Fifty years later, the blacklist looks even blacker
It all got under way rather quietly. A few "fringe" types began knocking on doors at the studios and networks, professing to have lists of writers, directors and even a few executives who supposedly were Communist Party members. At first, they got the cold shoulder. Then, to everyone's surprise, the climate abruptly changed.
Walter Winchell, who in those days had a top-rated radio show, started warning his audience, "Wake up, America, or you and your children will die in your sleep"-- a line that sounds like a slogan for today's militia groups. The American Legion began rumbling about a possible boycott of movies that showed a "Soviet bias." Even the Hollywood Reporter chimed in with a front-page editorial headlined: "Red Beach-Head!"
INEVITABLY, PUBLICITY-HUNGRY congressmen began sniffing around and a race commenced as to who could start the first hearings about the "Hollywood Reds." The bad times had begun.
In his new book "The Agency," Frank Rose relates the sorry saga of the blacklist from an intriguing point of view -- that of the taciturn, doggedly non-political William Morris Agency. The prime mission of Ross' book is to trace the 97-year rise of the agency through the colorful epochs of vaudeville, radio, movies, Broadway and TV. Throughout its history, the Morris office, as it was always dubbed, proved singularly resilient in accommodating defections or other trauma. It accommodated the incursions of flashier competitors like MCA or CMA. It accommodated the hoods who founded Las Vegas by appointing its own inhouse hood who could speak their language. The late Abe Lastfogel, the belligerent bantam who ruled the Morris office for several decades, was convinced he could accommodate the Red-baiters as well. His troops were too busy making deals for pictures and pilots to let this nonsense get in their way.
He was wrong. Indeed, the supremely self-confident Lastfogel was so unaccustomed to being wrong that it threw him into a complete funk. He looked on in utter confusion as industry leaders like Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer paraded before congressional committees to proclaim their patriotism and denounce the lefties in their midst. "Why doesn't everyone just shut up?" he wondered.
THEN EVENTS HIT CLOSE TO HOME. The names of important clients like Judy Holliday, Edward G. Robinson and screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. were dragged into the proceedings. The agency's top TV clients, such as Milton Berle, were throwing tantrums because Red Channels vetoed potential guests --"You've got to tell these bums to get lost!" Berle told Lastfogel.
In the midst of all this, the unthinkable occurred. Suddenly the self-styled patriots were naming, not just clients, but employees of the agency, starting with William Morris Jr., the benign, debonair son of the founder who nominally headed the agency. During the war, when Russia and the U.S. had been allies, Morris helped found the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, and he had retained a strong interest in the Soviet Union as well as a friendship with such prominent left-leaning activists as the late Corliss Lamont. As such, he was clearly grist for the enemies list. So was a man named John Weber, who headed the agency's literary department.
The Morris office was paralyzed. Back in the days of vaudeville, William Morris the First had vigorously fought titans like Albee and Keith when they tried to blacklist clients who refused to play by their rules. But that was business. This was politics -- what the hell did the William Morris Agency know about politics?
John Weber made it easy for Abe Lastfogel. He handed in his resignation, packed up his belongings and left for Paris.
The William Morris Jr. problem was more painful. Lastfogel and Morris had a lengthy meeting in New York. Lastfogel reportedly explained that he hated the blacklist but he hated Communism even more. Morris said he would never do anything to hurt the agency his father had founded and Lastfogel, who had once been the elder Morris' secretary, had built to its present wealth and power.
A TERSE PRESS RELEASE was put out announcing the retirement of William Morris Jr. The newspapers went along with the ploy. Variety even added that the move was "in line with a longtime aim to personally lighten his load ..." Since Morris had never really worked, there was no load to lighten, but only a few insiders understood the subtext.
Eventually the dark clouds passed. The agency had survived the trauma. Some of its clients had lost their careers and, indeed, some had fled the country, but the agency kept rolling along.
Politics, like MCA, had proved to be just one more temporary interference.
