Douglas Kennedy - The Pursuit of Happiness

He sighed a tired sigh.

'Yeah - I guess you did', he said.

'How did you find out?'

'Lawyers talk to other lawyers who talk to other lawyers who talk to...'

'I don't follow you'.

'Ever heard of Marty Morrison?'

I shook my head.

'One of the biggest corporate lawyers in the city. Ever since this blacklist crap started, Marty's firm has handled a lot of people who've been called to testify by HUAC. 'Cause it's not just the entertainment business that's been investigated. The Feds have also been poking their noses into schools, colleges, even some of the biggest companies in America. As far as they're concerned, there's a Red under every bed.

'Anyway, Marty and I have known each other since Adam. He grew up two blocks from me in Flatbush. We were at Brooklyn Law together. Though he went the Wall Street way, we've always maintained the friendship. Of course, we're constantly giving each other crap about our political differences. I always say he's the only Republican I will ever break bread with. He still calls me Eugene Debs. But he's a straight shooter. Very well connected. Someone who knows where all the bodies are buried.

'He also happens to be a big Marty Manning fan. Around a year ago, we're having lunch one day, he gets talking about some sketch he saw the previous night on Manning's show. That's when I do a little bragging and tell him that Manning's head writer - Eric Smythe - happens to be my client. Marty was actually impressed... though, of course, he had to make a joke about it: "Since when the hell has a stevedore lawyer like you been representing writers?"

'That was the only mention of your brother. A year goes by. The stuff hits the fan with NBC. Eric refuses to do the dirty on his friends. He ends getting slimed in Winchell's column. The next day, Marty rings me here. "Saw the item about your client in Winchell," he tells me. "Tough call." Then he asks if there's anything he can do to help, because he knows all those assholes on the HUAC committee. He also thinks they're opportunistic trash - not that he'd ever admit that publicly.

'Anyway, I thanked Marty for the offer of help - but told him that your brother wasn't looking for a deal... and certainly wouldn't suddenly become a stoolie after all the damage that the Winchell piece had done. So, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.

'Then, of course, four weeks later, Eric was dead. And...'

He stopped. He twitched his lips. He avoided my stare. 'What I'm about to say to you might really anger you. Because it was none of my business. But...'

He stopped again.

'Go on', I said.

'I was so goddamn upset... enraged... after Eric died that I made a call to Marty. "You can do me a favor," I said. "Get me the name of the bastard who shopped my client." And he did'.

'Jack Malone?'

'Yeah: Jack Malone'.

'How did your friend find out?'

'It wasn't hard. According to Federal law, anything revealed under testimony at a HUAC hearing - or during an interview with an agent of the FBI - cannot be printed or publicly disseminated. But there are three former G-men - backed by this right-wing supermarket magnate named Alfred Kohlberg and some super-patriotic priest called Father John F. Cronin - who have set up a company called American Business Consultants. Their principal job - if you can believe this - is to scrutinize employees in major corporations, making sure they're not Reds. But they also publish two newsletters - Counterattack and Red Channels. These rags exist for one purpose only - to list the names of everyone who's been accused of being a Communist in a closed executive session of HUAC. Those two newsletters are the Blacklister's Bible: they're the place corporate America and the entertainment industry look to see who's been named. Naturally enough, Marty Morrison has a subscription to both of these shit sheets. He discovered that your brother had been listed in Red Channels - which is also how Eric's employers at NBC learned that he'd been named during testimony in front of HUAC.

'From there it was easy for Marty to call a couple of lawyers he knows around town - guys who've cornered the blacklisting market, making very big bucks representing people who've been dragged in front of HUAC. Of course, lawyers being lawyers, they're always exchanging notes with each other. Marty hit pay dirt on the third call. A big white-shoe attorney named Bradford Ames - who, among other things, looks after the legal side of Steele and Sherwood. Ames owed Marty a favor. Marty cashed it in now.

'"Between ourselves, do you have any idea who might have named Eric Smythe?" Marty asked him. Of course, Ames had heard of your brother - because his blacklisting and his death had been all over the papers. "Between ourselves," he told Marty, "I know exactly the guy who shopped Smythe. Because I represented him when he testified in executive session at HUAC. The funny thing about this guy was that he wasn't in showbiz. He was a public relations guy with Steele and Sherwood. Jack Malone."'

My mind was reeling. 'Jack testified in front of HUAC?' I asked Joel.

'That's what appears to have happened'.

'I don't believe it, Jack's about the most loyal American imaginable'.

'According to Marty, he had a skeleton in his closet. A really small one - but even tiny skeletons get used against you nowadays. It turns out that, right before the war, Mr Malone put his name down for some Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee... which was one of those organizations that was helping people fleeing from Nazi Germany and Italy and the Balkans. Anyway, as it turns out, the committee that Malone was associated with had direct links with the American Communist Party. Brad Ames said that Malone swore up on a stack of Bibles that he was never a member of the Party... that a couple of Brooklyn friends of his had finagled him on to the committee... that he'd only gone to a couple of meetings, nothing more. The problem was - one of the guys who allegedly finagled him on to the committee had been subpoenaed by HUAC. And he'd named Malone during his testimony. Which is how Jack Malone also ended up in the pages of Red Channels - and how his bosses at Steele and Sherwood found out about his accidental flirtation with subversion.

'Naturally enough, Malone sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in front of his employers - and said he'd do anything required to clear his name. They called their corporate attorney, Bradford Ames. He met Malone - and they talked things through. Ames then went to some guy on the committee - and did a bit of bartering. Which is how things work at HUAC. If the witness isn't hostile, the number of names - and the actual names themselves - are agreed beforehand between the committee and the witness's attorney. Malone offered to name the same guy who named him. That wasn't enough for the committee. So he also offered to name three other people he knew on the committee. But the committee said, 'No sale' - as the guy who named Malone had also named those names as well.

"You've got to give them one new name', Ames told him. 'Just one. Afterwards you tell them it was all a youthful mistake, and how you love America more than Kate Smith, blah, blah, blah. Then they'll exonerate you'.

'So that's when Malone said, "Eric Smythe." Naturally, Ames knew the name immediately - 'cause he too watched Marty Manning. He told Malone that he thought the committee would be satisfied with that name. Because Eric Smythe was a relatively big fish.

'A week later, Malone went down to Washington and testified in front of HUAC. It was an executive session - which meant that it was all behind closed doors, and not for the public record. So I suppose Malone thought that no one would ever know.

'But lawyers always talk'.

'I'm sorry', Jack said when I first told him about Eric being named. 'I am so goddamn sorry... Tell him if there's anything... anything... I can do...'