I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir (13 page)

M
y new education began with the Blacklist. Learning to think outside myself, learning a new talent that was to serve me all the rest of my life. To fight the bad guys.

I may have been confused at home with Arnie, but I was very clear and motivated about this enemy from the time my name was listed in
Red Channels
.

I’d spent the past ten years taking action against the Blacklist in New York. My focus, talent, and passion went into that fight. It was my job to work through Actors’ Equity to keep the theater free to hire any actor who was right for the part—and to vote the current board of AFTRA out of office.

Kim Hunter and I were both members of the Actors Studio, very celebrated, very young. Both in our early twenties when I acted in
Detective Story
and Kim acted in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. We both originated the roles on Broadway, appeared in the films, and were nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1952. Kim won for her moving Stella in
Streetcar
. I won the Cannes International Film Festival award for Best Actress of 1952 for
Detective Story
. We
were golden girls with great lives and careers ahead of us. There’s a line in Shakespeare’s
Cymbeline
:

Golden lads and girls all must,

as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Kim and I came to dust early as working actors.

Working actors lost the best years of their lives, some never knew why, and in New York, two men, insignificant, and in one case downright stupid, actually ran the television and radio blacklist business. Giant corporations allowed two unstable, insignificant guys to exercise power over the choice of talent and content on television and radio for twelve years.

One of the men, Vincent Hartnett, created
Red Channels
, the pamphlet I was listed in. Hartnett also created AWARE, Inc. Private, anti-Communist entrepreneurs created the blacklist business in New York not just to catch Communists, but liberals. They set the standard for how far left an actor was, what Hartnett considered to be Communistic. The tide and absurd rules set by HUAC and McCarthy allowed it to happen nationwide. In New York it was a witch hunt. Only Hartnett and his cohorts decided who was the witch. It was also a lucrative business. Vincent Hartnett was a smart businessman; he was hired by ad agencies and networks to clear names for them. Anywhere from five bucks to twenty bucks a name, and there were hundreds of names daily to be cast.

Our union heads at the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the president of our union, Vinton Hayworth, and the rest of the board were also all members of AWARE, Inc. They partnered with Mr. Hartnett to dominate the television actors’ union, to blacklist fellow actors in our union and the entire New York television and radio industry.

This meant that any actor who rose at a union meeting and spoke his mind took a calculated risk. If they rose to speak against the Blacklist in any way, some member of our AFTRA union board would give that actor’s name to Hartnett at AWARE, Inc., and that actor would be added to the blacklist, his name sent to the networks as unhireable.

So the responsibility of those of us already blacklisted became to speak for the vast majority of television and radio actors who couldn’t. Tentative at first, as we lived it, year in and year out, we funneled our passion into our war, our cause.

Slowly a small but steady group evolved of actors of all political stripes. Two lefties, Madeline Lee and me; Florida Friebus, a centrist member of the Actors’ Equity board; some rarely working actors who helped with mimeograph machines; some working actors with family responsibilities. We few planned our war. To get AWARE, Inc., out of AFTRA and elect a new democratic slate.

We discussed actors without known affiliation who were smart, brave, and respected enough by their fellow AFTRA members to vote into office. Strong enough to oust this board of blacklisters.

Fighters get wounded. This is about an actor I involved in running for the board of AFTRA who lost everything because of it.

John Henry Faulk was a successful radio humorist on CBS, with a lot of sponsors and a high listening audience for two hours a day. He had come to New York from Austin, Texas, a sweet, funny, good ol’ boy on air covering a highly educated, moral man. As Willy Loman would put it, “He was well liked,” very. And he had kept that kind of Will Rogers unassailability, that un-Jew folksiness that we saw as a tough act to attack. He was America.

Madeline Lee and I called John Henry and went to his apartment to talk. He sat back and listened, his fingers making an arch below his eyes.

Before we left, he’d committed to run against the AFTRA board.

I turned at the door and repeated all the warnings. I owed him every warning that was not given to me when I spoke at Bromberg’s memorial. “This is your one life. It could be changed forever; they have all the guns. They could wreck you!”

