Phoebe Brand, actress. If Brand
was blacklisted, there is no telling what she was blacklisted from. In 1931 she
was part of the legendary left-wing Group Theatre Brand. She was one of its
first and most committed members. She was later was one of the founders of the
LA-based Actors Lab. The Hollywood Reporter called Carnovsky, Brand and the
other members of the Lab's executive board "as red as a burlesque queen's
garters".
In 1952 director Elia Kazan identified Brand
as Communists when he testified before the House Un-American Activities
Committee. According to almost everything written about her, after that, Brand
was unable to work in film and on stage. However her last Broadway stage credit
before 1952 was for Awake and Sing in 1939 and she had only one screen credit,
for a bit part on a TV show in 1951.
Brand sold her LA home in 1952 and moved to back to New York and appeared in a long-running stage production of The World of Sholem Aleichem (1953-1955). The play's cast was made up of supposedly blacklisted actors….who couldn’t find work although they were working on stage. Brand became a founding member of the Round Table Review in Manhattan and directed several works including a stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, “The Idiot.” She also taught acting.
Brand sold her LA home in 1952 and moved to back to New York and appeared in a long-running stage production of The World of Sholem Aleichem (1953-1955). The play's cast was made up of supposedly blacklisted actors….who couldn’t find work although they were working on stage. Brand became a founding member of the Round Table Review in Manhattan and directed several works including a stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, “The Idiot.” She also taught acting.
Her husband was the actor Morris
Carnovsky, also a founder of the Group Theatre (1931-1940) in New York.
Carnovsky was in Hollywood for twelve before he left in 1952.
From 1937 through 1949, he had
small parts in 15 films and one television program. He made four films in 1950.
In April of 1951, he appeared
before the HUAC and refused to say whether he is or ever has been a Communist,
even after HUAC investigator confronted him with his party ID card, No. 43975.
At that same hearing, Character
actors Marc Lawrence named as a communist and Elia Kazen named him as a
communist in his testimony in 1952.
Actor Sterling Hayden testified before HUAC that he had attended
Communist Party meetings that were sometimes held at Carnovsky's house in
Hollywood.
He worked, uninterrupted,
throughout the entire decade of the 1950 and despite what appears to be a self-inflicted
blacklist, he reappeared on twice TV in 1959, in The Play of the Week and a TV
movie, The World of Sholom Sleichem
Just because someone’s name
appeared in Red Channels, that doesn’t mean they were blacklisted. It just
means there name appeared in Red Channels.
Just because a person said they
were blacklisted doesn’t mean they were. Many people in Hollywood have lied
about being blacklisted over the years.
If a person was actually blacklisted…and not
many were actually blacklisted….it was the studios and TV sponsors who
blacklisted them. Not the United States federal government.
If a person claims the blacklist
ruined their career, they should be able to prove they had a career before the
blacklist.