Charley Douglass almost sold motion picture studios on the use of the laugh track. The Lee Marvin–Jane Fonda film Cat Ballou actually had a laugh track added and was sent out to a handful of drive-in theaters to gauge response. Naturally, the response was negative. Further use of laugh tracks in feature films was abandoned, but it had been a serious consideration for half a second.
Douglass and Pratt were frequently ordered to insert heavy laughter where it didn’t belong. “That was always a bad situation and it happened a lot,” said Pratt. “It got to the point where [executives thought] the louder the laugh was—the funnier the joke was. But that wasn’t the case. That’s why the press, the media and the public in general came down on us.”
The laugh track dominated 1950s television comedy. At the same time the Cold War dominated American discourse. The Red Scare affected several comedians in the late 1940s and early ’50s. Among them were Lucille Ball, Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx.
Marx joined the quiz show craze that had brought the end of Fred Allen and Henry Morgan. Their demise was seen as a lesson. If you can’t beat the quiz show craze, join it. Comedians George DeWitt, Hal March and Jan Murray all became better known as game show hosts. Groucho joined their ranks as the host of You Bet Your Life. “I wasn’t particularly proud of doing a quiz show,” said Marx. “It was like slumming.”
You Bet Your Life premiered on radio in October 1947, formatted to fit Marx’s personality. It became an excuse for Marx to ridicule civilian contestants with trademark snipe. Fans were impressed with how often Marx’s quips hit the mark—but the audience didn’t know he was the first beneficiary of magnetic tape. Unlike competing programs, the show was not live. For every half-hour episode, there was an extra hour the public never heard or saw. “The ability to edit was a very important thing,” said director Robert Dwan. “If it wasn’t funny at all, it wasn’t used. We gave Groucho crutches to lean on.”
Each segment featured two eccentric civilians “selected by our studio audience before the show.” In reality, they were heavily vetted and rehearsed by the production staff. They looked for people with outrageous occupations or personalities—easy fodder for ridicule. After Marx interviewed them and scored a good number of laughs, he’d resort to the quiz and ask four questions on a given subject, allowing the contestants to win some money.
The anti-Communist hysteria was at its height during You Bet Your Life’s television run from 1950 to 1961. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hoped to remove left-wing influence from American life. Groucho’s show was caught in the mix. According to an internal FBI memorandum from August 17, 1953: “Groucho Marx contributes heavily to the Communist Party.” To this day the rest of that memorandum is blacked out and the majority of the file heavily censored.
You Bet Your Life musical director Jerry Fielding was fired for his political activity. The House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Fielding. “I was very much involved in politics and all kinds of crusades. One of the things that bugged me most was that we had two [musicians’] unions in this town [Hollywood], a Black one and a white one. The white union had a higher scale than the Black union and a higher death benefit, and a lot of other things. There had never been a Black musician on the West Coast playing network shows on the radio. I joined to form an amalgamation committee to break this law down. We were going to put two Black guys on the Groucho Marx show. Groucho felt the idea was very good, and when I got noise from NBC, I went to him and he backed me up pretty strongly. But at the time I was told in no uncertain terms that if I kept this up, they were going to get me. The amalgamation finally happened. It was on account of the Groucho Marx show that this happened. Otherwise, there’d still be two unions here.”
You Bet Your Life’s sponsor, Chrysler, was convinced only a Commie would dare promote racial equality. Fielding couldn’t find work for ten years. “After that I couldn’t get Groucho, I couldn’t get my agent, I couldn’t get NBC. It was as though I didn’t exist. I never saw any of them again.” Marx conceded a few years later, “That I bowed to the sponsors’ demands [to fire Fielding] is one of the greatest regrets of my life.”
Abbott & Costello were filmdom’s most popular comedy team at the start of the Red Scare. Lou Costello was influenced by his friendship with right-wing film producer Robert Arthur. “Lou was very much, as I was, a supporter of Senator McCarthy,” said Arthur. “Lou felt very strong about this and tried to do his part to protect the freedom of America.” Costello complained about the high taxes leveled on his massive income, but conceded, “We have to keep taxes high to pay for the fight against communism.”
