Make Believe

smile on her face. I was reminded of the indomitable Katherine Cornell and her usual preposterous stage entrances, whether called for or not in the script. Max made the introductions while Alice slid into a canary-yellow wing chair opposite me. I wondered when she planned to start blinking.

I didn’t know what I expected, but not this prim, matronly-looking woman, dressed now in a simple floral- print housedress with two rather ungainly red bows stuck indecorously to her bodice, a dress that clashed with the yellow of her chair. Hardly Hollywood-more Emporia, Kansas, the farmer’s wife at a Grange supper of pork-and- beans that followed a Methodist quilting bee. George Kaufman, always privy to transcontinental gossip though most was spurious and definitely scurrilous, had informed me that she was a notorious black widow whose rich gangland husband had died under mysterious circumstances. I’d expected some slicked-over movie confection, much too young for Max, a vacuum slathered in a harlot’s glossy lipstick and dime-store rouge.

Alice, to the contrary, wore no makeup save the dimmest hint of light powder on her cheeks and a faint tint of apricot lipstick, decorous and flattering. With my own bright red lipstick and rouged cheeks, my head of permed white curls, I played the madam. The near-septuagenarian out on the town. Not only that, but Alice was small and chubby, with a cherubic face that held round walnut-brown eyes, a little too large, so that she seemed startled awake. She was the kind of woman you’d see depicted on a box of laundry detergent or baking powder. Or the friendly if annoying neighbor in an Andy Hardy movie. Mickey Rooney would beg her for candy.

I found myself liking her. She had a thin, sweet smile that reminded me of friends connecting after long absence.

“We finally meet,” she whispered.

“Can you believe I got married, Edna?” Max got up to pour his wife a drink. Not wine, I noticed, but iced tea from a pitcher.

“I was a tad surprised.” I was stunned, truth be told.

Alice looked at him with affection. “I had to convince him.”

“She asked me,” Max confided.

Alice grinned. “Otherwise we’d still be going Dutch after late Friday night suppers at Chasen’s. Or still standing at the juke box at Sneaky Pete’s on Sunset Strip, dropping nickels in to hear ‘I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover’ for the hundredth time.”

“No, it was ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside.’ Esther Williams.” His eyes gleamed. “I love that song.” He took a sip of wine, rolled his tongue over his lips. A deep sigh. “Edna, seriously, this visit, though a pleasure, wasn’t… necessary.”

“Of course it was.” Emphatic, quick.

“I’m small potatoes in this whole political mess…”

“Well, you’re my potato.” I grinned. “Though these days a very hot potato.”

Max had long been involved with different productions of Show Boat dating back to the Hammerstein and Kern Broadway hit of 1927 that ran for 572 performances and was almost immediately revived. He’d been hired to perform his wonderful magic on MGM’s latest Technicolor extravaganza, the much- touted remake starring screen heartthrobs Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, as well as, scandalously, Ava Gardner as Julie LaVerne, the tragic mulatto. The movie was now finished and eagerly anticipated. Previews in April and May in out-of-the-way theaters throughout California had been favorable, indeed, downright rapturous.

I was cynical, of course-the two earlier films had made me squirm, and I fully expected the same reaction this time around. Bowdlerized, slapdash renderings of my romantic saga, piecemeal and suspect. With his history, Max had been hired to orchestrate the music, and, typical of Max, he’d worked tirelessly on this new Metro release, his loving touch all over the production. In a letter he claimed it would be a superb movie, though I winced at that- but finally Max had written that L. B. Mayer or Dore Schary-he didn’t know which blustery mogul-had quietly removed his name from the film credits. In fact, he’d been cruelly walked off the grounds.

“I’ve been blacklisted,” Max wrote me. “I’m the new Hollywood leper in fantasy land.”

