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In 1953 The World of Sholom Aleichem produced by Howard Da Silva and Arnold Perl opened at the Barbizon-Plaza Theatre in New York. (It was somewhat misnamed, since not all the material was by Sholom Aleichem. "The evening consisted of three short plays. Act one opened with “A Tale of Chelm,” a traditional Jewish folktale of a village's foolishness as it tells the story of a local joke about a teacher who can't tell the difference between a billy goat and a nanny goat. The second piece, “Bonche Schweig,” was based on a story by I. L. Peretz. It tells the tale of a man who, on Earth, lived a wretched life, expecting nothing. Now he is in heaven and, after hearing his life defended by an angel, he is offered anything he wants as a reward for living such a humble life. Bonche's request, like his life, is quite simple: “In that case, if it's true, could I have, please, every day, a hot roll with butter.” The third piece was based on a work by Sholom Aleichem, “The High School,” or “Gymnasium.” The story is set in Russia, where there is a Jewish quota on boys who want to attend a regular (non-religious) school. It is the story of Aaron and Hannah Katz, who want their son Moishe to receive nothing less than the best education they can find for him." https://books.google.com/books?id=uEWEDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA65)

Here is the original program:

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Now the interesting thing to me is this: The cast here is a veritable who's who of people who had been (or would be) blacklisted from the movies, radio and television for alleged Communist affiliations:

(1) Howard Da Silva, the director: "Da Silva became one of hundreds of artists blacklisted in the entertainment industry during the House Committee on Unamerican Activities investigation into alleged Communist influence in the industry. Following his March 1951 testimony in which he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights,[14] his lead performance in the completed feature film Slaughter Trail was re-shot with actor Brian Donlevy.[15] Da Silva continued to find work on the New York stage, but did not work in feature films again until 1961 when he appeared in his BAFTA nominated performance in David and Lisa.[12][16] He was eventually cleared of any charges in 1960,[17] but not before his career in television had also stalled, with no work between 1951 and 1959 when he appeared in The Play of the Week. The brief respite was followed by another television career void until his appearance in a 1963 episode of The Defenders. That was the beginning of the end of Da Silva's blacklist, and the show's producer Herb Brodkin paired Da Silva with William Shatner when he created the television series For the People.[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Da_Silva

(2) Will Lee, who played the Melamed (teacher) in "A Tale of Chelm" and was in the other two plays as well: "Lee also began appearing in movies, including bit parts in Casbah, A Song Is Born, Little Fugitive, and Saboteur. He was blacklisted as an alleged communist and barred from movies and on TV for five years during the Red Scare, according to members of his family. He had been active in the Actor's Workshop and had been an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1950 investigating show business..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Lee He later of course would become most famous as Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street.

(3) Phoebe Brand, who played the Melamed's wife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_Brand In 1952, Elia Kazan identified both Brand and Morris Carnovsky (whom she later married) as having been Communists along with him in their days with the Group Theatre in the 1930's. Subsequently they were both blacklisted for some years. Brand became famous as an acting teacher, teaching her last class from a hospital bed shortly before her death in 2004.

(4) Morris Carnovsky as Aaron Katz in "The High School": see above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Carnovsky

(5) Sarah Cunningham, who played Hannah Katz in "The High School" and the Goatseller in "A Tale of Chelm" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Cunningham_(actress) "Cunningham and her husband [John Randolph] were believed to have first been named as having possible Communist ties in 1951, possibly again in 1953, and were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 in New York. They, as well as Madeline Lee Gilford, Jack Gilford and others, were victims of the anti-Communist blacklist. Neither was able to work in film, TV or radio until well into the 1960s."

(6) Jack Gilford who played Bonche Schweig: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Gilford "He was quite active both socially and politically in left-wing causes, as was his wife, Madeline Lee.[1] In 1953 Gilford and Lee were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) regarding their alleged Communist sympathies, after being specifically named by choreographer Jerome Robbins in his own testimony to the committee.[1][7] The couple had difficulty finding work during much of the rest of the 1950s due to the Hollywood blacklist..."

