
WALTERS Did you write an article that was subsequently published in the USSR Information Bulletin? 48
PAUL Yes, I did.
ARENS And, while you were in Paris, did you tell an audience there that the American Negro would never go to war against the Soviet government?
PAUL It is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union.
ARENS Did you write an article that was subsequently published in the USSR Information Bulletin?
PAUL Yes.
ARENS “Moscow is very dear to me and very close to my heart. I want to emphasize that only here in the Soviet Union did I feel that I was a real Man with a capital M, and now after many years I am here again in Moscow in the country I love more than any other.” Did you say that?
PAUL I would say— What is your name?
ARENS Representative Arens.
PAUL Well, Mr. Arens, we will take this in context. When I was a singer years ago— This you’ll have to listen to.
(He says this last in his rich booming voice. It startles ARENS. ARENS stops fidgeting with his papers and looks at Robeson, now listening.)
PAUL (CONT’D) I am a bass singer, and so for me it was Chaliapin, the great Russian bass, and not Caruso the tenor. I learned the Russian language to sing their songs.
SHERER I ask you to direct the witness to answer the question.
PAUL 49
Now, when I first went to Russia in 1934, I felt for the first time like a full human being. It was the first time I felt like a human being, where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel in this Committee today.
SHERER Why did you not stay in Russia?
PAUL Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?
ARENS Did you send your son to a Soviet school in New York City?
PAUL I sent my son to a Soviet school in the Soviet Union and in England, and he suffered no prejudice like he would here in Washington.
WALTERS Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers, and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?
PAUL Just a moment. It is something that I challenge very deeply and very sincerely; that the success of a few Negros including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean.
ARENS Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin?
PAUL Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union. And I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted 60 to 100 million lives of my people—black people—drawn from Africa and the plantations.
ARENS While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps?
WALTERS You have been so interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to 50 see that.
GERDA Paul Robeson was blacklisted and— and remained under FBI surveillance for a decade.
LILLIAN Paul.
(LILLIAN hands him THE ORESTES. PAUL picks it up and thumbs through it. LILLIAN is scribbling on a placard.)
LARRY HUAC loved to get people to testify against their own.
PAUL HUAC held a special hearing.
(BRECHT holds up placard that reads: “HOUSE OF UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES INVESTIGATION INTO COMMUNIST INFILTRATION OF MINORITY GROUPS, 1957.”)
GERDA In an act of almost unprecedented hypocrisy…
WALTERS The Committee calls Jackie Robinson. We want to give members of Mr. Robeson’s race the privilege of expressing contrary views.
PAUL Their ostensible aim was to get Mr. Robinson to discredit Mr. Robeson’s disloyal and unpatriotic statements.
ROBINSON I didn’t want to testify. I didn’t want to fall prey to the white man’s game, pitting one black man against another. Robeson was striking out against oppression in the best way he knew how. I regret it now.
GERDA Like Robeson, Robinson managed to use the hearing to speak out about racial injustice just as Robeson had.
LARRY You see the choices HUAC forced people to make.
51
(LILLIAN snaps, and BRECHT holds up her placard. It reads: “TRAGIC CONFLICT AS EVIDENCED IN THE HUAC HEARINGS BY WAY OF ANALOGY WITH THE ORESTES. STARRING PAUL ROBESON.” LILLIAN takes a majestic robe and puts it over PAUL’s shoulders. PAUL stands up and faces the audience.)
PAUL Now Agamemnon looks at the sea. “Already the storm is rising. The winds are wearing and wasting away his men. The seer Calchas has divined that Agamemnon has angered the goddess Artemis. She will create a storm that will destroy the fleet and all the company in it.”
LILLIAN Unless Agamemnon agreed to sacrifice his own friend.
ELIA His daughter. This is so completely pretentious.
BRECHT Silence! We are in ancient Greece… A big jar of it. Ha!
PAUL “From the North blew the thwarting blast, and the Mother of Famine beckoned. If he does not fulfill Artemis’ condition, everyone—including Iphigenia—will die. Pleading, he calls out: ‘A heavy doom awaits my men if I disobey, but heavy too if I shall rend my child. Which of these is without sacrifice?’ Pleading, he calls—"
LARRY I beg you not to make me crawl through the mud.
