Okay, friends. I apologize in advance for such a ridiculously lengthy post. I realize that very few of you will be sufficiently interested to plow through it, but here's my contribution for those that might.

I hitch-hiked, dead broke, into Seattle from the Midwest in 1946. My father, with whom I had irreconcilable differences of opinion, had been transferred there, but was spending most of each year in Alaska. This meant that I might be able to use a room at the family home without fear of renewed conflict. I had finally decided to take a crack at finishing high-school after being away from it for a couple of years. Yeah, I had been urgently invited to leave Salina High School in Kansas in the winter of 1944/45. High school in Seattle didn?t work out either. I had spent a couple of summers in the Kansas/Nebraska wheat fields, rambled around the country on my thumb, and just couldn't adjust to jangling bells and tardy slips. Besides, Dad came home for the winter. However, I had discovered some empty rooms above a greasy spoon at the corner of 42nd and University Way (I'm fairly sure of that location, but it's been a long time!) and, determined to be an artist, I found a neglected entrance, set up a camp cot and my easel, and established squatter's rights. About this time, a friend urged me to try out for a play at the Seattle Repertory Playhouse where he was a regular performer. I did so, and found my "home away from home."

I did a few rather insignificant parts in a variety of plays. Since some of you may have read the claims later leveled at the Playhouse that it was presenting "Communist" plays, I'll tell you what they were. I played Fenton in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (a somewhat trivial comedy by that ranting red radical William Shakespeare). I then played a young soldier from Kentucky in an original musical based on the story of the "Pig War" in the San Juan Islands (written by the mother of one of our actresses and titled "The San Juan Story") I also played the kid who wants to run away from home in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (serious Communist attempt to break up the American family, I guess, since Sheridan Whiteside encouraged the lad to go ahead and do his thing!). I was Ferguson (a very small part) in "A Sound of Hunting" (World War II prize-winning drama), and I worked backstage on Thornton Wilder's ""Our Town." Someone actually described "Our Town" as an attack on the American family because the husband says of his wife, at one point, "I don?t know why she sings in that choir. She's got no more voice than an old crow." We also did a special children's production of "Tom Sawyer," based on a book we all know was written by a subversive, atheistic radical from Missouri. If any production that I was in might fall into the "propaganda" category, it would be "The Informer," the powerful Sean O'Casey play about "the troubles." I played "Tommy," the young school teacher who draws the short straw and is thus assigned to assassinate the informer. I remember Mrs. James reading a lovely letter from O'Casey in which he expressed his regret that he could do nothing to reduce or forgive the required royalties, because the play was in the hands of his publishers, over whom he had no control.

So I was quite familiar with the Repertory Playhouse, with its directors and its staff, when, in 1948 (one year after HUAC attacked the Hollywood Ten and several years before Joe McCarthy began his self-aggrandizing rant), the Canwell Committee called "Pop" and Mrs. James to answer charges of Communist Party membership and, therefore, that they advocated the violent overthrow of the government of the United States. The newspapers, especially local Hearst daily (The Post Intelligencer), jumped on the story like seagulls on crickets. As the unchallenged testimony at the hearings (no one was allowed to cross-examine those who testified against them) spewed forth, headlines such as "Repertory Playhouse Communist Party Assembly Line!" (followed by very small print: "witness declares") were emblazoned on page one. Well, I had worked there for perhaps a year and a half, and no one, I repeat: no one, ever invited me to become a Communist or to attend a Young Communist League meeting, or anything of the sort. Maybe it was me, although I don't know why I should have been an exception. Come to think of it, the friend who first encouraged me to visit the Playhouse was never recruited for the Party either.

One sleazy local character's testimony offered such juicy tidbits as "they gave fund-raising parties for the Communist Party at which all the actresses mingled with the crowd, selling drinks!" This was presented with a salacious snicker (after all, we know what actresses are really like, don't we? Heh-heh.). To my knowledge, only once a year, at Christmas, did the theater give a party, and that was for its subscribers and its staff. At this party, a traditional pot of "glug" was served, a fairly strong Swedish drink, I understand, made with raisins. At no other time, never during the other 364 days of the year, was alcohol permitted inside the Playhouse. If an actor arrived to play his role after having a bit too much to drink, he was denied entrance to the theater and sent home, even if that meant someone took a book onstage and read in the part! "Pop" and Mrs. James were convinced that alcohol and acting did not mix. Period! The testimony as it was presented to the Committee was simply untrue. But again, there were no "friendly witnesses" permitted to rebut this kind of perjured testimony.

