There was a second’s uncomfortable silence. “Our policy is to cooperate with the FBI. Look, we’ll have one of our attorneys meet you in Washington. Just tell the committee what you know and you can be back in California next week.”
“Hey,” I said. “What’s the FBI got to do with it? And why didn’t you tell me this was coming? And what the hell does the committee think I know, anyway?”
“Something about China,” the man said. “That was-what the investigators were asking us about, anyway.”
I slammed the phone down and called Mr. Holmes. He and Earl and David had gotten their subpoenas earlier in the day and had been trying to reach me ever since, but couldn’t get ahold of me in Palm Springs.
“They’re going to try to break the Aces, farm boy,” Earl said. “You’d better get the first flight east. We’ve got to talk.” I made arrangements, and then Kim walked in, dressed in her tennis whites, just back from her lesson. She looked better in sweat than any woman I’d ever known.
“What’s wrong?” she said. I Just pointed at the pink slip. Kim’s reaction was fast, and it surprised me. “Don’t do what the Ten did,” she said quickly. “They consulted with each other and took a hard-line defense, and none of them have worked since.” She reached for the phone. “Let me call the studio. We’ve got to get you a lawyer.”
I watched her as she picked up the phone and began to dial. A chill hand touched the back of my neck.
“I wish I knew what was going on,” I said.
But I knew. I knew even then, and my knowledge had a precision and a clarity that was terrifying. All I could think about was how I wished I couldn’t see the choices quite so clearly.
To me, the Fear had come late. HUAC first went after Hollywood in ‘47, with the Hollywood Ten. Supposedly the committee was investigating Communist infiltration of the film industry-a ridiculous notion on the face of it, since no Communists were going to get any propaganda in the pictures without the express knowledge and permission of people like Mr. Mayer and the Brothers Warner. The Ten were all current or former Communists, and they and their lawyers agreed on a defense based on the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.
The committee rode over them like a herd of buffalo over a bed of daisies. The Ten were given contempt-of-Congress citations for their refusal to cooperate, and after their appeals ran out years later, they ended up in prison.
The Ten had figured the First Amendment would protect them, that the contempt citations would be thrown out of court within a few weeks at the most. Instead the appeals went on for years, and the Ten went to the slammer, and during that time none of them could find a job.
The blacklist came into existence. My old friends, the American Legion, who had learned somewhat more subtle tactics since going after the Holiday Association with axe handles, published a list of known or suspected Communists so that no one employer had any excuse for hiring anyone on the list. If he hired someone, he became suspect himself, and his name could be added to the list.
None of those called before HUAC had ever committed a crime, as defined by law, nor were they ever accused of crimes. They were not being investigated for criminal activity, but for associations. HUAC had no constitutional mandate to investigate these people, the blacklist was illegal, the evidence introduced at the committee sessions was largely hearsay and inadmissible in a court of law… none of it mattered. It happened anyway.
HUAC had been silent for a while, partly because their chairman, Parnell, had gotten tossed into the slammer for padding his payroll, partly because the Hollywood Ten appeals were still going through the court. But they’d gotten hungry for all that great publicity they’d gotten when they went after Hollywood, and the public had been whipped into a frenzy with the Rosenberg trials and the Alger Hiss case, so they concluded that the time was right for another splashy investigation.
HUAC’s new chairman, John S. Wood of Georgia, decided to go after the biggest game on the planet.
Us.
My MGM attorney met me at the Washington airport. “I’d advise you not to talk with Mr. Holmes or Mr. Sanderson,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“They’re going to try to get you to take a First or Fifth Amendment defense,” the lawyer said. “The First Amendment defense won’t work-it’s been turned down on every appeal. The Fifth is a defense against self-incrimination, and unless you’ve actually done something illegal, you can’t use it unless you want to appear guilty.”
“And you won’t work, jack,” Kim said. “Metro won’t even release your pictures. The American Legion would picket them all over the country.”
“How do I know that I’ll work if I talk?” I said. “All you have to do to get on the blacklist is be called, for crissake.”
“I’ve been authorized to tell you from Mr. Mayer,” the lawyer said, “that you will remain in his employ if you cooperate with the committee.”
I shook my head. “I’m talking with Mr. Holmes tonight.” I grinned at them. “We’re the Aces, for heaven’s sake. If we can’t beat some hick congressman from Georgia, we don’t deserve to work.”
So I met Mr. Holmes, Earl, and David at the Statler. Kim said I was being unreasonable and stayed away.
