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Abstract
The Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) is rightly praised for its actions during the height of McCarthyism; certainly, its record of protecting its members far surpasses that of other entertainment unions, including the Screen Actors Guild. A closer look at the AEA archive, however, reveals that the union’s support for its blacklisted members was tempered by its strong anti-communist bent. This position first developed in the 1930s, when the administration was locked in a power struggle with the Actors Forum, a vocal faction within the union that many thought was run by communists. This essay first analyzes the union administration’s reactions to the Forum’s perceived “radicalism” during the 1930s and then addresses how these responses anticipated its treatment of the many ex-Forumites blacklisted two decades later. Among the questions raised by tensions between these two groups are: How do Equity’s clashes with the Forum complicate its legacy as one of the few unions to resist the blacklist and in what ways do they illustrate the increasingly difficult choices the anti-communist left faced during this era?
Acknowledgment
I wish to thank the following for their help: Stuart Albert, James R. Barrett, John Braeman, Frederic C. Jaher, Mark H. Leff, Valleri J. Robinson, the two anonymous readers, and the librarians at the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “SPECIAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING HELD MAY 7, 1945, at the HOTEL ASTOR,” Actors’ Equity Association Records, WAG 011, box 8, folder 9, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (AEA). Margaret Webster, a Loeb supporter, is the author of this quote.
2 Sam Jaffe to Members of Council, n.d., AEA, box 10, folder 10. Given its allusions to contemporary plays and films, the year is likely 1947.
3 Angus Duncan to Arthur Loeb, 2 March 1956, AEA, box 31, folder 34. See also “ACTOR-- TRADE UNIONIST,” Variety, Jan 4, 1956, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/actor-trade-unionist/docview/1017014358/se-2 (accessed August 6, 2023).
4 For positive assessments of Equity’s actions during the blacklist era, see K. Kevyne Baar, Broadway and the Blacklist (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019), 83–94; Milly S. Barranger, Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2008), 133–34; John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting: Part II Radio-Television (Fund for the Republic, Inc., 1956), 158–61, 210–17; Rita Morley Harvey, Those Wonderful, Terrible Years: George Heller and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 109; Howard Pollack, Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 300–01; and Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 144. For a rare dissenting view, see Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 178–79.
5 “The Issue in the Equity Factional Fight,” n.d., AEA, box 288, folder 15.
6 Although it introduced during its short tenure many reforms now considered industry standards, including minimum wages and pay for rehearsals, the Actors Forum has received little full-scale attention from theatre scholars and practitioners. For brief mentions, see Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 189–90; Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 130–31; Brian Eugenio Herrera, “The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 27, no. 2 (2015), http://jadtjournal.org/2015/04/24/the-best-actor-for-the-role-or-the-mythos-of-casting-in-american-popular-performance/ (accessed July 18, 2023); Sean P. Holmes, Weavers of Dreams, Unite! Actors’ Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 176–77; Elia Kazan, Elia Kazan: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 473–74; Robert Lewis, Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life (New York: Stein and Day, 1984), 74; Robert Simonson, Performance of the Century: 100 Years of Actors’ Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2012), 72–73, 184; and Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-40 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 217–18, 266. Academics in other disciplines provide more in-depth studies, including television actress-scholar Harvey; sociologists Leonard I. Pearlin and Henry E. Richards, “Equity: A Study of Union Democracy,” in Labor and Trade Unionism, ed. Walter Galenson and Seymour Martin Lipset (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960), 265–81; and communication scholar Glenn D. Smith Jr., “‘The Guiding Spirit’: Philip Loeb, the Battle for Television Jurisdiction, and the Broadcasting Industry Blacklist,” American Journalism 26, no. 3 (2009): 93–126, doi: 10.1080/08821127.2009.10677728.
7 See “New Move is Made on Sailor, Beware!,” New York Times, April 3, 1934, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101004980?accoundid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019); and “Truce is Declared in Sailor Beware!,” New York Times, March 9, 1934, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101059570?accounid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019).
8 For names, see “Gillmore Wins Equity Backing; Liberals Rebel,” New York Herald Tribune November 26, 1935, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/gillmore-wins-equity-backing-liberals-rebel/docview/1221724523/se-2 (accessed August 6, 2023); Harvey, Those Wonderful, 8–17; and “Legitimate: Equity Session Rather Mild, but Oldsters’ Disinterest Causes Alarm; ‘Youngsters’ Dominate the Meeting,” Variety, June 5, 1934, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1475775096?accountid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019).
