Dupes

  Humphrey Bogart had actually made ten films before 1934: four in 1930, three in 1931, and three in 1932. But none was significant, and certainly none was of the caliber (or achieved the success) of the movies he made later. Moreover, he had made no movies in 1933, would make only one in 1934, and none again in 1935.10 Similarly, he had performed in four plays between October 1932 and May 1933 but made none during the period when the Workers School was in session.11 His first major success, the film The Petrified Forest, would not be released until 1936.12

  In short, the January–March 1934 period was a down time for Bogart. His prospects seemed dim. As biographer Gerald Duchovnay described these days, “Hard times set in, and Bogart was reduced to playing chess, a favorite hobby he learned from his father, for up to a dollar a game to help support himself and his wife.” Bogart was, wrote Duchovnay, “bringing home barely enough money to eat.”13

  Worse, his talented, respected father collapsed both physically and financially during this time. In 1934—when the Workers School was in session—Dr. Bogart separated from his wife and racked up huge debts. Later that year the well-regarded physician endured a miserable death in New York's Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled, having accumulating some $10,000 in debt—an enormous sum during the Great Depression, all of which his penniless son vowed to pay back.14 It seemed that America and its free-enterprise system had horribly failed Bogart's father.

  Overall, the Great Depression was hitting Bogart harder than most Americans. Had he turned to Communism in this period, few would blame him. If Humphrey Bogart had ever considered the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, it seems that 1934 would have been ideal.

  Miserable about his life, and his father's life, Bogart continued to fight with his overbearing but highly accomplished mother, Maud. He always had a tense relationship with his mother, as had his father. Dr. Bogart's battles with his wife wore on the son. This, too, only added to Bogart's turmoil. He drank heavily, and looked for answers.

  Further adding to his woes, Bogart was battling for his own marriage—his second, to fellow actress Mary Philips, whom he had married in April 1928.

  Philips herself adds to the potential intrigue at the Workers School.

  Listed directly above “Bogart” in the evaluation section of the Workers School for January–March 1934 is no less than a “Phillips.” On the district page the name is spelled “Philips,” meaning there is a misspelling in one of the two spots (which is not uncommon with the name “Philips”/“Phillips”). Like “Bogart,” Philips is described as “college,” as a “Section Organizer,” and as from a New York district. The evaluation section characterizes Philips as “sentimental,” but as holding the potential to “make a rapid advance toward becoming an effective Party worker.” (See page 488.)

  Could this Philips be Humphrey Bogart's wife? Mary had retained her maiden name, personally and professionally. Also, it appears that she was available to attend the Workers School at that time: though she had roles in three plays in New York between December 5, 1933, and June 1934,15 none of the plays ran in that ten-week window when the Workers School was in session.

  I was unable to learn anything more about Mary Philips, including her politics. She and Bogart divorced in 1937. She married again to another actor, and, to my knowledge, never had children. She died in April 1975.

  The “College” and “Westinghouse” Questions

  From all of that evidence, one might reasonably speculate that the Bogart at the Workers School was Humphrey Bogart. But there remain sticky items that make confirmation elusive, if not unlikely.

  Among them is the note on “college,” though, again, this designation might have been a broader category not necessarily implying current enrollment in a college. Humphrey Bogart never earned a college degree, but college certainly dominated his and his family's thoughts. Bogart had attended a prestigious prep school: the esteemed Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. College was the expected next step. His parents (who were well educated) wanted him to attend Yale. Nonetheless, again, he never earned a college degree, nor, to my knowledge, attended college on a consistent basis.16

  Likewise unclear is the “Westinghouse” reference listed next to Bogart's name at the Workers School. I was unable to link the Westinghouse reference to any Bogart from this period, Humphrey or John or any other, whether through Web searches or phone calls and e-mails to archivists/record keepers at Westinghouse or historical societies with records on Westinghouse. A simple piece of paper with some sort of illustration of Westinghouse employment by a New York–based Bogart in 1933 or 1934 might have easily settled this case, but my research never produced such evidence. (Perhaps now, after the fact, some source from Westinghouse or elsewhere will contact me with the answer.) Apparently, Westinghouse does not have such records from that long ago; this was an era not only before computers and digitalization but even before Social Security.

