IT WAS A SCREAM
Klain, Maurice
It Was A Scream by MAURICE KLAIN I NEVER thought I'd collaborate with the Republicans. Not this year. And least of all with the Old Guard. But I did. Shortly before the election I received a...
...And without screaming...
...Lawrence River...
...Through everything, though, the sting of her father's palm was sharp upon her...
...General Grant was terrible too...
...Sure enough, her plea was published—a full-page spread to lure the eye and sway the vote of millions in Ohio and maybe elsewhere...
...She has queer, uneasy, shivery sensations whenever they brush against her...
...The White House had seen her creation, she informed me...
...She is no sissy, though...
...I saw . . . the day when practically our entire Navy was shot to hell in Pearl Harbor...
...Just a babe in the woods when it comes to politics...
...Leonard Hall wanted me to take out the part about foreign aid...
...For this repression Miss Wallace found some relief in piety...
...And soon...
...No use going into a tailspin, Professor...
...Miss Wallace threatened in big, startling letters across the top of the page...
...I could have done the same thing for the Democrats and made it just as damning...
...I saw our sons left to rot in tropic heat...
...Soldiers never make good Presidents...
...Anyway," she said, "you're a good sport about it...
...She interrupted me...
...One night she mistook her tomcat for "a TIGER and, as its sharp claws dug relentlessly into . . . [my] arm," Miss Wallace reminisced for the sake of the voters, "there sounded a shriek that was like something out of this world...
...I saw all this come to pass—and still I did not scream...
...She has traveled in more places than Kilroy...
...I wrote it down—you know, for the man on the street...
...Under his leadership we began the great exodus from our reckless debauch back to decent living, decent citizenship and harmony with everybody's God...
...I reproached myself...
...Movie gossip is just a side-dish with her...
...I saw Communists put in high Government positions...
...The Cleveland millionaires wanted it left in . . . They think Leonard Hall runs a powder-puff campaign...
...She fussed with the words a bit, using some of mine to make revisions, until I conceded reluctantly that, in a narrow technical sense perhaps, she had done no great violence to history...
...I'm no Jeanne d'Arc...
...As a child she was terrorized by nightmare visions —by Indians, wild beasts, and other haunts of the dark...
...I hadn't realized that Miss Wallace was so wrought up, nor that she had lived through such harrowing experiences...
...Oh, you're so right...
...They hoped other "angels" would have the message reprinted in papers elsewhere and thus spread it across the land...
...They think it's time to hit hard...
...I learned from legal information that if you leave out names you're not so apt to get it...
...You didn't ask me and the Republicans did.'" Miss Wallace has also written, without my collaboration, a movie script entitled "I Walked With a Zombie...
...What was her trouble...
...Her voice rose in her throat— full and free again...
...I saw iron and steel shipped to Japan —and returned as bullets to kill our men, while Red Cross nurses and Catholic nuns were raped...
...Adventure—danger— is the meat she craves...
...Did you notice how few big words I used...
...The lady had telephoned while I was out...
...What an unfeeling clod I am...
...Shortly before the election I received a sudden, unexpected call for help...
...Quite the contrary...
...Well, Professor...
...What's more, Miss Wallace came to feel like a new woman...
...Bless your heart," she said...
...Miss Wallace feels about libel laws as some people do about cats...
...She laughed...
...When I start out on a dangerous assignment, I always say to myself, 'If you want me, God, I am ready now.' ") The lady was worried about one statement in the pitch she was making for the Republicans...
...Once, for example, she managed to get practically a ringside seat at a voodoo murder in the tropics...
...Some "multi-millionaires" around Cleveland would pick up the bill...
...I had it in the White House...
...I don't want to be sued...
...A profile writer dubs her a "Lady in Search of Danger" who "will attempt anything to get a story" and "has encountered experiences that raise the hair and chill the blood...
...The Republicans are getting scared...
...The only wonder is that its reverberations did not Shatter the ice floes in the St...
...I do think it's fool-proof on libel . . . I'm just afraid the Commies may try to beat me up...
