Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

Eric Bentley edited a script out of the testimony of a number of notable actors, writers and directors who were called in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the beginning of what has come to be called the McCarthy era. Ostensibly the hearings were intended to investigate the Communist infiltration of show business. They were really designed for right-wing congressmen to enhance their status by getting photos of them bullying celebrities.

When the play was originally produced at Yale Rep in 1973, many of the people who appeared as characters in the evening were still alive. In fact, one – Zero Mostel – protested so loudly at being included in the piece that the scene featuring him defying the Committee was cut.

I know a lot about this stuff because of research I did in preparation for writing a play about the after-effects of the blacklist called The Value of Names. I knew some of the people who were victimized by the committee and had their names smeared, and I drew on some of the stories they told me for my play. So I was one of the people in the audience who got a lot of the references and knew the backstories.

I’m betting, however, that most people in a general audience don’t know who the people depicted in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? were. I doubt many of them have seen films featuring Lionel Stander and Larry Parks. For those who know their work, the effect of the play is enhanced by comparing their performances in front of the Committee to their personas in front of the camera. Parks was most famous for playing a relentlessly upbeat Al Jolson in two biopics, The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again. These should have been his ticket to major stardom, but his evident distaste of the Committee while he was bullied into cooperation damaged his career. In the play, it is agonizing to watch him beaten into submission, a far cry from his screen image. Stander generally played insolent gangsters and reporters, so it is entertaining to find him as cheerfully sarcastic resisting his inquisitors. I am guessing that the scenes depicting Parks and Stander in Are You Now hold the attention of the uninitiated, but I the scenes work on a deeper level for those who know their work.

I can’t help but wish this production had been able to figure out a way to get more of the audience up to speed about the larger lives and accomplishments of those depicted in the play. I hope some are moved to do some independent research.

The scenes largely fall into two categories. Those who resist and defy the committee, and those who cooperate and give names that they know will end up on the blacklist. The defiant ones offer particularly juicy parts, and, when I saw it, guests Jay O. Sanders (as Stander) and Bill Eugene Jones (as Paul Robeson) obviously relished the opportunity to play different brands of courage – insolence (Stander) and dignity (Robeson). Andrew McCarthy as Parks accomplished the challenging task of maintaining the audience’s sympathy even as he reluctantly capitulated to pressure. I’m sure that some fans of Guys and Dolls were disappointed that librettist Abe Burrows (played, when I saw it, by David Krumholtz) came across as an opportunistic shitheel. Looking at the names of the actors cycling into those parts, I’m sure later audiences will be as engaged as I was. They will continue to face the formidable Michael McKean as the unnamed head of the Committee.

I don’t have any information about the motives of the people who produced the play. It’s a large cast for off-Broadway and the tech is sophisticated. I can’t imagine anybody thought the production was going to make any money, though there are some famous people in the cast. Perhaps presenting this is intended as a gesture of citizenship. Currently, Republican leaders are, for the first time in years, accusing people of being Communists. It can’t escape the audience’s notice that this is an echo of the days when HUAC was doing its nasty thing.