Special Calummy
Caplan, Gerald M.
Special Calummy Fear on Trial, by John Henry Faulk. Simon and Schuster. 398 pp. |6.50. Reviewed by Gerald M. Caplan About nine years ago, in January of 1956, John Henry Faulk was employed by...
...Not that Faulk was alone in being attacked...
...There were the friends, David Susskind among others, who asked, "Would you consider letting me give you a check for a thousand dollars...
...It was these union activities that caused Faulk to be singled out for special calumny...
...Then, on February 12, 1956, "a cold, gray day," as Faulk recalls it, in the sixteenth publication of "AWARE, INC., An Organization to Combat the Communist Conspiracy in Entertainment - Communications," Faulk was branded as a Communist sympathizer...
...The chief blacklisted Lawrence Johnson, was a businessman...
...His story, both on the personal level and as a tale of our times, is an important one, and Faulk tells it well...
...There were exceptions, of course...
...Between the self-appointed moralists who care too much and the executives who care not at all, there must be a middle ground...
...The only striking thing about them was the extraordinary success of their undertaking...
...There was the family maid, Rhodelle, who stayed long after the Faulks could pay her wages...
...When Johnson pounded his fist, the top executives quivered a little, then raced to fire his suspects...
...The charge, although cleverly stated by innuendo, was clear: Faulk was pro-Communist...
...And who were the aggressors, the men who for six years governed hiring in the industry, and shattered John Faulk's career...
...Whatever the truth about the others, the onslaught against Faulk can be understood simply as the unrefined product of malice...
...He had aided the Communists in the past, and was doing so now m his union activities in the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA...
...And, at the end of the trail, there was the sensational courtroom victory where Louis Nizer, performing brilliantly, brought back the largest judgment rendered in a libel suit— $3,500,000...
...If the once mighty always appear small and a bit ridiculous in retrospect, then Johnson and Hartnett, viewed in 1965, emerge as exceptionally little men...
...Self-righteous and not very bright, both men were moralists, convinced of the Tightness of their conduct...
...As a man in his early forties, he had done well...
...there were many others...
...But perhaps no other victim was quite so "innocent...
...and, with the growth of television, the future looked promising...
...But men like Murray were rare, and in Murray Kempton's words unique: "One brave man per profession is not so far below the national average...
...He had a daily "talk" program, one hour long, in which he chatted about local affairs, played a few records, and philosophized about changing times and boyhood days back in Texas...
...in particular, an advertising executive, Thomas Murray, who said, "I don't want a grocer calling me up and telling me someone is a Communist...
...Reviewed by Gerald M. Caplan About nine years ago, in January of 1956, John Henry Faulk was employed by radio station WCBS in New York City as an entertainer...
...The sadness of the Faulk years was the void in the middle...
...Never manning the barricades, they offered only token resistance...
...Such success could not have been achieved without the almost instant capitulation of the networks, the advertising agencies, and the sponsors...
...He was a solid performer, not the talent of the decade, but well above the ordinary, more like Herb Shriner than Will Rogers...
...he owned a number of supermarkets...
...Above all, there was Faulk himself, maintaining throughout his sense of perspective, his dignity, and even his finely developed humor...
...Revealing little self-pity and even less vindictiveness, Faulk displayed much of that "grace under pressure" which makes a man attractive...
...It was that rare phenomena—the totally unfounded accusation...
...But if Faulk suffered much during those six years, and was reduced to doing publicity films for the Salvation Army and promotional plugs for shopping centers in Austin, Texas, there were also many rewards—the deep joys of friendship tested...
...In AFTRA he had taken a lead in opposing blacklisting, and had labored for a resolution condemning AWARE and for the election of an anti-AWARE slate...
...The resolution was passed, the pro-AWARE clique was defeated, and, then, after a brief silence, the attack on Faulk was launched...
...He has written not only a good book, but a fair one...
...If one believes in heroes and scoundrels, then certainly the real villains of the Faulk tragedy were the managerial elite—the irresponsible, apolitical men at the top who always avoided controversy...
...There was Ed Murrow, who volunteered $7,500 of the $10,000 needed to retain Louis Ni-zer as counsel in the libel suit...
...The other primary antagonist, Vincent Hartnett, had held a minor job in some script department, then suffered considerable unemployment before discovering blacklisting...
Vol. 29 • February 1965 • No. 3