9 See “Annual Meeting June 1,” Equity XIX, no. 5 (1934): 8; “Equity Frames New Contract Clause To Protect Actors from Wage Cuts,” Variety, July 3, 1934, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1475798468?accountid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019); and Paul N. Turner to Frank Gillmore, 4 March 1935, AEA, box 260, folder 25.
10 See “Lively Meeting Prelude to Regular Ticket,” Equity XIX, no. 4 (1934): 5–6; and “Revolt in Younger Ranks of Equity: Seek Clean Slate, New Councillors,” Variety, March 27, 1934, http://search.proquest.com/docview/475828962?accounid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019).
11 Generational differences also existed between the two groups. Many Forum actors were decades younger than the officers: Gillmore, one of Equity’s founders, was nearly seventy; his closest ally, Dullzell, was over fifty. Kazan, twenty-six at the time of his participation in the Forum, remembers Equity as “a hidebound organization under the presidency of a decent but dusty old actor…,” Kazan, Life, 473.
12 In 1945, Dullzell reprimanded the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) when it refused to let Black Equity member Hazel Scott sing in Constitution Hall. “Actors’ Equity Association desires to go on record as protesting against such discrimination,” he wrote the DAR’s president. “We have just gone through a great world war to establish freedom, democracy and equal rights for all peoples regardless of race, creed or color, and if negroes helped win it by fighting in our armed forces, then surely they should receive equal rights with all the peoples of the world or the war has been fought in vain.” Paul Dullzell to Mrs. Julius Young Talmadge, 2 October 1945, AEA, box 8, folder 1.
13 “A.F. of L. Urges Expulsion of Communists,” Equity XIX, no. 10 (1934): 11.
14 For discussions of the Party’s attempts to influence unions in the 1930s, see Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker 1933-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 554–69; Edward P. Johanningsmeier, “The Trade Union Unity League: American Communists and the Transition to Industrial Unionism,” Labor History 42, no. 2 (2001): 159–77, doi: 10.1080/00236560120047743; Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 68; and Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 82–83.
15 Frank Gillmore to Paul N. Turner, 16 October 1935, AEA, box 260, folder 26. Gillmore’s anti-communist attitude is particularly ironic given that during Equity’s strike in 1919, he was accused of “Bolshevism;” see “Authors’ Strike Conference Fails to Present Solution,” Variety, August 22, 1919, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1475681603?accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019).
16 Paul N. Turner to Frank Gillmore, 30 October 1935, AEA, box 260, folder 26.
17 Recalling one particularly turbulent Equity meeting, actor Perry Bruskin noted that “[y]ou don’t say ‘fellow workers’ to an actors’ group. These are artists. These are not working people;” see Bonnie Nelson Schwartz, Voices from the Federal Theatre (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 6. For more on Equity’s often uneasy attempts to reconcile its standing as a labor union with its self-perception as a white-collar artistic association, see Holmes, Weavers, 176–78; and “The Issue in The Equity Factional Fight.” For a discussion of the Popular Front, see Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 2010).
18 For accounts of individual Forum members’ ties to Party-supported theatre groups, see Ira A. Levine, Left-Wing Dramatic Theory in the American Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980), 110–11; and Lynn Mally, “Inside a Communist Front: A Post-Cold War Analysis of the New Theatre League,” American Communist History 6, no. 1 (2007): 82, doi: 10.1080/14743890701402056. See also many issues of New Theatre Magazine, including New Theatre Magazine 2, no. 2 (1935), 27; and New Theatre Magazine 3, no. 1 (1936), 45, https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workers-theatre/index.htm (accessed May 11, 2019). Molly Day Thacher (1906-63), Kazan’s then-wife, wrote for this journal. For background on workers’ theatres – theatre by, for, and about labor – see Colette A. Hyman, Staging Strikes: Workers’ Theatre and the American Labor Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). Chrystyna Dail discusses other theatre groups accused of communism in Stage For Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2016).
