KNOX: For months, I wasn’t getting any work, and I suspected something must be going on. Then Chester Erskine, who was a fine writer, producer, director, and a very good friend of mine, bought the rights to the Reader’s Digest television series, and he called me to ask if I’d play a gangster on one of the shows, which, of course, I accepted. Then he called me about two days later and said that he had to talk to me. I went over to his office, we walked outside, and he said, “Look, you can’t repeat this, but you’re blacklisted.” Studebaker was the sponsor and they’d told Chester that he couldn’t use me for this program, and Chester said he had to use me because I’d already signed the contract. They said, "Okay, but just this once, no more."

I was still getting a lot of offers for parts on television, but each time I’d tell a director or producer to call my agent, that’s the last I’d hear about it. The deal would fall through.

Q: Why exactly were you labeled a Communist?

KNOX: I’d signed a petition. The heading of the petition as printed in the Hollywood Reporter was “The Thomas Rankin Committee Must Go”. Also, I had attended the Actor’s Lab, which was later listed as a Communist front. Then what really did it was when I signed the amicus curiae, which means ‘friends of the court,’ and was signed by hundreds of people asking the Supreme Court to hear the case against John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo, who were writers with the Hollywood Ten.

Q: Burt Lancaster had also signed these petitions and they never came after him.

KNOX: That’s because Lancaster was too important. He was too big a star.

Q: But so was John Garfield.

KNOX: They didn’t give a shit about Garfield.

Q: Do you feel the Blacklist killed him, or was it his life pattern and basic personality? He was a heavy smoker and drinker, and in his autobiography, Edward G. Robinson says that Garfield’s passions about the world were often so intense that Robinson feared he was a candidate for a coronary.

KNOX: Let me tell you, Garfield’s whole life revolved around acting. He was a natural born actor. So when the blacklist prevented him from doing the work he loved, it was like cutting his legs off. It was very sad; I remember he’d walk around saying, “What do they want from me?” And it killed him.

Garfield was with The Group Theater back in the 1930s when they were all Communists, except for him. Garfield was very apolitical, but they got him anyway.

Q: Edward G. Robinson was another innocent casualty.

KNOX: He’d signed a different kind of petition. When the Soviet boat came to L.A., during the war, the Soviets were our allies. They were losing tens of millions of people. There was an organization to welcome these sailors as American allies, and Eddie Robinson put his name to that as one of the welcomers, as would have I had someone given it to me to sign. But after the war was over, our biggest enemy is the Soviet Union, and who are they going after? Eddie Robinson!

Q: Bogart formed his own protest against the “witch hunt” when he and a group of fellow actors marched on Washington.

KNOX: Bogart was sort of left, and felt it was very unjust. But the FBI got to him and John Huston and told them to drop it. So they went home and Bogart kept his mouth shut. These people appeared enormously strong in their movie roles, but most backed down quietly when the pressure was put on them.

Stone Wallace is a writer living in the Northwest.

Got a problem? Email us at filmmonthly@hotmail.com