Editorial Comments on John

EDITORIAL COMMENTS ON JOHN COGLEY'S ~~REPORT ON BLACKLISTING." NoTE TO EDITORS: Additional copies of the Cogley Report may be secured from THE FuND FOR THE REPUBLic 60 East 42nd Street, New York s·osTON HERALD Circ.: m. 130,559 s. 248,071 Front Edit Other Page Page Page Congressional investigations are text and threw them at Mr. Cogley, useful when they stick to investigat- most of which Mr. Cogley fielded ·ing. It is when they attempt to ex- rather skillfully. press a point of view that they get Arens repeatedly tried to make it into trouble. Currently Rep. Francis E. Wa1- appear that the reports minimized ter's House Committee on Un-Ameri- Communist records, associations, or can Activities has been "investigat- sympathies. But the reports do not ing" the Fund for the Rep~l:>lic's gloss over the fact that there has reports on blacklisting in-the motion been Communist infiltration of the pic.im:e. and radio-television indus- industries. "Hollywood was long di tries. The testimony of the first vided b?tween an indeterminate 'left' day's hearing, in which John Cogley, and 'right'," Cogley writes in Val author of the reports, was ques- ume I, "but the Communists on the tioned, fell into the latter category. left were generally accepted as fellow Richard Arens, director of the liberals. The secrecy of their opera committee staff, got things going tion came as a distinct shock when it when he tried to discredit Mr. Cog- was revealed ••." ley by, of all things, discrediting If Mr. Cogley did not, in his book, The Commonweal, which Mr. Cogley go into the full political background used to edit. of every person he was writing about Next Arens attempted to dis- it was because he was, as he said in credit Mr. Cogley's staff. "Did you his testimony, writing the history of know that Paul Jacobs had been a blacklisting, "not rewriting Red member of the Young Communist Channels." League?" he asked. It turned out The questioning of Mr. Cog'ley that Jacobs had been-22 years be- was an attempt at. intimidation of a fore. Another staff member was man for something he had written made to look bad because she came by a group of men who did not hap to the United States only 11 years pen to agree with what he wrote- ago. and who had made no very thorough Arens harassed Mr. Cog'ley on the study of the writings. definition of blacklisting. He empha- There is undoubtedly room for sized over and over again the fact disagreement about these two re that the l."und for the Republic was a ports. It will be a healthy thing if tax free j'o.undation, the implication they are widely read and debated. being ·that perhaps it should not be. But Congressional bullying gets us .A,rens took quotes far out of con- nowhere. The Manchester Guardian June 26, 1956 Until about a year ago the upshot was predictable. The actor was hastily told 1set up a security system of their oym A McCARTHY 1 he was "unsuitable," or the agent agreed outrageously outside the law ; wh1ch to let the sleeping watchdogs of advertisers and networks and film 1 l Americanism lie without bein~ refuted. ' studios have then from laziness or To-day. the word is likely to come ' cowardice, used as the arbiter .. LEGACY through. by equally devious but The report has "brought m no ,. reliable" t:hanneis. that the actor has indictments and has offered nu been .. clearE"d," is no longer " contro recommendations." It has merely listed versial," and is therefore well qualified in dreadful detail the legacy of to hit the cymbals in a televised jam McCarthyism: which is the acceptance Stars and Their session or to impersonate a drug-store by otherwise responsibl~ men of the clerk whipping l!'P a milk-shake. doctrine that the law 1s an untrust worthy punisher of subversion ; th~t Twilight Zone rumour is to be believed from any Shadows source unless it can be overwhelmingly The shower of quotation marks in the refuted ; that a man's reputation is only preceding paragraph is not accidental. spotless when it can be guaranteed by From Alistair Cooke We are in a twilight zone between the self-appointed moral guardians of the protected area of the law and the no extreme Right. NEw YoRK, JuNE 25. man's. land of s:andeor and scurrility. The moral of these depressing volumes Who patrols this land ? Who are the The Fund for the R~public, an might well be the one James Thurber obscure anonymous policemen who so appended to one of his wonderfully independent child of the Ford Foun- sedulously sift the harmless actors, trenchant .Fables now appearing in the j dation that was born to wrestle with