  That said, a few noteworthy items might link Humphrey Bogart to Westinghouse. First, remember that Bogart's financial prospects at the time were bleak. He needed work, and Westinghouse was very active in the New York area, in the business of electricity, manufacturing, broadcasting, radio, and more. Westinghouse at different points owned RCA and was also part of NBC. Located at 150 Broadway in New York City, Westinghouse was not far from where Bogart lived and was even closer to where he performed on Broadway.17 Among the major Westinghouse projects from the era was installation of the many elevators popping up throughout New York's booming skyscrapers, which provided lots of employment for locals.18 So it is not inconceivable that Bogart might have done some work for the company, whether to earn a paycheck as a common laborer working on elevators or through something in broadcasting, media, theater, or the entertainment industry.

  On the latter, it is entirely plausible that Westinghouse might have sponsored some form of entertainment work by Bogart, given that from the outset the company's most influential activity was broadcasting, especially radio broadcasting. Consider how Ronald Reagan was a spokesman for General Electric, which for years ran GE Theater as one of the top shows on television. In fact, at the height of Bogart's acting career, Westinghouse was drawing celebrities of his caliber for its Best of Broadway drama airing on CBS.19 Thus, a Westinghouse connection to Humphrey Bogart in the early 1930s is not impossible, although, again, I found nothing conclusive in Bogart's biography that would identify him with Westinghouse at this period.

  John Leech's Testimony

  With all of that said, here is the most critical question: was there ever a suggestion that Humphrey Bogart was a Communist (or even a small “c” communist) in this period? We know of the suspicions raised over the duping he received from his comrade “friends” in 1947—John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, and the rest—but what about the early 1930s?

  Actually, yes, there was a major allegation. It was a significant testimony made under oath, more than once and in great depth, in 1940. And it is what makes all of this so intriguing.

  Specifically, in August 1940, a man named John L. Leech shared a list of suspected Communists with a Los Angeles County grand jury. When that testimony hit the press, it was a national scandal overnight. Among the accused were some high-profile Hollywood names, including Jimmy Cagney, Frederic March, Franchot Tone, Jean Muir, and Humphrey Bogart, though Bogart at that point was not nearly the headliner that the others were or that he later became.

  Leech testified during the first two weeks of August 1940 in an “extraordinary session” of the Los Angeles County grand jury; his lengthy testimony produced a 192-page transcript. Leech was no flake found wandering Venice Beach. He had been at the top echelon of the Los Angeles area Communist Party, for which he had served as organizer and executive secretary. He joined the party in 1931. From 1934 to 1936 he served as a paid organizer and recruiter.20 He even appears to be the same John L. Leech who, according to congressional records, ran for Congress (in California's Seventeenth District) on the Communist Pa
rty ticket in 1932. (He earned a dismal 1.8 percent of the vote, putting him well behind the Democrat's 71.9 percent and the Republican's 26.3 percent.)

  For reasons not entirely clear, Leech soured on the party and the movement, and they on him. He was eventually expelled from CPUSA in 1937. His disillusionment with the party only grew after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact.21 Prior to his grand jury testimony in 1940, Leech had been a prominent witness at the deportation hearings against Frank Marshall Davis's friend Harry Bridges.

  Now, in August 1940, Leech named forty-three Hollywood personages as, variously, dues-paying party members, financial contributors, or very close associates. He claimed that everyone he named was, in some form, intimately related to the local party. These were people involved much deeper than some front-group capacity. By and large, these were not dupes; these were dupers.

