blue-blooded board of the Hudson-Hyde Trust give a good goddamn about writers? As far as these genteel gentiles are concerned, writers are what Harry Cohn called them: ‘schmucks with typewriters.’ In the same class with nannies and broads—almost as useful and much more expendable. I have to fight these guys every time I pay a writer what he’s worth. They’re schmucks with airplanes—big private airplanes—who come out here when their wives are planning charity balls and tell me which broads to send up to the hotel. Before I get paid, they get laid. And that, on top of our profits, is how we finance great American popular art like yours. Believe me, Jake, V.Z.A.’s got friends in Washington and he wants to keep ’em. What a
macher
he is with the Republican Party I don’t have to tell you. I’ve begged him to let me keep one writer after another. Frank Ford, Eric Riswold, Burt Allen, Archie Collier, Dan Salander, Joel Kanin—top guys, the best in the business. He axed every single one. Not to mention actors, actresses, producers, directors. My orders are very strict: ‘Get rid of the stink of pink or we get rid of you.’ Deals? Forget it.”
But Engel, as Jake well knew, was lying. He’d been allowed to keep Lance Drake, a huge Marathon star whose last two pictures had grossed more than ten million dollars worldwide. Nobody had had to work very hard to convince Van Zandvoort Aldrich about the importance of keeping Marathon’s cash cow. Aldrich had called Dick Nixon in Washington and promised a big contribution to the young man’s next campaign if he could persuade his colleagues on the Committee to let the Drake matter drop; then he’d called Engel and dictated a letter in which Drake would say how sorry he was to have been duped in his young and innocent days into giving money to the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. In exchange for the letter, Engel and Drake got no publicity and a dropped subpoena.
But Lance Drake was a major movie star, not a screenwriter.
“You do realize what kind of position this puts Dinah in, don’t you? She hates the idea of informing, but she doesn’t want me to lose my job. Can’t you say something to Aldrich? What kind of a threat could she be? She’s just a
housewife
, for Christ’s sake.”
Engel slumped back in his chair. “No can do, my boy.”
“Jesus Christ, Irv, how can I let my wife go to jail for a year? We’ve got two little kids at home. Have you thought of that?”
“Did I say anything about Dinah’s going to jail? Listen, Jake—” he said,leaning forward. “If I thought Dinah should take the First or the Fifth, by God I’d tell you. Believe it or not, I’ve advised some of my own people to do it—even though I knew I’d have to fire them, and told them so.
I have never demanded that someone who works for me double-cross his own conscience—
”
Where had he heard
that
line before? Jake wondered. Later on he remembered reading it in Engel’s open letter in the trades, during the hearings on the Ten.
“Jake,” Engel continued, “you’ve got to look at it this way. Dinah’s not the one with the
talent
in this case.
You
are. For Christ’s sake, why should
we
be deprived of
you
—a very hot creative talent, right in your prime—just because you happen to be married to a woman—a
wonderful
woman, Dinah is one of my
favorite
people in the whole world, an absolute
paragon
of what a Hollywood wife should be, an attractive, no-bullshit dame utterly devoted to you and your two beautiful children
—but
, let’s say it now, out loud, a woman who was, if we have to face it, at one time, like a lot of other very young people of goodwill who didn’t know any better, a member of the Communist Party?”
He pulled on an earlobe and cocked his head before adding: “Unless, um, she’s still got some kind of attachment to it?”
“Hell no. She left years ago.”
“How many years ago is ‘years ago’?”
“During the war—before we were
macher
he is with the Republican Party I don’t have to tell you. I’ve begged him to let me keep one writer after another. Frank Ford, Eric Riswold, Burt Allen, Archie Collier, Dan Salander, Joel Kanin—top guys, the best in the business. He axed every single one. Not to mention actors, actresses, producers, directors. My orders are very strict: ‘Get rid of the stink of pink or we get rid of you.’ Deals? Forget it.”
But Engel, as Jake well knew, was lying. He’d been allowed to keep Lance Drake, a huge Marathon star whose last two pictures had grossed more than ten million dollars worldwide. Nobody had had to work very hard to convince Van Zandvoort Aldrich about the importance of keeping Marathon’s cash cow. Aldrich had called Dick Nixon in Washington and promised a big contribution to the young man’s next campaign if he could persuade his colleagues on the Committee to let the Drake matter drop; then he’d called Engel and dictated a letter in which Drake would say how sorry he was to have been duped in his young and innocent days into giving money to the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. In exchange for the letter, Engel and Drake got no publicity and a dropped subpoena.
But Lance Drake was a major movie star, not a screenwriter.
“You do realize what kind of position this puts Dinah in, don’t you? She hates the idea of informing, but she doesn’t want me to lose my job. Can’t you say something to Aldrich? What kind of a threat could she be? She’s just a
housewife
, for Christ’s sake.”
Engel slumped back in his chair. “No can do, my boy.”
“Jesus Christ, Irv, how can I let my wife go to jail for a year? We’ve got two little kids at home. Have you thought of that?”
“Did I say anything about Dinah’s going to jail? Listen, Jake—” he said,leaning forward. “If I thought Dinah should take the First or the Fifth, by God I’d tell you. Believe it or not, I’ve advised some of my own people to do it—even though I knew I’d have to fire them, and told them so.
I have never demanded that someone who works for me double-cross his own conscience—
”
Where had he heard
that
line before? Jake wondered. Later on he remembered reading it in Engel’s open letter in the trades, during the hearings on the Ten.
“Jake,” Engel continued, “you’ve got to look at it this way. Dinah’s not the one with the
talent
in this case.
You
are. For Christ’s sake, why should
we
be deprived of
you
—a very hot creative talent, right in your prime—just because you happen to be married to a woman—a
wonderful
woman, Dinah is one of my
favorite
people in the whole world, an absolute
paragon
of what a Hollywood wife should be, an attractive, no-bullshit dame utterly devoted to you and your two beautiful children
—but
, let’s say it now, out loud, a woman who was, if we have to face it, at one time, like a lot of other very young people of goodwill who didn’t know any better, a member of the Communist Party?”
He pulled on an earlobe and cocked his head before adding: “Unless, um, she’s still got some kind of attachment to it?”
“Hell no. She left years ago.”
“How many years ago is ‘years ago’?”
“During the war—before we were
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