19 See Kazan, Life, 444–45, 458–59. See also Smith, Real Life Drama, 186, 217–18; and C.P. Trussell, “Elia Kazan Admits He Was Red in ‘30s,” New York Times, April 12, 1952, http://search.proquest.com/docview/112384772?accountid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019). For discussions of the TUUL, see James R. Barrett, William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Victor G. Devinatz, “A Reevaluation of the Trade Union Unity League, 1929-1934,” Science & Society 71, no. 1 (2007): 33–58, https://www.jstor.org/stabel40404362 (accessed May 10, 2019); and Johanningsmeier, “Trade Union.”
20 “Investigation of Communist Activities in the Los Angeles Area Hearings – Part 6” (Government Printing Office, Washington, DC: 1953), Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/stream/investigationofc06unit/investigationofc06unit_djvu.txt (accessed May 11, 2019). Cobb was most famous for originating the role of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1949.
21 “Ibid.”
22 See “Equity Group Fears Pay Level Under WPA: Forum Members Urge Safeguards, Including Closed Shop on All Relief Projects,” New York Times, October 18, 1935, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101340289?accountid+14553 (accessed May 10, 2019); “Equity to Assist in WPA Projects,” New York Times, October 19, 1935, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101341257?accountid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019); and “Legitimate: Special Equity Meet to Discuss Relief Shows; Forum Forces Issue, Insisting on Membership in Ass’n,” Variety, October 23, 1935, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1475876625?accountid+14553 (accessed May 10, 2019). For the Forum’s later efforts on behalf of the FTP, see Philip Loeb to Hallie Flanagan, 6 August 1939, Hallie Flanagan Papers, *T-Mss 1964-002, box 13, folder 3, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
23 Paul N. Turner to Council of the Actors’ Equity Association, 11 February 1935, AEA, box 260, folder 25. Gillmore and Turner’s apprehensions proved prophetic when the government, alleging communist activity, dropped the Project from the new WPA budget in 1939. For information on the FTP’s demise, see Hallie Flanagan, Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 340–73.
24 See “Actors’ Forum Outlines Plan to Control Equity’s Council,” Variety, February 27, 1935, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1475915225?accountid=14553 (accessed July 26, 2019). Van Kleeck would later support the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact and face accusations of communism in the 1950s; see Harvey Klehr, John Earle Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 80; and William L. Laurence, “Einstein Rallies Defense of Rights: In Replies on Eve of his 75th Birthday He Advocates Resistance to ‘Inquisition’,” New York Times, March 14, 1954, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/einstein-rallies-defense-rights/docview/112885486/se-2 (accessed July 19, 2023).
25 See “Leaders of Equity Threaten to Quit,” New York Times, October 30, 1935, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101333584?accountid+14553 (accessed May 10, 2019).
26 “Tumultuous Meeting Votes Officers Confidence,” Equity XX, no. 12 (1935): 7.
27 See “Tumultuous Meeting,” 19. Several years later, in 1945, a weary Dullzell would repeat this charge at a membership meeting, passionately declaring that the political conflicts within Equity were akin “to a house divided against itself [that] would not stand long;” “Special Membership Meeting held May 7, 1945.” The threat of a “schism” within Equity was deeply troubling to its senior officers: the union long prided itself on its unity, marching, for example, to “One for all and all for one” during the Equity Strike of 1919; see “‘All for One and One for All,’” Equity XXXVI, no. 10 (1951): 3.
28 See “Tumultuous Meeting,” 7; and Paul N. Turner to Frank Gillmore, 30 October 1935.
29 “Tumultuous Meeting,” 24. During an informal meeting held several days before the special meeting, the Forum was asked by other Equity members if they were communists; Jaffe denied that they were. Heller sidestepped the issue by assuring his fellow unionists that “‘[w]e uphold the constitution of Equity’;” see “Policies of Equity Debated by Actors,” New York Times, November 20, 1935, https://search.proquest.com/docview/101295395?accountid=14553 (accessed July 31, 2019).
30 “Tumultuous Meeting,” 16.
31 See “Equity Showdown Won by Gillmore,” New York Times, November 26, 1935, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101283033?accountid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019). Several people remember the meeting as acrimonious: Bruskin recalled that the “the place came apart;” Schwartz, Voices, 6.
32 See Jane DeHart Mathews, The Federal Theatre, 1935-1939: Plays, Relief, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 52.