There was a disagreement right from the start. Earl said that the committee had no right to call us in the first place, and that we should simply refuse to cooperate. Mr. Holmes said that we couldn’t just concede the fight then and there, that we should defend ourselves in front of the committee-that we had nothing to hide. Earl told him that a kangaroo court was no place to conduct a reasoned defense. David just wanted to give his pheromones a crack at the committee. “The hell with it,” I said. “I’ll take the First. Free speech and association is something every American understands.”
Which I didn’t believe for a second, by the way. I just felt that I had to say something optimistic.
I wasn’t called that first day-I loitered with David and Earl in the lobby, pacing and gnawing my knuckles, while Mr. Holmes and his attorney played Canute and tried to keep the acid, evil tide from eating the flesh from their bones. David kept trying to talk his way past the guards, but he didn’t have any luck-the guards outside were willing to let him come in, but the ones inside the committee room weren’t exposed to his pheromones and kept shutting him out.
The media were allowed in, of course. HUAC liked to parade its virtue before the newsreel cameras, and the newsreels gave the circus full play.
I didn’t know what was going on inside until Mr. Holmes came out. He walked like a man who had a stroke, one foot carefully in front of the other. He was gray. His hands trembled, and he leaned on the arm of his attorney. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years in just a few hours. Earl and David ran up to him, but all I could do was stare in terror as the others helped him down the corridor.
The Fear had me by the neck.
Earl and Blythe put Mr. Holmes in his car, and then Earl waited for my MGM limousine to drive up, and he got into the back with us. Kim looked pouty, squeezed into the corner so he wouldn’t touch her, and refused even to say hello.
“Well, I was right,” he said. “We shouldn’t have cooperated with those bastards at all.”
I was still stunned from what I’d seen in the corridor. “I can’t figure out why the hell they’re doing this.”
He fixed me with an amused glance. “Farm boys,” he said, a resigned comment on the universe, and then shook his head. “You’ve got to hit them over the head with a shovel to get them to pay attention.”
Kim sniffed. Earl didn’t give any indication he’d heard. “They’re power-hungry, farm boy,” he said. And they’ve been kept out of power by Roosevelt and Truman for a lot of years. They’re going to get it back, and they’re drumming up this hysteria to do it. Look at the Four Aces and what do you see? A Negro Communist, a Jewish liberal, an F D.R. liberal, a woman living in sin. Add Tachyon and you’ve got an alien who’s subverting not just the country but our chromosomes. There are probably others as powerful that nobody knows about. And they’ve all got unearthly powers, so who knows what they’re up to? And they’re not controlled by the government, they’re following some kind of liberal political agenda, so that threatens the power base of most of the people on the committee right there.
“The way I figure it, the government has their own ace talents by now, people we haven’t heard ou That means we can be done without-we’re too independent and we’re politically unsound. China and Czechoslovakia and the names of the other aces-that’s an excuse. The point is that if they can break us right in public, they prove they can break anybody. It’ll be a reign of terror that will last a generation. Not anyone, not even the President, will be immune.”
I shook my head. I had heard the words, but my brain wouldn’t accept them. “What can we do about it?” I asked. Earl’s gaze held my eyes. “Not a damn thing, farm boy.” I turned away.
My MGM attorney played a recording of the Holmes hearing for me that night. Mr. Holmes and his attorney, an old Virginia family friend named Cranmer, were used to the ways of Washington and the ways of law. They expected an orderly proceeding, the gentlemen of the committee asking polite questions of the gentlemen witnesses.
The plan had no relation to reality. The committee barely let Mr. Holmes talk-instead they screamed at him, rants full of vicious innuendo and hearsay, and he was never allowed to reply.
I was given a copy of the transcript. Part of it reads like this:
MR. RANKIN: When I look at this disgusting New Deal man who sits before the committee, with his smarty-pants manners and Bond Street clothes and his effete cigarette holder, everything that is American and Christian in me revolts at the sight. The New Deal man! That damned New Deal permeates him like a cancer, and I want to scream, “You’re everything that’s wrong with America. Get out and go back to Red China where you belong, you New Deal socialist! In China they’ll welcome you and your treachery.”
CHAIRMAN: The honorable member’s time has expired.
MR. RANKIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN: Mr. Nixon?
MR. NIXON: What were the names of those people in the State Department who you consulted with prior to your journey to China?
WITNESS: May I remind the committee that those with whom I dealt were American public servants acting in good faith…
MR. NIXON: The committee is not interested in their records. Just their names.