Lou Costello’s daughter said, “Joe McCarthy was a demagogue, but to my father he was a man in shining armor.” Costello’s enthusiasm for McCarthy affected the atmosphere of his shoots. At one point he drafted a loyalty oath and asked everyone working with him to sign it. John Grant, writer of special material for Abbott & Costello, was offended when Costello presented him with the loyalty oath. “Lou, after all these years do you have to question my loyalty?” Costello said, “If you really are a true-blue American, you won’t mind saying so. Just sign the paper, John. Are you gonna sign or are you gonna let people wonder if you might be pink?” Grant quit and stormed off the lot.
Costello was a star attraction at a McCarthy testimonial. Some warned it would impact his popularity. “That reasoning doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Costello. “Since when is it more important to have good box office appeal rather than be a good American?”
McCarthyist hostility affected those who already had paranoid delusions. Steve Allen was an early champion of civil rights and was a target of death threats. A cancer victim wrote Allen, “I will be dying in three or four weeks and was thinking of what I could do in my last few days to make up for all my sins. [I have decided] to exterminate some of the Communist fifth column. That is why I write to you, Mr. Communist Allen . . . I have nothing to lose taking my revolver, going down to your home, or better yet, to your office in Sherman Oaks, and, on the whim, firing two or three bullets into the head of the biggest liar, cheat, humbug and Communist in this country.”
Radio satirist Henry Morgan received a letter from Red Channels, the pamphlet that named suspected Communists in the entertainment industry. Morgan was one of 151 people cited in the original pamphlet, including comedy writers Abe Burrows and Nat Hiken. Red Channels and its publisher, the journal Counterattack, could kill a career with one swift mention, even if the accusation was false.
Dear Mr. Morgan:
As you know, I am the originator of Red Channels. I enclose a confidential memo listing reported affiliations on your part with Communist fronts and causes. If you care, in your interests, to comment on these to me before I publish them, I shall be glad to hear your side of the story.
Red Channels named Morgan for his participation in a 1947 radio special called Hollywood Fights Back, a variety show mounted to fight the House Un-American Activities Committee. Guests included Lauren Bacall, Myrna Loy, Edward G. Robinson and Artie Shaw. Red Channels also noted a joke Morgan told at the 1947 White House Correspondents’ Dinner: “Whenever it is quiet in Washington, you can count on the Un-American committee to issue a report. Maybe sometime later, when it has a chance, it will start gathering the facts.”
Morgan’s employment fell sharply. He worked in regional New York radio for a couple of years, but had no exposure beyond Manhattan. He bought space in the 1952 New Year’s edition of Variety, most of which was filled with celebrities’ season’s greetings. Morgan’s space said, “Whatever happened to Henry Morgan? Signed, Henry Morgan.”
Red Channels and Counterattack enriched themselves through intimidation. “I worked for Counterattack,” said informer Harvey Matusow. “Besides the newsletter, for five thousand dollars we also set up security systems for companies. If a company bought our services, they would send us lists of names and we would check them out
in our files and let them know if they were acceptable or not.” Ira Skutch directed Henry Morgan on various panel shows. He remembers the vetting racket. “The guys who came to see us said if we subscribed to their service, they’d clear everybody we called, so this whole business of clearing people was a blackmailing scheme.”
The anti-Communist blacklist was greatly motivated by a desire to destroy showbiz labor unions. A number of sitcom writers and actors were blacklisted, the majority of whom were involved in union politics. “Most of us were not Sam Gompers types,” said comedy writer Charlie Isaacs. “Nevertheless we decided to start a union. I was made president. Jess Oppenheimer was the vice-president. Immediately we got into a terrible jurisdictional fight with the Screen Writers Guild. Some clique over there decided they couldn’t beat us because we had most of the TV writers, so they began smearing us, saying we had Communists in our group.”