33 “Memo of criticisms which seemed to have an effect at the meeting Monday night,” n.d. AEA, box 260, folder 26; and “Memorandum to talk over with Frank and Paul,” n.d., AEA, box 260, folder 26.
34 See “Tumultuous Meeting,” 21; and Rebecca Brownstein to Paul Turner, Frank Gillmore, and Paul Dullzell, 3 December 1935, AEA, box 260, folder 26. For Broun’s support for the Forum, see Heywood Broun, “Labor and Industry: Insurgency in Equity,” The Nation, May 15, 1935, 574–75.
35 Paul N. Taylor to Selena Royle, 27 November 1935, AEA, box 260, folder 26. Royle’s subsequent blacklisting in the HUAC era is yet another instance of how the political split within Equity was more complex than the usual liberal/conservative binary; for details of her experience, see “Demands Legion ‘Put Up Or Shut Up’ on Red Claims,” Variety, July 9, 1952, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1016952728?accountid=14553 (accessed July 21, 2023).
36 See “Equity Feud is Over, Broadway Believes,” New York Times, December 2, 1935, http://search.proquest.com/docview/101294366?accountid=14553 (accessed May 10, 2019).
37 For information on this shift, see Devinatz, “Reevaluation;” and Johanningsmeier, “Trade Union.”
38 Paul N. Turner to Council of the A.E.A., 25 April 1940, AEA, box 6, folder 44. The TAC (1937-40) was a popular front organization frequently accused of communist ties. Many members would later be blacklisted, including Hester Sondergaard (her sister, the Academy-award winning Gale, met a similar fate); see Hobe Morrison, “Legitimate: ‘Cabaret TAC,’ a Political Monotone on a Single Theme, rather Boring,” Variety, November 23, 1938, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/legitimate-cabaret-tac-political-monotone-on/docview/1476036125/se-2 (accessed July 18, 2023) and “Legitimate: TAC Officials Revealed,” Variety, August 21, 1940, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/legitimate-tac-officials-revealed/docview/1285766182/se-2 (accessed August 5, 2023). For background on the TAC, see Michael L. Greenwald, “Actors as Activists: The Theatre Arts Committee Cabaret, 1938-1941,” Theatre Research International 20, no. 1 (1995): 19–29, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300006994 (accessed July 18, 2023). For information on the continuing tensions between the former Forum and Equity during this period, see “Deny ‘Reds’ Rule Equity,” New York Times, March 16, 1938, http://search.proquest.com/docview/102626406?accountid=14553 (accessed August 3, 2023); “Legitimate: Actors Forum Quietly Busy Again: Puts Up Opposition Ballot,” Variety, April 22, 1936, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1475982976?=accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019); and “More Fireworks at Equity Meet; Loeb Clash vs. Gillmore,” Variety, March 18, 1936, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1475889080?accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019).
39 Lambertson also accused Heller, who was now an officer in the American Federation of Radio Artists. For information on this period, see “Council Resignations and Reorganization,” Equity XXVI, no. 7 (1941): 5+; Elaine Eldridge to Paul Dullzell, 5 June 1948, AEA, box 11, folder 12; “The Following Motion was Passed at the Council Meeting,” July 9, 1940, AEA, box 6, folder 34; “Labor is Warned of ‘Enemy Within’,” New York Times, January 9, 1940, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/labor-is-warned-enemy-within/docview/105180181/se-2 (accessed August 11, 2023); “Meeting Takes Strong Stand on Communism,” Equity XXV, no. 10 (1940): 5+; “Minutes of Annual Meeting,” June 1, 1945, AEA, box 8, folder 9; “Miscellany: Lytell Welcomes Investigation That Might Uncover Reds in Equity,” Variety, July 10, 1940, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/miscellany-lytell-welcomes-investigation-that/docview/1285752689/se-2 (accessed August 5, 2023); “Reds Declared in Key Posts of New York Stage: Lambertson Says Theater Project Will Remain Dead Until Communists Quit,” New York Herald Tribune, July 9, 1940, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/reds-declared-key-posts-new-york-stage/docview/1247740095/se-2 (accessed July 17, 2023); “Refusal to Revive WPA Theatre Laid to Red Rule of Actor Unions,” New York Times, July 9, 1940, http://search.proquest.com/docview/105252914?accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019); and “The Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting,” Equity XXVI, no. 6 (June 1941): 5+.
