Saturday's Child (16 page)

It would be years before the full irony of the award would reveal itself. Today, when I think of all those women's club members—all those gloved, hatted, corseted, volunteers-for-every-good-cause women who managed to organize efficiently around everyone's needs but their own—today I grin, as if they might somehow have divined that this dutiful young girl not only exhibited periodic symptoms of committing poetry but also harbored the gene for—could it be?—
—feminism!

Had they only known.

I wish I could have said, curtseying politely and snapping the parchment scroll,

“Thank you
so
much. I promise you that I will try to surprise your wildest expectations. America's Ideal Girl will, in my case, grow into an iconoclastic writer, a political radical in the civil-rights and anti-war movements, and a founder of contemporary feminism; she will elope with a gay poet and stay married to him for twenty years, spend time in jail and underground, survive experimenting with the sexual and drug ‘revolutions,' give birth to someone who will grow up to be a rock musician and her close friend, leave the marriage, enjoy men and women lovers—and retain a threadbare, somewhat surreal sense of humor through it all. Put that in your apple pie and smoke it.”

It was an oddly prophetic twist of fate that
women's
clubs were the source of the honor. For decades, women asking questions or offering comments after a feminist speech or poetry reading of mine have shyly added the query “This is crazy of me, I'm sure, but weren't you also—?” To save time and awkwardness for both of us, I've learned to interrupt gently: “A child actor, yes.” At which point the questioner's eyes widen with delight. Even feminist leadership isn't immune. My friends and colleagues all have their own amusing stories to tell of how my childhood unknowingly affected theirs. Among them, Susan Brownmiller whoops that she was a fan who watched
Mama
religiously every Friday night; Andrea Dworkin insists she wanted to
be
Dagmar and live in that idealized TV family; the late Audre Lorde laughed at recalling that she'd been mesmerized by my
Alice in Wonderland
. And Gloria Steinem and I have tried to
work out whether it's possible that I—at age four or five a guest judge for Ted Mack's
Amateur Hour
radio show—could actually have sat in decision over Gloria's own Mack audition when she was twelve, in her desperate attempt to tap-dance her way out of the “wrong” side of Toledo, Ohio. If so, I wish I'd had the foresight to vote for her.

But how could any of us have realized we would blossom into flower children of the radical Sixties? Perhaps the only hint was the sense of suffocation we endured as if it were regular oxygen. This, after all, was the Fetid Fifties.

This was the period that political conservatives and religious fundamentalists regard as “the good old days.” It was the ghastly era of “I Like Ike,” of Nixon and Checkers and the Red Menace, Wonder Bread, racial segregation-as-the-norm, and Fallout Shelters. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen glared and flapped his cassock about, propagating the faith on TV, and the series
I
Led Three Lives for the FBI
glamorized counterspying on that omnipresent Red Menace. Senator Joe McCarthy pretty much ruled the Senate and, for a while, the nation. Fashion was calf-length full skirts, waist cinchers, Capezio shoes, and mink stoles. African Americans were “Negroes” or “Colored people,” Native Americans and indigenous communities were “Red people” or “Indians,” and Asian Americans were still considered suspect in the wake of the U.S. government's having hauled Japanese Americans off to internment camps during World War II. Other groups were subsumed under a generic, assimilative “white,” though ethnic stereotypes about the alcoholic Irish or dumb Poles or miserly Scots went largely unchallenged. Anti-Semitism thrived, so much so that
Gentleman's Agreement
was considered a controversial film: it wasn't uncommon for clubs to be “restricted”—a euphemism for No Jews Allowed. America's stunning dual capacity for homophobia and denial showed itself in the immense popularity of a closeted yet outrageously flouncing Liberace. Abortion was illegal and, for all but wealthy women, tantamount to backstreet butchery with no anesthesia and a high morbidity rate. Contraception consisted mostly of condoms and diaphragms (the Pill was still in the laboratory stage; a headline from a 1952
New York World Telegram and Sun
clip proclaims “Birth Control Pill Works on 24 out of 30 Rats”). Acquaintance rape, date rape, and marital rape were nonexistent concepts; spousal battery a whispered shame; child sexual abuse a not-even-whispered-yet shame;
sexual harassment a fact of life; and equal pay a fantasy. Married women couldn't legally retain their “maiden” (i.e., fathers') names or obtain credit independently from their husbands. Newspaper and magazine ads (in the corners or on the reverse of those scrapbook clippings) reflect the same hideous norm promulgated by TV commercials of the day: smiling (all European-American) women caressing refrigerator doors, sporting frilly aprons while serving “him” hearty casserole dinners, vacuuming (such miracle labor-saving devices!), going to church, and sleeping in a twin bed (
not ever
a double, which might imply sex)—but never seen behind a desk or the wheel of a car, much less in any nontraditional job such as wielding a gavel, dangling from a pole in a telephone-repair harness, or holding a press conference as secretary of state. Most such job openings would, in time, require lawsuits.

