Dupes Page 22

  A fellow screenwriter who devoutly enforced that warfare was a nasty individual named John Howard Lawson, known as “Hollywood's commissar.” In his revealingly titled book Film in the Battle of Ideas, which was published by the Communist house Masses & Mainstream, Lawson was candid in instructing his comrades: “As a writer do not try to write an entire Communist picture, [but] try to get five minutes of Communist doctrine, five minutes of the party line in every script that you write.”5

  This was precisely the advice that the Comintern and CPUSA gave to American Communists to best deliver propaganda. (Recall the use of this tactic at the American Peace Mobilization rallies.) The goal was to exploit a legitimate medium, a reputable non-Communist one, as a platform to disseminate a Communist message. For the screenwriter, the movie could serve as a kind of front in and of itself, as did certain “peace” rallies.

  Lawson was combative in his cause. “It is your duty,” he instructed his fellow Soviet patriots, “to further the class struggle by your performance.” That struggle, he said, included the highest of Soviet priorities: the undermining of God. The commissar wanted to see in American movies a “campaign against religion, where the minister will be shown as the tool of his richest parishioner.”6

  For decades since, American liberals have tried to portray anti-Communists’ concerns about Hollywood as brute hysteria. In fact, the anti-Communists were very well-informed of the Communists’ intentions—far better informed than were the liberals duped by the Reds. As Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, author of an excellent book on the subject, wrote of Hollywood's Communists: “They had enjoyed spectacular success using liberals to serve their causes.” The movie industry, wrote Billingsley, “had played the role of what Lenin called ‘useful idiots,’ duped and bilked by militant Communists.”7

  Naïveté was the big issue among liberals, but not the only issue. Many simply could not bring themselves to criticize anyone on the left and thereby concede any ground to the anti-Communists. This was the case even after the hideous behavior of Communists during World War II—including harsh treatment of liberals, their causes, and their iconic president. Screenwriter Budd Schulberg, a former Communist Party member, admitted this to Arthur Koestler, the respected ex-Communist author who penned the seminal work Darkness at Noon. Although he detested Communists, Schulberg said, he did not want to attack anyone on the left. Koestler corrected Schulberg: “They're not left; they're East.”8

  Lies, Damned Lies, and Lillian Hellman … and Arthur Miller?

  To fully chronicle the eclectic list of Hollywood Reds and dupes, and the troubling cases somewhere in between, is impossible in a chapter or two. There were, for starters, the unrepentant Stalin apologists, like writer Lillian Hellman; CPUSA member Dashiell Hammett, a famous mystery and script writer, and Hellman's longtime lover;9 Lester Cole, a Communist writer who later excoriated those who wanted to forgive and forget, like Budd Schulberg, and who so enraged Louis B. Mayer that the MGM mogul screamed, “You're nuts! Goddamn crazy Commie! Get out! Goddamn it, get out!”;10 musician Artie Shaw, who, as we will see, could proudly recite the Soviet “constitution”; playwright Bertolt Brecht, later dubbed “Minstrel of the GPU”;11 performer Paul Robeson, Marx's musical mouthpiece;12 the union thug Herb Sorrell; plus many, many more. Hollywood had not failed to produce a dramatic cast.

  Hellman, whom producer Elia Kazan once described as a “coiled snake,” was among the worst cases.

  Until her dying days, Hellman insisted that she had not been a Communist.13 But she did not exactly have a reputation for veracity. Writer Mary McCarthy publicly called Hellman a liar, saying, “Every word she writes is a lie—including ‘and’ and ‘the’”—prompting a slander suit from Hellman.14 British historian Paul Johnson, who said that for Hellman “falsehood came naturally,” unforgettably quipped that “there are lies, damned lies, and Lillian Hellman.”15

  Not that Hellman, who referred to the USSR as “the Motherland,” needed to prevaricate to infuriate. Her candor was maddening enough. She dismissed the very notion of Stalin's purges as “anti-Soviet propaganda,” attacked the Dewey Commission for its findings on the Moscow show trials, and, in general, unerringly parroted the Stalinist line.16 While unflinchingly defending Moscow's mass murderer, she viciously attacked Senator Joe McCarthy, the subject of her book Scoundrel Time.