40 See “Equity Stages Row over Neutrality,” New York Times, May 25, 1940, http://search.proquest.com/docview/105491520?accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019); and “Minutes of Annual Meeting,” June 1, 1945. The agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union lasted between August of 1939 and June of 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
41 “2 V.P.s and 8 Equity Council Members Resign, Piqued Over New Elections,” Variety, June 11, 1941, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1285772487?accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019). Few in Equity likely ever knew that one of the resignees, Winifred Lenihan (1898-1964), acted as a government informant. A long-time adversary of the ex-Forumites, she had asked fellow union member Tallulah Bankhead (1902-68) to pass “suspicious” names on to her father, Alabama Democrat William B. Bankhead (1874-1940), then Speaker of the House; see Philip Loeb, FBI File, [FBI Headquarters] − 65-19839 [Classification − Espionage] [Philip Loeb], National Archives Catalog (FBI File), 9, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/200172222 (accessed September 5, 2023).
42 See “Debate on the Anti-Communist Amendment,” Equity XXV, no. 11 (1940): 9–10; and “Meeting Takes Strong Stand on Communism.”
43 “Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting,” 12–14.
44 “The Council Deals with Blacklisting,” Equity XXXVI, no. 11 (1951): 31.
45 For a complete text of the November, 1947 declaration, see David Robb, “Hollywood Blacklist Launched 75 Years Ago at Waldorf Conference: Here’s How It Went Down,” Deadline, November 22, 2022, https://deadline.com/2022/11/hollywood-blacklist-anniversary-waldorf-conference-1235180135/ (accessed July 11, 2023).
46 See “Special Membership Meeting held May 7, 1945.”
47 Elliot Nugent to Philip Loeb, 8 September 1947, AEA, box 10, folder 10. Charles Williams notes this characterization of communism as anti-American in other unions around this time in “Americanism and Anti-communism: the UAW and Repressive Liberalism Before the Red Scare,” Labor History, 53, no. 4 (2012): 495–515, doi: 10.1080/0023656X.21 (accessed April 15, 2024). Thus, Nugent and Kennedy were part of a broader effort unions enacted to “clean house” after WWII. For further discussion, see Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War At Home: The Cio In World War II (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 233–45, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bs6pg.17 (accessed July 23, 2023).
48 See Elliott Nugent to Actors Equity Association, 27 May 1949, AEA, box 14, folder 1. Ironically, the anti-communist Nugent had a Counterattack file. One entry reveals that he had signed a declaration in 1938 that called for economically boycotting Germany; see “Elliot Nugent,” November 1, 1949, the Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack, the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag, TAM. 148, box 13, file 43, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (Church League). Counterattack was an anti-communist newsletter that regularly “named names” from 1947-1955.
49 Sam Jaffe to Members of Council. For Loeb’s objections, see his testimony to the McCarran Committee in “Subversive Infiltration of Radio, Television and the Entertainment Industry. Part 1: hearings before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Subcommittee Investigating Subversive Infiltration of Radio, Television, and the Entertainment Industry, Eighty-Second Congress, first session and Eighty- Second Congress, second session,” (Washington: U.S. G.P.O, 1952): 187+, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100665363 (accessed July 23, 2023).
50 For Michigan Republican Representative George A. Dondero’s denunciations in 1946, for example, see “From Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates of the 79th Congress, Second Session Washington, Tuesday, July 23, 1946,” AEA, box 9, folder 11; Godfrey P. Schmidt to Clarence Derwent, 23 October 1946, AEA, box 8, folder 33; and Paul N. Turner and Rebecca Brownstein to THE COUNCIL, 24 October 1946, AEA, box 9, file 1.
51 For Harding’s account, see “UN-AMERICAN,” 1951, AEA, box 18, folder 19. Appell was best known for helping to recover the “pumpkin papers,” State Department documents used to convict suspected Soviet spy Alger Hiss of perjury in 1950. In the early 1960s, when HUAC turned its attention to the Ku Klux Klan, Appell was instrumental in connecting the Klan to the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; for background, see “Authority on the Klan: Donald Thomas Appell,” New York Times, October 29, 1965, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/authority-on-klan/docview/117009956/se-2 (accessed July 11, 2023) and “Klan’s Extermination Order Told to Probers: Target was White Rights Worker Later Slain with 2 Others, Investigator Says,” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1966, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/klans-extermination-order-told-probers/docview/155350842/se-2 (accessed July 11, 2023). Russell, HUAC’s chief investigator until 1954, was dismissed from his position when it was discovered that actor and friendly witness Edward G. Robinson had bribed him; see “Louis J. Russell is Dead at 61; Investigator for Hiss Trial,” New York Times, July 3, 1973, https://search.proquest.com/docview/119867306?accountid=14553 (accessed July 23, 2023).