  Leech cited Bogart as a notable financial contributor to the Communist Party.22 He also told the grand jury that Bogart was among those who participated in a “study club” where Leech and Hollywood luminaries “came and read the doctrines of Karl Marx and other writers,” whom “they would read for hours and then talk it all over.” Those who attended the study club were members of the Communist Party, said Leech; he knew this “because they contributed their dues and donations to me personally.” He added that the celebrities adopted a “Party name” in order to conceal their identity.23

  Adding credibility to Leech's charge was the meeting place he cited for the “study club”: Budd Schulberg's estate at Malibu Beach.24 We now know definitively that Budd Schulberg was a Communist during that period. This was not public knowledge in 1940. (Years later, in 1951, Schulberg admitted in testimony before Congress his involvement in the Communist Party; he also explained that he had been involved in “a Marxist study group” at that time.)25

  Bogart, for the record, vehemently denied Leech's accusations, immediately issuing a statement to the press. “I dare the men who are attempting this investigation to call me to the stand,” he retorted. “I want to face them myself.”26 As for the charge of attending a “study club,” Bogart responded: “Furthermore, I have never attended the school mentioned nor do I know what school that may be.”27

  This was an interesting choice of words. Leech had not mentioned a school, but a club.

  Leech v. Bogart

  The fracas had just begun.

  Congressman Martin Dies, the Texas Democrat who chaired the House Committee on Un-American Activities, wasted no time in investigating the issue. Congressman Dies and the committee's chief investigator, Robert Stripling, immediately hopped on a plane for the West Coast. On August 16—just one day after Bogart's denial was published in the press—both Leech and Bogart were testifying before a special congressional session in Los Angeles.

  There, under oath, Leech again made his charges, including against Bogart. He repeated his claims that Bogart had paid contributions to the party and had attended the study club. When Congressman Dies asked point blank, “Are you contending that Mr. Bogart was a member of the Communist Party?” Leech immediately answered, “Yes I am.”28 On the study club, Leech also told Dies: “I do definitely recall Mr. Bogart's association with these study groups.”29 He added that Bogart had been present at a party meeting in honor of Earl Browder in Los Angeles in August 1936.

  Bogart, also under oath, emphatically denied all of these charges. He disputed not only the specific charges but also having ever known John Leech. He told Dies that “Hollywood people are dupes in the most part”—that is, liberals who tend to get hoodwinked by Communists, but not Communists themselves.30

  Here again, despite the Left's caricature of the House Committee on Un-American Activities as full of hysterical Red-baiters, Chairman Dies could not have gone easier on Bogart and the other Hollywood figures. Almost instantly, Dies cleared Bogart, as well as Cagney, Frederic March, and writer Philip Dunne—the big names under heated dispute—of charges of being Communists. Dunne was so grateful to Dies and Stripling that he paused in his testimony to express warm appreciation for the honest treatment they had given him.31 The newspapers immediately flashed headlines declaring that Dies had absolved the stars.32

  In truth, Dies may not have done enough homework. Had he had access to the Workers School roster for January–March 1934, which listed a “Bogart,” he surely would have posed a question to the actor along those lines, especially given what Leech had added to the picture. Consider that Leech's charges against Bogart applied to the 1934–36 period, when Leech was chief organizer of the Hollywood Communist community.33 In his testimony, Leech remarked on exactly the time that Bogart would have returned to Hollywood (permanently) after his very difficult year (1934) in New York, a year that began with the Workers School session in question and ended with the sad death of his father. Moreover, throughout this period, Bogart shuttled back and forth between New York and Hollywood in search of work. In other words, the timeline fits, as does the geography.

  One more critical point on Leech: Many of the names that Leech presented in 1940 proved to be high-profile, significant Communists, including actual party members. Amazingly, Leech had managed to name among his short list seven men who would be implicated among the Hollywood Ten—fully seven years later: Lester Cole, Herb Biberman, Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, and Sam Ornitz.34 He had also named the likes of Budd Schulberg, later confirmed as a Communist at the time.