...Something with a real wallop...
...I saw"—notice, she saw—"our country sold down the river at Yalta...
...A damsel in distress" was the way my wife described the call...
...She accused the Roosevelt Administration of definitely knowing, a week in advance, that "the Japs" would attack Pearl Harbor and, "incredible as it may seem," deliberately letting it happen...
...A cri du coeur it was, rending the stillness and complacency of an October's Sabbath morn...
...Eisenhower had been ineffective not only as a President but as a party leader too...
...I named several persons who are...
...I saw secret conferences with foreign powers where dignitaries ate from gold plates, sitting on priceless Oriental rugs...
...The sting eased...
...Miss Wallace regards "adventure writing" as "a matter of . . . overcoming fear in one's own subconscious...
...I saw American mothers, shocked and dazed by loss of their loved ones in a distant land—and all because of a War we could have prevented...
...Professor, you were swell...
...It had been through the White House...
...You can throw me a lifeline, Professor," Miss Wallace announced when I returned her call...
...Of course, apart from the one passage on which I had collaborated unenthusiastically, I had no idea what she was going to say...
...I said, without mentioning libel, "That's not a truthful statement...
...I'm going to scream again...
...I'm a Hollywood writer," she explained...
...When my father had tanned my bottom soundly, he held me at arm's length and pronounced those never-to-be-forgotten words, 'Don't you EVER scream like that again!'" What this woman has suffered since...
...They also wanted me to take out the stuff about foreign aid...
...She has trysted with fate more often than Lanny Budd...
...The trouble is," Miss Wallace remarked, "when you call a bunch of college professors, you're apt to run into somebody supporting the Democrats...
...She had to talk to me...
...I saw Bataan, with its infamous 'March of Death...
...I saw the Korean war, unnecessary, uncalled for, and seemingly never-ending...
...But when God, in His mercy, came and took one of these away, I saw a piano-playing Romeo get on a soap box and wave the flag, living in reflected glory...
...It was ready for press—well, almost...
...Frank Hub-bell, better known locally as Inez Wallace, who used to cover Hollywood for a Cleveland newspaper...
...But I am not, I cautioned her, a speMAURICE KLAIN, associate professor of political science at Western Reserve University, has written for the American Political Science Review, the Antloch Review, the Reporter, and the New Leader...
...Howard Pyle, the President's aide and her husband's friend, had looked it over...
...She left her name and number—Mrs...
...I tried hard to be casually professional...
...She had written an appeal for the GOP...
...Her father's hand fell away...
...I ventured to suggest that Mr...
...Desperate, in fact...
...A big Democrat called me and said, 'Look, Red, why in holy hell didn't you do this for us}' I told him, 'There's just one answer...
...We can turn a tramp into a king, and vice versa...
...programs of economic aid to foreign countries, "the substance of our nation sent abroad to heathen who cared less for us than the dirt under their feet...
...But they were crazy about it otherwise...
...He wore stars on his military uniform but he wore both the stars and stripes in his heart...
...It would fill an entire page of Ohio's biggest morning paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on a Sunday before the election...
...But .first she wanted to check some facts...
...cialist in military or diplomatic affairs...
...This thing would probably appear all over the country...
...One likes to speak respectfully of past Presidents...
...And," she warned the voters, "if you throw us back into that chaotic nightmare from which we awoke only four years ago, so help me God, 'I'm going to SCREAM AGAIN!' " I called Miss Wallace after reading this, hoping to reach her before she toppled Cleveland's famous Terminal Tower...
...Very big...
...This was a big thing, she said...
...All this and more—much, much more—Miss Wallace saw...
...I lived to see," Miss Wallace continued, appraising U.S...
...Then, when it seemed that I could bear no more, a great man loomed on the horizon...
...As a co-author I looked forward to seeing Miss Wallace's piece in print...
...Miss Wallace read to me a second and a third time her phrases about Pearl Harbor...
...I'm a professional writer...
...Lady," I answered, "you already, have...
Vol. 20 • December 1956 • No. 12