52 For names, see “ACTORS MOVE TO BAR COMMUNISTS,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1953, http://search.proquest.com/docview/166498431?accountid-14553 (accessed May 13, 2019); Navasky, Naming Names, 207, 219; Trussell, “Elia Kazan Admits,” and Tom Weaver, Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers of the 1940s through 1960s (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2006), 357–58. Van Dekker was one of the few ex-members of the Forum who was not blacklisted. He found employment because he had been cleared by 20th Century Fox, possibly at the behest of a family member who worked in the State Department. In 1953, however, he was forced to withdraw from a play in Syracuse when the local Legion office objected to his presence; see “Committee on Blacklisting,” December 14, 1953, AEA, box 23, folder 3.
53 See “Resolution on Blacklisting Passed by Council,” September 12, 1950, AEA, box 15, folder 32. For information on Muir’s case, see William Grimes, “Jean Muir, Actress Penalized By 50’s Blacklist, Dies At 85,” New York Times, July 25, 1996, http://Search.Proquest.Com/Docview/109569204?Accountid=14553 (accessed May 13, 2019).
54 See R. Lawrence Siegel to Hon. Edward C. Maguire, 19 October 1951, Philip Loeb papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, box 1, folder 5, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations (Loeb Papers). Siegel was Loeb’s lawyer and defended many victims of the blacklist, including Jaffe and Revere.
55 See Philip Loeb, FBI File, 140–41. Loeb always denied that he had ever been a Party member; see Philip Loeb to Mr. Spingold, 23 May 1951, Loeb Papers, box 1, folder 4. According to his Counterattack file, he affiliated with several organizations deemed communist (including Equity) and had signed the “Statement by American Progressives on the Moscow Trials,” the 1938 document that supported Stalin’s purges. He also took part in the TAC’s neutrality efforts during the Hitler-Soviet Pact; see “What War Means to the Actor” The Daily Worker, May 21, 1940, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/may-21-1940-page-7/docview/1922314532/se-2 (accessed July 23, 2023). His file does not, however, list any evidence that he ever officially joined the Party. For his complete file, see “Phillip Loeb,” March 28, 1952, Church League, box 18, file 34. Nate Spingold (1886-1958), a Columbia Pictures executive, worked with accused “subversives” to clear their names; see “Pictures: Another Pioneer, Nate Spingold, Dies,” Variety, June 18, 1958, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1032388110?accountid=14553 (accessed July 23, 2023).
56 The Council to Gertrude Berg, 17 October 1951, AEA, box 18, folder 20.
57 For relations between Brownstein and the former Forumites, see “Brownstein Life Member” n.d, AEA, box 16, folder 28.
58 See “Blacklisting Chief Concern of TvA Meeting,” Equity XXXVII, no. 3 (1952): 15–16. The McCarran Committee was the Senate version of HUAC; Loeb testified before it in April of 1952. For his complete testimony, see “Subversive Infiltration of Radio, Television and the Entertainment Industry. Part 1.”
59 “Resolution Proposed and Adopted by Membership Meeting,” January 11, 1952, AEA, box 21, folder 5.
60 See Paul G. Jones to George Nicolau, 15 December 1955, AEA, box 24, folder 17; and Baar, Broadway and the Blacklist, 93–94.
61 Florida Friebus to the Council of Actors’ Equity Association,” 19 April 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 17; see also Florida Friebus to the Council of Actors’ Equity Association, 22 April 1951, AEA, box 19, folder 6. Friebus later became a popular character actress in such television shows as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and The Bob Newhart Show. Ironically, one member of the new blacklisting committee, E. John Kennedy, had co-sponsored the loyalty oath resolution in 1947 that Loeb had argued against.