It's heartening, in the moments when one despairs of real progress ever being possible, to remember the Fifties—and celebrate not living in them any longer.

Those contented all-American families hid brutal secrets behind their toothy smirks. Those charity industries and “brotherhood” charades never engaged commonplace racism and poverty. That “Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag” babble we had to recite in school was part of the chauvinistic, anti-Communist propaganda poisoning the country. And with the rise of McCarthyism, the television industry would develop its own corrosive rust—the too-little-remembered tarnish defacing the Golden Age.

Television blacklisting entrenched itself in 1947.
⁵
That was the year three former FBI agents began publishing
Counterattack
, a newsletter with the stated aim of exposing “Communist influence” in the entertainment industry. Actually, it was a shrewd protection racket: any actor, director, or writer listed in
Counterattack
as “unacceptable” or “unclear” could be ruled “politically acceptable” for one-time work
for a fee
, seven dollars per
person per clearance. (One producer who opposed the process waggishly listed Santa Claus, who was subsequently cleared—for a cut-rate five bucks.) But by 1950 the accusers had grown in numbers and in clout, and the industry was paying serious attention to the whispered-about “graylist.” Vincent Hartnett, a fanatic who'd been involved in
Counterattack
, also published
Aware
,
Inc
. as well as
Red Channels
—all of them booklets listing people accused of being Communists or “Communist sympathizers,” though you might find yourself on the list simply for criticizing the notion of a blacklist, or supporting racial integration, or saying you thought the UN was probably a good organization.

The blacklisted actor John Randolph recalls that Procter & Gamble
⁶
and Borden's had a list of 151 names of “radical” or “obstreperous” actors, except that in some cases the names were of nonexistent people, or were misspelled or mixed up with other actors' names. But it didn't matter. Why let a picky detail like accuracy impede the rush to accusation and judgment? Like all smears, once the accusation had been made, it stuck. The victim had little choice. You could confess (even if there was nothing
to
confess), recant, and name others. Or you could protest in defiance and face the certainty that your career would be destroyed. Randolph, who had been a courageously hostile witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), could get no work in television, radio, commercials, or movies from 1951 to 1965, although he was able to land a few parts on the stage.

Soon it wasn't only rabid witch-hunters like Hartnett, or powerful sponsor-advertisers and ad agencies, who were circulating lists. The FCC
began to make threatening noises. The networks themselves became actively involved.

As Jeff Kisseloff wrote in the
New York Times
(May 30, 1999), “Each of the networks caved in to some extent. NBC abruptly canceled
The Aldrich Family
in 1950 … until an actress could be found to replace Jean Muir, its star [who] did not work again in television for eight years. The actress Kim Hunter recalls being blacklisted by CBS, ABC, and NBC, in that order. Delbert Mann [director of “Marty” for
Goodyear TV Playhouse
] has said he was so fed up with NBC's blacklist that he had to be talked out of leaving the network.” The blacklisted radio star John Henry Faulk became unemployable, but at least he lived to sue his accusers, win a landmark decision in court, and write a book about the blacklist, titled
Fear on Trial
(later, in 1975, made into a TV movie). Not so fortunate the actor Edward Bromberg (dead of a heart attack in the wake of being forced to testify before HUAC, after he'd been named by the director Elia Kazan), or the actor Philip Loeb, co-star of TV's
The Goldbergs
. CBS canceled that award-winning show in 1951 when Gertrude Berg, its producer, star, and primary writer, refused to jettison Loeb though he'd been blacklisted. But when the series reemerged the following year on NBC, it was without Loeb—who never again worked in television, and who committed suicide in 1955. Berg's attempted defense of someone accused was unsuccessful and tragically rare—although dear Sid Lumet became famous (or notorious, depending on one's perspective) for finding creative ways to justify hiring blacklisted talent for shows he was directing.