LEE I had two small children. My wife was ill when you named me. I held out two years. Then I folded.
PAUL “Twixt woe and woe I dwell.” His first response is—
STERLING Chairman?
THOMAS What?
STERLING Permission to weep?
52
LARRY My friends. These are my friends. You know who they are?
ELIA True to myself?
LARRY You did it because you wanted to keep making movies? I was true to myself. Everything before that testimony was not the real me. You know what I say? It took guts to do what I did. Maybe I did, you don’t know, but maybe what I said did save lives. Everybody knows there were some Communists in Hollywood. I steeled myself.
PAUL Your heart. And that is what makes it so appalling.
LILLIAN The women of the chorus are appalled less by the choice he makes—he is forced to make—than by the way he shakes off the burden of remorse and gives over to self- deception.
PAUL He deceives his wife.
RAND There were many, many gravediggers in Russia.
LARRY You asked to come back and testify. You could have worked in New York.
GERDA He shifts from horror and revulsion at the choice he makes to a strange, unnatural pride. A terrifying certitude.
ELIA There was no question the American Communist Party was being run out of Moscow. And no one died.
PAUL The chorus sings: “Blaming no prophet, he blew together with the winds of luck that struck against him.”
KATE What’s that mean? What? That he decides to blow the way the wind blows? My father was—
CONRAD 53
My father had a heart attack.
PAUL He says, “For it is right and holy that I should desire it. And so, holding her in so special honor, as if were the death of a beast—”
SULLIVAN When you do something like that, when you sell your soul for a mess of pottage, you change. Some of them go deeper into the muck. They think “What the hell. I’ve killed one guy.”
STERLING I went home that night, and I was someone else. It was as if I committed adultery with my wife.
KATE Some classicists say that at the last minute, Artemis replaced the girl with a deer.
(RING, her father, puts his arm around her. BRECHT holds up placard reading: “EXECUTIVE HEARING, APRIL 10, 1952. TESTIMONY OF ELIA KAZAN. FRANK S. TAVENNER, JR, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH.”)
BRECHT It was a closed session held in a private room. HUAC released the transcript to the press the next day.
MR. TAVENNER I understand that you have voluntarily requested the Committee to reopen your hearing.
ELIA That is correct. I want to make a full and complete statement. I want to tell you the conclusion I came to— I came to the conclusion— that I did wrong to withhold those names. How… How would you tell it, Arthur?
ARTHUR I would say there are oppressive features in human nature. And that when you acknowledge that you have these features in yourself—in your very nature—you may be better prepared to resist the temptation to…
ELIA I named people who were already named. One was dead. The others were already named. They were blacklisted. That’s all. They could have found another job.
RING 54
You could have found another job.
ELIA I was America’s greatest director.
LARRY (sadly) Your greatest film was a justification for informing. What was it the Brando character says?
(ELIA turns and becomes TERRY MALLOY.)
ELIA (as TERRY MALLOY) And I’m glad what I done to you, you hear that?
GERDA On April 11,1953, part of the Elia Kazan testimony was released to the press. Elia decided to publish a statement in the New York Times. A full-page paid advertisement.
(ELIA sits at a desk, penning the statement.)
RING A statement by Elia Kazan.
ELIA “In the past week, intolerable rumors about my political position have been circulating in the news and in Hollywood. I want to make my stand clear.”
(Various blacklisted or abused characters come and stand behind him. They read over his shoulder in turn. The ghost of J. EDGAR BROMBERG walks over stands behind him. He starts reading the next phrase.)
BROMBERG “I believe that Communist activities confront the people of this country with an unprecedented and exceptionally tough problem. That is, how to protect ourselves from a dangerous and alien conspiracy and still keep the free, open, healthy way of life that gives us self-respect.”
PAUL (standing over his shoulder) “The question will be asked why I did not tell this story sooner. I was held back, primarily, by concern for the reputations and employment of people who may, like myself, have left the Party years ago.”