(7) Ossie Davis, the stage manager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossie_Davis See
where he discusses the efect of the blacklist on him and his wife Ruby Dee.

(8) Ruby Dee, the "defending angel' in Bonche Schweig. "During the Cold War era, when many artists were reluctant to risk their career ambitions by publicly involving themselves with political insurgency, Dee mined the intersection between art and activism. She founded the Association of Artists for Freedom, rallied to secure clemency for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and was an outspoken supporter of actors Paul Robeson and Canada Lee (both under scrutiny by the House Committee on Un-American Activities). Her political views would not come without their price. Targeted by newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan as a possible Communist sympathizer, Dee (along with her husband) was eventually summoned before HUAC, and Dee was in due course blacklisted." https://www.americantheatre.org/2014/08/12/in-memoriam-ruby-dee-1922-2014/

(You may of course say that whatever the politics of the actors, the play was not itself political. Certainly not in any obvious contemporary sense, but Ring Lardner, Jr., one of the Hollywood Ten, writing to Da Silva, found political significance in it: "Then, during The High School, I realized fully what nothing I had heard about the production had prepared me for: that the total effect—-the message or whatever you want to call it--of the World of Sholom Aleichem is one of much greater signficance than that of many plays which deal more directly with the struggles of our time. The Katzes, so wonderfully recreated by Morris [Carnovsky] and by Sarah Cunningham, are true heroes of the irrepressible masses, and their development from one level of struggle to another makes for people's theatre at its best." https://books.google.com/books?id=uEWEDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA69)

So--what happened to this show appearing at the height of the Cold War scare over domestic Communism? Answer: it got rave reviews from the New York Times and New York Post, got a big audience and was revived for another year. This shows the complete difference between the movies, TV and radio on the one hand the "legitimate" stage on the other. The blacklist simply did not extend to the theater, Broadway or off-Broadway.

And it's not like some people didn't want to so extend it. Counterattack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterattack_(newsletter) bitterly denounced The World of Sholom Aleichem, everyone associated with it, and the critics who praised it--to no avail, thouugh Brooks Atkinson of the Times got plenty of hate mail for his favorable review. In 1955 and 1958, HUAC had hearings in New York City on Communism in the theater. They were a near-complete failure. The 1955 hearings got exactly one cooperative witness--and twenty-two uncooperative ones. The uncoopoerative witnesses typically denounced the Committee for trying to cow the entertainment industry into political conformity, and when asked "are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party" would decline to answer, invoking the First and Fifth Amendments. Had they been film or TV actors, they would have been immediately fired--but as stage actors, they just went back to their acting careers as if nothing had happened. Lou Polan https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/04/archives/lou-polan-broadway-actor-in-over-50-plays-is-dead.html went back to work in Bus Stop, where he was appearing before his testimony. John Randolph went back to the Brattle Summer Theater in Cambridge, Massaachusetts to finish his run in Much Ado About Nothing. (Decades later he won a Tony for his role in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound.) His wife Sarah Cunningham also continued to work in theater. Stanley Prager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Prager continued to appear in The Pajama Game on Broadway. Phil Leeds, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Leeds three months after invoking the Fifth Amendment, landed a role in The Matchmaker, which ran for a year on Broadway. In 1958, HUAC came back and called nineteen witnessess--eighteen of them uncooperative. The most celebrated witness then was Joseph Papp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Papp He invoked the Fith Amendment--and went back to directing Shakespeare in the Park. (True, to illustrate how TV differed from theater, he was fired by CBS. But to show how times had already started to change, Papp "opted for arbitration and became the first person to win reinstatment during the blacklist." https://books.google.com/books?id=uEWEDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA151)

Besides 1955 and 1958 witnesses, people who had invoked the Fifth Amendment in earlier HUAC hearings (dealing with Hollywood) also found work on Broadway. Anne Revere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Revere didn't appear in any more movies between her 1951 testimony and 1970--but she won a Tony for her part in Toys in the Attic in 1960 (where her fellow blacklistee Sarah Underwood was her understudy...)

