The Genius and the Goddess

by Jeffrey Meyers

  Miller's political ideas did not focus on any particular party or program. He'd lived through the excesses of capitalism and the disaster of the Depression, and had always sympathized with the working poor and the unemployed. His left-wing activities, limited to supporting various communist enterprises, seem surprisingly naïve. Like many young writers and intellectuals of the 1930s, Miller thought Soviet communism stood for hope, for an ideal of social equality and for opposition to the growing threat of fascism in Spain, Germany and Italy. This idealism blinded him to the true nature of communism in Russia, even after Stalin's monstrous crimes of the 1930s (which had disillusioned many previously hard-line communists) became well known: the forcible collectivization of the peasants that caused widespread famine and death, the political purges, the Moscow show trials, the omnipotent secret police and the millions of innocent victims sent to Siberian prison camps. He kept faith with Russia and continued to support communist-front organizations until the end of the 1940s, despite the cynical non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, the betrayal of the Warsaw rising during World War II and the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe. He added his name to the lists of those supporting the well-intentioned but propagandistic World Youth Festival in Prague in 1947, the World Congress for Peace in Paris in 1948 and the Peace Conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in 1949 – the latter also endorsed by subversive types like Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Miller's political activities, innocuous as they were, made him a victim of the general paranoia about leftists and got him into trouble with the authorities on two previous occasions. These incidents also aroused the interest of HUAC. In 1954 the State Department, asserting that it was not in the country's best interests, had refused to renew his passport so he could attend the European premiere of The Crucible in Brussels. This refusal prompted Miller's remark, "It didn't harm me, it harmed the country; I didn't need any foreign relations." The following year, when he was asked to write a film script about juvenile delinquency in response to the rise of gang violence in New York, his reputation cost him the job. "I spent the summer of 1955 on Brooklyn streets," he recalled, "wrote an outline and was ready to proceed with the script when an attack on me as a disloyal leftist was opened in the New York World-Telegram and Sun. The cry went up that so long as I was the screenwriter the city must cancel its contract with the producer." After the rabid headline of July 22, 1955, declared "Youth Board Filmster Has a Pink Record," the twenty-two city commissioners voted to kill the project.

  In 1956, as HUAC continued to attack Hollywood, the most popular films of the year were lavish crowd-pleasers: Mike Todd's wide-screen extravaganza Around the World in 80 Days, Yul Brynner as the ruler of Siam in The King and I and Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments. That year Eisenhower, with Nixon as his runningmate, was re-elected president; Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal; Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalin; and Russia, intent on maintaining its power in Eastern Europe, crushed the Hungarian revolution.

  To defend himself Miller engaged Joseph Rauh, one of the best lawyers in the country. Four years older than Miller and a graduate of Harvard Law School, Rauh was one of the most influential liberals in the postwar era. Active in Democratic politics, he'd worked for two Supreme Court justices and for several agencies in Roosevelt's administration. Throughout his career he had fought for civil rights and represented labor unions. Miller described him as a hero: "A giant of a fellow who somehow looks even broader and taller because of his bow ties, Joe Rauh is a combative lawyer, formerly head of Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal pressure group whose adherents included men like Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson."1

  On May 18, testing the waters, Miller applied for a passport, as if he'd never before had trouble with the passport office. He wanted to attend the London premiere of A View from the Bridge in October and to accompany Marilyn, who would be making The Prince and the Showgirl in England. He also submitted an affidavit that declared he was not a member of the Communist Party. Rauh arranged for him to swear, in return for being granted a six-month passport, that he would return to America if cited for contempt of Congress. On May 22 Miller informed his other eminent attorney, Lloyd Garrison, that his passport application included a letter which stated his business reasons for traveling to England, but did not mention his romance with Marilyn. The clerk, he said, was very nice and did not even try to arrest him. But he was getting tired of holding his breath and wondering what would happen to him in the immediate future, and looked forward to a quiet, uneventful year. This was a vain hope, since peace and quiet would be quite impossible once he married Marilyn.

  Miller's FBI file quoted from an article in the New York Times of June 22, the day after Miller appeared before HUAC, and reported that the committee questioned him about

  the signature on a 1947 statement against the outlawing of the CP; a signature on a statement defending [the Red agent] GERHART EISLER before he fled this country to become a top Communist official in East Germany; a statement attacking the HUAC; and statements opposing the Smith Act [of 1940, which made it a criminal offense to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government]. The article reflected that MILLER stated he had no memory of most of these things but that he would not deny them.

