N. BUCHWALD
writes on the
death of
John Garfield

le

P8GW tiie Geter ohn)
= tay tila before he became a

°Us movie star. We met at
® theatre and at public meet-
ee Following my review of
dige his shows, he sent me
ea’ appreciative letter. He
ever €N a splendid young man;

Yone loved him, A power-
’ dynamically vibrant actor,
eNeeg cr Whelmed movie audi-
terteatinte his dramatic charac-
COnsta ©n of the role Hollywood
the ntly forced him to play—

*mbittered youth striking

ey tnst a friendless, hostile
“ronment.

nia though he played that
tion % the screen with distinc-
’ M personal life he played
ath Successfully, played it so
tea ‘deed that his failure
him. When it came to the

Cj
MeO. the great crisis, he
ileg

AR

ay 2 Gattield did not die, He
toe Murdered. Of that, there
© No doubt. He was mur-

by the political terror, the
Sphere of

Yereg
ath,

int inquisition and

_inidation which has, sur-
he like a lynch gang, the
fs, ana American actors, writ-
; Other intellectuals.

tgs to his doctor, Gar-
nig ®d of a heart attack.
the aly, tha t’s probably
&y 5 it is more accurate to
1». died of heartbreak, of

teay
"Of pain and—cowardice.

Garfield was not the
a reactionaries tried
sts | fat. Scores of anti-
in 1 the arts had preceded

Sing questioned by the
an Activities Commit-

Una.

Merj

on. o™ against the artists
1Beoy, Ywood, the ,More cour-
*rmed a resistance, The
4 Nine defied the

*fs, refusing to an-
ay i Westions on their po-
Fn becg AVictions, They refused
PF lleag te informers, to name

‘ . “classic”? question,
dae’Mbey W, or were you ever,

“yor of the Communist
®Y answered proudly,
ala: cqpemocratic Americans
aye No ane hone of your busi-
‘thet Westie: has a right to ask
ths Coreg ey They sacrificed
Hees Glenity’ ct they retained

Nd honor. .

PR
y Ut thy :
8 n Garfielq was scared,

Dag V8 :
ag Sy
Ae is at to repudiate -his
Ine ® °rd as an enemy of

Nsty ;
Metea *Peating what he was
© someone dull-

e
‘Binge an had been active

The star
turns yellow

(shown here
campaign to
save price. controls in the U.S.)
was scared. He was ready to
repudiate his past, his record as

“John Garfield

participating in a

* o 2]
an enemy of fascism. . .

/

minded, he said what the politi-
cal pogromists demanded of
him: “I hate communism... -
It is a danger to culture....
It is a danger to world peace.”’

He said it, but how it shamed
him. How he wriths at the
utterance of these lies! How he
suffered at the shock of his own
ugly capitulation to the red-
baiters, his servile obedience of
them!

Unhappy Julie then tried to
save himself with a delusion.
He tried to tell himself he could
be a coward, and still’ be hon-
orable, he could betray his past
and salvage his future, he could

harm his friends but still hold

the respect of his honest col-
leagues, He did all this to pro-
tect his career. At the same time,
in a desperate effort to save
his honor, he refused to name
names, and pretended ignorance
of his associations with well-
known anti-fascists.

his attempts at fence-
The

But
straddling’ were fruitless,
inquisitors wereé dissatisfied.
Garfield’s career went by the
boards. He was told that declar-
ations of anti-Communism were
not enough. He must become a
stoolpigeon, an agent of AE:
witch-hunters. Unless he did, he
was through as an actor.

And Julie Garfield writhed.
His appearance before the Un-
American A(tctivities ‘Committee
earned him the contempt of his
best friends. It did not earn him
a guarantee’ that his career
would continue, Instead, the in-

quisitors threatened him with
charges of perjury, For a year
and a half, the torment went
Hollywood blacklisted him.
His career was finished, unless
he yielded to the pressure, un-
less he abandoned all scruples.

on,

John Garfield was 39 when
he died. A day before he died,
he consulted with the officials
of'a “‘respectable’’ Jewish organ-
ization —- the Anti-Defamation
League of B’nai B’rith. He want-
ed their advice on his ‘‘rehabili-
tation,” on some sure way to
prove that he wasn’t a Com-
munist. The B’nai B'rith offi-
cials helped him to prepare a
“personal manifesto” in which
he agreed to be an informer.
The text of his “repentance”
statement was very artfully de-

The Don

By RALPH PARKER
MOSCOW

AISED by three powerful
pumping stations to the crest
of the watershed, the waters

‘of the Don are now flowing down
’ toward the Volga.

The two mighty rivers will
meet south-west of Stalingrad.

There are nine sets of locks
on the Volga’s side of the “‘stair-
case.” During the-past few days
engineers have been bringing
the Volga’s water stretch by
stretch up the staircase. :

Somewhere between the fifth
and ninth locks on this 62-mile
long canal, the juncture the Rus-
sian people have dreamed of
since the time of Peter the First,
will occur, in fact, will already
have occurred by the time ‘this
appears in print.

Abnormally low spring floods

' rigation

vised. But Julie could not make
the descent into complete moral
bankruptcy. Instead, he died. .. .

e

And Julie was not the only
one to go like this, A similar
journey was made by the fine
Negro actor, Canada Lee, who
died just a few weeks before,
only 45 years old, at.a time when
he was just approaching the
peak of his ability as an actor.

