Dupes

by Paul Kengor

  5. “John Bogart, 80, Dies; Was Times Executive,” New York Times, October 12, 1992.

  6. “Marjorie Goodell Wed to J. A. Bogart,” New York Times, April 18, 1937.

  7. “Miss Jacqueline Branaman Is Married to Philip J. Halla,” New York Times, November 27, 1966.

  8. “Jacqueline Branaman Bogart: Tribute & Message from the Family,” Tributes.com, retrieved March 5, 2010.

  9. Such an eyewitness is my good friend and colleague Charles Wiley, who in 1934 was a New York–based child actor rehearsing the 1935 award-winning stage hit Old Maid. The female lead in that play was Humphrey Bogart's ex-wife, Helen Menken, whom Bogart remained friends with and visited occasionally backstage. Wiley was there. He met Bogart and remembers the visits well, as did Wiley's parents, who years later, once Bogie was an established star, often reminded an older Wiley that this was the same man who had frequently visited Helen Menken backstage in 1934. Source: Interview/conversations with Charlie Wiley, April 27–28, 2010, during Wiley visit to Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.

  10. Stephen Humphrey Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father (New York: Dutton/Penguin, 1995), 305–6.

  11. Duchovnay, Humphrey Bogart: A Bio-Bibliography, 278.

  12. Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father, 83.

  13. Duchovnay, Humphrey Bogart: A Bio-Bibliography, 11.

  14. Ibid.

  15. According to the online Broadway database ibdb.com, these three plays by Philips were: All Good Americans (December 5, 1933, to January 1934); The Pure in Heart (which was written by John Howard Lawson, and which opened March 20, 1934, and closed the same month); and Come What May (May 15, 1934, to June 1934).

  16. I also found John Abendroth Bogart elusive on this question. John Abendroth Bogart began working at the New York Herald Tribune in 1934. At the start of 1934, when the Workers School was in session, John Bogart would have been approximately twenty-one years old, which is the typical age for someone just finishing college—although most college graduates do not finish a four-year program midyear, as would have been the case here. Unfortunately, I was not able to learn whether John Bogart went to college. The announcement of his marriage to Marjorie Goodell in the April 18, 1937, edition of The Times does not make reference to college, whereas college is mentioned for other newlyweds listed on the page. For instance, the wedding announcement to the immediate right of the Bogart-Goodell announcement notes a groom who graduated from Yale, while the announcement immediately below notes a groom who graduated from St. Joseph's College.

  17. The 150 Broadway address is listed in the 1934 New York City directory.

  18. See “Business & Finance: A. B. See to Westinghouse,” Time, July 19, 1937.

  19. See Leon Morse, “TV Specs Providing Greener Pastures to Hollywood Stars,” Billboard, July 3, 1954, 2.

  20. Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund report that “Leech had joined the Communist Party in 1931, served as a paid Party organizer for two years, 1934–36, and been expelled in 1937.” See Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 157.

  21. Radosh and Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood, 53.

  22. Among contemporaneous accounts: “Jury Told 43 Film Notables Are Reds,” New York Daily Mirror, August 15, 1940; and “Tone, Cagney, March Called Gilded Reds,” New York Daily News, August 15, 1940.

  23. “Tone, Cagney, March Called Gilded Reds.”

  24. Ibid.

  25. See Budd Schulberg, testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, May 23, 1951, quoted in Nicholas Beck, Budd Schulberg: A Bio-Bibliography (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 81.

  26. “Filmsters Blast Back at Communist Charges,” United Press, August 15, 1940.

  27. Bogart statement quoted in “Hollywood Stars Accused as Reds Before Grand Jury,” New York Times, August 15, 1940.

  28. Testimony of John L. Leech, “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States,” House of Representatives, Subcommittee of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Los Angeles, California, August 16, 1940, 1382.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Testimonies of Humphrey DeForest Bogart and John L. Leech, “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States,” 1375–85. Also testifying on behalf of Bogart was his financial adviser, Andrew Morgan Maree Jr., who handled all of the actor's signed checks, and who testified that he never saw one check go from Bogart to the Communist Party. Of course, the response to that defense by John Leech would be that many party members used fake names, or “party names,” when dealing with the Communist Party, or used cash, and thus he would not expect a signed check in Bogart's name.