  He'd applied to take a course in Marxism in about 1939 and in 1947 attended several writers' meetings sponsored by the Communist Party. But he told the committee that "he came away from CP meetings convinced that his temperament and viewpoints were diametrically opposed to those of Marxists." Another article included in his FBI file, from the conservative Plain Talk magazine of June 1947 (the year of All My Sons), sneeringly linked Miller and Kazan, who later became political adversaries, saying that "Miller, and his director, Elia Kazan, might both be awarded the Order of Lenin."2

  All those who faced the committee had to deal with a barrage of negative reporting in the press and on television. To be hauled before them suggested the witness was guilty, and it took great self-possession and expert legal advice to deal with the hectoring questions. HUAC, ironically enough, failed to see that they themselves were playing the role of Grand Inquisitor. They adopted the methods of the Soviet Purge Trials by reenacting the "typical communist scene of [victims] crawling and apologizing and admitting the error of their ways." The informers, by confessing imaginary crimes, joined their accusers and seemed to prove the existence of a secret plot that HUAC felt compelled to investigate. "Only through the humiliating ritual of informing on former colleagues," as David Caute observed, "could the penitent ex-Communist purge and purify himself and so regain the confidence of the inquisition."3

  Miller, as an unfriendly witness, had three strategic options. He could plead the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protected him from self-incrimination; he could testify about himself, but be deliberately vague about the names of other people; or he could answer all the questions about himself, but refuse to name names. Miller, advised by Rauh, chose the latter course, invoked the right to free speech and, by implication, the right to silence guaranteed by the First Amendment. Mary McCarthy pointed out that his principled stand was quite unusual and that "he was almost the only prominent figure heard by the committee who did not either tell all or take refuge in the Fifth Amendment."

  Miller began by truthfully declaring, "I was never under the discipline of the Communist Party, the communist cause," and "would not support now a cause or movement which was dominated by communists." He openly criticized the committee itself, whose "rather ceaseless investigating of artists was creating a pall of apprehension and fear among all kinds of people." His testimony covered a wide range of political topics. He advocated the repeal of the Smith Act; defended his contribution to a fund that supplied vitally needed medicines to Red China; discussed the ideas of his plays; condemned Ezra Pound's anti-Semitic broadcasts from wartime Italy; and denied that he had any connection with Howard Fast, the American communist writer and winner of the Stalin Pea
ce Prize. When asked if he'd attacked "Kazan because he broke with the Communist Party and testified before a congressional committee," Miller stood firm and declared, "I have never attacked Kazan. I will stand on that. That is it." Instead of trying to deny his former beliefs, he staunchly defended his support of the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War: "I have always been, since my student days, in the thirties, a partisan of Republican Spain. I am quite proud of it. I am not at all ashamed. I think a democracy was destroyed there."4

  Miller forthrightly answered all the questions about himself. When provocatively asked, "Do you consider yourself more or less a dupe in joining these communist organizations?" he disagreed. He was idealistic and his political experience had been valuable: "I wouldn't say so because I was an adult. I wasn't a child. I was looking for the world that would be perfect. I think it necessary that I do that if I were to develop myself as a writer. I am not ashamed of this. I accept my life. That is what I have done. I learned a great deal." He also made an important distinction, relevant to the issue of his passport, between his criticism of America at home and overseas: "there is no case that I would say I was ready to support criticism of this country abroad. . . . I do draw a line between criticism of the United States in the United States and before foreigners."

  In his profile of Miller, written the following October, the English theater critic Kenneth Tynan pointed out the absurdity of the HUAC's questions: "To clinch its case, the committee confronted him with a revue scene on which he had collaborated in 1938: it presented the committee as a mad Star Chamber where witnesses were gagged, bound and tortured." They read the opening passage of Miller's broadly satiric sketch, Listen My Children, written with Norman Rosten, to prove his incorrigible anti-American tendencies: "In the center of room, in a rocker, sits a man. He is securely tied to a chair, with a gag in his mouth and a bandage tied over his mouth. Water, coming from a pipe near ceiling, trickles on his head. Nearby is a charcoal stove holding branding irons. Two bloodhounds are tied in the corner of the room." "Having read the scene," Tynan wrote, "the committee's attorney triumphantly asked:'Well, Mr. Miller?' Ruminant over his pipe, Miller sharply replied: 'But – that was meant to be a farce.'" Tynan's version improved on Miller's reply. He actually said, rather mildly, "I find it amusing. I don't see what is so horrific about that. I think it is a farce. I don't think anybody would take it seriously that way."

  Indignant at his effrontery, the committee continued to press Miller about his criticism of their work. They asked him if The Crucible was the subject "of a series of articles in the communist press drawing parallels to the investigations of communists and other subversives by congressional committees." Instead of backing down, Miller confirmed the parallel by responding, "I think that was true in more than the communist press. I think it was true in the non-communist press, too. The comparison is inevitable."5 In this instance, as in the exchange about Listen My Children, his quick wit and calm rationality made the committee look absurd.

  In October 1947, when the screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr., one of the Hollywood Ten, was pressured to name names before HUAC, he famously replied, "I could answer the question, but if I did, I would hate myself in the morning." (Lardner was sentenced to a year in jail for contempt and, by an ironic twist of fate, wound up in the same Connecticut prison as the chairman of his investigating committee, who'd been convicted of corruption.) The high point of Miller's testimony came when, remembering Lardner's exemplary statement, he also took his stand and refused to name names:

  I want you to understand that I am not protecting the Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to and I will protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him. These were writers, poets, as far as I could see, and the life of a writer, despite what it sometimes seems, is pretty tough. I wouldn't make it any tougher for anybody. I ask you not to ask me that question. . . .