Blacklisted comedy writers included Reuben Ship (The Life of Riley), Leo Solomon (The Alan Young Show) and Frank Tarloff (I Married Joan). Danny Thomas hired Tarloff to write on his sitcom, but had to credit him under a pseudonym. “Two of our best writers were Frank Tarloff and Mac Benoff . . .” said Thomas. “Frank and Mac were on the list—God knows why because I never heard them say anything more subversive than ‘Richard Nixon is a jerk.’ But they couldn’t work anywhere else in the industry . . . We had to use pseudonyms for them, or we might have been blacklisted too.”
According to comedy writer Herb Sargent, Steve Allen intentionally booked blacklisted talent. “On the early Tonight shows, he’d book people like Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford, who were blacklisted. The network would say, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ and Steve would say, ‘No, if they don’t go on, I don’t go on.’ He was terrific that way.”
Jack Gilford was a constant presence in Broadway sketch revues, certain to be a major player in television comedy until the blacklist. Ezra Stone was directing a television show for Fred Allen when they tried to book Gilford. “Pat Weaver came down personally to the rehearsal hall and took Fred and me aside and said, ‘We’ve got to let Gilford go. We can’t clear him.’ Fred turned absolutely crimson. He was so incensed and humiliated.” Gilford’s wife, Madeline Lee, was also blacklisted. Red Channels was confused by her name and blacklisted three different performers named Madeline Lee rather than let one Commie squeak past.
Jane Wyatt, the wife on the sitcom Father Knows Best, was blacklisted from the film industry in 1950. “I had gone to Washington with the group that protested the Hollywood hearings. I also was seen wearing a Russian costume at a meeting during the war to push for a second front, which President Roosevelt was pushing for too.” Wyatt had been costarring in motion pictures with Gary Cooper and Cary Grant, but was kept out of movies for the next several years. Before she was cast in Father Knows Best, the sponsor required she narrate anti-Communist documentaries for the Central Intelligence Agency’s Radio Free Europe.
The family sitcom The Goldbergs was popular, but had its life span shortened by the blacklist. Male lead Philip Loeb supported the End Jim Crow in Baseball Committee, an attempt to integrate the major leagues. It made him unpopular with the sponsor, General Foods.
Jack Wren of the advertising agency BBDO told Henry Morgan he would remove him from the blacklist if he would defame Philip Loeb in return. Morgan said, “He sent for me to talk about my blacklisting. Wren says there’s an AFTRA meeting to consider the case of Phil Loeb. ‘Here’s the speech I want you to make.’ I say, ‘I can’t read that.’ It was slander. I said, ‘I’ll make a speech, but not this one.’ I didn’t know Phil. At the meeting . . . I went up to the microphone, trembling. I start to read my version of this, which was that Phil Loeb shouldn’t bring his case to AFTRA. Wren called me after the meeting. He wanted me to write him a letter saying he cleared me ‘to show the evenhandedness’ of his office. I prefer to think I didn’t write the letter, but I did. He [Loeb] killed himself not too long after I made my speech to the union.”
Some comedy figures promoted the blacklist by creating a Hollywood committee in support of McCarthy. While it was no surprise that Hollywood reactionaries John Wayne and Ward Bond were involved, other signatories included Marx Brothers screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, Laurel & Hardy director Leo McCarey and silent comedy legend Harold Lloyd.
The biggest supporters of the blacklist were the newspaper columnists. Their reactionary rants resonated with readers. Ed Sullivan wrote in his column, “The entire industry is becoming increasingly aware of the necessity to plug all Commie propaganda loopholes. Network and station heads, with a tremendous financial stake, want no part of Commies or pinkos.” Sullivan welcomed blacklisters into his home. Theodore C. Kirkpatrick of Counterattack was invited to vet the guests of The Ed Sullivan Show in person. Sullivan said, “Kirkpatrick has sat in my living room on several occasions and listened attentively to performers eager to secure a certification of loyalty.”