  31. Testimony of Philip Dunne, “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States.”

  32. Among other contemporaneous accounts, see “Dies Clears 3 Actors of Being Communist Sympathizers,” Washington Evening Star, August 21, 1940; and “Dies Clears Four Accused as Reds,” New York Times, August 21, 1940.

  33. See “… Says Reds Sought Hollywood Cash,” New York Times, August 7, 1940; and “Film Stars Aided Reds, Jury Charges,” Washington Times Herald, August 15, 1940.

  34. This list is also included in a report filed by the Los Angeles division of the FBI, submitted November 14, 1950, which is located in Bogart's FBI file, file no. 100–15732, 21.

  35. See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0822034/bio, retrieved August 12, 2009.

  36. See Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, 93, 102–4.

  37. Through a FOIA request, I received approximately three hundred pages of documents from the FBI on October 23, 2009.

  38. David Platt, “Bogart: Anti-Fascist Film Hero,” Daily Worker, October 15, 1944, 15.

  39. See also David Platt, “Bogart and Bacall Endorse a Contest,” Daily Worker, July 11, 1951.

  40. Duchovnay, Humphrey Bogart: A Bio-Bibliography, 198–99.

  41. Ibid.

  42. A key note: Ronald Reagan personally liked Bogart and did not suggest anywhere in his first memoir, Where's the Rest of Me? that Bogie was a Communist or Communist sympathizer, as Reagan had done for other Hollywood Reds. Rather, Reagan noted that the members of the Committee for the First Amendment who flew to Washington from Hollywood were recruited by Communists not because they were fellow Communists but because they were “suckers.” Of course, by this point, Bogart could have long since left the party or abandoned any sympathies from the early 1930s. See Reagan, Where's the Rest of Me? 85–86, 100–1, 186, and (especially) 200. Reagan, obviously, ended up moving much farther politically than did Bogart. Then again, Bogart died nearly fifty years earlier. Interestingly, the two men were in a similar spot politically in 1952: Reagan was still a Democrat but supported the Republican presidential nominee, Dwight Eisenhower. Bogart, meanwhile, considered supporting Eisenhower, but his very liberal wife, Lauren Bacall, persuaded him to campaign for Democrat Adlai Stevenson. See Duchovnay, Humphrey Bogart: A Bio-Bibliography, 29; and Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father, 140–43.

  Author's Note

  This book was not motivated by a desire to stir up controversy. The decision to write the book came well before the meteoric presidential rise of Barack Obama, which shocked not only me but, no doubt, even Obama's own supporters—and certainly Democrats like Hillary Clinton. (In fact, my most recent book prior to this one, published in 2007, was on Senator Clinton, whom I expected to be our president today, or at least the party's 2008 presidential nominee.)

  Rather, this project was a reaction to the declassification of vast reams of evidence unavailable (even unimaginable) to scholars who studied Communism and the Cold War as recently as the late 1990s. Most notable was the release of files from the Comintern Archives on CPUSA. The Library of Congress now houses hundreds of reels of microfiche from these files—and as noted, these represent only a fragment of the full Comintern collection, which remains
in Moscow. In addition to these essential resources are holdings by the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, the Hoover Institution, New York University's Tamiment Library, and several presidential libraries. Adding to that, at midnight on December 31, 2006, the FBI declassified hundreds of millions of pages of secret Cold War documents on people suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. The New York Times called it a “Cinderella moment” for researchers. Other important archives have been neglected, such as those of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which for decades has translated media reports from Communist countries. And that isn't even a complete list. So expansive is this material that one could spend decades poring over it and even then touch only a small portion of what is on the shelves.