  How would Leech have known all of this if he was not who he claimed to be? He was a legitimate, credible source on Communism in Hollywood, as Communist Party records confirm his role as an official and organizer for the party.

  Bear in mind, too, that Leech made these allegations well before the Cold War began; America at the time was worried about Hitler and fascism, not Stalin and Communism.

  Might Leech simply have been mistaken about Humphrey Bogart? It is possible, but that would be an odd mistake, given that Bogart was an established Hollywood actor by this time. But it is equally difficult to argue that Bogart was fingered because of his star power; at this point in his career he had some success in Hollywood but was far from being a household name across the country. Most of the newspaper coverage of Leech's accused—which was sensational—focused not on Bogart but on bigger stars like Cagney, March, Muir, and Tone. True, Bogart had recently made a splash with The Petrified Forest (1936), based on the popular play by Robert Sherwood, who later became Harry Hopkins's privileged biographer, and with Dead End (1937), a grim, class-based Depression-era film—written by Lillian Hellman. But major Bogart films like Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, the latter written by Communist and Hellman lover Dashiell Hammett, were still down the road.

  Although some of the accused angrily denounced Leech as a liar, he had little to gain by falsely implicating—under oath to a grand jury and then to the chairman of a congressional committee—Bogart or the others. Actually, he gained nothing, material or otherwise; there was no book deal, no personal celebrity. He seemed to disappear from the face of the earth, in fact. Research into what happened to him produced no hard information; I could not even confirm the date of his death (though a John L. Leech did die in Inglewood, California, in August 1972). A post on Leech at the respected Hollywood biographical website imdb.com maintains that Leech had been “a police agent who had infiltrated the Communist Party before being expelled in 1937.”35 Other websites similarly claim that he was a “spy” of some sort. On the other hand, archival documents from the Communist Party claim, among other things, that he was expelled from the party out of fear of blackmail because of sexual indiscretions.36 Either way, he did work as an organizer, secretary, and recruiter for the party in Los Angeles from 1931 to 1937.

  Whatever the final verdict on Leech, his charges remained part of the background in later government investigations of Bogart. This is evident today in Bogart's partially declassified FBI file, which I obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and consulted at length for t
his book. Though the file remains partly redacted, the documents that have been released do not clearly link Bogart to the Communist Party. To the contrary, many of the documents, including an FBI “Summary Memorandum” from November 24, 1947, and a December 7, 1943, War Department “Loyalty and Character Report,” conclude that Bogart, despite certain flaws like a “violent temper,” was of overall “excellent character” and a loyal American, with no track record of “financial contributions” to the Communist Party. The reports say there was no factual substance to allegations that Bogart had been “connected with the Communist Party.”37

  The fact remains, however, that John L. Leech was a credible witness, some of whose charges were confirmed many years after the fact. Even today his allegations hardly seem outlandish.

  Humphrey Bogart: Daily Worker “Hero”

  Whether or not Humphrey Bogart was a contributor to the Communist Party, he did run in some of the same circles as Communists and Communist sympathizers. That was not difficult to do in Hollywood, given the party's pervasiveness in the film industry, especially among screenwriters. Still, it must be noted that Bogart was celebrated by the Communist press, which the Communists rarely did for someone whose politics they did not approve of. For example, the October 15, 1944, Daily Worker toasted Bogart with the glowing headline “Bogart: Anti-Fascist Film Hero.”38 In that article, Daily Worker reporter David Platt (who also wrote about the actor in 1951)39 praised Bogart's on-screen portrayals against fascism as well as his “off-screen performances,” which were, according to Platt, just as “thrilling.” Specifically, the article highlighted the Bogart films Across the Pacific (1942), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), and Sahara (1943). The CPUSA organ neglected to mention the screenwriter of the latter two films: the angry apparatchik John Howard Lawson.