Columnist Hy Gardner accused Charlie Chaplin of being a Communist and pointed to his pallbearing at the funeral of novelist Theodore Dreiser as proof. Chaplin’s status as a noncitizen especially bugged his detractors. When asked why he remained a British subject, Chaplin told the New York Herald Tribune, “I’m an internationalist. I do not believe in nationalism because that makes for war.” Gardner wrote, “I will be proud to take a bow for encouraging the government to refuse [Chaplin] readmission to this country without first putting him under an Immigration Service microscope used on all foreign objects likely to spread a disease.”
Walter Winchell attacked Lucille Ball at the height of her fame. On his low-budget television show, Winchell read his scoops to the rhythm of a ticker tape. “While the House Committee on Un-American Activities was holding secret sessions in California, the most popular of all television stars was confronted with her membership in the Communist Party.” Newspapers aligned a photo of Lucille Ball with Winchell’s words. Television critic Jack O’Brian drooled over her potential demise: “Lucille Ball announces in the current Silver Screen magazine that she intends to retire in five years. It may be a lot sooner than Lucille plans.”
The American Legion organized a protest against I Love Lucy and in September 1953 Ball was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify. The FBI unearthed her 1930s voting record, in which she was registered as a Communist. She explained that her grandfather was a socialist and she registered as a Communist to please him. This admission would have been enough to sink a union activist, but true to the name of her sitcom, Lucy was well loved. J. Edgar Hoover defended her as one of his favorites. Republican HUAC member Donald Jackson held a press conference to prevent runaway smearing: “She had never had a role in the communist party,” but not wishing to contradict his colleagues he added, “The investigation is continuing [and] no case is ever closed.”
The next I Love Lucy taping was tense, and Desi Arnaz eased the studio audience. “Welcome to the first I Love Lucy show [of the season]. Before we go on, I want to talk to you about something serious. Something very serious. You all know what it is. The papers have been full of it all day. Lucille is no communist. We both despise the communists and everything they stand for.” Arnaz introduced Ball to the studio audience as “my favorite redhead. That’s the only thing red about Lucy—and even that is not legitimate.” The audience cheered.
When the campaign against Ball went nowhere, angry columnists claimed that even that had been part of the Communist conspiracy. “The commies themselves had a big part in breaking the Lucille Ball story and here’s why,” wrote Mike Connolly in The Hollywood Reporter. “They feel that when Miss Ball proves she was never a Red it’ll tend to discredit charges of commie membership still to be lodged against others. Fiendishly clever, these fiends.”
One of the only major newspaper columnists not beating the drum was acerbic television critic John Crosby. The red he detested was Red Skelton, and that had strictly to do with his program, no
t his politics. Crosby wrote at the time, “The blacklist is one of the things our generation is going to have to answer for to succeeding generations.”
While some comedy writers were blacklisted, NBC drafted a plan to mentor new ones. NBC had good luck with comedy—Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Martin & Lewis—and the network wanted to keep that winning streak going. It created an in-house classroom called the NBC Writers Development Program, with a mandate of shepherding newbies into professional positions. Playwright Tad Danielewski and comedy writer Joe Bigelow were tutors. Executives Ross Donaldson, Leonard Hole and Les Colodny were scouts. One of the more notable students in the program was Woody Allen.
Allen was assigned to shadow comedy writer Danny Simon during the dying months of The Colgate Comedy Hour. Allen called Simon one of the “most important people to my career . . . for teaching me the fundamentals of how to construct sketches and, even more, for the psychological boost of having someone that accomplished believe in me.” Simon was widely respected in 1950s television, but when his brother Neil “Doc” Simon became the most popular playwright of his generation, a chip developed on Danny’s shoulder. He was no longer the picture of confidence; his brother’s great success made him question his own ability. Comedy writer Ron Clark says, “He would turn out a funny sketch, but he would just keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and the sketch would get less funny and less funny and less funny.” A prime example was his play Only the Shadow Knows. It was originally about two brothers, one living in the shadow of the other, and was based on the relationship between him and Neil. Danny rewrote it so much that the finished version was about a gentile woman who converts to Judaism.
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