John talked about his father, who’d been a constitutional lawyer in Austin. “I was raised by a dad who looked out for the underdog, went to court and protected them. That’s who he was, and he knew his Constitution.”

I felt really privileged to know him, as I did with so many of my new friends.

Our next strategy was to shake the AFTRA board to its roots by calling for a vote against AWARE, Inc., and blacklisters in our union meetings. One blacklister listened to private conversations of members and reported them to AWARE, Inc., and the board.

The lefty actors could not get recognized to speak at AFTRA meetings; they were all too well-known to the board. Madeline Lee in particular, who had a smart mouth, could raise her hand forever and never be permitted to speak at a meeting.

I, on the other hand, was a new face, not quite placeable yet, and although I couldn’t work in television I had been the leading lady on Broadway in
Wedding Breakfast
and either appeared or starred in one play after another on Broadway.

There was a huge AFTRA meeting at which I spoke, my first AFTRA speech.

“I think the fact that our board members [board members of AFTRA] are sitting with a man, Vincent Hartnett, who is the author of
Red Channels
and helped to put out lists is a shameful, shameful thing and should not be tolerated in our union.” Applause.

The board stared out at us from the stage, a still life, their eyes and mouths like O’s, startled and shaken.

Later, on May 24, 1955, we called for and seconded a reprimand of AWARE, Inc., and those who collaborated with them. A member of the board interrupted with a telegram from Kim Hunter, which they said she requested to have read at the meeting.

As a good American, Kim Hunter said she endorsed AWARE, Inc., and deplored Communist efforts to invade television.

It made me sick to imagine the duress she’d had to have been under to send that telegram and the shame she must have felt.

The vote to chastise AWARE, Inc., was 514 for AWARE, Inc., and 982 against. We won. A big, startling win. The hall erupted like a Dodgers game. The danger for the slate that John Henry was putting together was rising exponentially. The board and AWARE, Inc., would be fighting for their very existence.

We were euphoric, of course; our little secret group of ragtag actors had our first triumph. It was amazing.

John Henry named his slate the “Middle of the Road,” opposed to both Communism and blacklisting. He was running for vice president, his friend Charles Collingwood for president. Collingwood was a very respected news correspondent for CBS. Impeccable. Other friends of his agreed to run with them. Almost twenty in all.

Our job, our group’s job, was to gather the necessary signatures for each candidate to qualify to run for office. Spreading through the Theater District, we urged scared, reluctant actors to put down their signatures backing the candidates of “Middle of the Road,” who were putting their professional lives on the line.

I remember getting a call from CBS asking if I was available to work on
Danger
, one of their shows, at the time.

“No, no,” I protested, “you don’t mean me, check your records.”

The nice network girl called back, flustered. “I’m sorry, you’re right, cancel that offer.”

Then, through some wonderful oversight, I fell into a job on a soap opera. Ira Cirker was the producer-director. Soaps were big business, many of them with huge casts. I think it was
Search for Tomorrow
. I do know Mary Stuart, the leading lady who played Joanne Gardner, had been on every day since the show began. At the time my character was her friend Rose, who had a big grudge against Joanne for some reason. The last shot viewers had of me, I was holding a salt shaker containing poison over a soup pot in the kitchen. Would I or wouldn’t I poison the soup and kill Joanne and her loved ones?

I felt really lucky. I was working live every morning, the show went straight into the television-watchers’ homes, the cast was like family, and I hoped that maybe the show was below the radar. I was going to work every day and nobody said anything.

And my job was so fun. It was such a guilty pleasure to be below the visibility line on daytime television.

Then Ira called me in. The network, CBS, had been threatened by Laurence Johnson, a grocer from Syracuse, New York. He’d read
Red Channels
and found me. Johnson owned a few supermarkets in Syracuse. A few markets, that’s all—not in New York City, not in Los Angeles. He threatened the advertising agency who represented Crest toothpaste, one of the sponsors of
Search for Tomorrow
. He would track down actors working on TV and threaten the sponsors—in this case, Crest—with a display in his markets in front of their merchandise:
DO YOU WANT TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH WITH A PRODUCT FROM A COMPANY THAT EMPLOYS COMMUNISTS?

