`Jolson' Explores Pain Of Blacklist

The anti-Communist blacklists of the 1940s and '50s seem like ancient history to most Americans.

But for many who toiled in the entertainment industry back then, memories of what Lillian Hellman called "the scoundrel time" remain vivid and painful.

Arthur Laurents was there, and he has not forgotten those bad old days.

Laurents touched on the blacklist era in his screenplay for "The Way We Were," a 1973 movie that starred Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford as a Hollywood couple divided by their reactions to the blacklist.

And he offers a broader reflection in "Jolson Sings Again." Laurents' first new play in a decade, it tracks four Hollywood colleagues caught up in the fear and turmoil of the era.

"I had to write this, because unless you were there you really don't know what the blacklist was like," the author said in a recent

interview.

"I don't think Hollywood ever really recovered from this thing. Nor did the country. The witchhunts began in Hollywood, but they spread all over - to government, the unions, the universities. It was a widespread national tragedy."

"Jolson Sings Again" will have its world premiere at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Feb. 8-March 4. And the production, staged by Rep artistic director Daniel Sullivan, is spurring national interest.

Careers were ruined

Spry and busy at age 76, Laurents clearly remembers how a command appearance before the congressional House Un-American

Activities Committee could result in a ruined career, or a jail sentence for those who refused to divulge the names of "fellow travelers."

He recalls a time when past membership in a left-wing political party, or even a signature on a civil rights petition, could become a reason to deprive prominent actors, directors, agents and script writers of work, and send some of them into European exile.

And he knows all too well how the "Red scare" soured personal and working relationships, casting lingering shadows of fear and resentment over a generation of artists.

In 1950, the "subversive" label was affixed to Laurents' own name. He emerged fairly unscathed from the deal, and went on to write hit films ("Anastasia," "The Turning Point") and Broadway musicals ("West Side Story" and "Gypsy").

But as his own career prospered, Laurents saw others vilified as "Reds" struggle to regain professional status. An unlucky few, such as film star John Garfield and stage actor Canada Lee, were hounded into early graves.

A compact, elegant man, with elfin features and the conversational flair of a seasoned raconteur, Laurents says he finds most blacklist dramas overly melodramatic and simplistic.

"It's so tempting to do something preachy and self-righteous," he observes. "If you make the central figure a noble and suffering hero, he's admirable - but a bore."

In "Jolson," he aims to capture the moral ambiguities of the period: "While writing, I had to discover what I really thought about these four characters. I used to believe the blacklist was a black-and-white issue, but now I see it differently."

Today, says Laurents, "I believe there's a difference between the people who informed on others to further their careers, and those who did it to stay alive and save their families. But everyone was damaged - the good guys, the bad guys, and the gray guys in the middle."

The dominant figure in "Jolson Sings Again" is one of the "bad guys": a brilliant but ruthless Hollywood director named Andreas. (He is played at Seattle Rep by TV and stage actor Dennis Boutsikaris.)

As the witch hunt intensifies, Andreas makes all moral accommodations necessary to keep his career on the fast track - including ratting on associates.

But his old friends Robbie (Laura Esterman), a successful agent, and her husband Sidney (Daniel Oreskes), a screenwriter, try to survive without betraying others. And Julian (Evan Handler), an ambitious young writer, faces hard ethical choices as well.

The play opens in 1947, the year the House Un-American Activities Committee launched its "Inquiry into Hollywood Communism" under the aggressive chairmanship of Congressman J. Parnell Thomas.

It ends in 1962, in the polluted backwash of the film studio purges.

Laurents' ironic title echoes a 1947 newspaper headline about the HUAC testimony of Larry Parks. The star of a 1946 film biography of Al Jolson, Parks was one of the first celebrities coerced to "sing" - provide names. Under duress, he identified members of a Communist group he had been part of earlier.

"I'll never forget hearing a news seller on Hollywood Boulevard waving a paper in the air, shouting, `Jolson sings again! Read all about it!,' " explained Laurents. "It was such cynical, cruel humor, so much in the spirit of those times."

By 1950, Laurents, a relative newcomer to Hollywood, found himself under scrutiny. His name appeared in "Red Channels," an influential anti-Communist publication chronicling the affiliations of entertainment industry "subversives."

Though never a Communist Party member, Laurents was active in left-wing and civil rights causes. After the "Red Channels" mention,

the government denied him a passport without explanation.

To regain it, Laurents hired a lawyer recommended by a friend. "I didn't know the friend was a government informer and the lawyer worked for the FBI," he notes wryly.

"The lawyer grilled me for hours, pressing for the names of people in a Marxist study group I was part of. I gave him no names, though I was dying to tell him just one to see his reaction. It was Ava Gardner!"