  When I was already engaged in this kind of research for other works on the Cold War, but on a much smaller scale, I constantly came across snippets of intriguing material, such as the May 1983 KGB document on Senator Ted Kennedy. Sometimes these documents (including the Kennedy memo) were sent to me by other researchers. Confirming their authenticity usually required digging deep into various historical archives, some long buried. Every visit required yet another visit, which brought yet another finding. Initial short visits became long-term excavations.

  Excavations, like any archaeological dig, eventually yield not just broken pottery but also smashed skulls and bones. That was especially true in this case, since Communism produced more than a hundred million corpses in its wake in the twentieth century. I found further examples of unrecorded Communist criminality and brutality.

  And it was that unprecedented violation of the sanctity and dignity of human life that motivated—actually, demanded—a response. It demanded this book. Communism produced the single greatest documentable human-rights atrocity in history. That is why I care about this issue so much, and why I think others should as well. That is why I did this book.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people I would like to thank for their help that I hesitate out of fear that I will surely forget a name or two who deserve to be commended.

  First off, I'm grateful to Peter Schweizer, who, like me, first got noticed through works on Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War. Peter and I have become good friends. A few years ago we did a book together on the Reagan presidency, an edited volume titled The Reagan Legacy: Assessing the Man and His Presidency (2005). We vowed to do another book together when the time seemed right. This book began as that project. We were both doing archival research on the Cold War, moving along the same path, and we both saw the need for this book. We came to this concept together, and began pursuing the work as a project through the Hoover Institution, where both of us are fellows. Unfortunately, Peter's success elsewhere caught up with him: the demand for him as an author overwhelmed him. Soon, he was under contract to produce several (significant) books simultaneously, with yet more around the corner. Thus, he had to withdraw from this project as we approached the writing stage. Still, his counsel and input during the conceptual and research stages was indispensable.

  Likewise, I thank the good folks at the Hoover Institution, particularly John Raisian, Deborah Ventura, and Stephen Langlois. Among other things, they provided the administrative and accounting assistance as I sent in every record and grouping of receipts from every trip to the Library of Congress and wherever else. They were always kind and helpful.

  As a professor at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, I'm blessed with an abundance of wonderful students eager to help with research. Some of them were my student assistants, whereas others were students in classes who stopped by to see what I was researching and whether they could help. Here's where I most fear missing someone who should be acknowledged, but I will give it my best shot: Matt Costlow, Rachel (Bovard) Latta, Jonathan Riddle, Anthony Maneiro, Emily Hughes, Jessica VanDervort, Doug El Sanadi, Dan Hanson, Glen Hiler, Steve Sweet, Melissa Borza, Daniel McKrell, Dustin Heath, Julie Fox, Elle Speicher, Nicole Randazzo, Bethany Peck, David Kilburn, Brittany Pizor, Andrew Kloes, Betsy Christian, Stephen Wong, Silas Finnegan, Jordan Koschei, Sean Morris, Walter “Soren” Kreider, and Andrea Fellersen. Melinda Haring, a former student, returned from an extended stay in the former Soviet Union to suggest the photo that became the cover art for this book—no doubt moved by the spirit.

  Among the Grove City College students, most critical was Matt Costlow, who was my go-to guy for just about everything with this book, especially in the final weeks of furious fact-checking, and who is generally a fabulous student assistant and young man. Also valuable were Dan Hanson, who reads Russian and was always extremely reliable; Rachel (Bovard) Latta, who was a crucial researcher here as she has been on some of my previous books (and who refused any pay in return); Anthony Maneiro, who, among other things, dug and dug until he found the Frank Marshall Davis Honolulu Record columns from 1949–50—no small achievement; and Emily Hughes, who worked on-site in Hawaii to confirm the electronic versions of the Davis columns that Anthony had found, as she located the original columns on microfiche at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Hamilton Main Library. How many authors can find this kind of support? Grove City College is a gift—from God and for God—that keeps on giving.