writers. musicians, dancers, or the "New Yorker." In the current 'issue sheepish conformists from the goats? there is the lamentable case of a mon- problems of civil liberties, published How systematic are the precautions . goose who didn't want to fight cobras to-day a 600-page report, in two taken by uniformly discreet men at or anything else. "The word went_ 1 volumes, on "blacklisting," ·a .pr_actice their desks in an advertising agency, a around that the strange new mongoose ' soap firm, .a netwo::-:.t production unit, was not only pro-cobra and anti· which the fund concludes is now or a Hollywood studio ? mongoose, but intellectually curious and taken ·for granted in every part of These are the questions the Fund for against the ideals and traditions of show business except the New York the Republic set itself to answer. To mongooism." Thereupon strangers who do so it shrewdly appointed as the had never laid eyes on him " remem· theatre. editor-in-chief of this report a journalist bered that they had seen him crawling Eve-ryone who has had only a casual so "uncontroversial " as to be a Roman on his stomach, or trying on cobra acquaintance with the routine of casting Catho:ic layman and a former editor hoods." He said he was trying to use I movies or television plays, with hawking of "The Commonweal." Mr John reason and intelligence, but he was i a programme for sponsorship, sooner or told that " reason is six-sevenths of ' later becomes aware that there is either treason" and that '' intelligence is a very efficient underground system of Cogley hh done a masterly and spine what the enemy uses." In the end excluding "..:ontroversial" performers, chilling job. His staff began in 1 he was tried and condemned to or that the moral climate of our time is January, 1955, to collect facts in Holly- ' banishment. 1 remarkably stable and enervating. A wood and New York, the capitals of Thurber's moral is-"Ashes to ashes . bright-eyed producer or an alert casting and clay to clay, if the enemy doesn't manager will pluck from his memory movies and television and radio. It get you your· own folks may." " just the type " to play Cyrano, a , interviewed 500 people, including baseball manager, a drunk, George I watchdogs. victims, Communists, peni· Washington, or what have you. A tele tent Communists. union leaders, adver phone call to the actor's agent estab tisers. producers, journalists, pub:icists lishes that the man is available and of every political Wing. It bolstered a eager He i:; a dues-paying member of reporting job with a legal study and a the proper u_nion. He has just had, or survey of •· morale in the radio and is perhaps ·still enjoying; a successful , television industry." run on Broadway. His name is pencilled Its conclusions are depressin_g. in and the &atisfied dlrector gees out to Seve·ral hundred performers of one lunch kind or an-other have been out of work for years because of the black· Devious Channels listing custom. Some are known When he comes back he finds a note to Communists, some have run close to caJl the producer-, or the sponsor, or a contempt of Congress ; and these are minor official of the network that' carries perhaps the only people whose mis the show, or another minor official of fortune one can · suffer without much the advertising agency that got the damage to the conscience. They are sponsor in the first place. He may find the minor Fuchses, the garrulous Red on his memo pad an unfamiliar name Deans of show business. who have had from the small sf&ff of a man who to face the ire of most Western societies i publishes a bulietirt, procurable by which have painfully discovered of late i subscription, which lists the alleged that total freedom of expression, if it I "Communist-front" affili-ations of actors leads to action, is a rash thing to allow who once were Communists, or who to men enlisted in an international appeared before Congressional com conspiracy, whether they are writers or mittees, or who joined one of the electricians. innumerable " people's" groups since But this seems to be by far the identified by the Attorney-General as smallest group. There are many, many Communist fronts, or who simply gave ' others who see no sin in having mildly their talent during the war for any one I radical political opinions. Many more. of hundreds of "emergency" benefits evidently had no political convictions at I for" anti-Fascist" refugees, for veterans all, but gave their services free to some of .the Spanish war, for aimless or harm vaguely identified worthy cause.

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