It was very effective. Johnson also had a strong connection to a group of veterans in Syracuse, who he threatened would start a mail campaign.

It put me out of the soap opera business and effectively stopped any paycheck I could count on, or Arnie could count on. Arnie had
angina, and he needed help paying the bills. Losing the soap opera was a real loss for him and for me.

Mike Wallace, who hosted game shows back then, passed me in the hall on my last day of work. “How ya’ doing?”

I told him I was fired that day and how and why.

Mike said, “You tell me you’re not a Communist; I’ll go to bat for you.”

“Mike, the whole point is to be whatever you are, Communist or not, as long as you don’t hurt anybody. One is supposed to have the freedom to believe anything in this country and still be able to earn a living.”

Laurence Johnson, the short, fat grocer from Syracuse, would come to New York City, go to the Madison Avenue advertising agencies and, floor by floor, introduce himself and threaten them with endangering their accounts. The accounts ranged from Lipton tea to Campbell’s soup to Crest toothpaste. Advertising agencies certainly didn’t want the publicity, so little Mr. Johnson became a very important man. Madison Avenue was not political, just anticontroversy.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Hartnett became friends and partners of sorts. They would be in contact, they would discuss strategy, and Hartnett even brought Mr. Johnson to a hotel in New York to meet with our union leaders, union president Vinton Hayworth, and members of AFTRA’s board.

I was chosen by our group to rise at our AFTRA meeting and confront our board with this information. It was given to us by a
Herald Tribune
reporter when the newspaper was afraid to print it.

It was a thrilling journey down the aisle, down the carpet, confronting President Vinton Hayworth and the AFTRA board. As exciting as any theater experience I’d ever had. Facing the enemy.

The “Middle of the Road” slate won the election, with about eight
of the old slate still serving. Collingwood was now president, Faulk now vice president of AFTRA. An overwhelming win for our side.

After the victory, several things happened. The new slate discovered they didn’t have a clue as to how to run this huge union; AFTRA’s old lawyer, a Mr. Joffe, continued in the same bad old way; and Vincent Hartnett revealed to John Henry’s bosses at CBS suspicious Communistic connections in the leftist activities of John Henry Faulk.

John Henry lost his radio show, all employment stopped. He went broke. He tried selling bonds back in Austin. Friends gave money for him and his wife to live on. He went to a big lawyer, Louis Nizer, and convinced him to sue AWARE, Inc., Hartnett, and Johnson. Edward R. Murrow gave him $7,500 to pay his legal bills. Murrow considered the money an investment in America.

•   •   •

S
ix years later, July 29, 1962, John Henry was awarded three and a half million dollars, one million more than he and his attorney had asked for. The jury had asked the judge if they could give him an extra million.

Louis Nizer, John Henry’s attorney, brilliantly exposed Vincent Hartnett’s assumptions of John Henry’s connections to Communist causes. All of which turned out to be lies. One of the dinners he was accused of attending was also attended by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Hartnett’s lawyer, who was attached to Roy Cohn’s law firm, was hopelessly outflanked by Nizer and by John Henry’s appearance on the witness stand, his wounds so deep and unfair, his own decency and clarity so obvious.

Hartnett’s insane rise, his bizarre inaccurate charges, his moneymaking on the backs of his victims, were exposed to the jury and the
newspapers. Everything was printed for the world to see. After all, it was the sixties. The
Herald Tribune
was no longer afraid to comment on what they called the “unholy alliance” between the leaders of AFTRA and the Blacklist.

Laurence Johnson was the principal person in the suit. He was the one with the supermarket millions. He refused to show up in court or to testify. The day Louis Nizer made his brilliant summation to the jury, Johnson was found dead, of natural causes, in a Bronx motel.

There were to be no millions for John Henry Faulk or Louis Nizer. All that was left was about $160,000 from Johnson’s estate.