62 The ACLU commended Equity for its “consistent stand against blacklisting and its allied activities;” see “Minutes of Anti-Blacklisting Committee held on August 12/55,” AEA, box 29, folder 17. For information on Equity’s anti-blacklisting efforts, see Angus Duncan to John Dales, Jr., 6 March 1953, AEA, box 23, folder 34; Angus Duncan to Paul A. Walker, 6 May 1952, AEA, box 21, folder 3; “Blacklisting Committee recommendations,” January 8, 1952, AEA, box 21, folder 3; “Meeting-of-the-Joint-Blacklisting Committee,” October 21, 1952, AEA, box 21, folder 4; “Report to Council from the Blacklisting Committee, Created under the Contract,” October 14, 1952, AEA, box 21, folder 3; “Report to Council, Monday November 3, 1952 from the Joint Equity-league blacklisting Committee,” November 3, 1952, AEA, box 21, folder 3; and “The Second Quarterly Meeting,” Equity XXXVIII, no. 2 (1953): 7–8. It is unclear whether Equity implemented all the Committee recommendations, including its suggestion, for example, that members of Equity’s legal department attend the New York HUAC hearings as observers when members testified.
63 See Florida Friebus to Fred Friendly, 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 17.
64 See, for example, “Summary of Anti-Blacklisting Committee Meeting held on September 6, 1955,” September 6, 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 17. Friebus’ committee reports indicate very few cases; those that did occur were resolved to the actor’s satisfaction; see Florida Friebus, “Report of Equity Anti-Blacklisting Committee,” n.d. AEA, box 21, folder 3.
65 Margaret Webster, “Philip Loeb,” New York Times, Oct 16, 1955, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/philip-loeb/docview/113366947/se-2 (accessed August 6, 2023).
66 “Resolution of November 13, 1951 re Blacklisting,” November 13, 1951, AEA, box 21, folder 3.
67 “Report of the Poll of Officers and Councillors on the Advisability of a Membership Anti-Totalitarian Qualification,” July 15, 1953, AEA, box 24, folder 40. The union did not implement this rule.
68 Though the union itself was officially anti-communist, personal attitudes ranged from Bellamy’s demonization to Harding’s belief that “the presence of a known Communist in the cast of a play…is [not] going to undermine our society or destroy our country.” See “Constitutional Review Committee Minority Report Comment by Alfred Harding,” n.d., AEA, box 29, folder 17.
69 Angus Duncan to Paul R. Milton, 17 May 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 18.
70 “The Iniquitous Blacklist,” Equity XXXV, no. 9 (1950), 15.
71 Paul N. Turner to The Council, 23 November 1945, AEA, box 8, folder 4.
72 “Resolution Re Blacklisting Passed by West Coast Advisory Comm. March 15, 1951 – Discussed by Council at Its Mgt. Apr. 3, 1951,” April 3, 1951, AEA, box 18, folder 22.
73 Anne Revere to Eloise, 27 March 1951, AEA, box 18, folder 18. For information on Revere’s experience with HUAC, see Barranger, Unfriendly, 49-64. The “Hollywood Ten” were members of the film industry imprisoned for contempt of Congress after appearing before HUAC in 1947.
74 See “Minutes of April 17, 1951,” AEA, box 21, folder 3. Fortunately, Revere was able to pursue her theatre career, winning a Tony in 1960 for Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic.
75 Florida Friebus to the Council, 19 April 1955.
76 Paul G. Jones to Ruth Hunter, 1 September 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 19. The Anti-Blacklisting Committee did, however, request assurances that HUAC would not publicly release the names any of the twenty-seven witnesses might supply; see “Minutes of Anti-Blacklisting Committee held on August 12/55.” Equity’s concerns were alleviated, however, when after four days of hearings and over twenty witnesses, only one, George Hall, was friendly. Kraber, who had been named by Kazan three years earlier, made his contempt for his fellow former Forumite obvious during his own testimony: after pointing out that Kazan had won a lucrative directing contract shortly after testifying, he asked the committee, “Would you sell your brother for $500,000?” For information on these events, see Baar, Broadway and the Blacklist, 95–110; Milton Bracker, “6 More Witnesses Balk Red Inquiry,” New York Times August 19, 1955, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/6-more-witnesses-balk-red-inquiry-hearings-ended/docview/113335161/se-2 (accessed August 7, 2023); and C.P. Trussell, “27 Entertainers Face Red Inquiry,” New York Times, August 11, 1955, http://search.proquest.com/docview/113384382?accountid=14553 (accessed July 23, 2023).