Three tense months later, after mailing the government a letter describing his political beliefs and activities, Laurents received a passport. He was lucky: No one forced him to betray others in order to secure his constitutional rights.

But later, another dilemma arose. Laurents hesitated to write the script for "West Side Story," because its director would be Jerome Robbins - an artist who had supplied HUAC with a list of alleged "Reds," thereby earning the scorn of many theatrical colleagues.

"To work with somebody who willingly informed, but is a great talent - is that validating their actions?" Laurents asks. "Or is not working with them cutting off your nose to spite your face? Life goes on, doesn't it?"

"West Side Story" was a triumph for both men. But the ethical questions raised by the collaboration still nag at the writer - and they haunt "Jolson Sings Again." The role of Andreas is modeled partly on Robbins (and on Elia Kazan, another famous director reviled for naming names). And the young writer Julian's actions resemble Laurents' at about the same age.

Writing "Jolson" proved therapeutic for Laurents. It also recharged his creative batteries after the dismal failure of "Nick and Nora," a 1991 Broadway musical he wrote.

At an age when he could easily retire on his laurels, Laurents says he's "having a wonderful time" bringing this drama to fruition. Another new script, "The Radical Mystique," opens Off Broadway in April. A third, "In Love and Anger," is in the works.

"That one's about greed in the 1980s, and I want Dan Sullivan to do it in Seattle," Laurents noted. "He's simply the best director I've ever worked with, and I mean that."

A planned 1995 Broadway run of "Jolson Sings Again" fell through when producers Robert Fox and Scot Rudin failed to raise the $1.2 million budget for it.

But Laurents seems to take the disappointment in stride, and hopes "Jolson" will land on Broadway later. Its themes, he believes, are pertinent to today's social climate.

"What went on then is the same thing going on now with the Christian right, and these obscene, rumor-mongering talk-show hosts," Laurents suggests. "I think this country is more mean-spirited today than it's ever been in my lifetime."

"Back during the blacklist," he amplifies, "even the misguided people believed they were fighting for something, or against something. Today it just seems like everyone is against."

If Laurents has a message to deliver, it's that "when you betray others, you betray yourself."

"Maybe we're not all strong enough to hold onto our principles in every situation. But we should at least know when we give them up. As I say in the play - and it's a line I used in `The Way We Were,' too - people are their principles."

----------------------------- FEW FILMS ADDRESSED BLACKLIST -----------------------------

Despite the inherent drama of the blacklist era, Hollywood and Broadway have produced relatively few plays and films about this still-touchy subject. In addition to Laurents' "The Way We Were," here are some of the works that do tackle it:

"The Front," a fairly bland 1976 film comedy, with Woody Allen as a man who becomes a "front" for blacklisted writers. (The movie's director, Martin Ritt, screenwriter Walter Bernstein and actor Zero Mostel were all actual victims of the blacklist.)

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?" is a documentary play by Eric Bentley that excerpts the HUAC testimony of, among others, Larry Parks, Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson and Jerome Robbins.

"The Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist," an informative 1987 documentary film by Judy Chaiken, focuses on the Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters who defied HUAC by refusing to testify.

"Guilty by Suspicion," Irwin Winkler's mediocre 1991 movie drama, stars Robert DeNiro as a successful director whose career is destroyed because he won't name names.

"The Crucible," by Arthur Miller. Though set during the Salem witch trials, the 1953 play is clearly an allegory about the political witch hunts of the 1940s and '50s.

"Fear on Trial," a 1975 TV movie starring George C. Scott as lawyer Louis Nizer and William Devane as John Henry Faulk, who was blacklisted and sued for libel. It's much more direct and factually accurate than "The Front," "The Way We Were" or "Guilty by Suspicion." Unfortunately, it's not available on tape.

"Fellow Traveler," a 1989 HBO/BBC production, is another good TV movie on the subject that is available on video. It stars Ron Silver as a screenwriter and Hart Bochner as a movie star, both blacklisted during the 1950s.

------------------------------------------------ LAURENTS' WORK SPANS FOUR DECADES, SEVERAL MEDIA ------------------------------------------------

"Jolson Sings Again" by Arthur Laurents plays at the Seattle Repertory Theater, Tuesdays-Sundays from Feb. 8 through March 4. For ticket information, call 443-2222.

"Jolson" is the latest work by a writer whose career spans four decades and encompasses several different media. Other well-known works by Laurents include:

Films: "Anna Lucasta" (1949), "Anastasia" (1956), "The Way We Were" (1973), "The Turning Point" (1977).

Plays: "Home of the Brave" (1945), "Time of the Cuckoo" (1952), and his own favorite (though it flopped), "A Clearing in the Woods" (1957).

Musicals: The books for "West Side Story" (1957), "Gypsy" (1959) and "Hallelujah, Baby!" (1967).