CONFORM-OR LOSE YOUR JOB                                                                                       245

on a Friday. Universal Pictures fired him the following Monday
afternoon.

Radio and television, as I earlier pointed out, are as sensitive as
the movies to the employment of "conti-oversial" persons, with the
Red Channels blacklist " continuing to play a centi-al role in the
dismissal of performers. The judgment on Red Channels rendered
by the dramatist, Robert E. Sherwood, remains definitive: "We
are aU too famiHar with defamation used as a conventional
weapon in political stifle, and defamation in the rantings of racial
and rehgious bigots; but defamation conducted as a commercial
enterprise belongs in a category of contemptibflity all by itseff." ^**

This defamation ruined one of America's most accomphshed
actors, J. Edward Bromberg. After his listing in Red Channels^
neither Broadway, nor HoUywood, nor TV nor radio would hire
him. He went abroad to seek work and at last found a job. But
the long ordeal had been too much for him, and he died a broken
man in 1952. His body was brought back to America for burial,
and the lines were long at his funeral. Later, a memorial service
was held. But there, circulating among his friends, were those who
had come not to pay respects, but to spy. And soon actors and
actiesses were being blacklisted for attending the memorial
service of J. Edward Bromberg.

Other blacklisted actors whose premature deaths seemed at
least partly attiibutable to theh disti-ess at being outcasts in their
profession were Roman Bohnen, Mady Christians, John Garfield,
Canada Lee and PInhp Loeb. The last-named, who for several
years played the popular TV role of "Papa Goldberg," was in 1952
found "too contioversial" for continued employment. Years of
union work in Actors' Equity, appearances (poHte but negative)
before Congressional committees, and a long Hsting in Pied Chan¬
nels destioyed his livelihood, and his prospects. An all-but-hope¬
less family problem was added stiain. In 1955 Philip Loeb, regis¬
tered under a false name in a New York hotel, took his own Hfe.

John Crosby, in his New York Herald Tribune column "Tele¬
vision  and  Radio," hit hard  at what he  calls  "the blacklist

"See Chapter g.