  If Lillian Hellman was not a Communist, then she was a dupe, and a crass, insufferable dupe at that.

  The forerunner to Hellman's Scoundrel Time was Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible.

  Miller is an interesting case requiring careful study. The playwright was made famous and became a hero among the Left for many reasons, but especially for The Crucible, a political parable blasting McCarthyism and the “Red Scare.” In many liberal circles it is tantamount to a crime merely to suggest that Miller was ever a Communist or Communist sympathizer. In truth, however, close investigation of Miller's complex story reveals that at one point he undeniably had Communist sympathies, if not loyalties.

  Arthur Miller was born in New York City in October 1915 to Isidore and Augusta Miller, two Polish-Jewish immigrants. He attended the University of Michigan, where he began writing plays. Though much has been written on Miller, the best current research on his life, his politics, and his political-personal double life has been done by Dr. Alan M. Wald, English professor at the University of Michigan. In his insightful, probing 2007 book Trinity of Passion, Wald, himself a man of the Left, shows that Miller had been “a struggling Marxist playwright since the late 1930s.”17

  A genuine scholar, willing to do the hard digging, Wald took the time to look at old editions of the Daily Worker, New Masses, Masses & Mainstream, Currents, Jewish Life, the liberal PM, and other Communist, Communist-led, or Communist-friendly publications of the era. He found that Miller's byline frequently appeared in those publications, and that his plays were often glowingly reviewed by comrades.18 But beyond that, Wald made a blockbuster discovery: Miller seems to have published in New Masses under the pseudonym of Matt Wayne from March 1945 to March 1946.19

  Scouring those publications, as I have likewise done, reveals that Arthur Miller was an active participant. Two features stand out: Miller's open participation (under his real name) in a symposium splashed on the cover of New Masses on December 25, 1945 (along with well-known Communist screenwriter Albert Maltz),20 and an interview/profile of Miller in the April 17, 1946, edition of the Daily Worker, along with an accompanying photograph of the proletarian playwright.21 (See pages 186–87.)

  By Wald's description, Miller's political writing in these publications was often “militantly angry.”22 It also reflected the party line and language. In the Daily Worker interview, Miller explained that “the main fight” in the postwar era was “the fight to raise the living standards of people all over the world and the enemy is imperialism.”23

  In addition to these two standout Miller contributions, other, lesser-noticed items buried inside these publications are likewise illuminating. For instance, Miller was highlighted as the first speaker in a public forum—cosponsored by New Masses and the new Communist journal Mainstream (before the two fused into one publication)—vigorously defending Hollywood screenwriter Howard Fast, who had caught the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.24 Fast was a writer for the Daily Worker and New Masses, became an editor for Masses & Mainstream, and wrote novels like The Incredible Tito, about Yugoslavia's Communist dictator. He would receive the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953.25

  In its July 3, 1945, issue, New Masses offered its readers a special deal: The comrades-turned-capitalists advertised a reduced rate on a one-year subscription if purchased with a choice book by one of the listed authors. The options included Volume 23 of The Collected Works of V. I. Lenin; Owen Lattimore's Solution in Asia; Bertolt Brecht's The Private Life of the Master Race; Dr. Harry F. Ward's The Soviet Spirit (Ward was the Religious Left dupe of ACLU fame); and, among a handful of others, Arthur Miller's Situation Norma
l. (See page 189.)

  Professor Wald notes that New Masses made such offers for no less than three books by Miller: Situation Normal, Focus, and All My Sons. “Usually,” notes Wald, “the books offered with New Masses subscriptions were by well-known Communists; it was uncommon to see three by one author.”26 Miller was a special case. Apparently, his thinking fell that closely in line with the comrades at New Masses. Most interesting, this was still well before The Crucible.