Hollywood, sadly, was awash in fear and reprisal, a noisome cancer eating into the rarefied industry of make believe. Back in 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, under the leadership of a pudgy martinet named J. Parnell Thomas, had begun investigating Communist influence in the movie industry, particularly among scriptwriters. Hollywood folks, stunned, had been compelled to head East to testify to past or present affiliation with the Communist Party. A garish public-relations nightmare. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? was the nightmarish mantra.

At first Hollywood fought back with protests and meetings, buoyed by support from the studios. But then public opinion shifted as the gossip columnists roared their disapproval, and Hollywood bigwigs ran scared. Heads tumbled. Careers died. Lives ruined. What resulted was the Hollywood Ten, now bound for prison and career suicide.

Just this past year, with the specter of jowly and stentorian Senator Joe McCarthy waving undocumented lists of Reds in government before Republican women’s clubs in the heartland, as well as a new round of attacks from a reconstituted HUAC, Max reacted. Bothered by the spectacle, he had to say something. Of course, he knew Communists, men who’d joined when it was a party dedicated to fighting fascism in Germany and Italy, idealistic souls who’d recanted after the Stalin purges. In fact, he was a close friend of two of the Hollywood Ten: John Howard Lawson, whom I knew as a serious if windbaggish playwright, and Dalton Trumbo, a brilliant scriptwriter we all called Doc.” Good men, and loyal Americans.

Max had penned an indignant but I thought beautifully crafted letter to the Hollywood Reporter, articulating the case for First Amendment rights of the accused, a heartfelt cry for balance and fairness and-well, it didn’t matter. That simple letter, forceful and intelligent, earned him the label of Communist, fifth columnist, fellow traveler, card-carrying Red, a betrayer of American democracy. An endless stream of glib, dismissive phrases. A brutal attack in Myron Fagan’s muckraking Red Treason in Hollywood.

Reprinted here and there, quoted by a slap-happy, Red-baiting Walter Winchell, referred to by Jack Warner before some committee, the letter branded Max a danger. His timing was bad. The Rosenberg trial was bold-face, front-page news. The Alger Hiss debacle still sizzled. The Russian A-bomb threat frightened everyone. No matter that Max was a good man; condemned in the local press, named by Red Channels in their muckraking columns, he became estranged from both friends and foes. Clients drifted away. Phones went unanswered. Max became the unwitting poster boy of the moment: the veteran entertainment insider who supposedly answered the phone when Moscow called.

I’d written that I’d be visiting him-to lend support.

Max now seemed eager to change the subject. “Metro asked you to the premiere of Show Boat?”

I swelled up, indignant. “Not exactly a heartfelt invitation…just a courtesy. No thank you! I’ve already refused. I made a point of it. I don’t like their treatment of you, and I’ve told them so loud and clear. I came to see you. Spend time with you, go out for dinner. Show Boat has nothing to do with my visit.” The West Coast premiere was scarcely a week away, and MGM knew I was in town. I’d heard they were worried I’d make a scene. Some of the scenes I’d made over the years were the stuff of legend.

Alice spoke up. “They’ll hound you. Their rep, a guy named Desmond Peake, the man who axed Max from the studio, called here to get information from us.”

“I know. There are phone messages filling up my cubby hole at the Ambassador.”

“He’s a real shark, that one,” Max noted.

“I will see them, of course, whoever them is. They’ve scheduled a private showing of the movie.” I bristled. “Max, I simply don’t like the fact that your considerable contribution to Show Boat is going uncredited. A horrible word: ‘uncredited.’ So dismissive and unfair.”

“It doesn’t matter to me.” Max shrugged.

Hotly. “Oh, but it does.”

Alice nodded. “Justice.” She wagged her finger at her husband.

“Exactly,” I echoed. “I detest a witch-hunt, and this one is lasting too long and is too insidious. I don’t understand this…this madness. I gather that gossip queen Hedda Hopper is on an anti-Red tear, even smearing you in her columns. ‘Moscow Max’-right? Snide and catty.”

“I’m famous.” Max raised his eyebrows. “Edna, everyone in Hollywood is desperate to be wildly famous.” A