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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

statement, and he did. Another person who was there was Arthur Knight, who was then the film critic for the Saturday Review. He's written extensively on films. He's no longer on the Saturday Review; he's been on the coast. He was a student of my brother Phil's at City College. That's how I knew him.

Then we had a screening in a screening room at 1619 Broadway. I remember very vividly that Pauline Kael came. I asked her, and she sent me a card with her comments on it, very, very fine, very moving, that she was very impressed with the film. It was a good thing. But she was not that important at the time. But then I got quotes from King and from Kennedy. The Lindsey quote came from -- who is the guy who is the big mockup, who does the commercials for Koch?

Q:

David Garth.

Foner:

David Garth at that time was working for Lindsay.

Q:

He was a liberal once, too?

Foner:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. His family was from Great Neck. They knew my brother. He knew my brother Jack from Great Neck. I wanted to get Lindsay to give me a statement, so Garth called me and said, “Can you send it over to me?” So he looked at it and said, “Gee, it's terrific. I'll give you a good statement. What do you want me to say?”

I said, “You say what you want to say.” He gave the statement. So Van Arsdale, James Gavin, through the Vietnam thing. Then the other things, Modern Hospital, that's the publication of the managements, the guy came in to do a feature and he did a feature on the union, but he also saw the film and he did this fantastic review. “The only punch in the nose is for the hospitals that still haven't gotten the message. Every line on the payroll is a human being, and what every human being requires above all else is dignity.” He made that low-key punch in the nose. That was a very important thing.

Then the AFL-CIO, before they took it, they wanted to remove the section on Malcolm X. George Guernsey, who was then the education director, very decent guy, wonderful guy. He had been a polio victim. He was a terrific teacher from Antioch, and he lived his whole life on crutches, a big folksong fanatic, he came out of the CIO, but he was in the AFL-CIO now. He saw it and said, “You have to take out the thing with Malcolm X.”

“George, forget it.” Of course, it's the only time Malcolm X is in a film with a union.





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