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I saw him last Sunday. John Henry Faulk was a very hot property on CBS Radio, and beginning to get into television. His homespun Texas humor, very funny, very witty, very charming guy. He was very big when the blacklists came, and he was blacklisted. One of the companies started a campaign -- that was a blacklist that they listed in Red Channels, and one of the companies was doing it. John Henry Faulk decided to sue, and John Henry Faulk was represented by Louis Nizer, and John Henry Faulk eventually won the case. It ended up in the Supreme Court. I don't think he ever got a lot of money on it. One of the people who funded his case, because he had to raise money for it from a number of people, Bernard Rapaport, from American Income Life, in Waco, Texas -- was Cora Weiss' mother, Vera Rubin. It must have come from Sam Rubin. They were married at the time. Because at the memorial for Vera, one of the people who came up to speak was John Henry Faulk. He's back in Texas, running a radio show and doing well, doing very well. I hadn't seen him in years. It was just nice. He's very funny, very funny. He tells the story, here's the kind of the humor, about his coming down to Texas, you know, and he'd talk about the Vietnam War. And “I'm scheduled to speak to this Chamber of Commerce group, and the person who is supposed to introduce [and he started with his Texas drawl] is not there, and so old cousin Elmer is going to do it.” Then he digresses to show how anti- communist Cousin Elmer is. He does this broad thing on Cousin Elmer and Lyndon Johnson, etc. Very funny but very pointed. So this Cousin Elmer (it's the wrong name) says, “I'm going to introduce someone you all know, John Henry. There is two things about him I want to say. First, John Henry ain't ever been to the penitentiary, and second, I don't know why.” [Laughter] He was very, very funny. And John Henry was delighted to come. He wanted to entertain, and he was blacklisted, and we would provide an audience. So we would provide an audience for a lot of people that way. So we were doing this kind of thing.

How was Ossie so well-connected?

Ossie was in the theater.

How old was he then?

Well, Ossie is now probably around sixty-two, sixty-three. So we're talking '52.

He was about thirty.

Thirty, yes. He was working in the post office. He was also working in “Wisteria Trees.” That's where I met him, backstage at City