300 Years & Counting 1H KILLS - On The Issues Magazine

two young children to his native New York.He did find a few small stage roles, but he wasdeeply depressed. In a short time his marriagefailed, and not long after, at the age of39, he had a fatal heart attack. Julie, herselfan actress, still grieves over the unfairness ofhis persecution. "My mother was a Communist.Everyone knew it. But Daddy wasn't.They kept hounding him about her and herefused to talk about her. He refused to talkabout anyone."Julie, now in her 40s, was only six-and-ahalfwhen her father died. Although she hasalmost no actual memory of him, she has astrong rush of emotions when she speaks ofhim and those years. Her well-trained andnormally confident voice breaks into anguished,high-pitched, frantic repetitions. "Idon't know a lot of facts about this stuff," shesays, her face suddenly haggard and strained."Whenever I do hear any facts about it, I havea tendency to forget the facts. It's sort of amajor blockage. I think it was 1951 when hedied. Because he was blacklisted he was, in away, heartbroken and it killed him."Suspicion of strangers is another part of theleftist legacy from the '50s. "How do I knowwho you are?" demanded Josh Mostel, theactor-director son of the late Zero Mostel, whowas also blacklisted. It was a question herepeated again and again during our interview.But no one was more hostilely suspiciousthan Janet Ades, a Bronx-rearedlawyer and social worker who lives in NewYork's Upper West Side. Then, surprisingly,moments later, she suddenly wanted to talk— that very afternoon.More than anyone else I spoke to, Janet wasdevastated by her experience growing up inthe left-wing movement. But it wasn't just thegovernment agents who made her life miserable.It was the Communist Party, and herparents whose loyalty to the Party was greaterthan it was to her. Today, she is fiercely anti-Communist and the deep wounds re-openeasily.In a low, angry, monotone, she told of growingup in the Sholom Aleichem Houses, one ofthe three left-wing, mainly Jewish and mainlyworking class co-ops in the Bronx. As a childJanet wanted to please the father she adored,a lawyer-accountant and prominent Partyfunctionary named Bernard Ades. So Janetjoined the Labor Youth League (LYL) andbecame a hot-shot youth organizer in theBronx. Like any intelligent student, the moreJanet learned, the more she questioned. Finally,when she was 15 and a 10th grader atthe Bronx High School of Science, she recalls,she asked one question too many. "I knewON THE ISSUES SUMMER 1992They hadfurious fightsthat made mygrandfathercry andcaused myfather to goon weekslongdrunksA HollywoodSuperstar, John Garfield:Many believe the Listkilled him.The resumerings werefriendly businessmenwhowould say,"Yeah, heworked for mefor 10 years"they had it in for me," she recalls. She wascalled to the home of her LYL youth advisor,and told, "If I wanted to be a good CommunistI would have to toe the line." Rebelliously, sherecalls, "I said I didn't know if I wanted to bea good Communist." And she was out.When Janet got home, no one spoke to her.Her parents would no longer discuss politicalmatters with her. At school, where all herfriends were in the LYL, "nobody looked atme, nobody spoke to me, nobody telephoned,even my best friend would not call me." On topof that, the FBI was always watching, listeningin on the phone, talking to neighbors.Simultaneously, the rabidly anti-Communistcolumnists and radio personalities, WestbrookPegler, Walter Winchell, and Victor Reisel,regularly broadcast Bernard Ades' name as a"Communist in our midst." Janet was anoutcast everywhere.Conrad Bromberg, a New York playwright,is the son of Joseph Bromberg, the acclaimedcharacter actor who also died too young becauseof the Blacklist. Like Garfield, he toowas a Hollywood prince, though not as big astar. Bromberg was blacklisted in 1948. Hedied in 1951 at the age of 47. Conrad, now inhis early 60s, whose preoccupation with hisfather's fate is expressed in his play, Dream ofa Blacklisted Actor, that has had several off-Broadway incarnations, recalls how the Blacklistworked in Hollywood. His play, he says, isthe story of his father, but the main characteris a composite of Garfield, Bromberg andEdward G. Robinson. "Robinson was vaguelyleft," recalls Conrad who went to high schoolwith his son Manny Robinson. "He signedpetitions for this or that. I heard from mymother and her friends that he bought hisway out of the Committee." But Garfield wasin a different situation. "Garfield was the firstactor who ever started his own movie companyand the big studio heads saw him ascompetition." Those moguls were also loudlyanti-Communist. Bromberg continues, "In myplay I call him 'Boxcar Johnnie, a gutter guyyou can't beat.' He fought back. But, theCommittee was on his tail right up to hisdeath. That motherfucker Victor Reisel wasalways putting stuff in his column like, 'Is ittrue that John Garfield gave money to theStockholm Peace Appeal? John, who are yourfriends?' The whole New York and Hollywoodentertainment communities read that stuff."It was impossible for Garfield to fight that.There was also what Bromberg calls "thisterrible contradiction of being Communists inBeverly Hills." There was a rule among mon-Continued on pg 5721