Poor Canada Lee! How he
hated the enemies and oppres-
sors of his people! He seethed
with anger and pain at every
occurrence of lynching, at every
terrorist action against hig peo-
ple. And his people loved him,
and were proud of Canada Lee
and his cultural
ments,

accomplish-

But he too lacked the strength,
the courage, to stand up against
the witchhunters. When he was
accused of being a Communist,
he could not survive the ordeal.
He denied that he was ever a
member of the Communist party,
thereby acknowledging the right
of his torturers to put such ques-
tions to him. He went further,
declaring that Communism is
the embodiment of all evils” But
the witchhunters weren’t con-
tent.

They forced Canada Lee to
attack the greatest artist of our
time, the noble fighter for free-
dom, the great representative of
the Negro people, Paul Robeson,

“whom Lee himself worshipped,
_Lee’s denunciation of Robeson

was an act of turpitude which
won him a temporary respite;

he was again allowed to make ,

films, and was permitted to go
to South Africa to make an “ex-
otic” movie about life there. He
‘came back, stunned and demor-
alized by what he had seen
there of ‘white supremacy,”

He tried to do two things at
once: to maintain his honor as
a man and loyal son of his peo-
ple, and to lick the boots of his
persecutors. It was too much for
heart to bear. And like John
Garfield, Canada Lee died sud-
denly Of a heart attack.

The intellectual lynchers can
boast of other victims. Five
months ago, in London, J. Ed-
ward Bromberg died suddenly at
the age of 48. But Joe died, as
he lived. He defied the witch-
hunters, neither renouncing his
past nor informing on his
friends. He paid for his cour-
age with his career and his life,
but his memory is an inspira-

tion to his friends and to all

artists,

Another victim of the red-
baiters was Mady Christians, an
actress who died last year, age
51. At the very peak of her
abilities, she was blacklisted, be-
cause it was said of her that
she consorted with Communists.
She didn’t fall to her knees; she
remained brave and courageous,
while her heart held out. She
Was a martyr to the cause of
artistic liberty.

S

' There are those opportunist
artists, to whom the abandon-
ment of their honor and artistic
integrity is a small price to pay
in exchange for commercial se-
curity, There are types like Elia
Kazan, who took an advertise-
ment in the newspapers to an-
nounce, proudly, with a blasting
of trumpets, his “loyalty,” to
spit upon his own past activities
in life and in theatre, to become
an informer, to join the lynch-
ers as one of their own.

And Clifford Odets, the same
Clifford Odets who wrote such
a moving requiem on the death
of Joe Bromberg—he too yield-
ed to the witchhunters, became
an informer, a traitor to the
cause of human freedom and.
democracy.

The Kazans and the Odets
have brought themselves back
into the good graces. of the
movie magnates and the politi-
pogromists, They have
“saved” their But of
What value are their careers
now, when everyone of decent
and honorable stature recoils
from them in shame, in disgust?

¢€al
careers.

But while they besmirch their
professions, there are others.
whose courage and valor redeem
the arts and brighten the sky.
There are liberals like Lillian
Hellman and Elmer Rice
who have courageously  de-
nounced the assassins of. the.
free and creative mind. And
there are too anti-fascists, like.
‘John Howard Lawson, Morris
Carnovsky, Albert Maltz, Sam-
uel Ornitz, and Many, many.
others, who haven’t deferred to

_the persecutors, but who are

continuing with their artistic ac—
tivities and bringing their art.
directly to the people, just as
Paul Robeson is doing, and How-
ard Fast, as many other victims.
of the Smith Act and the ideo-
logical terrorism.

In the light of their activities,
we can only regret that the
\names of these splendid people.
do not include those of John.
Garfield and Canada Lee. They
fell in battle, but they did not
fall as heroes,

flows into the Volga

retarded the filling up of the
Tsimiliansk Sea, a 750 square
mile reservoir lying between the
Volga-Don canal and Rostov.

But an emergency pumping
station was rigged up to fill the
irrigation canal running from
the reservoir into the parched
steppe. :

This year it is proposed to ir-
rigate half a million acres of
potentially fertile soil, Central
Asia and Caucasia have sent ir-
experts to help the
farmers. The state has offered
to pay half the farmers’ cost in
land .improvement measures,
lending them the rest interest
free.

Within the next five years, an
area half the size of Vancouver
Island will benefit from the new
irrigation schemes,

The last touches are now be-

ing put to the navigation route
thorugh the ship canal across
the Tsimiliansk Sea to the Don’s
mouth,

° é
All the places have been book-
ed on passenger ships sailing on.
June 1 from Moscow to Rostov,

The opening of the canal .
means the linking of al] Europ-
ean Russia’s seas and rivers into
a single transport system. d

Donbas coal, Caucasian man-
ganese ore and fruit and Kuban
wheat will henceforth be brought
by water to Central Asia; tim-
ber, chemical products and oil
will reach the south via the
Volga-Don canal.

To take full advantage of the
new waterways, ports are being
built at three. places on the Don
while at the mouth a new sea-
port is being constructed,

‘ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 6, 1952 — PAGE 9