So--what made Broadway and the "legitimate" theater in general so different from Hollywood and radio/TV to the extent that Broadway became the economic salvation of many blacklistees for awhile? (One should remember that many of these actors had started out in the theater before moving on to Hollywood, so it was a case of returning to their roots.) An easy answer would be that the actors' union, Actors' Equity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actors'_Equity_Association took a very different attitude toward blacklisting than did the Screen Actors Guild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_Actors_Guild (which of course was headed by Ronald Reagan) and AFTRA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Television_and_Radio_Artists where some of the leaders of the union in New York were actually officials of the blacklisting organization, AWARE, Inc.! Actors' Equity was opposed to the blacklist and actually inserted an anti-blacklisting clause in its contracts with theaters. But that really is not a full explanation. Some people in Actors Equity had their doubts as to whether the anti-blacklisting provision was enforceable. And John Cogley, author of the Fund for the Republic's study on blacklisting argued that the clause was more a symptom than a cause of the difference between the theater and Hollywood/radio/TV:

"The experience of the 22 uncooperative witnesses in the New York Theatre probe illustrates the tremendous difference between the legitimate stage, and the movies and radio-tv. The basic difference between these media lies in the fact that the American legitimate theatre is the only entertainment medium still entrepreneurial in its methods of production.

"The production of a play is relatively cheap when compared to the cost of a movie or television show. As a result, the complex financial setup of Hollywood and Madison Avenue does not exist. Individual backers have to be convinced that a show has possibilities, and this is usually done through personal contact between a producer and his "angels." In 1955, Arthur Miller was unable to work in the movies or in radio-television. Yet it was easy to raise the money necessary to put his work on Broadway. For one thing, Miller is a highly successful playwright his shows have consistently made money and an investment in a Miller play is an uncommonly safe speculation. For another, the playwright's reputation is strong enough to insure a good box office sale even before his plays open. As a result, Miller has never been faced with any problems arising out of his highly controversial political views. On the contrary, Miller's problem is to decide which of his potential backers to choose.

"Theatrical investors, as a general rule, do not care about the political associations of people who are to be hired. People like Margaret Webster, Harold Rome, Dorothy Parker, and Sam Jaffe, all listed in Red Channels, have been able to work in the theatre throughout a period of intensive blacklisting in movies and television.

"Yet such a situation could not exist were it not for the peculiar nature of the theatre audience in New York. The movie-goer or television viewer is a member of an impersonal mass, part of a vast cross-section, the nearest thing we have to the elusive "common man." His attitudes and prejudices are something of a common denominator. Because of this, Hollywood and Madison Avenue have to avoid certain themes and often feel called upon to shun the "controversial." The number of people who would actively boycott a movie on the basis of the political past of its writer or star is probably small, but nonetheless large enough to alert the businessmen responsible for a million-dollar picture. In the world of the Broadway theatre, the audience is significantly different...

"It is impossible to estimate the role of the intangibles in the theatre and equally impossible to omit them from a discussion of blacklisting. In Hollywood and in radio-television, artistic life has yet to create its own traditions. "There's no business like show business," the dedication to the individualistic, personal milieu of the stage, has been appropriated by the mass entertainment world. Yet on Madison Avenue it has no real roots. It is like the manager of a professional football team exhorting his players with college yells. But in the legitimate theatre, tradition still remains intact and functional. The agreement between Equity and the League of New York Theatres, even though, it has had little practical value, expresses an attitude, and the attitude is probably more important than any complicated machinery of arbitration...

"In and of itself, Equity's experience is noteworthy. It also serves to point up the contrast between Broadway and the mass media. For every element which has worked to keep blacklisting out of the Broadway theatre is absent in the mass media; conversely, it is exactly at those points where the movies and television are unlike the theatre that they are most susceptible to blacklisting pressure.