  Even this short list of Miller's work and interaction with the Communist Party, its front groups, and its publications contravenes claims by the likes of The Nation, which informed its readers at Miller's death: “He certainly wasn't a communist, and he wasn't a socialist.”27

  That statement is bizarre, given the totality of Arthur Miller's activities in the 1930s and 1940s. It could be defended only with the crucial caveat that Miller had left the party, the movement, the ideology, by the 1950s or later in life, as he likely did.28 To claim he was never a Communist, or even a small “c” communist or a socialist, is to be very naïve.

  The Crucible: “By Far Miller's Best Play”

  And then, only after all of that, came The Crucible. The Communists loved The Crucible as much as liberals did. The review of The Crucible in the January 28, 1953, issue of the Daily Worker carried the unequivocal headline “‘ The Crucible,’ Arthur Miller's Best Play.”29

  “It is by far Miller's best play,” began reviewer Harry Raymond. It was “a case history” of “persecution” and “hysteria” against “innocent men and women sent to the gallows” in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. But make no mistake, explained Raymond, “It is impossible to view this play honestly without noting the awful parallel courses of two widely separated American persecutions: the Salem witchhunt and the current persecution of Communists and other progressives.” The reviewer added: “Like the Salem persecution, the present one is directed by the ruling class of the land, its leaders of government, its judges, and what reactionary clergy they have been able to enlist.” And what of these reactionaries? The atheist Daily Worker was inspired to invoke the image of Christ at this sober moment, perhaps for the benefit of its friends on the Religious Left: these reactionaries, the reviewer said, had “deserted the teachings of Jesus to follow the war god Mars.”

  Communists gushed over Miller's link between Salem witch-hunters and American anti-Communists, and could not hold back their applause, exhorting non-Communist liberals to the encore. To that end, the Daily Worker, on the same page of its review, posted an accompanying sidebar on “What Other Critics Said About ‘Crucible.’” There, the Daily Worker led appreciatively with the endorsement of the New York Times reviewer, who dubbed Miller's play “powerful,” and a “genuine contribution.” “Neither Mr. Miller nor his audiences,” wrote Times reviewer Brooks Atkinson, in a line underscored by the Daily Worker, “are unaware of certain similarities between the perversions of justice then and now.”

  Miller, always a favorite of the Communist press, saw his popularity with the general public skyrocket. Now a national figure, he came to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

  On June 21, 1956, Miller was called to appear before the committee. His testimony received tremendous attention. The New York Times, for example, ran the eye-catching headline “Arthur Miller Admits Helping Communist-Front Groups in ’40s.” The lead sentence of the Times story noted: “Arthur Miller, playwright, disclosed today a past filled with Communist-front associations.”30

  To Congress, Miller conceded that he had signed appeals and joined protests sponsored by Red-backed groups. He refused to name names of those who were there with him. Likewise, he would not name people who joined him during the four or five times that he said he had attended Communist Party writers’ meetings. Miller also denied that he had ever been under “Communist discipline” and would not answer the question of whether he had ever joined the party.31

  The most dramatic moment of the hearing came when the House committee's counsel asked Miller whether he had once signed an application to join the party. As Miller dissembled, the counsel presented the exact five-digit number on the party application form for “A. Miller,” listed as a “writer,” whose address was 18 Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn—where Arthur Miller had in fact lived. Congress went so far as to publish a photocopy of the application card.32 (See page 191.) Miller said he had “no memory of such a thing.”33

  That was then—when Arthur Miller kept a lot of things close to the vest. Among them was whether The Crucible was, in fact, an allegory about McCarthyism. For most of his life, Miller publicly explained the play as being simply about the Salem witchcraft trials. To be sure, the world had always surmised, and many teachers had long taught, that The Crucible was really about the anti-Communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s, but Miller did not openly concede such a link to the House Committee on Un-American Activities or Senator McCarthy's investigations.34 Even most reviewers (the Communist Daily Worker being a notable exception) stopped short of explicitly linking Salem to anti-Communism.

