The Name Is Familiar

The Big-Name Fellow Traveler was a common figure of the 19405 who cheerfully threw his prestige behind party-line causes, then shouted in headline outrage when his motives were questioned. Largely because of hard-plugging congressional investigation, the Big-Name racket has all but petered out. Last week, in Manhattan, the House Committee on Un-American Activities heard some latter-day Big-Name testimony.

As its first star, the committee presented Artie Shaw, the widely read, widely wed (seven times) clarinetist and bandleader. Shaw flew in from a one-night stand in Little Rock, Ark., for a two-hour stand before the committee. The committee's subpoena, blurbed Shaw, "was like a breath of fresh air," because he had plenty to clear up.

Duped. After coming out of World War II in 1944 a sick and disillusioned man (he led a Navy orchestra in the Pacific), Shaw became a "dupe" for Communist-front organizations, he testified. He joined the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, became "a pretty hot" member of the executive council, then chairman of the committee; he endorsed the World Peace Congress and the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace. Said Shaw: "I joined organizations with words I was interested in, like 'democracy' and 'peace' . . . For a while I was a sucker for signing things ... I wouldn't sign anything today unless I had seven lawyers and this committee's approval."

Despite his stellar role as a dupe, said Shaw, he had never joined the Communist Party. He was invited to join in 1946, assumed a "fantastic alias" to get into four "cloak & dagger" meetings, finally decided that he did not like the party's denial of free speech. Wiping tears from his eyes with both hands, Shaw said he had never meant to be disloyal. Said he: "I want to do everything I can, as I always have, to defend American institutions and American folkways. This country has been very kind to me. I started out as a minority member of a poor family and I have come a long way ..."

Disillusioned. Choreographer (The King and I, Call Me Madam) Jerome Robbins testified that he had joined the Communist Party in 1944, quit it in 1947 a disillusioned man. He recalled that two other big names of the theater were members of his cell: Playwrights Jerome (My Sister Eileen) and Edward (Those Endearing Young Charms) Chodorov.

A big cinema producer had a story too. Robert (All the King's Men) Rossen testified that he was a member of the Communist Party from 1937 to 1947, and contributed no less than $40,000 to its causes. He recalled the names of 57 other Hollywood characters (most of them had been named before) whom he had known as Communists. In 1951, Rossen refused to tell the committee about his Communist past. Since then, he said, he had decided that he should speak out for "the security and safety of the nation."

Shocked. Gravel-voiced Lionel Stander, long type-cast by the movies as the rundown heel, strode into the hearing room with two luscious blondes and a lawyer, demanded that the television lights (for films, not live TV) be turned off. "I appear on television for entertainment or philanthropic purposes only, and this is neither," he rasped.

With his eyes (one green and one brown) glaring, Stander roared that the real subversives in entertainment are "a group of fanatics [who] would deprive artists of life, liberty and property and due process of law." When Chairman Harold Velde finally interrupted the tirade, Stander said he was shocked that the com mittee didn't want to hear about that kind of subversion. With obvious refer ence to Bandsman Shaw, he rumbled: "I'm not a dupe, dope, mope, moe or schmoe."

Stander testified that he was not a Communist that day, or the day before. But he exploded again when he was asked if he had ever been a Communist. Said he:

"You know that is a trick question. Do you think I'm a political moron? How many times will you use my name to get headlines? You know I swore to this un der oath [in 1950], and if you had any real evidence I'd be indicted . . . Just to be mentioned before this committee is like the Spanish Inquisition . . ."

Outside, he told reporters: "I never have been a Communist, but I refused to say so again to the committee because testimony of psychopaths and stool pigeons has been thrown against me, and might subject me to framed and unjustified perjury charges."

Stander's roar was at least nostalgic, for it had a fine old party-line ring.

In Boston, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee turned up two little-known scientists who had once been privy to big secrets:

CJ Philip Morrison, associate professor of physics at Cornell University, testified that he joined the Young Communist League at 19, moved into the party at 21, quit in 1940 when he was 25. In 1942, Morrison went to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bomb at Los Alamos, N. Mex. In 1945, he went to the Pacific to help ready the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. He said his break with Communism was clean, but he granted that only last month he had attended a meeting sponsored by the commie-lining American Peace Crusade in New York.

P: David Hawkins, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado (now at Harvard on a fellowship), testified that he joined the Communist Party in 1938, dropped out about two months before he went to work at Los Alamos in 1943. As the historian of the Manhattan Project, he had access to much top-secret material. Asked Indiana's Bill Jenner, committee chairman: "Did you tell any authorities in 1943 that you were a member of the Communist Party before you went to Los Alamos?" Answered Hawkins: "I did not. Nobody asked me . . . They asked me what organizations I had belonged to. I did not consider the Communist Party an organization."

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