The Other Side of Midnight

In Hollywood, the studio heads held a secret meeting to decide how to put the best face on what was happening. They made an announcement that they would not employ anyone who was in the Communist Party. This was the beginning of a ten-year blacklist.

Dore Schary, who was running RKO studios, boldly declared that he would quit before firing a writer accused of being a communist. Shortly after that, when the committee named a writer working at RKO, Schary fired him. The members of the Screenwriters Guild were outraged. Schary asked for a chance to explain his position to the writers. The guild auditorium was packed.

“I want to remind all of you,” Schary said, “that I’m a writer, too. That’s how I got started. I know a lot of you expected me to resign as head of RKO when they forced me to fire one of my writers. The reason I didn’t was that I felt that staying on as head of the studio, I can do more to protect you.”

And that was when he lost his audience. His self-serving speech brought boos and hisses, and the meeting abruptly ended.

One morning in the midst of all of this, Marvin Schenck, a studio executive who was a relative of Nicholas Schenck, called me into his office. No one was sure exactly what Marvin Schenck’s job was, but there was a rumor that he was getting paid three thousand dollars a week to look out his window and raise the alarm if he saw a glacier moving toward the studio.

Marvin was in his late forties, a small balding man, with the charisma of an undertaker.

“Sit down, Sidney.”

I sat.

He looked at me and said, accusingly, “Did you vote for Albert Maltz at the Writers Guild meeting last night?”

We had had a meeting the night before to elect a new board of directors. It was a closed meeting, but I was so startled by the question that I didn’t think to ask him how he knew how I had voted.

“Yes, I did,” I said.

“Why did you vote for Maltz?”

“I just read a novel of his, The Journey of Simon McKeever. It’s a beautifully written book and we need good writers like him on the guild’s board.”

“Who told you to vote for him?”

I was getting angry. “No one told me to vote for him. I told you why I voted for him.”

“Someone must have told you to vote for him.”

My voice was raised. “Marvin—I just told you I voted for him because he’s a damned good writer.”

He studied a sheet of paper in front of him and then looked up. “Have you been going around the studio the last few weeks, raising money for the children of the Hollywood Ten?”

That was when I lost it. What he was saying was true. I had started with my own contribution and then had gone around the studio raising more money to take care of the children whose fathers had been jailed.

I don’t lose my temper often, but when I do, it erupts.

“I’m guilty, Marvin. I shouldn’t have done that. Let the damned kids starve. If their fathers are in prison, the kids don’t deserve to eat. Let them all die!” I was screaming.

“Calm down,” he said. “Calm down. I want you to go home and try to remember who told you to vote for Albert Maltz. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I stormed out of the office. I felt violated. The indignity of what was happening was lacerating.

I got no sleep that night. I tossed and turned and finally came to a decision. At nine o’clock in the morning, I went back into Marvin Schenck’s office.

“I quit,” I said. “You can tear up my contract. I don’t want to work at this studio anymore.” I started toward the door.

“Wait a minute. Don’t be hasty. I talked to New York this morning. They said if you’ll sign a statement that you’re not a communist and have never been a member of the Communist Party, this whole thing will be forgotten.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Will you sign this?”

I looked at it and started to calm down. “Yes,” I said, “because I’m not a communist and I’ve never been a communist.”

It was a humiliating experience, but nothing compared to what so many innocent people went through during that time.

I will never forget the dozens of talented friends of mine who would never work in Hollywood again.

In February of 1948, the Academy Award nominations were announced. I was one of five nominees, for writing the original screenplay of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. I started to receive congratulations from my fellow workers, my agent, and friends, but I knew something they did not know: I had no chance of winning the Oscar.

The pictures I was up against were extremely popular. They included Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, A Double Life, Body and Soul, and the powerful foreign picture Shoeshine. Just being a nominee was honor enough. I wondered which one of them would win.

I got a call from Dona Holloway, congratulating me on my nomination. Dona and I had become good friends. We often went to the theater together, or a concert, and she was always interesting company.

The morning of the Oscars, Dona telephoned. She had recently left William Morris and had gone to Columbia Studios as Harry Cohn’s personal assistant, and I felt that Cohn was lucky to have her.

“Getting ready to go to the Oscars?” Dona asked.

“I’m not going.”

She sounded shocked. “What are you talking about?”

“Dona, I don’t have a chance of winning. Why should I sit there and be embarrassed?”

“If everyone felt the way you do,” she said, “there wouldn’t be anyone there to receive an Oscar. You have to go. What do you say?”

I thought about it. Why not be a good sport and applaud the winner? “Will you go with me?”