  But in June 2000, late in his life, Miller wrote an article for the British left wing newspaper the Guardian in which he finally came clean about The Crucible.35 In the opening line of the Guardian piece he admitted, “It would probably never have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late 40s and early 50s.” If that was not clear enough, he added, “I refer to the anti-communist rage that threatened to reach hysterical proportions and sometimes did.”36

  Miller's long-overdue admission of the obvious opened the door for the New York Times, in its later obituary for Miller, to be able to report in 2005—which it did not in 1956—that The Crucible was “a 1953 play about the Salem witch trials inspired by his [Miller's] virulent hatred of McCarthyism.”37

  But even then Miller—whom the Times would call the “Moral Voice” of the American stage in its obituary—did not really come clean. In the Guardian he descended to Lillian Hellman levels when he stated that of “everyone I knew … one or two were Communist Party members.”38 If that was not a blatant lie, then Arthur Miller was unbelievably foolish. Recall that he had told Congress that he had attended Communist Party screenwriters’ meetings; surely there were more than “one or two” party members at those. Recall, too, that he had been interviewed by the Daily Worker and written for New Masses; surely he encountered more than “one or two” party members there.

  Miller was either fibbing or unbelievably gullible. One cannot lunge for the excuse that he was afraid of political persecution: This was the year 2000. Miller was free to be frank with no fear of reprisal by a long-defunct House Committee on Un-American Activities or a long-dead Joe McCarthy.

  All of this ought to constitute a literary bombshell of sorts, contrary to liberal howls throughout the years that any suggestion that Arthur Miller was a Communist was baseless Red-baiting. And what if Miller had been a party member, or even a small “c” communist? It would mean that he was not a dupe but a duper, one who generated a cast of dupes, especially among those who defended him against accusations that he was sympathetic to the USSR. Liberals insisted that Miller was one of them, despite his innumerable unsightly instances of toeing the Communist Party line, which often ran contrary to the official position of the Democratic administration—for example, on Red China, Korea, the Spanish Civil War, and atomic espionage; on President Truman's use of the atomic bomb; on capitalism, materialism, profits, wages, and religion; on American “civil rights” abuses and American “imperialism”; on Howard Fast; on the Smith Act; on the illegitimacy of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the legitimacy of CPUSA; in signing his name as a sponsor to the USSR's first World Youth Festival in Prague in 1947, and in signing a statement defending controversial Communist Gerhart Eisler before the party apparatchik fled America to become a top official in East Germany; and, generally, in support of
numerous Communist front groups.39

  And if Miller had been a member of CPUSA, or even a communist who did not join the party, it would mean that he duped not only his liberal defenders but, in addition, all those millions, including generations of students, who read or watched The Crucible, relishing its delicious digs at anti-Communist “witchhunters” who persecuted innocents—supposed innocents like Arthur Miller. If Miller was secretly a Communist (or communist) and knew which of the accused were guilty, were lying, were operating covertly, or were serving Moscow, then his classic play, and his classic denials, misled a lot of trusting readers and audience members, with whom he was never exactly forthcoming.

  Perhaps time, and archives, will tell the whole truth about Arthur Miller. Maybe the answers reside in Miller's still-closed private papers at the University of Texas or in The Crucible collection held at Columbia University.

  Whatever the case, countless readers and playgoers saw in Miller's fiction the facts about anti-Communist persecution. When concerns over Communists in Hollywood mounted, leftist actors such as Will Geer adopted the Miller line and moaned about “Salem witch-hunts.”40 But those who understood the Communists recognized that reality was far different from how Miller portrayed it. Criticizing Miller's allegory, Elia Kazan's wife, Molly, explained: “Those witches did not exist. Communists do. Here, and everywhere in the world. It's a false parallel.” Molly Kazan shrewdly tried to inform the duped: “Witch hunt! … No one who was in the Party and left uses that phrase. They know better.”41 (For the record, Geer, later famous for playing “Grandpa” on the 1970s TV hit The Waltons, very likely was a Communist sympathizer and may well have been a party member at one point, probably when he was a master's student at Columbia University.)42