Worst of all, the Committee's star "professional" witness (paid by the Committee and the FBI), a man named Hewitt, testified that he had met Mrs. James in Moscow in 1934. He had been standing on the steps of the Kremlin, he swore, with a major Communist Party official when Mrs. James walked by below them. "The official pointed to her and said to me, `There goes one of our best workers in the United States!'" Newspaper stories about Mrs. James' trip to Russia, articles she had written describing the work of the Moscow Art Theater, etc, were duly entered into the record as documentary evidence against her. In fact, Mrs. James had taken an extended theater tour in 1934, visiting the Old Vic Theatre in England, the Comedie de l'Arte (I have no idea how that should be spelled; my French went by with my high-school!) in Paris, and, indeed, she visited and observed the workings of the Moscow Art Theater in Russia, then the world center of the Stanislavski method. I should add that she traveled with an extremely respectable Republican companion for the entire journey. A couple of days later, this Hewitt person, in the course of his testimony, stated that he had left Russia in 1933, the year before Mrs. James made her tour. "Pop" James caught this contradiction in Hewitt's sworn testimony immediately. He rose to his feet and bellowed in his best Shakespearean tones, "YOU'RE A LIAR!" Instantly, Canwell called for the state police to eject "Pop" from the hearing room, which "Pop" was fully aware would result from his outburst (it had happened to others who had tried merely to ask a question of the Committee chairman). As they roughly ushered "Pop" out, his lawyer quietly suggested to the Committee: "Mr. Chairman, this man is a perjurer on your records!" He, too, was immediately thrown out of the room, leaving Mrs. James with no legal representation in the room. Another lawyer rose to protest the action and was told that one word out of him would see him join the others outside. Very quietly, he responded, "I bow to force." And sat down. The audience, me among them, exploded with applause. Canwell then threatened to have the state police clear the entire hearing room, so we all quieted down, angry but intimidated, yet unwilling to give up our chance to witness the rest of the hearings. Canwell called for a recess. When the hearing resumed, Hewitt was permitted unlimited time to carefully explain that he had misspoken earlier, and that he had actually met Mrs. James in Russia in 1932! I assume he must have known that proof could be found to establish that he had returned to this country in 1933. However, Mrs. James wasn't in Russia in 1932, and she could surely prove that fact, given sufficient time and money to dig up fifteen-year-old records of her presence in this country throughout that year. So Hewitt spent the next hour or two carefully explaining how Communists were always sneaking back and forth to Russia, traveling with forged passports, etc., and it would be impossible to trace their movements.

This same witness, by the way, testified that he had met Melvin Rader, University of Washington philosophy professor and author of a respected book on aesthetics, at a Communist camp in the Catskills during one particular summer "training session." Rader answered the big question when it was put to him. "No! I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party!" Yes, he had spoken before meetings of the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, helping to raise funds for refugees from Franco's regime in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Was this a crime? No, but this was the sort of brush with which they tarred him. He filed a perjury charge against Hewitt, who had been whisked back to New York immediately after the close of the hearings. When it became clear that New York was not going to extradite Hewitt to stand trial on the perjury charge (a New York judge was quoted as saying "He wouldn?t get a fair trial in the Soviet of Washington!"), the Seattle Times assigned reporter Ed Guthman to investigate the matter. Rader and Guthman were able to establish, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Rader had spent that particular summer with his family at a modest resort in the Cascade Mountains. In fact, the Committee knew that, too! Committee investigators had actually taken the guest register for that year from the resort and later, when Rader asked for it, claimed it had been "lost." But local people remembered Rader being there! You see, that was the summer "so and so's barn burned down," and many of them remembered Rader being part of the bucket brigade that tried to fight the fire. But the conclusive evidence came from the local store keeper. Down in his cellar, even after all those years, was a box of sales slips from that summer. Rader had set up a charge account with the store and had signed sales slips throughout the month he was said to have been learning his subversive skills at the Catskill camp. Guthman wrote a series of articles for the Seattle Times, exposing the perjury, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer prize. Read Rader's book, False Witness.