77 “Executive Secretary’s Report to the Annual Meeting, May 27, 1955,” AEA, box 29, folder 16.
78 “The Iniquitous Blacklist,” 3.
79 See “Statement from President Ralph Bellamy,” n.d., AEA, box 29, folder 19.
80 “Tumultuous Meeting,” 16.
81 Sam Jaffe to Paul Dullzell, 28 September 1947, AEA, box 10, folder 10.
82 See “Subversive Infiltration of Radio, Television and the Entertainment Industry. Part 1,” 190.
83 While Loeb was the only ex-Forumite to commit suicide, John Garfield and J. Edward Bromberg died in the early 1950s of heart attacks likely brought on by the stress of being blacklisted. For an overview of HUAC’s damage to countless reputations and livelihoods – as well as to our democracy – see Ellen Schrecker, “McCarthyism: Political Repression and the Fear of Communism,” Social Research 71, no. 4 (2004): 1041–86, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct+true&db=a9h&AN=15868606 (accessed July 23, 2023).
84 By 1954, Equity had formed the Permanent Inter-Union Liaison Committee on Blacklisting with fellow unions Chorus Equity, Author’s League, Radio Writers Guild, Radio and TV Directors Guild, and American Guild of Variety Artists; SAG and the newly constituted AFTRA did not participate; see Florida Friebus to Milton Weintraub, 12 January 1954, AEA, box 26, folder 29. AFTRA did, however, condemn AWARE in 1955; see “Dear Fellow Artists,” August 5, 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 17; and “Statement from Godfrey P. Schmidt, President of AWARE, Inc, on its ‘condemnation’ by AFTRA,” July 3, 1955, AEA, box 29, folder 18. For analyses of other entertainment unions’ failures to defend their members, see Brett L. Abrams, “The First Hollywood Blacklist: The Major Studios Deal with the Conference of Studio Unions, 1941-47,” Southern California Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1995): 215–53, https://doi.org/10.2307/41171765; Baar, Broadway and the Blacklist, 70–82; Miranda J. Banks, The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 106–16; Barranger, Unfriendly, 60; 133–34; Howard Blue, Words at War: World War II Era Radio Drama and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 360–61; Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, Hide in Plain Sight: The Hollywood Blacklistees in Film and Television, 1950-2002 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 59; Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 367–71; John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting: Part I The Movies (Fund for the Republic, 1956), 162–66, https://archive.org/details/reportonblacklis00coglrich (accessed August 4, 2023); Cogley, Report on Blacklisting: Part II Radio-Television, 143–58; Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Harvey, Those Wonderful, 149–54; Ellen Schrecker, Many Are The Crimes: McCarthyism in America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 316–40; and Glenn D. Smith. “Something on My Own”: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 162–82, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1j5dg6n.16 (accessed August 12, 2023). Some examples these authors detail of union management’s support for the blacklist include Roy Brewer (1909-2006), the ardently anti-communist international representative of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) during the HUAC era; and the many AFTRA governing members who worked for AWARE. For information on the latter, see Jack Gould, “Battle Over Aware, Inc,” New York Times, June 26, 1955, http://search.proquest.com/docview/113428861?accountid=14553 (accessed August 3, 2023).
85 Kim Hunter, for example, a 1952 Oscar winner for Streetcar Named Desire (ironically directed by Elia Kazan) who could no longer find film work, was a Council member; see “Minutes of Anti-Blacklisting Committee held on August 12/55.” For assessments of theatre’s unique business model, see Barranger, Unfriendly, 126–28; and Cogley, Report on Blacklisting: Part II Radio-Television, 216–17.
86 Cogley, Report on Blacklisting: Part II Radio-Television, 216. Here, Cogley explicitly refers to the anti-communist, anti-blacklist John Kennedy’s self-assessment as a “‘liberal conservative or a conservative liberal’” (216). For background on those on the anti-communist left who were also against blacklisting, see Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism (New York: Free Press, 1995), 191–272. Here, Powers distinguishes between liberal anticommunists who emphasized the defense of freedom against totalitarianism and countersubversive anticommunists who prioritized rooting out communists; see 204; 254–55.