  I will be perfectly frank with you in anything relating to my activities. I take responsibility for everything I have ever done, but I cannot take responsibility for another human being. . . .

  My conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person. . . . My counsel advises me that there is no relevance between this question and the question of whether I should have a passport.6

  On September 27, 1956, the FBI summarized the main charges against Miller:"He admitted signing many appeals and protests issued by 'Red front groups in the last decade' but denied he was ever under communist discipline. MILLER, when asked if he signed an application to join the CP in 1939 or 1940, stated he had signed what he thought to be an application for a 'study course' in Marxism. He refused to name persons he had seen at CP Writers meetings."

  Despite these damaging accusations, the "pipe-smoking playwright," self-assured and dignified, made a good impression and was treated with respect. One historian wrote that his "appearance was notable for its air of sober amiability. . . . Despite a certain [deliberate] fuzziness on a number of points, Miller had been a credible witness. He was responsive, collected, and only moderately sententious." David Caute added that "up to a point Miller was a cooperative witness, wordy rather than eloquent, less at home with the spoken than the written word." Mary McCarthy explained why he was punished for resisting the committee: "when it came to giving names he balked, and this balking, in the view of his questioners, amounted to a limitation on Congress' power to investigate." The committee of course already knew all the names, but wanted him to accept "the principle of betrayal as a norm of good citizenship." When he refused to do so, on July 25, 1956 "the contempt citation against him was voted eventually by the House of Representatives – 373 to 9."7 Miller's staunch opposition to HUAC firmly established his image as a man of courage and integrity. Comparing the two old friends, Victor Navasky noted how "Kazan emerged in the folklore of the left as the quintessential informer, and Miller was hailed as the risk-taking conscience of the times. . . . In his life, his politics, and his art, [Kazan] has done as much to defend the naming of names as his old colleague Miller has done to challenge it."

  Not everyone admired Miller's performance. The playwright Lillian Hellman, who'd also been defended by Rauh when she was summoned by HUAC, had pleaded the Fifth Amendment and stated, "I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." She was jealous of his success and did not see anything courageous about his testimony. Alluding to The Crucible, he'd told HUAC that he'd "been to hell and back and seen the devil." Hellman wisecracked that he "must have gone as a tourist." She meant that he had come back safely from Washington, that he was merely self-dramatizing his appearance and that "he was too cozy with the committee for her taste, too willing to grant their right to ask questions in the first place." In 1964, when Miller's autographical play After the Fall was being performed in New York, Hellman (using her own name instead of Miller's) published a wicked parody that mocked his role as noble martyr:

  "Buy My Guilt" was written by Lillian Hellman and is now being performed in the converted tiger cages of the Bronx Zoo on a most advanced thrust-retreat stage. . . . Miss Hellman claims the play is not autobiographical, but the editors must point out that the events of the play follow closely on her life. . . .

  The play concerns itself . . . with Miss Hellman's appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, her inner struggles, her unselfish concern with weaker and less fortunate friends, her final admirable admission that all of us must stand trial for the rest of us.8

  By pleading the Fifth Amendment Hellman had avoided the charge of contempt. But, as Navasky noted, Miller took a greater risk by opposing HUAC: "Miller made a decision, in spite of an awful lot of advice the other way. People said,'You are blowing your career.' Either he was braver or smarter than they were or he could not be in the company of corrupt men for too long and live well with himself." On July 8, about three weeks after the hearings and before he was cited for contempt, Miller described his reaction to the ordeal in a letter to Saul Bellow:
"The slightly amazing thing to me is that I never felt scared at all. Something's snapped in me – the connections of fear. I guess I have reached that ancient and dangerous stage when one just doesn't give a shit."9

  II

  Miller maintained that he was not subpoenaed for his left-wing views, but "because I was engaged to Marilyn Monroe. Had I not been, they'd never have thought of me. They'd been through the writers long before and they'd never touched me. Once I became famous as her possible husband, this was a great possibility for publicity." Congressman Francis Walter, the chairman of HUAC, hoped that Marilyn, concerned about maintaining her popularity with the public, would support the committee. Wanting above all to get re-elected, he actually telephoned Joseph Rauh and (Miller said) promised "that if Marilyn would take a photograph with him, shaking his hand, he would call off the whole thing. It's as simple as that. Marilyn would get them on the front pages right away."

  Miller refused to allow Marilyn to kiss the frog – and then staged his own publicity feat. In the midst of his testimony, to take the heat off and generate sympathy, he unexpectedly announced the real purpose of his visit to England: "The objective is double. I have a production which is in the talking stage in England of A View from the Bridge, and I will be there with the woman who will then be my wife. That is my aim." Learning from Marilyn about how to manipulate the media, Miller pulled off a brilliant coup de théâtre. Marilyn was surprised and delighted by his public announcement. Reacting as if Miller were the great man and she the unworthy consort, she told Norman Rosten: "He announced it before the whole world! He told the whole world he was marrying Marilyn Monroe. Me! Can you believe it? You know he never really asked me. We talked about it, but it was all very vague. I mean, really ask me to marry him!"10