Mrs. James called the Times to see if they might assist her in a similar investigation to gather the materials needed to prove her presence in the United States during 1932. The Times asked, "Are you a Communist?" Mrs. James indignantly replied, "Young man, I wouldn't answer that question before the Committee, and I won't answer it for you, either! Under our Constitution, a individual's political beliefs are their own, private business. You have no more right to ask me that than Canwell did!" And so the Times declined to help her. God bless Florencee Bean James' courageous and consistent spirit!

So, what did I learn from these people and how did it influence my life? Well, I learned that there were adults who would look upon my creative impulses as legitimate enterprises. They also taught me to be concerned for the welfare of others less fortunate that I and that one should stand up for the principles in which one believes. These people were "progressives" who believed in equal rights for all people of all classes and colors, in equal justice for all under our laws. These were issues they did talk about in my presence, and I listened and admired them for their positions. They worked to support anti-lynching legislation, for example, and they supported the Washington Pension Union's effort to pass legislation that would guarantee health care for the state's impoverished elderly. Yes, they say the head of the Pension Union, Bill Pennock, was a Communist, and he might well have been. When I went down to the Union with him to sing a few songs for the old folks (Bill's wife was one of the finer actresses at the Playhouse), I saw how much the people there loved him and how deeply he cared for them and their welfare. He was a gentle, loving man. If American Communists were all like Bill Pennock, they might have won a few national elections! When Bill was called to stand trial under the Smith Act, the emotional strain proved to be too much. He was taking sleeping pills to help him rest during the agonizing nights of the trial and, one night, he took too many. His wife has always believed his death was accidental, but it was ruled a suicide. I don't know, but, to me, he was a saint.

What happened to the Playhouse and its directors? Well, after twenty years as a completely self-supporting cultural institution, a theater conscious of its role as an expressive part of its community, a theater totally financed by season subscription sales, block sales to various organizations, and regular ticket sales at the door, their funding dried up almost overnight. Subscriptions dropped to one-third of the previous years, block sales evaporated. No one was willing to support a "subversive" outfit like the Repertory Playhouse. Hadn't the newspapers said they were recruiting University students for the Communist Party? What did it matter that there were NO University students working or studying at the Playhouse? What did it matter that the Canwell Committee was established to investigate Communists on the state payroll and that the investigation of "Pop" and Mrs. James could easily have been described as a misuse of state appropriations. After all, they were not on the campus (just near it), were not on the state payroll, and there were no students involved. At the end of the hearings they were charged with the equivalent of "contempt of the State Legislature." Their appeal was never heard and they had no money to pursue it. The University bought the Playhouse building from its owner. The Jameses had a lease based on a percentage of the gate, but surrendered it when the owner pleaded with them that he could no longer afford to maintain the property with no income from it. The night that the Drama Department of the University opened its first show in the building, "Pop" James suffered a cerebral hemorrhage from which he never awoke. Mrs. James went to Canada to teach and direct small community theater enterprises.

I went to work for a couple of other theater groups in Seattle: The Tryout Theater which produced original plays under the guidance of Doc Savage of the University Creative Writing department, and then for the Great Plays Company which lasted only a short time due to the extravagant living habits of its "just in from Hollywood" director. I learned from this experience a certain distaste for purely commercial theater. I went to New York the year of the Army/McCarthy hearings and learned that my distaste was not ill-founded. I left New York and was bumming around the country with a guitar, a pack and a sleeping bag when I discovered that people might actually pay me to sing all the old songs I had been singing just for fun. At that point, the direction of my life was permanently altered, but the lessons of concern for others, of the insistence on freedom of speech and association for all people, and of the value of the non-commercial arts as presented by ordinary people (our folk arts, if you will) "all taught to me by those beautiful people at the Repertory Playhouse" have never been forgotten. And that, my friends, is what "McCarthyism" did to me, or perhaps I should say "did for me!"

Sorry I couldn't write a shorter post. This one was too important to me.

Sandy

Sandy, I think I got them all
fixed correctly. Please let me know if not.
It is a privilege to read this and to help out with the glitches.:-)
kat/joeclone