  Also from Grove City College (aside from my students), I thank President Dick Jewell, Provost Bill Anderson, Dean John Sparks, Assistant Dean Dave Ayers, colleagues Michael Coulter and Marv Folkertsma, Diane Grundy and her superb library staff (especially Conni Shaw and Joyce Kebert), and my splendid team at the Center for Vision and Values: Lee Wishing, Brenda Vinton, Ray Speicher, John and Kathy Van Til, and Cory Shreckengost. Without Lee and Brenda, and their superb, devoted service, I would not have had the time to write this book, period. Cory also helped with research, as he has with past books. He is a brilliant young man, a most dependable worker, and himself a gifted author who needs a break from a publisher looking for an excellent partnership. Cory is capable of original, nicely written work.

  I should add that the Center for Vision and Values has become the engine for research among Grove City College faculty that its founders—Dick Jewell, John Moore, Chuck Dunn, John Sparks, Lee Wishing, and Bill Anderson, among others—originally envisioned. At least two of the chapters (plus several sections) in this book began as white papers or conference papers for the Center for Vision and Values. I encourage readers of this book to visit the center's website, www.faithandfreedom.com for an excellent collection of scholarly material. I'm deeply appreciative of Phil Gasiewicz for his support of the center and for our friendship.

  Outside of Grove City College, I'm grateful for the help of Thomas Whittaker, a local home-school student, and his family. Likewise, three of my own home-schooled children offered input or interest—Paul, Mitch, and Amanda. I also thank our neighbor, Jim Covert, for his interest and encouragement throughout the process, as well as his friendship to my family. This is true for many other friends as well, including Tod and Andrea Reiser, Joe and Sharon Harrilla, and Father Mark Hoffman and all the other special people from Beloved Disciple Catholic Church. (Here again, there are too many to begin to list them all.) And much farther away from Grove City, I remain blessed by my special friendship with Bill Clark, who resides in Paso Robles, California, and Herb Meyer, who is in the San Juan Islands off the West Coast.

  Also there with friendship, knowledge, and time-tested, battle-earned wisdom were the old salts, my cadre of Cold War veterans: Charlie Wiley, Arnold Beichman, Stan Evans, and Herb Romerstein. Herb, especially, was a fountain of information, able to answer almost any question on Communism with the immediacy of an e-mail or a phone call. When the likes of Herb and Charlie and Stan leave this world, an entire library of information will go with them—to the great detriment of historical knowledge. In fact, in that respect, the Beichman Library has since closed, with Arnold Beichman passing away in February 2010. Both Herb and Arnold were so helpful, and such giant co
ntributors to the cause over the past fifty years, that I dedicated this book to them. Few men in the twentieth century battled so many Communists and suffered so many dupes.

  Similarly, Cliff Kincaid, Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and Tim Graham of the Media Research Center were available to answer questions on certain key figures in this book. Cliff is tireless and fearless in his research on figures long past but still relevant.

  I also had allies who stepped out of nowhere, some not even knowing of my latest research, to offer me old books and documents they had held forever, including thick volumes from House and Senate committees and subcommittees from the 1930s to the 1970s. They include Lawrence S. Katz, Don and Carolyn Thomson, and Marjorie Provan. Their materials were indispensable. For that, I likewise salute all those old-school Democrats who ran the committees who exposed this information, back long, long ago when the Democratic Party was the party of Truman, JFK, and even Ronald Reagan.

  Of course, I'm especially grateful to ISI Books for publishing this book. I've always admired ISI Books and the intellectual gems it produces, which no other publisher bothers to touch. The brilliant addition of Jed Donahue as the new editor lifts the product line to an even higher level. As much as I respect ISI Books, it was the hiring of Jed that sealed the deal for me. I've learned firsthand that Jed is a superb editor—truly the best in the business. Also from ISI Books, I thank the publisher, the great Ken Cribb; Christian Tappe, assistant editor and office manager; Chris Michalski, sales and marketing director; and Jennifer Fox, managing editor, who did the layout for this book—an enormously complicated endeavor that involved juggling dozens, even hundreds, of e-mails, photographs, and old documents.