JULIE and JOHN 55
“I was also held back by a piece of specious reasoning which has silenced many liberals. It goes like this: ‘You may hate the Communists, but you must not attack them or expose them.’ I have thought soberly about this. It is, simply, a lie. It is my obligation as a citizen to tell you, and I want to tell you—”
ELIA I want to tell you—
EVERYONE “Everything I know.”
LARRY Wait. Which story are we telling now?
GERDA It depends who’s doing the telling. There is history, and there is story. If you are talking about how you experienced something, it’s a story.
ELIA I know. Let’s collaborate!
(Maybe people throw things at him or hiss or something equivalent.)
BRECHT (with a flourish) No! For once you must stick to the facts!
(Everyone looks at him doubtfully.)
BRECHT (CONT’D) Ha! Got you! It is from a play of mine, I think. Maybe some other play. I am not certain. Maybe, maybe not. No, no, no, never, yes, maybe not. I am certain it is, maybe, good night.
GERDA Good night. What can you do? You can only tell them what you saw, how it felt.
LARRY What you were thinking.
RING What were the reasons that led us to do what we did?
GERDA Un-Americanism outlived the collapse of Communist Russia, of course. It is a terrible word. 56
JULIE I know we are not telling this story. But I will say that when I hear that sick, narcissistic man in the White House repeatedly calling the congressional investigations of Russian election interference a “witch hunt,” I want to say—
LARRY How dare you?
JULIE How dare you? This Congress is investigating the misuse of government power. My father was a victim of the misuse of government power.
PAUL (quoting Orestes) “I sing, the watchman declared, only to weep again the pity of this house No longer administered in the grand way.
(LILLIAN applauds PAUL.)
RING This is a story of how, all around the world, the sum of the complexities of centuries of human history were levelled to a handful of grotesque generalities. (to KATE) Sweetheart?
(RING and KATE walk together.)
RING (CONT’D) (to the others) Good night.
TONY As the child of someone who chose to refuse, you cannot help wondering about yourself: What would I do? What would I have done in that situation?
(He looks at someone in the audience.)
TONY (CONT’D) I want to tell you. You don’t know. You may think you know, but you cannot know.
CONRAD Sometimes I still have the comeback dream. Yes, in my dream, the blacklist has lifted. My father has been welcomed back to Hollywood. He is big again. We are sitting in the theater watching the premiere of his new film. I think of it as his comeback picture. We watch the final scene. He is—my father, the great actor—he is… magic. On the screen, 57 the picture blurs and the end frame comes on. The screen goes dark. There are a few moments of silence, and then… Boom. (thundering applause) The applause is deafening. They love him again. The lights come up in the theater, and they are all clamoring for him. My father!
JULIE My father!
CONRAD They call, “Bravo!” They demand that he take a bow! “Bravo! Bravo!” My father stands up and turns slowly to the audience. Slowly, he takes a bow. We are happy again. Like in the old days. We are—
(The figure of BROMBERG enacts some of this. After he bows, CONRAD walks over and takes his hand. They walk off stage together.
This sort of Ghost Revival occurs: GERDA and her daughter, STEPHANIE, [and anybody else you want] walk across stage with picket signs that read: “SUPPORT UNIONS,” “WAGE INCREASE,” “ACLU,” “NO NUKES,” “ALL ARE WELCOME,” “IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT.” BRECHT follows them with a sign that says: “THINGS TO COME.” JOHN enters in his boxing gloves and shorts with JULIE. They are playfully talking, jabbing as they slowly move across the stage. PAUL appears in his Othello robe reading silently from a script, and LILLIAN carries his train and walks off with him. SHERWOOD enters [n a shroud?] with BARBARA. She removes the shroud [or whatever—shroud, no shroud, your choice], and SHERWOOD is writing in a notebook. He looks at her and smiles. They embrace and walk offstage. LARRY runs in with a GRANDSON who precedes him, catching a football. They keep playing as they pass to the other side. Now, JOHN and JULIE have reached the other side of the stage. She exits first. Just before he exits, he stops, turns to the audience, and double jabs at them. Blackout.
End of play.)