"The mass media are big business. Thus, the decision announced at the Waldorf Conference in 1947, which has formed the basis of blacklisting in Hollywood ever since, was not made by the people actually involved in the production of movies. It came, rather, from persons whose primary interest in the films is financial. This is in sharp contrast to the situation hi the legitimate theatre, where financial backing is still sought on an individual basis. An investor's enthusiasm for a particular play is still important on Broadway.

"The audience for movies and radio-tv is sharply differentiated from legitimate theatre audiences. In the first case, the audience is many removes from the producer. It is vast, impersonal. The legitimate theatre retains a select audience. It does not advertise in the same way as movies and radio-television. It makes its appeals on the basis of the judgment of a small group of critics in New York City.

"In Hollywood and on Madison Avenue tradition is not an important force. It is simply impossible to transfer the intimate traditions of the theatre to the impersonal mass media. The movies and radio-tv capitulated to pressure almost as soon as it was applied. The theatre laid down a program to fight the pressure, primarily through the joint action of unions and management.

"In a way, it may well have been this element of tradition which worked to bring about a sane union situation in Equity. For the ideological mentality of the extreme right militates against the tradition of the theatre, just as the business structure of the movie industry is alien to that tradition.

"The proponents of blacklisting in the entertainment field are usually "conservative" in their economic views, tending in some instances (vide: the AWARE, Inc. students' meeting in February, 1955) to Manchester laissez faire. Yet it is precisely the element of "bigness," of an un-Manchester economic power acting monolithically, which made blacklisting possible in the movies, radio and television. And it is the legitimate theatre, the most "free enterprise" part of the entertainment world, which has resisted blacklisting and has based its resistance on tradition and conservatism.

"The result is that the theatre has a better conscience: it is freer. The characteristic attitude of industry people in Hollywood or on Madison Avenue is compounded of fear and shame. The theatre people are proud that they have not succumbed. They are proud of their tradition and proud that they have lived by it, even during a period of great stress and assault." https://archive.org/stream/reportonblack00coglrich/reportonblack00coglrich_djvu.txt

Benrard Gersten, longtime executive director of Lincoln Centre Thratre (and himself a witness in 1958) agreed with Cogley:

"If I had to say it in one word, I'd say no advertisers. There were no advertisers. Red Channels was able to put the fear in advertisers, and find natural allies among those who placed ads and those who owned companies who were certainly anticommunist if you were to generalize. But the theatre community was mom and pop stores. Certainly the audience didn't care. Who believes that Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman say or All My Sons failed to sell tickets because Arthur didn't testify ... certainly no one failed to go see Lillian Hellman's plays because she testified. And certainly it wouldn't have mattered to the audience who went to see High Button Shoes if Jerry [Robbins, the choreographer] was a communist or from Timbuktu." https://books.google.com/books?id=uEWEDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA118

So, all in all, it is hard for me to see the blacklist being extended to Broadway without a basic change in the economics of the theater. Of course if the theater had been dependent on the government for financing, it would have been a different story--the Federal Theatre Project famously became the target of investigations in the 1930's. Old fashioned small-scale free enterprise--not large corporations or government financing--seem to have been most conducive to freedom in the theater. OTOH, it must also be said that it may have helped that Actors' Equity was centralized in New York. Only in the 1990's did it become decentralized to allow regional decisions to be left to regional branches--some of which in the 1950's might have been less resistant to political pressures against allegedly Communist actors. So blacklisted actors might still have some problems on the road.

One final note on The World of Sholom Aleichem: by 1959, it could become a made-for-TV movie with blacklistees like Zero Mostel as well as some others I have mentioned:
It helped lay the foundation for Mostel's later success in Fiddler on the Roof.

(This post is heavily based on K. Keyne Baar's recent Broadway and the Blacklist.)
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