No one was immune. The distinguished newscaster Howard K. Smith was named. The world knows about the Hollywood Ten, but the hard-hit writers in broadcasting were less well known, among them Allan Sloane, a prominent radio writer, and Walter Bernstein, whose scripts had been sought after for television; Bernstein later wrote the movie
The Front
as well as a memoir of the period,
Inside Out
, in which he described the financial terror and despair he and his colleagues and their families faced.

In 1999, around the time of the furor over Kazan's being given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the New York chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences bestowed a comparable award on Frank Stanton for “lifelong work defending First Amendment rights.” Stanton, at this writing
ninety-one years old, was president of CBS—and overseer of its blacklisting policies—throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
⁷

Kisseloff again: “In 1950, Mr. Stanton approved a company-wide loyalty oath to reassure advertisers and self-proclaimed patriots. … [In 1951] with [CBS Chairman of the Board William S.] Paley's approval, Mr. Stanton took the network beyond Red Channels with the creation of a security office staffed by former FBI agents to investigate the political leanings of its employees.” In fairness, it should be said that later in his tenure, Stanton risked jail by defying President Richard Nixon's attempts to censor CBS newscasts and documentaries, and he led the triumphant fight to have TV cameras permanently on the floor of the U.S. Congress. It should also be said that Stanton—unlike Kazan, who to this day claims he sees nothing wrong in having named names—has at least stated that he wishes he'd had the wisdom back then that he has now. Nevertheless, Kisseloff is not exaggerating when he notes that in the late 1940s through the 1950s, CBS went further and more willingly than any other network in collaborating with and enforcing the blacklist.

That was precisely the period
Mama
was on the air.

On CBS.

In the early years I knew nothing about all this. Who would bother to tell me? On the contrary, my experience was that grown-ups clammed up whenever I entered the room. Naturally, any bright child quickly comes to know this means the adults were talking about sex, politics, or money. It wasn't until the early 1950s that I would strain my ears while pretending to do my homework in a corner of the rehearsal hall, trying to pick up
clues from the discussions and arguments adult cast members had during breaks.

Decades later, in Los Angeles during a book tour, I decided to reconnect with some of my erstwhile TV family. Conversations with Doris Quinlan, Dick Van Patten, and especially the late Ralph Nelson were interesting, alarming, and validating of what I thought I'd overheard all those years earlier.

There was a three-way political split in
Mama
.

On the left were ranged Frank Gabrielson, Gordon Webber, and most of the other writers (those writers—ya can't trust 'em), plus (quietly) Jud Laire, Jac Venza, and Doris Quinlan, and (more openly) Ralph Nelson—who even dared wear a provocative “Adlai Stevenson for President” button to work.

In the noncommittally safe Gee-I'm-just-in-show-biz-don't-know-nothin'-'bout-politics category were Dickie, Rosie, and most everybody else, including my mother and aunt.

Then there was Peggy Wood.

Peggy—the working-class, compassionate figure of Mama herself—was actively involved with the
Aware, Inc
. group.

Peggy, who within moments of meeting people would inflict on them the information that her American heritage dated back to the Revolutionary War, used to trill elegantly, “Whoever thought that
I
, with
my
background, could play a poor Norwegian immigrant?” Her memoir was actually titled
How Young You Look
. She had worked in the theater since 1911, peaking in productions of
Naughty Marietta
and Coward's
Blithe Spirit
, and she regarded herself still very much in the grande dame tradition: her maid would brush Peggy's hair fifty strokes at a time and kneel to lace up her shoes.