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Session:         Page of 592

The Wall Street Journal doing a feature on Nicholas. I talked at great length. He wanted to know about the Charleston thing, and I mentioned the film has Nicholas in it. He said, “Can I see it?”

So I said, “Sure. I'll set it up for you. Gee, I haven't seen this in years.” I wanted to see it myself. So I sat and watched it, and it's a good film. It's a very powerful film. There's confrontation there. Andy Young said some wonderful things, Coretta King, Abernathy -- it's got everything in there. Johnny didn't do that, but Madeleine Anderson did, who he recommended, who was working with CBS, a black filmmaker, who finished that in time, because she was racing the deadline of having a baby. She had to finish it in time. That's a different story.

The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is Vietnam.

Q:

I have a few more questions for you before you jump ahead to Vietnam. All these actors and performers and musicians that were linked to 1199, all had pro-union attitudes and presumably were available to almost any union that wanted to use them, weren't they? Did other unions emulate what you were doing? And why do you think they didn't?

Foner:

Whether they would have been available, I would say for the most part most of these people would have gladly performed for unions. To a certain degree Ossie and Ruby did some things at 65 on a very minor scale. They would always call me before they took any booking with the union: “Tell us about this.” Unions didn't do this kind of thing. That's the story of it. They didn't do this kind of thing, and therefore a lot of union people, other unions, would come to our programs. We would make it a point of saying, “Why don't you come to see this.” Those unions that were closer to Israel, we'd say, “Come to our Salute to Israel.” We had the Negro History celebration -- “Come to that.”

In some cases there were performers who wouldn't perform for other unions, like Ossie got Ricardo Montalban, I think I told you about that. Ricardo Montalban wouldn't do that; he was doing it because of Ossie. But the Pete Seegers and the Johnny Randolphs, Pete did perform for unions, too. But the actors and actresses, they were never asked by unions. That's why they had a very special relationship with us. For example, when we were doing the Bread and Roses Day in Lawrence, I was trying to get some Hollywood actors to fly in from the coast for the day, and I knew it was an impossible thing. I asked Kim Fellner, whom I know, if she would reach people, and she tried. She told me that it's impossible, the people are all involved in things and can't. The





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